FALSELY ACCUSED

Perception, Perception, Perception

Hello. If you read my last piece, “The Chip,” then you’ve already been introduced to Amstell, an assistant head teacher who was my arch enemy throughout secondary school (high school if you’re American) back in the 90s.

I’ve thought about Amstell a lot since leaving school 25 years ago. Never kindly. I still feel that I was unfairly treated by him throughout those four years.

But I’m a middle-aged man now and also a teacher. And one of the things I get my students to focus on is character perspective and motivation. So I’m going to give three stories, as seen from my point of view, that demonstrate why I’ve spent my adult life thinking Amstell was (and probably still is) an arrogant, nasty little man.

Then I’m going step out of my own limited perception to put myself in Amstell’s shoes and tell the story as he would tell it. What motivated him? What was the narrative he told himself that made him do the things he did? He must’ve believed that everything he did was for the greater good and I want to explore that.

I understand that I was a handful for teachers. I didn’t get diagnosed with ADHD until I was in my thirties. I was out of control in school: no filter, no impulse control, no focus, no respect for authority, just a handful. Throughout my years of teaching, I’ve never had a student that I’ve found to be more of a handful than I surely was, but I’ve had enough challenging students to make me reflect on how some teachers must have felt about having to teach me, and obviously I’ve come to realise, like we all do with age, that nothing is ever black and white.

So here’s the second story in the Amstell series.

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I WAS AN HOUR and a half late when I pushed through the glass doors and asked the receptionist for the late book. She told me to take off my headphones and put the Walkman away. I ignored her and she pushed the book my way with a frown.

I wrote: “Kris Mole … 10:05 … Orthodontist”, then turned to make my way to class.

“MOLE! STOP RIGHT THERE!”

Amstell. For three weeks, since the start of the school year, he’d had nothing to bust me for, but now his opportunity had arrived. An hour and a half late. Detention.

Au contraire, Amstell, au contraire.

I wouldn’t reveal the note from the orthodontist—not yet. Let Amstell berate me first. Work himself into a state of excitement. Slap me with a detention while grinning demonically. Only then pull the note from my pocket, slowly, as though to announce the award for best actor. Let him read it. Watch his grin turn to a grimace as he rescinded the punishment.

Outside Amstell’s office were two chairs, one either side of the door.

“SIT!” Amstell barked.

He pushed open the door and stepped back into his office, while I sat down, excited at the prospect of ruining his morning with the revelation of the note.

On the other side of the door, Amstell was shouting at someone. I strained to listen, but was distracted by the receptionist, who, watching me from behind her desk, remarked with a conceited smile, “Well, now look! I did tell you to put that thing away, but would you listen?”

Eventually Amstell’s office door was pulled open and I heard Amstell telling the kid to go sit outside and not to speak to, or even look at, anyone. Then the unfortunate kid stepped out. As he walked past my chair I kicked the side of his foot. Without tilting his head, he made eye contact and I mouthed silently, “What the fuck?”

“MOLE! IN HERE! NOW!” Amstell’s voice shook the walls.

I stood up slowly and entered his office.

“DOOR!” he shouted.

I pushed the door closed behind me; my brain spinning as I tried to think of reasons why Jay might now find himself sitting on a chair outside Amstell’s office. As far as I knew, he had been keeping his nose clean, like me, since the beginning of term.

I stepped towards Amstell’s desk, arm outstretched, orthodontist’s note in hand. Today didn’t seem like a good day to toy with him. My teeth were aching.

“I was getting my braces tightened,” I mumbled.

“SHUT UP!” Amstell wasn’t interested in the note. “Where were you at three o’clock yesterday afternoon?”

I stayed quiet.

“It’s a simple question, Mole. Just tell me where you were at 3 o’clock.”

“Hard to say,” I said. “I haven’t got a watch.”

“Don’t play silly buggers, Mole!” Amstell said. “You’re in bigger trouble than you can handle, mate. I already know the answer anyway; I just need to hear you say it.”

“I told you, I can’t be sure. But at that time I was probably riding my bike home.”

“Then you won’t mind if I search your locker, seeing as you’ve nothing to hide,” he said, before adding that I had the right to refuse, but that my refusal would be taken as an admission of guilt. Then he stood up, told me to follow him, stepped through the door and ordered me not to look at Jay as we passed.

I knew the reason Amstell wanted to search my locker; the reason Jay and I now found ourselves in hot water. We had been selling posters. We’d take a kid's order, and at the end of the day nip into the computer room (the I.T. teachers always headed to the staff room as soon as the last bell rang), find the desired picture on the internet and then hope that the sound of the printer didn’t alert any teacher who happened to be passing. I had four posters in my locker right now waiting to be delivered.

