Every teacher has that one student. The one who makes you question your life choices, your classroom management, and whether or not you should start putting Kahlua in your coffee and have it for breakfast.
For me, it was an elementary aged girl my first year bossing in the ED self-contained classroom. She was brilliant. Too brilliant. The kind of smart that’s dangerous in the wrong hands… used for destruction every game tick.
Her preferred strategy?
Task Avoidance: Level 99.
Combat Style: Feral.
When she didn’t want to do something — math, writing, literally anything academic — she’d slip under her desk and transform. Not metaphorically. Literally. She became a cat.
And not a cute little purring-on-a-pillow cat.
We’re talking feral, aggressive, hissing-from-inside-the-supply-cabinet kind of cat.
She would:
- Crawl under desks 🐾
- Swat materials off tables like they were low-tier drops 🧻
- Climb into cabinets and hiss if you tried to communicate
- Sometimes bare teeth while making direct eye contact
This wasn’t a random event — this was her multi-phase boss fight.
Phase 1: Desk Dive
Phase 2: Tail Twitch
Phase 3: Feral Paw Swipe
Final Phase: Emotional Damage (to staff and property)
The class would have to be teleported out like we were in a surprise wilderness encounter. Just me and the cat boss left in the room. No prayer potions. No safe spot. Just low-level gear and crossed fingers.
And just when I thought we were done for the semester, she hit me with the final boss move:
At Thanksgiving, we had this sweet little classroom tradition — a real pumpkin set out for students to write what they were thankful for. Deemed our “Thankful Pumpkin”. Social skills am I right?
It sat in the middle of the room, covered in Sharpie-scrawled gratitude like “my dog,” “my mom,” and “lunch.”
Heartwarming, right?
She. Made. It. Go. Splat.
With the strength of a thousand tantrums and the precision of a Crazy Archeologist special attack, she yeeted that pumpkin off the table.
It hit the floor and exploded — real pumpkin guts, seeds, and sticky orange shrapnel everywhere.
The smell of smashed squash and ruined sentiment filled the air.
I stood there, rethinking all of the life choices that led me to this moment in time, looking at this demolished gourd like it was the final loot chest after a three-hour boss run… only to find nothing but pain inside.
No one even got to say they were thankful for XP that year.
Naturally, her cat shenanigans earned her a one-way ticket to home-based learning.
But what did I do?
I signed up to be her teacher anyway.
Why? No idea.
Some misplaced, exhausted, probably trauma-bonded sense of wanting to make a difference.
Day one at her house.
She bolted out the door and climbed a tree.
A real tree. Big, barky, covered-in-leaves tree.
We were supposed to be learning fractions. Instead, she was hissing from the branches like a jungle cat.
When I walked outside and asked her to come down, she started spitting at me.
And in the most professional way humanly possible, I let her know that if she spit on me…
I was coming up after her.
Because apparently, teaching means you don’t just deliver lessons — you fight boss battles with multiple attack styles and no prayer left to flick.
🎮 TL;DR:
Sometimes, a student doesn’t want to complete a task. Sometimes, that student becomes a cat. Sometimes, you get hit with a surprise pumpkin toss.
And sometimes, you threaten to climb a tree mid-lesson because spit was weaponized.
But you show up.
You respawn.
You clean the classroom, the pumpkin, say a prayer — and you try again.
Because that’s what teachers do.
I teach, I grade, I silently scream into the void. Occasionally I blog.
Follow for more red-pen rage and XP from the front lines:
💻 Respawns and Responsibilities on Facebook