Debra Ryll

Word Count 735

Yes, we had roaches on the East Coast—but they weren’t the size of the Titanic, and they couldn’t fly. In Connecticut, roaches died easily with the swat of a slipper or a rolled-up newspaper. In Arizona—our new home—they were encased in hard-shelled body armor, apparently necessary to survive in a harsh desert environment. Killing them was like a back-alley street fight: they zigzagged around the room like B-52s. Sometimes it took our whole family to corner one. And then—whap whap whap—my dad beat them to death with repetitive blows from his size 12 Oxford, at which point they released their gooey, paste-like insides in a final death spurt. It was almost better to let them live.

One minute I was watching the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall, the next I was a resident of a godforsaken state populated with “ghost” towns named Tombstone. What had my parents been thinking?

I hated everything about Arizona. Until school started, where, for the first time, I had a male teacher instead of a nun.

And not just any male teacher. Mr. Davis looked like a movie star. Mr. Davis looked like he walked right out of Teen Beat magazine.

Mr. Davis could have been a centerfold.

He was tall, young, tan and lean. He wore chinos and open-necked shirts. He was a real-life Ken doll with a blond buzz cut, and our fifth-grade class was his first teaching assignment.

His polo shirt was the color of a Creamsicle, and he was just as dreamy. Apparently, the other girls felt the same. And statistically, one or more of the boys, but I was too young to know that.

Something very strange happened in Mr. Davis’ classroom. A girl named Sally stuck her thumb in her mouth and started sucking.

And then Melinda Williams started sucking her thumb. Followed by Evelyn Hidalgo, Toni Costa, and Irene Rodriquez.

I really didn’t want to, but I was the new girl and I wanted to fit in.

Pretty soon every female student had surrendered to peer pressure. Blushing under his tan, Mr. Davis asked us to stop. We would quit for a while, but then he’d turn to write something on the blackboard, and by the time he turned around we’d all be plugged in again.

“Girls,” he begged, “this isn’t sanitary. Please stop.” But our breasts were budding beneath our shirts and hair was sprouting from strange places and staring at Mr. Davis all day was, well… perhaps we needed to pacify ourselves.

Though his discomfort was obvious, Mr. Davis valiantly delivered our lessons facing a sea of prepubescent girls indulging in quasi-sexual behavior. All that sucking. Six hours a day of sucking.

Two weeks later, Mr. Davis strode into the classroom with newfound determination. Wearing a banana yellow polo that showcased his biceps, he set up the slide projector and drew the curtains to darken the room. He pulled a white screen down over the blackboard and displayed a single image: a monstrous insect with serrated mandibles emerging from a gigantic, hideous head. “These are the type of microscopic creatures that live all over the surface of everyone’s skin,” he explained.

Pop! Pop! Pop! The sound of a dozen thumbs being ejected simultaneously echoed through the classroom.

Satisfied, Mr. Davis turned off the projector and parted the curtains. He picked up a piece of chalk and turned toward the board to diagram a sentence. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Sally put her thumb back in her mouth. But this time, I did not join her.

Debra is a TEDx Monterey speaker, the author of two children’s books and Religomania, a musical about two Moms on a mission… to take down organized religion. Her essays have appeared in the Manifest Station and the San Francisco Chronicle, and she has just completed a memoir, Blue Cake, True Tales of an Accidental Outlaw, chronicling her misadventures as a drug and diamond smuggler