I led Amstell through the empty corridors, lined on one side by lockers, and classrooms on the other. Some of the lockers had been recently tagged in metallic-blue paint with the word NUFFA. We arrived at my locker and stood in front of it.

“Don’t just stand there!” Amstell ordered. “Open it!”

I opened the locker, and there she was, chief witness for the prosecution, Teri Hatcher, aka Lois Lane, dressed in negligee and posing seductively with her hand over her mouth.

Amstell scooped her up along with the other three posters, each one depicting a female celebrity of some description, dressed either in negligee or a bikini. I wanted to say that they were the only four I had ever printed, but I couldn’t find my voice. Amstell was still holding the posters in his right hand, but now his attention was drawn to the three latest editions of FHM sitting on the bottom of the locker, which served as catalogues for kids to choose the posters they wanted.

Amstel flicked through the magazines, holding them up and shaking them. Then he reached back inside the locker, checked there was nothing lying underneath the posters, then put the magazines down and told me to close the locker.

“Come with me!” he said in irritated tone, and I followed him back to his office.

The lunch bell rang and Amstell let Jay and I go while he continued his investigation.

We headed to the back of the field to compare notes. Jay said that Amstell had turned up in his form room during morning registration and whisked him away. He’d pressed him on his whereabouts at three o’clock the previous afternoon. When Jay had said he couldn’t remember, Amstell had replied, ‘Then, allow me to jog your memory: you were in the computer room.’ Then he’d made Jay empty the contents of his bag onto his desk.

“I thought I was fucked,” Jay said. “I figured he’d found out I was Nuffa, and I knew he was about to get his hands on my paint pen. I took the pen out last and waited to hear the music. But all he said was ‘Is that everything?’ and the next thing I know, he’s searching my locker. So fuck knows what he thinks we’ve done.”

After lunch, I went to class, expecting Amstell to show up at any moment, but he never came. When I got home Mum told me that Amstell had phoned to tell her I’d been caught rifling through an I.T. teacher’s handbag and that I’d nicked a purse full of money out of it.

“It wasn’t me, Mum!”

“I know it wasn’t you,” Mum reassured me. “I told him you’re a lot of things but a thief ain’t one of them; then I hung up on him. Silly little man.”

The following morning, Amstell came and marched me to his office, closed the door, and rather than sit down at his desk, he put his face right in mine, like a sergeant major berating a conscript for a poorly made bed, and said, in his stupid Michael Caine voice, “Look, right, your mate Jay hasn’t been a very good mate, right, cos he’s just told me that you done it. So you can stop your lying, it’s over, you’ve been caught.”

It took a moment for his words to sink in.

“Why are you lying?” I replied.

That Jay had admitted to anything was impossible. Because it wasn’t us. You’ve got the wrong man. Sorry about that, Amstell!

“You know you’re lying,” I said, “and you know that I know you’re lying.”

Suddenly the look in his eyes changed from extreme rage to deep revelation—the revelation being that he had got it wrong and oh shit, how was he going to save face?

“I know it was you who took the purse,” he said, sheepishly, “I’ve got a witness.”

“You haven’t got a witness!” I said, laughing at him. “Because I didn’t do it! So if you think you’ve got a witness, tell me who that witness is, and I’ll tell you they’re lying.”

“You bragged about it to Big Sean when you bumped into him by the lockers. Him and Little Scott. You showed them the purse and told them you’d just nicked it!” he insisted.

“Hang on,” I said, my laughter growing as the pieces fell into place, “Big Sean told you that? Big Sean who’s got a criminal record longer than his arm. Big Sean, who I saw stepping out of the computer room with Little Scott on the same afternoon that the purse, that you hadn’t even mentioned to me until now but thought it was okay to tell my mum I’d stolen, got nicked. That Big Sean? Are you even serious or is this a wind-up?”

As I spoke, Amstell’s face turned red with the realisation that Big Sean had duped him.

The next day, both Big Sean and Little Scott were absent. Word went round that they’d been suspended for thieving. Big Sean had given Amstell permission to search his locker, on the condition that he let him keep the bag of weed he had in there. Amstell had found the purse. Big Sean didn’t care, he’d been done for nicking so many times, getting caught was an accepted occupational hazard.

Amstell never mentioned the incident again. Never apologised. Never admitted that he’d been wrong to phone my mum and tell her I was a thief. And from that day forward, my resolve to behave myself and stay out of confrontation with authority was irreparably broken. Amstell was out to get me and wasn’t going to let the truth get in the way. And I was going to display my lack of respect for him at every given opportunity.

—

Thanks for reading. Here’s part 3 of the series: