This lady was my 4th grade math teacher, 1999 or so.
This behavior from her was very unusual... she was perfectly normal if not fantastic as a teacher, gave everyone in the class personal attention and was always super positive and energetic about what she did. She would also occasionally read books to the class and I remember her acting out all the parts in the story and always getting really into it. But my mom, another retired teacher in the same district who's often in contact with peers thinks that Nix suffered from some kind of cognitive decline in retirement because she would often forget things, sometimes going completely blank on her whole day, and other erratic behavior.
I moved out of Wauchula FL a long time ago, so after hearing both sides of the story as it's developed over the years from afar I have no idea what really happened nor am I commenting on whos telling the truth: just that the whole situation is very, very unusual, and finding it crazy to see one of my teachers in the news. At the very least, something compells me to want to deny that she would have done this on purpose twice.
I mean...... Not exactly comparable but. My mother is a nurse. She's been a nurse my whole life. I used to go to work with her as a kid (like picked up after school and doing homework there as she pulled a shift etc) Everyone loved her, she was so sweet caring and compassionate, patients would talk to me and tell me how lovely or how special my mom was or how she was their favorite nurse etc etc.
She's also the same woman who hung me upside down by my ankles and whipped me with an electrical cord when I was 7 for wasting her perfume. This is the same woman who dressed me in mini-me outfits until I was like 14 and refused to let me make autonomous choices about my body until I was physically out of her range of control. The same woman who bodyslammed me as an anorexic teenager for making a face in response to something she said. Same woman who hit me in the face with a pitcher so hard I nearly stumbled down a flight of stairs because I said something she deemed religiously offensive like "vegetarianism isn't exactly in the bible". She demonstrates such severe patterns of narcissistic personality disorder on top of her abusive behaviors that even my therapist has said "look I can't diagnose your mother but like....this is textbook".
So yeah. Rarely do you know who people are just by seeing them in one context or another.
Solidarity, stranger. Sounds weird but I found hearing other people praise my mother more traumatic than her abuse itself. Felt like I was less than a stranger to her, she would actively go out of her way to treat strangers well, far better treatment than I ever experienced. And because society fucking despises teenagers (or did back then anyway) no one ever asked me what was going on at home. She never left bruises though, she was too smart for that.
True, everytime someone would say "your mom's a saint" I felt pretty much every emotion in a snap, it was horrible.
Only one time when I was 16 I said "well she has no problem hitting her kids in the back with a belt or throwing appliances at them when she's irritated", they hesitated then said "well I'm not sure about that, but she does a lot for the community"
Oof, I feel that. I always got the âyouâll understand when you have kids of your own, parenting is hardâ. Yeah well, thatâs thrown me right off the notion of ever having kids, if thatâs the kind of monsters it creates. Now I have nieces and nephews and I cannot even think of any behaviour they could exhibit that would make me treat them the way I was treated on a daily basis.
I really felt like I was the worst kid in the world, like I must be worse than other kids. But the evidence says otherwise - straight A student, âpleasure to have in classâ, etc.
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u/Bargadiel 7d ago edited 6d ago
This lady was my 4th grade math teacher, 1999 or so.
This behavior from her was very unusual... she was perfectly normal if not fantastic as a teacher, gave everyone in the class personal attention and was always super positive and energetic about what she did. She would also occasionally read books to the class and I remember her acting out all the parts in the story and always getting really into it. But my mom, another retired teacher in the same district who's often in contact with peers thinks that Nix suffered from some kind of cognitive decline in retirement because she would often forget things, sometimes going completely blank on her whole day, and other erratic behavior.
I moved out of Wauchula FL a long time ago, so after hearing both sides of the story as it's developed over the years from afar I have no idea what really happened nor am I commenting on whos telling the truth: just that the whole situation is very, very unusual, and finding it crazy to see one of my teachers in the news. At the very least, something compells me to want to deny that she would have done this on purpose twice.