“Nostalgia”: From the Greek for “the Pain of Returning Home”

I felt very down for a while today.

I was goofing around on the web, and I came across a video about physical education in the 1950’s. It began as an old educational video, but the man who runs the channel broke in a couple of times and told of his experiences in gym class. He thought it was too brutal.

Someone in the comments wrote about gym classes being dominated by bullies.

That made me think about a guy I have written about before. I have written posts about him, but they don’t appear on the site. As I recall, I took some down shortly after publishing them. I’m not sure. I may have discarded all of them before publishing.

I had this feeling that I shouldn’t expose people’s pasts if I didn’t want mine exposed. The Golden Rule. Everyone has things to be ashamed of.

I started Googling the man in question. His name was Gary Gussman. He was the phys. ed. teacher at Miami Shores Elementary, where I spent several grades.

I was trying to find an old photo of him, because I had the idea that he might have been one of the men who used steroids before they became popular and well known. My memory told me that in the old photo, he looked weak. When he was my phys. ed. teacher, he was more muscular, or so I recall him. I also recall him having more masculine features. Steroids do that to a man’s face.

While I was looking, I came across a social media group for people who grew up in Miami Shores. He had been mentioned.

Some people praised him, saying he had done them a lot of good. Others said he was abusive and hit the kids. One guy–someone in my class–said he “slapped the ___ out of” him several times. Others said he liked to hit kids with his elbow, perhaps so he could later say he hadn’t punched or slapped anyone. “I bumped into him.”

I never saw him hit the kid he slapped, and I don’t recall him hitting anyone with his elbow. I saw him do other things.

I was not happy with the people who praised Gussman. He was a criminal. Corporal punishment was, and is, still legal in Florida, but Miami Shores Elementary didn’t use it, and slapping and elbowing kids would not have been legal anyway. Gussman was just an angry coward who liked hurting small children who could not fight back.

Gussman was small. I would guess he was 5’4″ tall. He was muscular and athletic, but he was tiny. I have always suspected that he was angry about his size, and that this was why he hurt children. I think he wanted to be a college or pro athlete, and he felt fate had cheated him. He was a little large for a jockey. He once complained about his size to us. I don’t know if he ever tried boxing, which has weight classes for small men. Anyway, he ended up teaching phys. ed. to children, and he seemed to have a scorching case of short man syndrome.

His real name was George Herman Gussman, and he was born in 1927, so it looks like he was named after Babe Ruth, who was 6’2″ tall and also Babe Ruth. I wonder if Gussman had a pushy dad who was disappointed in his son for failing to grow tall and become a professional athlete. Gussman’s son became a pro of sorts.

He didn’t like fat kids. Big surprise for a old-fashioned P.E. coach. He also didn’t like smart kids. He didn’t pick on me, apart from generally being obnoxious, but he picked on people I knew.

Tony Bryant, now deceased, was a mama’s boy to the core. His dad was dead, and his mother spoiled him relentlessly. He was soft. He was a nerd. Star Trek was his life. He was also obnoxious, but not in a bullying way. His IQ was over 150.

One day Gussman picked Tony to lead the class in calisthenics, and he wasn’t happy with Tony’s performance. I guess Gussman had access to our files, even though he wasn’t a real teacher, because he knew Tony was smart. He stopped the performance and ridiculed Tony while the rest of us waited for it to be over. He said, “You have intelligence, but you don’t have intellect.”

I don’t know what that means, and neither did Gussman. He wanted to sound smart, so he used a word he did not understand. He resented the smart boy, so he said something he thought made himself look smart, but it only emphasized the difference between his IQ and Tony’s.

There was a kid named Ronnie Coyle in my class. Unremarkable kid. Not a jerk. Not a clown. Not dumb. Not a genius. A regular guy. One day, Gussman had some of the boys line up for some reason, and while he was talking to us, he went off on Ronnie, picked him up by his shirt collar, and threw him on the ground.

Ronnie was terrified. He didn’t know what might happen next.

Gussman was frothing about something that had happened. From his raving, I gathered that Ronnie’s mother had complained about Gussman abusing Ronnie. Gussman was absolutely enraged. He wanted to kill Ronnie. He eventually ran out of gas and came to his senses, and class, if you can call P.E. that, resumed.

Throwing kids on the ground and threatening them is not legitimate corporal punishment, and Gussman wasn’t punishing Ronnie for misbehaving. He was punishing him for exposing Gussman’s misbehavior.

Gussman belonged in the penitentiary as a habitual batterer and verbal abuser of children in his care. He should have been in Raiford, unable to run away from bigger inmates (about 95% of the population) who would have treated him the way he treated kids, for the same reason: he wouldn’t have been able to stop them.

