Rick Grisham, Executive Director of Transportation of Cobb County Schools (Marietta, Georgia), Broken Arrow Schools (Oklahoma), Haskell Middle School, Lassiter High School, Frey Elementary School Lincoln Memorial University, United States Tennis Association (USTA), USTA Texas, Cobb County Teacher Leader Institute, Oklahoma State University, Teanna Grisham, Kennesaw Mountain High School, Richard Grisham, USTA National Trainer for Recreational and QuickStart Tennis Coaches Workshops, Lance Grisham, Adrienne Grisham Kennesaw Georgia

Rick Grisham is the Executive Director of Transportation in the Cobb County School District in Marietta, Georgia.

Flash back to the 1980s, when I was a small, tween girl navigating puberty and excessive shyness at Haskell Middle School in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. Sometimes a loner, I was the sterotypical perfect victim if an adult ever had abusive intentions.

Rick Grisham was PE teacher and tennis coach then, and also supervised the lunch room and subsequent recess. One day in the spring, Coach Grisham caught me chewing gum at recess, and ordered me to spit it out in the trash. I complied without incident, and the matter appeared settled.

More than six weeks later, on the last day of school, he abruptly approached me in the cafeteria and loudly informed me, in front of several students, that he planned to call me into his office that afternoon to receive swats for the aforementioned gum-chewing incident. A student overhearing this claimed to have been a past recipient of Grisham's swats, which were allegedly so severe that the student's head ran into a wall. Coach Grisham pantomimed his strong tennis swing, never taking his eyes off me.

As promised, I received a hall pass that afternoon from Coach Grisham. The destination on the pass was "Office." I knew he meant his personal office, which was in a dark, lonely hallway behind the Haskell gym. I intentionally played stupid and went to the front attendance office, where I quietly sat on the couch generally used by students who were awaiting pick-ups from their parents. What followed felt like the longest class period of my academic life. An administrator finally asked me for my hall pass, looked at it, and told me I was in the wrong place...as the bell rang. Phew.

Now that I look back on it, the fact that a male gym teacher tried to summon a tween girl to a private, dark  hallway behind the gym is suspect, especially on the last day of school. That day, however, I was only thinking about avoiding a pounding on my back end. Relieved that I dodged that agony, I never told my parents.