(Editor’s note: Columns often contain opinion and those belong to their author.)
A Ms. Trunchbull-type taught me in elementary school.
She was not a headmistress like Roald Dahl’s antagonist in “Matilda” and did not take over Miss Honey’s class.
My Ms. Trunchbull had that 80s glamour teacher look (that was such a thing back then) with a bad attitude and harshness. In contrast, the fictional Ms. Trunchbull looks like a gigantic gym teacher with slick-backed, greasy black hair in a bun and with shoulders fittingly like a bull’s. She is played with over-the-top scary yet at times intentionally laughable aggression and yelling by Pam Ferris.
My Ms. Trunchbull, a tall, cruel elementary school teacher in designer dresses and a half-bee-hive hairdo, locked students in closets (I may have been one time that I recall). In the hallway, if we were not completely silent on the way to lunch, she would make us stop and scream at us, “I don’t care if you do not go to lunch. You can just stand there and turn into skeletons!”
In the classroom, she quite often emptied everything out of my bookbag and scattered it around the floor, making the floor look like graphite-scribbled crinkly snow and rectangular logs of grocery-paper-covered school books.
She made me get on my hands and knees to retrieve test papers if I forgot to get them signed and clean up the mess she made. In comparison, the Ms. Trunchbull (looking more like a gym teacher) in the upcoming “Matilda” at the Miller throws a student by her pigtails (in violation of the dress code) among other abusive behaviors.
I obviously did not have the tele-kinetic powers of the school child Matilda at Trunchbull’s school. And, unlike one of her classmates, I had not become terribly pudgy after getting several surgeries for tonsils, adenoids and ears in a previous grade (my appetite grew a lot at that point because I was not sick from various infections all the time). But I was getting a little chubby. Therefore, I may have bordered on the husky kid stereotype close to the next grade.
No, my Ms. Trunchbull did not make me eat a gigantic chocolate cake like that one boy in the film who steals a piece. Yet I was, again, bordering on the pudgy boy stereotype. And if you grew up watching kids’ films, they quite often make the chubby boy gassy. (Well, I don’t think I have ever put this embarrassment in print before, but here goes.)
During one of the many times that I had to pick up papers my Ms. Trunchbull had dumped on the floor, she said I was not doing it fast enough. She bent down to snatch up papers as I was trying my best to. As she bent down, I was also bent down and, try as I might, I could not hold back flatulence. (Fish and cabbage day on a Friday in the cafeteria could be the worst.)
I flatulated right in my despised teacher’s face and was mortified. She fanned her face, scrunched up her pointy nose, and yelled and sent me to the principal’s office. I think even he laughed it off. But I was upset. I did not want to do that and did not want to make things worse.
I was the kid who never tried to do any kind of body functions in school at all. But to my surprise, my classmates laughed not at me for the gas but at the teacher they also despised being metaphorically skunk-fired. Even at my 30 year reunion, some of my classmates still remembered that story from when we were so young. And I think I finally convinced them that I did not do that on purpose.
Like Matilda, I dealt with that teacher and certain relatives who did not understand me (all long since forgiven). Matilda’s parents are very pragmatic but also sleazy (mine were the former, not the latter). But they enforce their pragmaticism on their child, and I relate to that. I was a very creative child and a little disorganized. I did not exactly fit into any boxes. As an adult, I became more organized, but I am still highly creative and still am not fitting in boxes.
I loved to read, though, and was a bookworm like Matilda. I could sometimes be seen ignoring grammar lessons and reading the books of Roald Dahl, Judy Blume, Shel Silverstein, fantasy authors, and fairy tales – those were my favorites.
To work on thwarting her Ms. Trunchbull, Matilda uses tele-kinetic powers throughout the book and film. Think of it as a kinder, gentler version of “Carrie” but with much less horrific uses of the powers, but parents who are still pretty bad.
I was quite precocious so identified with the main character and, in some ways, the actress. Mara Wilson, a child-star in the 90s, often played innocence and intelligence well, including as the youngest child, Natalie Hillard, in “Miss Doubtfire” and Susan Walker in one of several remakes of “Miracle on 34th Street” As in those roles, in “Matilda”, she can be quite precocious. She displays intelligence well beyond her years in the film – intelligence on a gifted level.
Danny DeVito, who plays Matilda’s used car salesman father, and Rhea Perlman, who plays a socially climbing housewife, ham it up as sleazeballs bent on making Matilda’s life hell. They do not really understand the gifted child they have.
And Mr. Wormwood, the father, is more focused on cheating people at his used car dealership. He does not take kindly to Matilda’s criticism of his tactics. Through slapstick, wise guy dialogue, and his standard delivery, DeVito makes a verbally abusive father comedic. Matilda’s mother wants Matilda to be more like her.
Perlman, when she tries to positively reinforce what she wants Matilda to be, tends to humorously point out their lower middle class climber lifestyle in a whiny caricature of a Brooklyn dialect. Matilda does not want any part of their lifestyle and would rather escape into her books. Besides, Mrs. Wormwood neglects the girl by not attending to her basic needs to the point that she had to learn to cook her own meals early on or go without.
Also, Matilda’s older brother behaves like Dudley Dursley did most of the time to Harry Potter. If you study Matilda’s family’s last name and over-use of that herb, wormwood and even the use of the word as a name in literature, their last name says it all.
Next, Embeth Davitz’s sweet, calm, and light voice and nurturing as Ms. Honey provides a stark contrast to Matilda’s parents and Ms. Trunchbull. She provides a person and place Matilda can escape to. (By the way, I had a very sweet Miss Honey in a previous elementary school grade so that made having a Ms. Trunchbull-type for the next grade even more unbearable.)
Anyway, go visit the classroom that the Miller will become this Sunday at 2 p.m. to see a film made from a book, “Matilda”, that has also been made into a musical and series. Don’t forget to wear your school uniform or other attire. Chocolate cake may not be the best snack before or after the film. In fact, you may even want to opt for popcorn instead of a chocolate bar. Skip fish and cabbage for lunch beforehand. And whatever you do, do not put your hair or your children’s hair in pigtails!
Ron Baxley, Jr. is a veteran journalist who has been a published author for 34 years and is working on writing a Southern-set television series. His latest satirical Southern fantasy Oz book, “O.Z. Diggs the Fifth Estate” is the third in the O.Z. Diggs VII series. For additional columns and fiction, go to https://substack.com/@ronbaxleyjr . Contact him via ronbaxleyjr.com .