It has occurred to me that he may have hated kids because kids were cruel to him when he was a small, weak boy.

Gussman continued teaching at the school, if you can call it teaching.

P.E. isn’t really a class, since there are no real lessons. “Throw the ball through the hoop.” “Run from here to there as fast as you can.” “Climb the rope and then come down.” Nonetheless, Gussman failed at it. He didn’t teach people much of anything.

I was one of those kids who could not figure out how to climb the rope. I tried, but I got nowhere. Now, I could teach a kid to climb a rope. It takes one sentence. Gussman could not manage it. He sent me up the rope, I couldn’t figure it out, and he told me to move on.

It bothered me to see a few people complimenting Gussman. One even said he had gone to visit him in Punta Gorda after he retired. What on earth for? Why would you visit a child abuser? I suppose this person must have been a very good athlete. Maybe Gussman coached him elsewhere, in a league, and helped him develop. And he wouldn’t have been around when Gussman was taking his height issues out on Ronnie.

I found the photo of Gussman, and I will post the relevant part. As you can see, he looks almost frail, and not particularly masculine. In later pictures, he looks different.

Steroids were available in the Fifties and Sixties. I don’t know if he used them or not. Maybe he just started hitting the gym hard. They would go a long way toward explaining his cowardly rages.

The lady to the left is Miss Pedigo. She is not a favorite of mine. She knew exactly what Gussman was doing to the kids. She was the girls’ coach, and she was beside him every day as second banana. She let it happen. I never saw her express any kind of disapproval.

Miss Pedigo was very crabby. Always angry. I can’t recall seeing her smile, except for this photo, and when you pose for group photos, they order you to smile. She looks as though it makes her face hurt. Like she has never done it before.

I don’t know what things are like now, but when I was a kid, a lot of girls’ coaches were butch and gruff. She fit the stereotype. I remember her scolding people, but I can’t recall any pleasant interactions.

This photo was probably taken 10 years before I showed up, and she was still Miss during my time.

On a lighter note, the lady on the far right is Mrs. Ryan, the music teacher. She used to be in charge of plays. Oddly enough, one particular student always seemed to get cast in lead roles. His name was…Randy Ryan. I still remember his memorable portrayal of the boy Indian chief, Little Peacemaker.

I doubt he went into showbiz and made his mother’s dreams come true.

Should people like Gussman be exposed? I think so. Exposure is appropriate when there is deception as well as bad behavior. If you shoplift when you’re 17 and then repent, there is no point in exposing you, but if you pick on kids for decades while holding yourself out as a model educator, and liars defend you, you should be exposed.

It’s amazing that a guy like this was ever paid to be around kids. Today he would have a mugshot.

While I’m on the subject, I had another prize teacher when I was in junior high. His name was Jack Bubrick. Predictably, he was a P.E. teacher.

Mr. Bubrick had a classic buzz cut, and he was always so tanned, he looked like a brick. Maybe he was tanned and sunburned at the same time.

He was an exercise nut. I would guess he was 55 when I showed up, and he had big biceps and rolled his shirt sleeves up so people could see them. I remember seeing him do situps on an incline bench with his arms crossed.

Bubrick was an angry, angry guy.

I was in his algebra class. One day, he said we were going to have a quiz. I didn’t have everything on my desk on time. I reached underneath for a pencil.

Bubrick flipped his lid. It was a startling spectacle. He told me not to reach under my desk. He said, “I’ll break your arm.” He said he meant it. He said, “I don’t care who your father is.” He repeated his threat. I didn’t understand the father reference at the time.

He raved a while longer while the students, like Gussman’s students, froze and waited for it to be over. Then we had our quiz.

Of course, he had committed a serious crime: assault. But he didn’t get in trouble, and I guess he taught until he died or went to a facility.

I don’t know why he had it in for me. I never saw him go insane with any other student.

He even bet against me when I competed in the Miami Herald spelling bee. I won the school bee, and an administrator named Alice Liberto had the common sense to enter me in the Herald’s contest. I won that handily. Days later, Bubrick saw me by the P.E. building, and he told me I had cost him five bucks. He lost to Mr. Girard, another coach who had always been kind to me.

It was kind of bold for Mr. Girard to bet on me against dozens of kids from all over South Florida, now that I think about it.

Anyway, he committed assault in front of a room full of kids, and there were no consequences.

I had several bully teachers during my childhood, but Gussman and Bubrick stood out in that they were physically dangerous. I only saw Bubrick lose his mind once, so Gussman is in a class by himself.

