The Change of the Seasons: Teacher's Pet

Chapter 1
Enter Sandman

Chapter Description: Women need coffee like girls need attention. This just happens to be the perfect storm for both.

[size=2] Dear Faculty and Staff,

We were all young once. This is the universal law that binds us together. Yet, it is so impossibly hard for most adults to remember their own childhoods; to truly remember it beyond blind nostalgia and awkward memories. It is an unfortunate, but candid truth.

I know it is no exaggeration to say that the vast majority of New Springers attended Edwardson Elementary School as children and that experience very likely plays a large part in your own careers here. That awareness is one such reason why I hope you will all respond positively to the changing attitudes towards the status of age in our humble little town of New Springs.

Our local government, the New Springs Authority, working in hand with Old Lake County has enacted several laws recognizing the rights granted to the new and rising class of Grownups and Growndowns.

I personally urge you to study these laws in detail on your own time; for the sake of you and your loved ones. Nonetheless, I have compiled guidelines appropriate for the important role as cultivators that you all share at this elementary school. Please familiarize yourself with these basics and inform your students, so you all can be prepared for the emerging prevalence of these transformations.

1. All Grownups are adults: If you were to witness one of your students transform into a Grownup then it is important to remember that while they will likely be disoriented in the immediate aftermath of their transformation, they are physically and mentally capable adults on a biological level. Treat them as equals, not as overgrown children.

2. All Growndowns are kids: No matter if they were a friend, family, or colleague when they were adults; a Growndown attending Edwardson Elementary School as a student should be look upon as the child they’ve become. Despite their previous lives of being adults, Growndowns act on the same emotional and mental level as their new youthful peers and share a similarly limited skillset. Treat them as dependents, not as miniature adults.

3. Always acknowledge their past: Grownups and especially Growndowns have a hard time reconciling their memories of their previous age with their new age. It is absolutely vital to verbally recognize this in your day to day interactions with them, as repressing their desire to speak up about their experiences only damages them in transitioning into their new age group. In the case of Growndowns, don’t be afraid to let them talk to other kids about their time as adults (so long as they keep it age-appropriate!)

4. Prepare them for Facilitation: It is important to keep in mind that Grownups and Growndowns will inevitability become accustomed to their new status through a phenomenon known as Facilitation. This process eases the person in adjusting to their new status and role in life. It is absolutely vital to ensure that they do not resist this process, otherwise they will suffer painful and permanent consequences.

As a Grownup and a mother to three adorable Growndowns, these guidelines not only come from experience but also from the bottom of my heart. Please keep this information in your thoughts. You never know what the seasons will bring.

Sincerely,

Sarah Longview // Overseer, New Springs Authority

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This was not how I wanted to start my day.

This was one of many frantic thoughts that raced throughout Elizabeth Baxter’s sleep deprived mind as she sporadically sipped on her morning coffee in her empty 5th grade classroom. This one dejected line of reasoning was the calling card for the 42 year old woman’s moral fiber. For above all else, Elizabeth was just not in the mood to unpack the various implications coming from the contents of this letter.

The woman found herself doing so anyway however, as the most immediate detail that captured the teacher’s attention was the letter’s author. The last time Elizabeth had seen Sarah, she had been about 15 and a half years old. Now……she read over the line again out loud.

“As a Grownup and a mother to three adorable Growndowns.....Jesus this is ridiculous.” She acknowledged to herself.

Elizabeth certainly wasn’t a reactionary woman, or even a conservative one by any means; but she hated the goosebumps that crawled over her light skin as she read over those words. Sarah had been a little girl in her classroom only five years ago and now she was a woman grown, sending her own parents to this very elementary school. Elizabeth was around the same age as Stacy and Scott Longview and had more or less known them for her entire life.

She attended Edwardson Elementary School with both of them (though you would have to forgive the 42 year old woman for not remembering which classes they shared back then), Got her first kiss from Scott at Morrison Middle School, got called a rotten bitch by Stacy at Harrison High School, and many years later advised the married couple on the academic progress of their two lovely girls.

Now all of that had been for nothing.

And it was all because of the Medlock family, she thought to herself.

“Good morning Mrs. Baxter!” sang the voice of a familiar preteen boy.

Speak of the Devil.

Though by every motherly instinct pinging inside Elizabeth, James Medlock was an absolute angel of a boy. He was a cute and dorky bundle of energy miraculously contained in a prepubescent 10 year old boy. Delightful in attitude, kind of heart, and smart to boot; James was the typical 5th grader and perhaps represented everything good a teacher and mother like her desired in a preteen child.

But by all common sense and logic James should be at Pilgrim’s Rest University right now; experimenting in adulthood like other New Springers in their late teens and early twenties were. Instead, like her former peers Scott and Stacy, like her former student Sammy, and like James’ own mother, James had been reduced into a Growndown. A legal adult (as defined by the former teenager Sarah) that had been regressed into a young child and drained of the knowledge, experience, and emotional maturity that allowed adults to rule over children since the dawn of time. The only thing that apparently separated a Growndown adult and an actual child was the former’s distant memories of their past life as an adult.

