As one could probably imagine, Jeffrey has been a brat his entire life. We were in school together for the entirety of our school careers, including preschool. I've got to hand it to those teachers for putting up with him for as long as they did. Our preschool lasted a full year, and it was a full year of them having to deal with his bullshit.
Trouble started from the first day. The class was divided into groups amongst two teachers, "Miss Mary," and "Miss Carla." Jeffrey was placed in Miss Carla's group, despite wanting to be in Miss Mary's. That basically set the tone for the rest of the year. I'm not sure why exactly it mattered so much to him, seeing as how he wouldn't listen to Miss Mary any more than he'd listen to Miss Carla. Of course, I was also placed in Miss Carla's group, presumably because Jeffrey and I were cousins and they thought they were doing us both a favor. Because of this, I have a decent recollection of events.
Jeffrey's always had a fiery temper, but to his credit, he's better now than when he was in preschool (though that's not saying much). On more than one occasion, he threw his chair at Miss Carla. Fortunately for her, he wasn't strong enough to get it more than a few inches away from himself, but he sure tried. Also on more than one occasion, he'd have to be physically restrained due to his defiance. He'd kick at the teachers, so they started making him take his shoes off in the mornings when he got into the classroom (he'd get to put them back on if we went outside). He used to stab at the other kids with scissors when we'd do arts and crafts. He never hurt anybody, 'cause they were just those little kid scissors, but I remember the other kids generally being afraid of him. Eventually, they stopped allowing him to have scissors and he'd have to tear his paper instead of cutting it.
There was this one particular girl named Lexi whom Jeffrey hated. I'm not sure exactly
why he hated her, because she was always nice to everyone and never did anything to him, but regardless, he'd do everything in his power to make her miserable. This ranged from going over to her while she'd be drawing and ruining her art in some way to more actively malicious behaviors such as intentionally kicking sand into her eyes on the playground and slamming her fingers into a drawer that she was getting something out of. In the latter incident, the teachers asked him why he did it, and he just answered matter-of-factually, "'cause I don't like her." Whenever she'd try to raise her hand to tell on him, he'd physically restrain her and cover her mouth with his hand. Of course, this would get him into more trouble than he'd have gotten into initially, and he was often removed from the classroom. He was generally a bully to everyone, but this one girl in particular always got the worst of it. I remember this one time when one of the other girls started crying because everyone else was making a lot of noise and it was giving her a headache. Jeffrey noticed this, and actively tried to be as loud as he could, as close to this girl as he could get.
He seemed to enjoy doing things for no other reason than to piss off the teachers and to make things harder for them. We had an all-day preschool, so we ate breakfast there. We'd sit at one of those crescent-shaped tables with the teacher in the center (
sort of like this, only bigger). Practically every morning, Jeffrey would intentionally spill his cup of milk because he thought it was funny how it'd go everywhere and the teachers would have to clean it up. On one occasion, he made a mess of the whole lunchroom by dipping his fingers into his milk and then flapping his hands, getting it everywhere. We had a water table in the classroom which was usually filled with water toys. On one occasion, however, the teachers put minnows in it. We were allowed to look at them, but not put our hands in the water. Of course, Jeffrey put his hand in the water. One of the teachers saw him, and came over to yell at him, so he reached in, grabbed one of the minnows, and threw it against the wall as hard as he could. This was one of the occasions where he was escorted out of the classroom.
During one month, we had a train theme, where we'd learn about trains and do train-themed activities. One of the teachers brought in a model train set, which came in a box with a styrofoam tray to put each individual piece in. During one particular recess session, Jeffrey took the styrofoam and broke it all up, for no particular reason. The teachers didn't notice that he was doing it until the end of the session, and were appropriately angry. During the same month, we took a trip to our local Toys R Us, which had a very elaborate model train setup. We were supposed to be looking at the trains, but Jeffrey just wandered off to look at other shit around the store. The teachers caught him and made him go back with the group. Presumably out of spite, he snuck off again when they weren't paying attention to him and hid. We stayed there for about an hour after we were supposed to have left. They had the customer service people call him over the intercom, but he didn't come. Naturally, they started getting a bit worried. After all, what if someone kidnapped him? As it turned out, he'd been hiding in one of the shelves. There was a relatively large Lego set box that he moved aside, got behind, and then replaced. He got in A LOT of trouble that day.
Of course, he was punished a lot. The problem was,
he didn't care. His entire life, he's had a complete inability to learn from his mistakes. They called his mother pretty often to tell her of his latest misbehavior, but she apparently either punished him too lightly, or didn't punish him at all. That's always been a problem, too. His mom was always way too coddling. I think Jeffrey might actually be a legit sociopath. He certainly doesn't care about anybody else beyond their utility to him, and often goes out of his way to hurt or otherwise inconvenience people. This wasn't helped by the fact that the people who
should've punished him
didn't, or at least didn't do it hard enough.
