| JUAN SANCHEZ Born: Brooklyn, New York
Mother: Carmen Maria Colon
Born: Ponce, Puerto Rico
LISTEN
TO HIS ORAL HISTORY
The
second time I came home wet in my pants, my mother really got mad. And
the following day, she came to school with me and she was to confront
the teacher and ask the teacher why she didn´t allow her son to
go to the bathroom whenever he needed to. And the teacher -- I don´t
remember her name but she was a very tall, thin white woman with a very
cold and very stern type of character. And she always had a tendency of
yelling at her students. So after a while she was talking to my mother,
she yelled at a couple of students and my mother noticed how she was relating
and really abusing the students. So she gave my mother some lame excuse.
She said that she never permits her students to go to the bathroom during
class and those are the rules and she´s not going to break it.
So my mother very nicely and very humbly tried to explain that I´m
not in a condition to hold it in and that the last few days I came in
-- came home wet in my pants and that she should take some consideration
because children can´t have that kind of resistance. And the teacher
just flat out told her in a very stern way that she´s not going
to change the rules. So my mother then turns around and she goes into
her bag and she pulls out a knife. And she turns around and grabs the
teacher by her shirt and points the knife at her throat and the teacher
was so terrified. She was so scared and so shaken. And then my mother
pushed her back in a very very rough manner. Then she quietly folded her
knife and put it back in her bag and then she said I want you to think
about this. And then we went back home because she didn´t let me
stay in class. So any way, the following day I went to school and I raised
my hand and she let me go to the bathroom and that day everybody was going
to the bathroom. It was a very funny experience, but it seems to me, my
mother had to take on a whole other posture -- a whole other character
from a very soft-spoken, humble woman to someone with a knife,threatening
the life of this individual who was abusing her students. That´s
something that always stays in my mind because it was a chance she took
that could have gotten her in a whole lot of trouble.
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