“Good morning James.” Elizabeth replied tiredly but not unkindly from her desk, “How was your weekend?”

“It was great Mrs. Baxter! I got this great new game and it’s about a robot in space who has to hunt down aliens! And it-” James continued to rave.

The 5th grade teacher was lost in the boy’s words but she nevertheless gave him her time of day.

James had a lazy mop of sandy blond hair on top of his head that perfectly matched his sweet blue eyes and while he was slightly chubbier than his classmates, Elizabeth assumed that he would lose that baby fat once puberty kicked in for him a second time. All in all, James was a fairly well liked kid and he acted the part of the nerdy 10 year old boy she often taught over her long career.

And this was what had been nagging at Elizabeth. People changed in New Springs. She always knew that, she had grown up in this town after all. But was it always so blatant like a fresh-faced upperclassman in college becoming a baby-faced 5th grader?

She struggled with all her might to think of someone being transformed into something else. She knew it had happened, heard about it through rumor at least, but had no idea of how such a thing could even happen or why it didn’t seem like such a big deal to her.

New Springs was a comfy suburbia of weirdness in a river valley that was frankly bizarre in retrospect. Yet none of that seemed to hold a candle to the strangeness of this trending occurrence of adults becoming little kids again and children seemingly replacing them as adults.

“And then in the final level you blow her up!” finished James, absurdly proud that he beaten an entire game he had just gotten over a single weekend.

Elizabeth had to giggle at his enthusiasm, reminding her of her own son when he was his age. “Please keep it school appropriate James.”

Though there was no need, as the school bell began to ring and James went to his assigned table. It was only then, when the morning announcements began, that she realized that the rest of the students had already entered the classroom. Realizing how unaware she was, she quickly finished her coffee as she put away the letter from the New Springs Authority. The teacher took a much needed moment of self-reflection at her desk before she proceeded with the roll call of her students.

Elizabeth was an average 42 year old woman. She had a warm but mature face that was still very beautiful despite the imminent approach of middle age. But the age and stress were there, that was for sure. The area around her green eyes were wrinkled from her constant battle against sleep while the top of her forehead revealed a widow’s peak common among older women with her mother’s genes. She did her best to hide it by keeping her brown hair light and vibrant, and often wore a colorful headband over it for pictures. She was prone, more often than not, to wearing a purple blouse to work with a simple pair of blue jeans. This combination of clothes did a good job of showing off Elizabeth’s sexy, curvy hips to her fellow teachers while appearing both laid back and motherly to her students.

Finally, Elizabeth stood up and quickly glanced about the room at her students. All were accounted for, save for…

“Has anyone seen Becky this morning?” She asked.

Mandy Axwell deftly raised her hand with a gentle smugness, “Mrs. Baxter, Becky is just wasting our time as usual. She’s been late to class nearly every single day since school started. Why don’t you just mark her absent already? That’s what I would do if I was the teacher.”

Elizabeth raised a sly eyebrow, “Well that’s very commendable Mandy. I just bet you would make such a lovingly considerate teacher. But my records show that this would only be Becky’s fourth tardy from class.”

Elizabeth’s condescending tone brought a fit of chuckles from the boys in the class, much to the horror of the popular preteen girl. Ever careful not to jab the bitch-in-training too hard (Elizabeth was pretty good at guessing the kind of people her students would grow into as teenagers), she went onto the lesson as planned.

“So today class we are going to learn a great deal about…” Elizabeth started to say as she spied her expected intruder attempting to sneak into class, “Well it’s good that you finally joined us Becky. What took you so long if you don’t mind me asking?”

Becky Brownwood stood aghast. The poor girl never stood a chance, not with an experienced teacher like Elizabeth. Her young face was adorned with a healthy spread of freckles that matched the girl’s dark blue eyes. Her auburn hair, styled into a tomboy cut froze in place with her flat-chested body.

It was clear that the 11 year old’s mind was racing and eventually Becky flippantly said, “I was distracted, I’m sorry Mrs. Baxter it won’t happen again.”

“I hope for your sake that you’re right young lady.” Elizabeth announced. “I can’t keep turning a blind eye to this. You very well know that everyone else gets here on time. You’re on thin ice with me Becky.”

“I know Mrs. Baxter.” Becky said solemnly

“Well anyway,” Elizabeth continued on without further ado, “We’re going to learn more about the three frontiersmen who discovered Old Lake Valley and founded the town of New Springs. Come on kids we all know their names here….”

“Daniel Edwardson!”

“Lambert Morrison!”

“And Greg Harrison” the children chanted without guidance from Elizabeth.

She had used the class wide review as a simple exercise to pump up the kids for the lesson. Not a child in the class would have gotten the frontiersmen’s names wrong.

