The Day I Fucked Crazy Carrie

"Yes, that's exactly right Carrie," I affirmed. "Henry believes that what he is saying is true, but clearly he is not of sound mound. For example, when Henry describes seeing witches riding broomsticks by the light of the moon and stars, does that sound like the words of a sane man? When he hears the words of the Devil and a chorus of Demons when drawing water from the well, or sees a woman who he perceives to be a witch talking to a cat and the cat talking back? Seeing cloven-hoof footprints on a track where sheep and goats pass by and interpreting them as being made by the Devil himself? Or when he and his family are reading the bible, and biblical figures like Abraham, Moses or King David leap out of the pages to instruct Henry of the Lord's word of the evil in Salem? Does that sound like a man in full control of his senses?"

Again, no interest from the rest of the class, apart from some who looked amused that yet another English class was turning into a one on one book club between Carrie Adams and Mr. Roberts again. Once again, Carrie had something to say.

"Henry seems to be like my Nanna," Carrie laughed. "Like the other day she was insisting there was a black panther in the garden, and it was just the cat. We took her to the zoo one time and all the way home she was insisting that she had seen a Yeti, but it was just a gorilla. Then another time she was cowering on the front porch saying that there was a UFO, and it was only a passing plane. Funny thing though, Nanna insists that there are no ghosts, yet we live in a haunted house."

Some students laughed, notably three male bogans behind her, and Carrie was most irritated, turning around to face them. "Our house is haunted," she insisted, glaring at them through her glasses. "There's strange noises like knocking and footsteps at night, things are often out of place or doors open when they shouldn't be, and sometimes when I'm getting undressed, taking a shower or bath or when I'm on the toilet I feel like I'm being watched."

More amusement from the rest of the class, even the gothic girls who with their dyed black hair, white foundation and dark make-up and black clothes went through life finding no humor in anything were laughing. Still it wasn't as bad as on Friday, when the class were working or at least pretending to work on an essay.

Carrie had come up to my desk and asked for the lavatory pass, which seemed to be a reasonable request except for the extra and very un-necessary details the teenager gave not only to me, but the rest of her class. "Sorry to interrupt Mr. Roberts but could I please get the toilet pass? I need to go to the ladies in a big hurry, I've got my period and the pad I'm wearing is feeling like its getting too full, I don't want to bleed through my napkin into my panties and jeans."

If this wasn't enough, Carrie had taken a new sanitary napkin out of her bag and was holding it in her left hand, a wet wipe in her right hand, the teenager not bothered at all that her male teacher and the rest of the students both female and male could see the feminine hygiene product she intended sticking to her knickers, and the wipe she would use to wash her pussy when she changed her napkin.

"No problem Carrie," I said, hastily handing Carrie the bathroom pass.

"Thanks so much Mr. Roberts, it's the heaviest day of my cycle, and my vagina isn't cooperating that's for sure," said Carrie, as she dashed out of the classroom to attend to her female problems.

Close to 15 minutes went by and I was wondering what was taking her so long until Carrie returned and she handed the bathroom pass back to me. "Thanks again Mr. Roberts. Sorry I took so long, when I got downstairs and went into the girls' room I found that I needed to have a poo as well, so I went to the toilet at the same time. Period disaster averted though, so that's the good thing."

Carrie talking about her weird grandmother and her family's house being haunted didn't cause as much disruption as her feminine hygiene emergency on Friday, but I still needed to get the class back on track. "Well reading about Henry and hearing about Carrie's Nanna brings me to the next homework assignment about unreliable narrators."

Sighs, groans and mumbles under the breath from the entire class. Well except for self-appointed teachers' pet Carrie and some of the stoners and slackers in the back row who were too lazy to even protest. "Your assignment is to write a story in the first person about normal event but narrated by an unreliable narrator. It can be anything, school, work, sports, a holiday, it's your choice but you need to make sure you include narration to show that the narrator is not reliable and the events described are not accurate."

I knew that I would probably have some students fail to hand in their stories on time or at all, that many of them would hand in half a page of garbage written the morning before the assignment was due, or that I would get stories written in third person, maybe second person or some bizarre narration style never used before, but tried -- and failed -- to promote the assignment as interesting and fun. Apart from Carrie, none of them believed me.

