“The Heimlich Group” is the visual pun I imagined about a private school that my agency had assigned me to as a substitute teacher a few months ago. The institution’s logo features two triangles–human torsos, arguably–one triangle superimposed upon the lower triangle. Instead of naming the organization’s actual name (I can’t, for fear of legal reprisal; I have also substituted the names of all the instructors and students featured here) the moniker I coined struck me as far more fitting name, given the implicitly forceful juxtaposition of the triangle-shaped torsos.
Little did I know, as I sat there in the lobby of the Heimlich Group, what lay in store for me that day.
I had waited over 30 minutes when the school’s principal, Teresa, arrived at the lobby to retrieve another temp scheduled for that day as well as myself. I asked the principal if I was overdressed while we passed other school staffers, dressed down as if prepped for moving day. She said not to worry and that it was “jeans Friday,” which accounted for her attire in denim.
By a long arc beginning at the back of the school’s lobby, leading to the center of the school campus, Teresa brought us to our respective assignments for the day.
My assignment called for me to assist in-class instructors as needed, but spend most of the day on the sidelines. No cell phone usage or reading would be allowed during the shift.
After dropping off the other temp, Teresa walked me to the end of the long hallway to the very last classroom before the door that led to the building’s foyer.
I entered a classroom with seven or eight students milling about. There was a lot of commotion and hollering as the instructor–a substitute no less–who introduced herself as Amelia, attempted to restore order. I could not help but associate the wear and strain etched in her countenance with the hazards of working for The Heimlich Group.
The ages of the gathered students I guessed to be within a range of 15 to 19 years old. A few of them appeared to be hapless recipients of overwrought pituitary glands: taller than my six-foot frame and weighing at least 50 to 100 pounds more than my own bulk at 220.
There were nine desks deployed in the middle of the classroom, along with a table and three additional desks lining the classroom’s margin: for the students considered “special cases” — of what struck me as a room-full of special cases. (My assignment described them as students with moderate-to-severe Autism. Full disclosure: my youngest son has been diagnosed with moderate Autism. Compared to the students I encountered that day, I would consider my son extremely high-functioning).
Into the middle of this ruckus, Byron entered the room wearing noise canceling headphones, seemingly on edge as he swayed and hollered like shaman. A boxed puzzle was quickly provided for him as he sat down at a back table and continued to fret loudly, repetitively, all the while massaging his pectoral muscles with each hand. At which point Amelia cautioned me that if he were to erupt as a physical threat I would be responsible to lead the ten or so other students out of the classroom for safety while Byron would be dealt with.
Fortunately he settled into the jigsaw puzzle, but not before shaking the table and knocking over an appliance-size pencil sharpener, spilling out a mound of pencil shavings.
Amelia pointed out, by way of introduction, a handful of other students to watch out for. There was Ravi, a thin and wildly grinning young man clutching a handheld video game unit. Ravi was known to slip his hand into his adult-size diaper and fling his feces at anyone nearby. I don’t need to emphasize how keen an eye I kept on that young man.
Sitting at a corner in the front of the room was River, thin and diminutive, sporting a stylish bowl cut. Amelia explained he was a headbanger and a biter: of the friendly and angry varieties. Obviously I didn’t want to be on the receiving end of either kind of mandible manhandling.
As I gazed over the rest of the classroom occupants, there were other characters I would get acquainted with throughout the day.
There sat Troy, who clutched an unopened box of Barilla pasta, whose contents at the latter end of the day would find their way to the floor.
Elias, who sat behind Troy, had not yet arrived at the classroom as he had experienced a triggering event in the bathroom, which caused him a seizure and inflicted three skin abrasions on his palms and right knee, all shedding blood.
In the corner behind Elias sat Eric, also attired in noise canceling gear, laughing maniacally to himself. Ryan, a quiet yet nervously pacing young man, had a special role in this class setting that no one objected to: it was his self-appointed job to keep all room wanderers in their seat.
The morning routine of the class carried on, punctured by interruptions or outbursts of clashing psyches until Amelia announced that the class schedule had arrived at “morning circle time,” which amounted to watching YouTube videos of over-hyped morning motivation songs for children.
After cycling through several preschool spirit songs, it was time for the class to enjoy some play time outside. The students stood and meandered out the door and toward the building exit. They arrived at one of several playgrounds situated at the heart of the Heimlich Group campus.
Out in the late-morning sun, each of the students gravitated to a favored playground equipment. Lotus, a brightly attired young lady, hopped on a swing and oscillated at wild arcs where the chains were almost parallel to the ground.
Janine was far more circumspect about safety and sanity, sitting calmly on the mental framed swing. She asked me to gently push her and I gladly obliged, exchanging bits of conversation. She was exceptionally pleasant to talk with and laughed often; her grin-bared teeth partially enveloped in a layer of gums. Janine kept calling me “Richard” and after a while I didn’t see the point of correcting her.