There was Mrs. Patricia Morceau, the 4th-grade math teacher who used to go berserk, scream at kids, and then say, “Go ahead. cry.” She did that to poor little Jill Waldman, who kept a messy desk. Mrs. Morceau pulled out a rotten orange and showed it to the class, and she got her wish. Jill started sobbing.

She told me to go ahead and cry once. I forget the reason. I never cried for bullies. I was only a little kid, but she made me angry. I didn’t feel like crying at all.

There was Ada Chaki, my sixth-grade homeroom teacher, who got mad at me because I knew how to spell “aspirin.” She was trying to write it on the board, she could not figure it out, and kids started guessing. She settled for “asprin,” and I piped up and tried to help. Boy, did she lay into me. No warning.

I thought she was going to be happy I helped. I did not understand human nature well at the time.

Some teachers think it’s a good thing when kids are good spellers.

We had a field trip. We went to Key Biscayne and waded in the ocean. She told us to be absolutely sure we brought a change of clothes so we could clean up before we got on the bus to go back. She made it clear this was very important.

I brought a change of clothes. I went to the mens’ room and changed. When I got to the bus, everyone was waiting on me. No one else got to change; they had changed their plan without telling me. Miss Chaki laid into me and made fun of me again for making everyone wait. I really disliked her.

She must have had serious problems. She died at 29, and the obituary has no explanation, so it would not surprise me if she was so miserable, she took her own life.

There was Jaye Schechter, my sixth-grade history teacher. I did a very bad job on a long-term project because my parents never made any effort to show me how to organize and complete a project, and she felt it was appropriate to give an insulting speech in front of the class while showing off my project. I was in a gifted program that took me out of Shores Elementary twice a week and put me in another school, and I guess that made her mad, because she used to say she didn’t understand why I was in the gifted program. She wanted me to think I was stupid. Really, I think she was looking for a way to convince herself I wasn’t smarter than she was. Which I was.

She took me out of class and led me into the hallway, and then she called another teacher, Miss Tosch, away from her class, so they could hector me and ridicule my work. I had to sit in Miss Tosch’s class while everyone else in my history class had a party with cake and punch.

It was a little weird that they thought just giving me a D wasn’t enough. She never contacted my parents to see what could be done to help me, because she didn’t care about me.

They were so critical and nasty, you would have thought I had been caught egging their cars. To be allowed to teach, they had to study teaching in college, so I have to wonder what they were taught there, if it included tormenting problem students and failing to follow up with their parents or do anything constructive.

My family was extremely dysfunctional, and it was my parents’ fault that I couldn’t do a long-term project, but it didn’t occur to these women to try to find out what my problem was.

I can’t leave out Mrs. Ritchie, my first sixth-grade homeroom teacher at Shores Elementary. She was a drunk. She had various bits of teaching paraphernalia in our classroom, stored in boxes with names like Heublein on them. I think she was buying booze by the case.

She was vile to everyone. One girl couldn’t take it, so she hit her in the stomach. My stomach used to get so upset, I had to use the bathroom.

I got my mother to talk to the principal, Miss Izzo, about her, and guess what Miss Izzo told us. She said she had put me in Mrs. Ritchie’s class because I was smart and mature, and she thought I could stand the abuse better than other students.

I always criticize tort lawyers, but my family should have hired one.

I was not mature. I was not ready to stand up to a vicious old crone who was hungover every day. Why do teachers assume smart kids are mature? You can be smarter than an adult and still be less mature.

Miss Izzo told us they knew Ritchie was a drunk, and they knew she abused students, but because of tenure, they could not fire her unless she did something egregious. Specifically, she said they could do it if she came to class drunk, but Ritchie was careful not to do that.

The sad thing is that people claimed Ritchie had been a good teacher in the past. She was elderly and bitter when my turn came.

They moved me to Miss Chaki’s room. That worked out poorly due to Miss Chaki’s hatred of smart kids, and she probably wasn’t happy that I had complained about another teacher. I still had to take math with Mrs. Ritchie, who stood over me and yelled at me for leaving her homeroom.

I didn’t have a problem with tough teachers. I preferred them. I was very happy when I entered junior high and started getting more male teachers. They motivated people better than women, and they got more respect, so things went more smoothly. My problem was with bullies.

It was after I read about Gussman that I started to feel down. It wasn’t because of him. It was because I saw other posts from people who loved growing up in Miami Shores. I saw last names I recognized; probably siblings of people I knew. They talked about the country club. Teachers they liked, including some no one should have liked. They said there was no crime. They made it sound like Mayberry.

This disturbed me because I don’t feel that way about Miami Shores.

