The Closet Monster

I went to preschool on the east coast.  As an insecure child, I sucked my thumb all the time.  A lot of kids do, right?  So anyway, my preschool teacher did not approve of said thumb-sucking and let us all know that if she caught us sucking our thumbs, she'd cut them off with her knife.  I remember her showing us the knife and it was HUGE, but then again, I was 3 so it could have been a paring knife, but still!  And when we were naughty, we got put in the closet.  The dark closet where she told us there was a monster who lived.  Yikes!

I remember vividly one day when a little kid came to school with a band-aid on his thumb.  The teach asked him, "is where I cut your thumb off doing okay?"  I stopped sucking my thumb at school pronto.

I wonder what ever happened to that lovely woman?  She was obviously in her dream job, wrangling toddlers.  NOT.