Lunch break at noon saw my students race for the door and downstairs as though the classroom was on fire. They couldn't leave fast enough. Even Carrie made herself scarce very quickly. My boss Frank, the head of the English department and a tall Italian-Australian man aged in his early 40s popped his head into my classroom.

"How are things today, Brad?" Frank asked.

"Good thanks Frank," I said, not disclosing the problems I had had with Carrie.

"You didn't motivate them to stay and learn more about the book you're studying?" Frank laughed.

I also laughed. "No, they couldn't leave fast enough. Maybe it's just me."

"No, my Year 9 class set a world speed record getting out of my class too," said Frank. "If we put them in the interschool athletics carnival we'd win easily if they move at that speed. And this afternoon we'll have them clock watching again until home time. I know I won't be hanging around this afternoon, either."

"I was planning to work back a bit," I said, really not wanting to go home to where Australia's answer to Jabba the Hutt languished in my living room. "I need to reorganize a few things."

"Good luck with that, and good luck with lunch duty," laughed Frank, going on his way.

It was nice of Frank to wish me good luck, but I needed more than luck being the teacher rostered on for lunch duty, and patrolling the lunch areas, quadrangles and oval. At this high school, it was like trying to supervise a zoo -- a large open range zoo where all animals were placed in one giant enclosure. However, I was not alone in my lunch duty, I soon had somebody walking around with me in the form of Carrie, who joined me in my patrol while sucking on a popsicle like she was sucking on something very different and talking incessantly.

Everyone -- students, teachers and school support staff like the Mike the janitor -- all laughed at me being accompanied by my cloud cuckoolander sidekick with a crush a mile wide. Watching Carrie suck on her popsicle I was reminded of other times I had seen Carrie eating suggestively in front of me. One was when we had a sausage sizzle for charity, and young Carrie was eating her hot dog like she was doing something entirely different. And the time I had seen Carrie eating a lollipop; that had to be seen to be believed.

Actually, the suggestive way Carrie ate her lollipop that day was the least of my problems. This had taken place during the school holidays, and I had gone for a day out in the city. I was on a tram heading down Collins Street, when who should step aboard at the Swanston Street intersection but Carrie, dressed in a tight top that showed her tummy and her naval, denim shorts so short that she may as just well have worn her panties and white sneakers and ankle socks with cartoon cats on her feet. Her long hair loose that day, Carrie wore her glasses as usual and on her head a girls' bucket style hat with a big flower on the front, and the look somehow made her look even crazier.

"Well hello Mr. Roberts, what an amazing coincidence!" Carrie had squealed, rushing up to me and that was it, I had company for the rest of the day, Carrie following me everywhere and flirting like we were on a date, sucking suggestively on her lollipop the whole way.

I also wondered how Carrie had managed to find me like this. Had she followed me on the train to Flinders Street Station and taken cover among the crowds? I wouldn't have put it past her. Carrie didn't have a car of her own but she did have a driver's license and one time I had seen her follow me in her mother's car -- Mr. Adams unusually did not have a license and left the driving to his wife - her P plates displayed. Carrie made too many of the same turns I did to be coincidental before driving away much too fast. Maybe she had just been lucky that day in town? Perhaps Carrie had gotten into the city early and taken refuge near the Princes Bridge and Yarra River waiting for me to emerge and then follow me? Or perhaps she had gone to the top of the Rialto Towers -- Melbourne's tallest building -- and stood surveying the city streets through binoculars waiting for me in case I appeared?

That day I had seen a bus about to leave Spencer Street Station bound for Adelaide, and considered jumping aboard to escape this young girl who would not stop following me around both at school and out of it. Plus I liked Adelaide, it was such a nice place. However, I had little doubt that Carrie would somehow work a way around this small problem -- such as catching the bus to Tullamarine Airport and jumping on a plane to Adelaide -- and be waiting for me in South Australia when I arrived.

