Dear Teacher with Gorilla Glue,
In case you haven’t heard the story plastered on every news outlet in America, Tessica Brown, is the forty-year-old Louisiana native who sprayed Gorilla Glue in her hair after she ran out of her Got2B hair spray. Needless to say, the spray adhesive did a number on poor Tessica’s scalp. As a result, she took to Tik Tok to see what, if anything, could be done to repair the follicle debacle (yes, I made a rhyme with the word follicle).
In retrospect, seeking help from Tik Tok was probably as she stated, “a bad, bad, idea.” The next morning the video had over ten million views. Ten Million. Still, no female wants to go viral for hair woes.
Since then, she has gone on record as saying, “My hair has been like this for a month now. It’s not by choice." She went on to further explain that having run out of her usual product, she thought she could simply substitute, but again, it was a, “bad, bad, idea.”
This story intrigued me more than I care to admit. For the life of me, I could not figure out why this lady thought spraying Gorilla Glue in her hair was a good idea, and then I discovered she was a teacher.
Suddenly, all the pieces of the puzzle came together. The world has been giving this woman a hard time, myself included, until I discovered her profession.
Now, she has my deepest empathy. Teacher friends, we have a responsibility to do a deep self-evaluation and be honest with ourselves.
Would we not have done the same?
Let’s take an introspective look.
First, this woman has six kids- six- at home and probably another 140 at school. She is tired. An empty bottle of Got2B is no reason to make a rush trip to the store on a school night.
Secondly, we are teachers. Have we not all been guilty of substituting subpar products in place of the real thing?
Thirdly, we are lying if we say we have not also had some bad, bad ideas.
Fourthly, can we not all agree that our hair has been in bad shape for at least a month, and it is not by choice?
Lastly, has another teacher ever gotten ten million views on Tik Tok? Ten million? We could be waving dollar bills for a vocab review and half of our kids wouldn’t even lift a chin. Again, I repeat a teacher got ten million views. My only regret is that she did not put together a quick little parts of speech jingle to go with each new rinse and repeat.
Furthermore, since the “incident,” Beyonce’s hairstylist has reached out to help Tessica. Her GoFund Me has also exceeded $14,000. That's a huge chunk of change. We can’t even get four boxes of Crayola markers on our Amazon Wish List without offering extra credit.
Say what you will about Tessica Brown, but if she swings this story just right, educators all over the country might be scrapping the box tops in exchange for monetary compensation from Gorilla Glue.
Think of the possibilities.
Yeah, you want a bottle too, don't you?
-CDB