“I hate you! I hate you!” the girl screams as she stands in the corner of the classroom, face red and eyes wild. Ah, the lot of the vice principal, nobody knows me, but everyone hates me.

“Obviously, you’ve had a rough morning,” I try in my most soothing voice, “Why don’t we go to my office…”

“Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?!” she counters with a rank accusatory tone. I hate when they play that card. You try and be nice about things, and whammo, you’re a perv. I should have taken the job at St. Barnaby’s.

“Look,” I say, trying a more stern approach, “We can’t have this kind of disruption every day…” I’m cut off as she yells something obscene. I see something shiny catch the morning sun as it hurtles through the air. No time to move or block, I’m struck, and stinging pain shoots from my eye into my brain.

She bolts, and I’m left holding one eye and scanning the ground with the other. What did she throw? A quarter? There on the floor, it sits so innocently. She hit me with a quarter.