RE: Trailer Trash 57 pt 2 (Patreon)

Because he’s a pigheaded asshole with shit-for-brains.

Coach Baylor’s shoulders drooped slightly because she couldn’t just say that to a student, and she tilted her head back to release a long sigh that turned to vapor in the cold air. When she turned to where Tabitha was sitting on the first row of the bleachers, it felt as though she was wearing the familiar pensive look of someone deliberating how best to break bad news to someone. It was hard not to notice Tabitha beginning to look alarmed, because the unexpected complexity that was making this topic so difficult to broach was beginning to fill even Coach Baylor with dread.

Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything at all. No—no, I’m glad I did. What if Tabitha had just blundered over towards track tryouts without knowing about any of this?

“I’m… not sure how best to explain this,” Coach Baylor admitted, stealing a glance back towards her class running around the track. “How much do you know about the Kentucky academic situation?”

“The academic situation?” Tabitha appeared puzzled by the question. “For Kentucky? I, um. I think I’m very aware?”

“Oh, you do?” Coach Baylor tried not to sound too amused. “Then—let’s see. How would you describe it?”

“Kentucky education is in a state of crisis,” Tabitha explained with a strange air of calm. “Based on percentage of residents who go on to receive a bachelor’s degree, we are one of the least educated states in the country. We’re academically ranked either forty-fifth or forty-ninth out of the fifty states, erm, depending on which statistical sampling you hew towards. Either way, they all agree that the situation is severe. If I remember correctly, it was determined that in Kentucky ‘forty percent of working-age adults have low literacy skills, which are likely to impede their advancement.’ It may be anecdotal, but I’ve observed this in my own life—my father reads at perhaps a fourth or fifth grade level.”

Stunned, Coach Baylor could only stare at the young girl sitting on the long bleacher bench beside the haphazard row of backpacks and jackets. For a long moment she even forgot the students making the long circuit around the track behind her, even though groups of the huffing and puffing teens were beginning to pass by them now. It was one thing to hear the other teachers in staff meetings praise this Tabitha Moore as gifted—and another thing entirely to witness firsthand how monstrous this girl really was.

“You’re in advanced placement English, right now?” Coach Baylor recalled. “Is… all of that something that maybe Mrs. Albertson went over with your class?”

“No, no,” Tabitha answered with a bitter smile. “Though I certainly don’t blame the faculty for… glossing over those facts. Certain hard truths, and the um, the reality of the situation is hard to digest—I can see you not wanting to poison everyone’s perception with pessimism. To look at the larger state of things and feel like your uh, your individual day to day academic achievements are undermined. No one enjoys being last place. It makes you want to give up, to not bother trying at all.”

“Poison perception with pessimism,” Coach Baylor repeated. “Where did you hear that from? That phrasing. It’s clever.”

“Oh, um,” The redhead teen blushed as if she had just been asked to prom by her beau. “Nowhere, really? It’s just. You know, alliteration. It’s a habit, or um, a guilty pleasure, or… yeah. I want to call myself an aspiring author, but I’m not quite there yet. Before that, I thought I wanted to teach—so. Yeah.”

“You’re a very intelligent girl,” Coach Baylor remarked, sizing Tabitha up and still not feeling like she’d grasped her measure. “You would make an excellent teacher.”

“Sadly not,” Tabitha shook her head with a strange, out of place wistful look. A been there, done that expression that didn’t belong on a fourteen year old girl. One who was obviously not old enough to be as informed about the abysmal state of Kentucky education as she seemed to be.

“Did someone tell you that you wouldn’t make a good teacher? Coach Baylor asked in a calm voice, propping her clipboard up against her hip. “Or, well, discourage you from that?”

Because if so… I want their name and number.

“No, I did,” Tabitha gave her an apologetic shrug. “I… decided it for myself. I think I realized that my own love of learning doesn’t communicate well to those who simply don’t love learning. It’s difficult for me to understand why someone wouldn’t have a passion for reading, or an interest in writing—so, how then could I teach them?

“It’s naive to think I can just share my fascination and enthusiasm for a subject to those who are disinterested, apathetic, or even averse to learning about that subject, and um. And the reality is, that I just don’t have the interpersonal skills, or social ability, or ah, I guess charisma to build that connection with others out of nothing. To instill that love of learning in a whole class of people. Also, and uh. The pay is dogshit.”

Coach Baylor was so engrossed in the girl’s oddly captivating explanation that the punchline at the end caught her completely unprepared—despite every effort to retain her composure, she felt a wide smile appear, and a laugh slipped out. She wanted to ingrain this strange soliloquy into her memory now, because after school hours, when she could cuddle up with her boyfriend and retell this—beer in hand—this was going to have her doubling over with laughter.

Oh, honey. Here I thought that asshole coach Cooke was just being petty—no, he’s really just going to despise you.

“Hah, well,” Coach Baylor tried to rein her expression, but the smile was stubborn and kept worming back into place. “I hate to say it, but you may be right.”

Even with the constant pain of being up and about on her bad knee all day, Coach Baylor had always made a point to remain on her feet while instructing students who were exercising. When she found herself losing track of her class which was running laps, to instead walk over and sit down on the battered old bleacher bench with the one student who wasn’t participating today, Coach Baylor surprised even herself.

“I won’t speak ill of other teachers, because that’s not professional,” Coach Baylor found herself confiding. “But, let’s just say while some of us are fighting the good fight, there are plenty who are either indifferent or too jaded to care. Then, you also have a tiny tiny few, a little minority of teachers, who are part of the problem.”

“I…” Tabitha let out a small laugh. “I want to say that I think I understand your meaning—but then also, I really just don’t. I thought perhaps that there was maybe some sort of grudge Coach Cooke had against me, because he’s in charge of Springton Football, and that incident with me cost him his star running back. But, Coach Cooke shouldn’t be part of the problem.”