At the shopping center that serviced the general area where both Carrie and I lived she had been able to set up a number of her little chance meetings. One Saturday morning I was buying toothpaste when who should come up to me but Carrie, the young girl wearing a bright pink tracksuit, her hair tied up in a high pony-tail with a big bright pink bow and bright pink sneakers on her feet. She stood out alright, but at least she was color-coordinated today. This might not have been so bad had the feminine hygiene products not been on the shelf opposite from the toothpaste.

Carrie had taken two packets of sanitary napkins off the shelf, the supermarket generic brand. One read '20 Adhesive Panty Pads -- Regular' and the other '20 Adhesive Panty Pads -- Super' as well as some feminine wipes and had then set a record for oversharing on private female things. I learned all sorts of things about my student's menstrual cycle I would have been happier not knowing.

Holding up her napkins, Carrie had explained in much detail why she was a pads girl rather than using tampons, and why she preferred to use these generic brand period pads rather than bigger name brands. Apparently these pads adhered to the saddle of her knickers better, were more comfortable around her vagina and absorbed her menstrual flow more evenly. Carrie sounded like she worked in sales and was trying to convince me to buy these napkins for myself. This was despite the fact that having an XY chromosome structure I would have no need for these feminine napkins myself, unlike Carrie who with her XX chromosome structure obviously needed to wear them every 28 days.

I was granted the great privilege of learning more details about Carrie's periods, such as her menarche when she was aged 12, and how she had PMS, menstrual cramps, a heavy flow, bloating and problems with her bowels whenever it was her time of the month, this and the vast quantities of blood that flowed out of her vagina causing her to become one of Australia's greatest consumers of toilet paper in the week she was menstruating. By the time it was over, I could have gone on a television quiz show where my special subject was Carrie Adams' menstrual cycle.

Another time I happened to meet Carrie at the shopping center she was dressed for work at her part time job at a fast food outlet. Wearing her green work shirt and black trousers, along with a green peaked cap Carrie's work uniform was something that a typical 18-year-old girl would wear. But somehow, with her braided plaits and her crazy eyes going everywhere through her glasses, it made Carrie somehow look even more menacing.

This time, I was not subjected to any oversharing about Carrie's monthlies, but rather Carrie pleading with me to have lunch at the fast food. "Mr. Roberts, please come and have lunch where I work. Please, please, please!"

She held onto my arm, looking at me with her eyes, and I relented. I felt like a hamburger anyway. "Okay, you've convinced me Carrie," I said.

"Yay!" Carrie exclaimed, jumping up and down in glee.

I went in the restaurant, and as I sat at the table to enjoy a hamburger, fries and milkshake, I looked into the kitchen area where Carrie was hard at work, chopping up lettuces, tomatoes and carrots. She looked up at me and gave me a big wave with a crazy smile on her face, the enormous knife she was using to cut up the vegetables still in her hand. It was a pretty chilling sight.

At least Carrie had never shown up outside my house, although I often wondered if she had and managed to stay out of my sight. Maybe though if my nutty student stalker did show up at my house it wouldn't be such a bad thing? I could invite her inside to see the sight of the 200 kilogram Tyrone in his underpants. And if that happened she would probably run away so fast that an hour later she would be in Sydney, sprinting across the Harbor Bridge heading for the Opera House. Then an hour later she would be crossing the Queensland border into the Gold Coast still running at full speed, before collapsing in Brisbane's Queen Street Mall five minutes after this, going into a catatonic state, sobbing uncontrollably and begging never to be taken to see the fat guy again.

I had spoken to my boss Frank about the issues with Carrie, but he didn't seem too concerned, saying that he had known Carrie since she started high school and that she was known for her attention seeking, and that when he was younger several female students had developed crushes on him, and that he had dealt with them by being polite and professional until the girls lost interest. He also said that he had seen goldfish with longer attention spans than Carrie Adams, and that she would soon find another guy to get a crush on. A male classmate, a young male neighbor, a pop star, a sportsman or an actor for TV.

However, when Carrie's crush didn't dissipate and I began having more and more 'chance encounters' with the girl both in and out of school, out of concern for Carrie's well-being I requested a meeting with Frank, the deputy female principal Lillian and the guidance counsellor Jan.

