I was on a roll with my life.  I had started out rocky in the beginning stages of elementary school, but somehow I shaped up and turned into quite the model student.  I liked my teachers and they liked me because I did well and was kind to them.

Then things changed.  It was 7th grade, and I had Advanced Math as my last period of the day.  The work was difficult, but I managed.  The teacher, whose name I now forget, was a decent enough woman...maybe in her late 30s, attractive, thin, strawberry blonde hair.  I liked her okay.

But then one afternoon it happened.  I had a question on the classwork.  I was seated in the very front row of the classroom, and the teacher was sitting practically right in front of me next to the overhead projector.  I raised my hand.  A minute crept by.  Then another. 

She was RIGHT THERE.  She could see my hand.  I knew because she kept looking at me.  LOOKING AT ME.  I was steadily getting frustrated, but I kept my arm up.  Still no response.  Finally, I softly said her name once and only once.

Well, that was the last straw, I guess, because she gave me such a look of horror and sent me into the hall.  I didn't understand.  She was supposed to answer my question, or at least acknowledge me in some fashion. 

I was pretty upset about it.  And from that moment on, I loathed school and I hated teachers before I even knew them.  And all because my trust in the system was so brutally betrayed.