Oh?

“He’s as much involved in the academic side of school here as he is athletics,” Tabitha shrugged. “Isn’t he? I know he also teaches English, and I think he also moonlights over in the science building, doesn’t he? I know someone mentioned they had Cooke for chemistry. He shouldn’t be this, this one-dimensional character, who’s just being small-minded or ah, meatheaded about what happened.”

Once again though, even after already raising her estimation of this unassuming teen up several notches, Coach Baylor still found herself feeling a little speechless. Maybe it wasn’t just that this Tabitha girl understood way more than she let on—maybe it was that not enough people were sitting down with her to really ask how much Tabitha understood. To listen.

“Well,” Coach Baylor swallowed back as much of her amusement as she could. “I uh, again, I hate to say it like this, but. You may be attributing a bit more depth of character to him than he deserves? He might describe himself as both ‘warrior and scholar,’ but I think the reality is that… academically, Coach Cooke teaches many different remedial academic classes, and only out of a kind of… self interest.”

Tabitha regarded her with wide eyes, completely invested in her words, and Coach Baylor felt a pang of guilt, because she’d already said more than she ever should have.

“For his players to play, to compete, to meet athletic scholarship requirements,” Coach Baylor struggled with a kosher way to phrase what she wasn’t allowed to say. “His players then have to reach certain academic standards. All of his boys meet those standards.”

Whether they actually do or not.

“Oh,” Tabitha seemed to understand anyways with a small wince. “I guess that makes more sense. I—in my head, I think I was overcomplicating it. It does makes sense.”

“I wish I could say that it does,” Coach Baylor wanted to let out another laugh, but she held it in. “The fact of the matter is—Coach Cooke does produce students with outstanding athletic performance, his numbers look good, and he… yeah, the school here is willing to give him a lot of leeway with how he runs his courses, and he was used to getting his way with things.”

“I bet,” Tabitha chuckled. “So… in the end, it really was just about the Chris Thompson thing?”

“It’s a number of things,” Coach Baylor tried to be diplomatic. “From what I understand, your whole case was a very… special situation, and Coach Cooke wasn’t used to getting his toes stepped on there, and—you know. General politics between some different teachers with some different conflicting views, when we all start butting heads over some issue. Ordeals being blown out of proportion.”

Cooke’s attitude towards our more ‘academically inclined’ students was already downright appalling for a teacher, and in a sane world, he would have been fired the moment he voiced any one of his thoughts on all of this. Thing is—we don’t live in a sane world or one that makes sense.

Coach Baylor had thought herself very neutral on this whole controversial ‘Tabitha’ subject before today. After meeting the girl for herself and talking with her however, she suspected she had dropped completely out of the fence-sitting camp and would be spending lunch today instead gossiping with Mr. Peterson and some of the English teachers. After all, circumstances were completely different now that Tabitha was one of her girls, and if Coach Cooke wanted to be contentious about it—

Well, then he can go fuck himself. I don’t care. I’m genuinely mad about all the things he’s said about her, now.

“I see,” Tabitha nodded.

Coach Baylor wasn’t sure why she would ever expect a fourteen year old to understand workplace drama just like that, but for some reason, she just did. Something deep in her gut told her that Tabitha did understand, that she would get it. She’d mentally separated Tabitha as being a little divergent from the general student populace because she was in AP classes—advanced placement for college credits being on a national standard that was pretty far removed from ‘normal’ Kentucky classwork.

But no, Tabitha is special even among them, Coach Baylor decided. I’m absolutely not letting her go—she’s going places, and we need her.

“I’m sure that Coach Cooke would still be very… professional and treat you the way you deserve if you choose to join the track team,” Coach Baylor said with a wry smile and subtle amount of skepticism. “But, I’d really like you to consider cheer instead, if you had to choose between the two. You were interested in cheer team?”

“Um, yes—somewhat?” Tabitha looked abashed. “It was a bit of a spur of the moment decision, as um, as I don’t think I would have considered it, normally. My friend Elena said she’ll be trying out, and I want to do it with her—to support her in any way that I can.”

“Elena Seelbaugh?” Coach Baylor almost did a spit-take.

The girl who went ‘dark and weird?’ The one all of my girls unanimously told me in no uncertain terms is NOT cut out for varsity cheerleading? That this Elena girl was just sowing discord, trying to be intentionally disruptive, and would absolutely NOT be a team player? Everyone seemed to be in complete agreement on that—I remember everyone nodding their heads and voicing their collective affirmation to deny Elena Seelbaugh from being part of the team?!

“Is that, um, is that not a good reason?” Tabitha sounded unsure, now.

The slender teen seemed to search Coach Baylor’s conflicted expression, and so the coach schooled her features and made a rapid series of decisions.

After all, don’t I want to prove that I’m nothing like that asshole Cooke? Teamwork IS important among my girls, but that never meant I wasn’t going to give anyone honestly trying out their fair shake. Maybe I’ll just need to pull a couple of them aside and talk to them about this Elena thing, see if maybe they were considering things wrong. Making assumptions about her, or had the wrong first read on things. It wouldn’t be the first time.

“Tabitha—I’m going to make sure you and Elena have your fair shot at try-outs.”

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/// The meat of this chapter will be either very believable or very unbelievable, depending on your own lived experiences, probably. My mother for long years worked for the 'light side' of the Florida Department of Education, certifying teachers, while her boyfriend at the time happened to work on the 'dark side' of the Florida DoE, revoking teacher certifications, which is something that happens because of... well, because of a number of unbelievable stories that you're not supposed to talk about too openly.