It didn't go very well, especially with my two female colleagues. I began explaining myself, and was reminded that young Carrie came from a somewhat dysfunctional family background and unhappy home life, and that patience and understanding from me was paramount when dealing with students like her. Jan had also asked me if I had ever done anything to encourage Carrie's behavior and didn't seem to believe me when I denied it, while Lillian sternly reminded me that the school and Victorian education department had a zero tolerance policy with teachers taking sexual advantage of students, especially vulnerable students like Carrie.

With the two women looking at me clearly regarding me as the school's answer to Humbert Humbert, I didn't dare tell them other things that had been going on. Like Carrie talking about her periods, her vagina and her underwear, adjusting her knickers through her clothes in front of me, bending over in front of me in tight fitting jeans, shorts or leggings, wearing cleavage-showing blouses and short skirts, and opening her knees in class to show me her panties. And I also didn't tell them about how Carrie had invited herself to have a day out with me in the city during school holidays, imagine how that would have sounded?

I was then told that schoolgirl crushes come and go like the weather and that Carrie was a Year 12 she would be leaving at the end of this year, so the problem would resolve itself anyway. I was also reminded that there were other more pressing problems with student behavior and truancy at the school to be overly concerned with a student having a crush on their teacher, and that I should treat this as a learning experience and become a better teacher in the future.

Leaving the meeting I was more than a little frustrated, but did agree that Carrie did have a dysfunctional family background. I had never seen her senile and insane grandmother who from what Carrie described seemed to be housebound, but had seen her parents Norman and Annie. They were such a peculiar couple, looking like farmers some isolated village in rural England who had never ventured more than five miles from their farm. Both were a bit overweight, bespectacled and a long way from good looking, the pudgy Mr. Adams sporting a comb-over and Mrs. Adams long lank hair around her pudding face. Just how they had such a pretty albeit crazy daughter in Carrie was hard to determine. The really weird thing was that Norman Adams never spoke to other people, he would just whisper to his wife and Annie Adams would then speak for both of them.

The reason Mr. and Mrs. Adams were at the school was not due to problems with their daughter but their son, Carrie's younger brother Damien who was in Year 10. Damien was not weird and kooky like his older sister, he was just a little shit, plain and simple. That Damien had received five detentions in one day and then got another detention while in detention for his previous sins summed up what he was like perfectly.

Carrie and Damien had an older brother Jason who at age 20 looked like something from the Manson family and still had a reputation -- and not a good one - at this school several years after dropping out. There were also two younger kids, a daughter Regan who was aged 11 and going to start high school in 1992 and a 10-year-old brother Freddy, who had great potential to emulate his older brothers, while even Carrie had described her younger sister Regan as 'a bit odd'. So next year one Adams daughter would depart the school and a new Adams daughter would take her place. Just great.

I could also see how the crush of an 18-year-old schoolgirl on her 24-year-old English teacher might be considered of low priority on the pyramid of problems with students at this school, many of which were so bizarre they sounded like urban myths.

This year alone a group of girls had climbed up on a roof and 'choc-milked' a severely overweight girl, drenching her with a bucket of chocolate-flavored milk long past its use by date. Some boys had pranked an older female relief teacher by sneaking up behind her with a tape recorder and played a tape of vicious dogs barking, this causing her to collapse with a heart attack and having to be carted off in an ambulance, with the emergency vehicle pelted with eggs and mud as it departed the school, lights flashing and sirens blaring. There were numerous complaints from the public transport authorities about the behavior of kids from this school on trains, buses and trams; the proprietors of shops in the region as well as residents who lived in the area around the school.

And things had only gotten worse. One boy had been reported missing by his frantic parents one evening, only for him to be found hiding overnight in the school library as a practical joke. One boy ran away from a school trip to the zoo only to be found in Canberra the next day. Some Year 11s got busted drinking goon and smoking marijuana on a school camp down in Geelong. Just last week some Year 10s went on a school trip to the movies and to Sizzler for dinner afterwards to see if they could act like sensible and responsible young men and women. As it turned out they couldn't, and my boss Frank and his own superiors were still dealing with the aftermath of the debacle.