The Three Founders were folk heroes in New Springs. The 5th graders would have known their names since preschool if not earlier, just as Elizabeth’s generation had known seem since early childhood, and just as future generations would come to know them.

The stories that surrounded the frontiersmen’s expedition into Old Lake Valley were numerous and varied in scope. But, they always started the same way. After a long and harrowing journey across the unexplored and dangerous countryside of early America; the frontiersmen lost their leader, the reverend Vincent Wilson, just outside the valley at the base of a massive mountain. A resting place that would eventually become the college town of Pilgrim’s Rest.

This mountain was but the smallest of many similarly sized mountains that encircled the river valley that had enraptured Vincent Wilson in his final days.

The three remaining survivors: the cartographer Daniel Edwardson, the naturalist Lambert Morrison, and the soldier Greg Harrison all struggled to climb over the mountainous wall into the river valley. A struggle which very nearly killed them, but the three frontiersmen continued onward anyway in order to fulfill the reverend’s dying wish for them to see what lie within.

Once they were inside the valley however, the tall tales got fantastical. Some of them have the three frontiersmen become warriors that battled giant monsters alongside the Native Americans that inhabited the valley.

Other legends cast them as scheming adventurers who steal a great treasure from the tribes within the valley instead of befriending them.

Whereas other stories play them up as romantics infatuated with a single woman that changed appearance and personality each season of the year they were inside the valley.

And there were so many others, with each individual tale contradicting as well as mirroring others, ultimately creating a messy cobweb of impossibility. A proper, realistic narrative had been established long ago from the many, many primary sources the Three Founders left with the town after their deaths.

But even these not were infallible as Elizabeth had learned as a young woman at Pilgrim’s Rest University. Scholars that revisited the autobiographical works from the Three Founders decades after writing entire books based on them would find texts that were almost wholly different in nature from what they had originally read; which often created controversies in the local academic community.

“Now can anyone tell me which of the Three Founders this-” Elizabeth’s question was cut off.

“It was Daniel Edwardson!” Becky declared with the confidence of an obnoxious bull, “Who-”

“Becky I was not asking who the namesake of this elementary school was. Do I have remind you young lady that this is the 5th grade and not kindergarten?” Elizabeth puffed.

“But I…..no Mrs. Baxter.” Becky said as embarrassment overtook her. Giggles from her fellow classmates quickly spread throughout the room.

Swift to cut off Becky’s humiliation, Elizabeth continued her question, “What I intended to ask was who was it that actually named New Springs?”

Quick as a whip Mandy raised her hand and answered, “Mrs. Baxter, that was Greg Harrison.”

“Yes good job Mandy!” She praised Becky’s arrogant rival. “Greg Harrison’s life as a soldier in the colonies made him very experienced with the languages of the Native Americans and thus was able to learn and speak with the tribes here in the valley. To them, Old Lake and New Springs were but one ageless ecosystem that they roughly called The Waters of Timelessness. When Daniel Edwardson heard this from Greg Harrison he went on to…”

“Prove that the lake was older than the rivers and springs!!!!! That what I was trying to say Mrs. Baxter!” Becky yelled.

The response caught Elizabeth off guard. The caffeine she had downed a few minutes ago had yet to kick end and she was still tired as all hell. The full grown woman felt the same wave of embarrassment that had swelled little Becky just moments earlier. Rather than admit her simple mistake to the class and move on, she choose to say these fateful words.

“Becky Brownwood you do not interrupt the teacher! No matter what!” Elizabeth yelled.

“But I was right!” Becky countered.

“That doesn’t matter young lady and you know it!” Elizabeth shouted, “You are on the thinnest of ice with me Becky. Get ahold of yourself and grow up already!”

It was clear that Elizabeth finally got through to the 11 year old girl. Because Becky stood up with tears in her eyes and ran out the door, almost certainly to the bathroom.

“Becky! Wait!” Elizabeth tried to protest.

She strode to the open door and peered down the 5th grade hallway. Elizabeth’s assumptions were confirmed when she saw little Becky run into the girl’s bathroom at the end of the hallway.

I’m sorry Becky. That shouldn’t have happened. The 5th grade teacher admitted to herself.

Hopeful that the girl would eventually return to class on her own free will, Elizabeth decided that she should resume the lecture back in the classroom; in order to avoid creating a bigger scene for the whole 5th grade hallway to witness.

As the 42 year old woman reluctantly reentered her 5th grade classroom, down the hallway the preteen girl washed her tear covered face over the bathroom sink. As her tears were replaced by the tap water; the water stirred, ever so slightly caressing her tear-stained cheeks. It considered her, gauged her, and then pitied her. Soon it would have the power to act in her favor, but at this moment it could only calm her.

Little Becky’s sobbing quieted as her fitful tears went down the drain.

Teacher’s Pet will continue in: Breaking the Ice[/size]