When I think of Miami Shores, I think of the police coming to our house at night and my dad standing in the front doorway in his underwear, taunting them because he knows they can’t arrest him unless he comes outside. I think of my sister tormenting my mother. I think of the night an ambulance showed up at my friend Mike’s house and took his brother away dead from a heroin overdose.

I think of sitting or lying in my bedroom, sometimes on the floor by the door, wishing my dad would go to bed and stop abusing my mother. I remember hearing slaps. I think of being afraid of the dark even though I was almost ready for junior high. I remember being afraid of my father. I remember underachieving in school, doing just enough to avoid disaster.

I remember getting my first car and going for long drives at night, just so I would not be in the house. I wished I could keep driving and not go home, but I had no place to run to.

I remember getting drunk during the school day and sitting through the last 4 periods hammered.

I remember my father telling my mother, “You’re not going to gut me,” when she finally decided to divorce him. He didn’t want her to get a dime. He said he would put her in the car, drive it into the bay, and kill her and himself. I remember the day my mother got fed up, and I had to take a pistol out of her hand while my dad stared at her in fear from their bed.

Were other families just better than ours? Was Miami Shores really a great place to live?

I am sure many families were less dysfunctional, but most people I knew were screwed up. Mike’s family, for sure. Next door, there was an Irish woman whose husband died from melanoma. She coddled and smothered her son, and he turned to heroin. His upbringing crippled him, and he felt a lot of hostility. He used to practice martial arts moves on his mother, and she was too ashamed to tell anyone. We used to hear banging noises from their house. It was the mother, slamming the refrigerator doors over and over to vent her anger.

She used to pour vodka into a tall water glass and turn it up. Their house was so dirty, you could smell it as soon as you got within 20 feet of the door.

My best friend Clayton killed his sister’s rabbit with ice water. He wanted to see its pink eyes turn blue. Then he hacked its foot off with a shovel for luck. His older brother was a big scary drug user. He became a Jesus freak, and he visited sometimes, but he was still scary. His parents didn’t want him around. Clayton stole things from me, and because I didn’t steal, I thought he was telling the truth when he said his parents had given him things that were just like the ones that had been stolen from me.

His mother was manic-depressive, as I recall.

Across the street, we had a gay couple. One night, one of them tied the other one up and castrated him. His body was found later on. I believe he was strangled. Romantic quarrel, people thought.

A block away, there were the Barakets. The father was a criminal. He had stolen a lot of money. One day the police found his dead body in a little park next to the bay, on a bench. He had cheated justice. His son was gay and obsessed with acting. He made his mother the widow build a stage in his garage so he could sing and dance for the neighborhood kids. She was very nice. Soft-spoken and well-dressed. He talked to her like she was a naughty child.

Down farther, by the park, there was my one-time friend Mark. We went to elementary school and high school together. He was arrogant and insulting, so I cut him loose in the 10th grade. He lived to see our 10th-year reunion, and then he jumped off a bridge in San Diego, supposedly because he could not cope with his homosexuality.

We had mafia families a couple of blocks north. Not known for happy lives.

Maybe some people had happy lives there, but I think a lot of the positive things I saw on social media were just social media fraud. “Bob just got a big promotion, and the twins are planning to go to Stanford!” Meanwhile, Mom is cheating on Bob with her tennis pro, and the kids are more likely to end up at community college.

I have an abusive elderly aunt, and she loves to brag about her family on the web. She and her husband can’t stand each other. Her son can’t stand her or her husband. Her daughter took her mother on a trip to her mother’s vacation home and told her she would not take both her mother and her husband. Her son is a drunk and a liar, and he is too lazy to look after the house his mother gave her.

I looked up her husband on the web, and criminals with his last name kept popping up. It looks like his son is in the joint for selling fentanyl and tampering with evidence. I’m not positive it’s his son, but he is the right age, he comes from the right small town, and he looks just like my uncle. My aunt’s son’s wife prosecuted him, if you can imagine such a thing.

I think my aunt married into a family of thugs. When her husband married her, he was living in a trailer and driving a beat-up jalopy truck.

“Everything is great. Envy us!” Like people don’t know anything except what you post on Facebook.

People lie. Also, some people are truthful, but they have very low standards. And memory is the servant of denial. People remember good times that weren’t.

My family could have done much, much better even by wordly standards, without knowing God, if my dad had handled things differently. He is still a mystery to me. The demented, frail Dad I knew before he died was wonderful, and I cherish every minute we spent together. The ogre I spent my childhood with was a different creature.

I don’t know if we could have had pleasant, fulfilling lives. Maybe. We should have been given the chance.