I chatted with the another classroom aide, a permanent employee of the Heimlich group I’ll call Enrique. He stood tall, but somewhat unassuming; a young man most likely in his late 20s. He had worked for the institution for a couple of years and I could barely withstand the temptation to ask how much he was earning to perform such a difficult and mind throttling job.
I conveyed to him my my wonder about the size of a few of the kids in the class, especially Tony, a tall, dark and enormous young man. His weight, I estimated, at about 300 lbs. Tony was soft-spoken and rarely talked. Another classroom aide said not to believe Tony when he indicated the urge to relieve himself. However, on several occasions throughout the day, I was asked to accompany Tony to the restroom. After finishing, he appeared to have adopted the self-directed task of toilet quality control. He entered every empty toilet stall to to initiate a flush. Only after ward could I convince him to wash up and return to class.
On the second bathroom visit with Tony, he insisted on a Number Two deposit. I was obligated to stand by while his massive girth eclipsed the porcelain commode. He sat there grunting and huffing occasionally for at least 20 minutes. Eventually, Amelia poked her head into the bathroom to make certain nothing had gone sideways.
Other students milled about the yard, a couple finding a comfortable spot on the artificial grass where they reclined. Troy followed Elias around, shoving him occasionally, until he retreated to the landing at the top of the slide, out of sight out of mind.
Then Troy began to follow Ryan around the yard. I began to notice a pattern from his targets of intimidation: they were roughly a fraction of his size and weight. Enrique hollered at Troy, to turn him off from pursuing and shoving Ryan. Eric the laugh hound, sat alone in the shade of the building, watching his classmates carry on.
A nurse and a behavior technician entered the play area, looking for Elias; they wanted to check on his mood and the condition of his wounds after the morning spill he took. The nurse pulled out her cell phone and called Elias’s mother to update her. “Want to talk to your mom?” the nurse offered. Elias reluctantly he took the phone and listened. His replies would have made little sense to anyone outside of Elias’s circle of caregivers. He handed the phone back to the nurse and she carried on commiserating with the behavioral tech.
All parties decided to let Elias finish the remainder of the day. Amelia returned from an impromptu meeting about the incident report she would have to write about Elias’s spill and ensuing seizure.
We called all the students to return indoors back to the classroom. It was lunch time. While most students brought home-prepared meals, a couple of them received school-made lunches. Amelia handed each student his or her homemade lunch stored away in a backpack hanging in the back of the classroom.
Byron did not receive much of a meal except for an icing stuffed cookie that Amelia said held a dose of his daily meds. Initially I thought his parents merely dropped the tablet in the cookie frosting, but as I began to think of medicine dosing strategies, I realized that the pill was most likely ground into powder that was then blended into the cookie icing. That would have been concealed method of dose delivery.
Each of the home lunches feature a variety of entrees that any given student would be willing to eat. There were a couple of frozen microwave meals. Elias received a slice of pizza along with other snacks. Even though Troy had brought to school on unopened box of corkscrew pasta, that would not serve as his lunch. River appeared to bring the most balanced meal of all the class: a box of healthy looking greens, possibly fresh spinach, and another box holding a salisbury steak over a bed of peas.
For the most part the students sat quietly eating their meals while the large flat screen played Disney cartoons, favored by most of the kids.
I observed River consumed his lunch with ravenous zeal, horking down several fists full of salad before pausing a moment — while a guttural disruption parted his lips. His body succumbed to heaving spasms and what I feared as the inevitable: jolts erupted from his abdomen up to River’s chest and out through his out of his throat a green fountain spilled out from his mouth
Credit I give where credit is due: River had the sense to regurgitate his guts’ contents back into the salad box. I suspect it wasn’t River’s first ‘Technicolor’ rodeo. Just a few strides of short of an informed conscience Amelia admitted she should have anticipated River’s reaction to stuffing his gullet. As though that lapse of judgment weren’t contemptible, she actually asked Enrique and myself if she shouldn’t feed River the remainder of his regurgitated meal. She had to ask.
That should have been the cap on a day of misery and degradation, but it wasn’t. What ended the day was 20 minutes of shrill, livid outpouring of desperation. Lotus endured meltdown when she had seen her ride outside the window in the parking lot, but Amelia hadn’t recognized the person who came to pick her up.
In a functional, normal educational setting, parents picking up their children after school will have the phone number to the classroom and can summon their child without drama or delay.
Lotus screamed and caterwauled to leave the room, flinging herself against the wall and upon the floor. It was a stunning demonstration of grief and rage that none of the Heimlich Group staff could be bothered to ameliorate. Amelia finally relented and escorted Lotus out the door and into the parking lot where her ride sat placidly in the driver’s seat, having no idea of the psychic duress Lotus experienced.
There’s the old cliche that says the inmates of an institution for the insane are running the asylum. Contrary to suggesting an uprising of the mentally ill, the maxim actually means that the decision makers in charge have shirked their responsibilities; actual, real-life conditions I witnessed first-hand. To my chagrin, my agency would pass on subsequent requests from The Heimlich Group, seeking my help. I could not fathom what circumstances would compel me to return.
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This post was previously published on Jude Folly’s blog.
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