Veronica and I go to high schools and speak to health classes about our journey and teach them about brain injuries. One of the classes we taught was a class of seniors and freshman. During our talk somehow the subject of Veronica having a Tik Tok came up. A senior student looked at her site and saw that she posted about Machine Gun Kelly, a singer they both liked a lot. Veronica got super excited and leaned into the student and said, “I would do Megan Fox.” The singer’s wife. The senior said, “So would I.” The boy’s attention made Veronica feel very giddy and she began to become really energetic and excited and happy. She began blurting things out she shouldn’t have in a school class situation. I began getting very nervous. I pulled Veronica to the side and told her that her behavior was not ok, that it was inappropriate. The classroom was loud with chatter from the students as if Veronica’s interaction caused a bit of excitement among them. There had been two teachers in the classroom at first, and one stepped out. Shortly after, one of the students was having an anxiety attack so the other teacher went to her desk in the back to care for her. In the meantime, a couple of the students got out of their seats, and I still heard continual chatter. I became overstimulated and was so scared and nervous because I didn’t know what words were going to come out of Veronica’s mouth. We finished our talk and a couple kids stayed after class to talk to us, and the student that was a male that Veronica had been talking to was talking to her after class. Veronica was touching his arm and face and I had been talking to the teacher and turned around and saw this and my heart skipped a beat. I said sternly, “VERONICA! HANDS OFF!” Veronica is 30, but in her mind, she will always be 15 years old in some ways. Around males she will always be 15 and giddy. The problem is not only that touching like that is inappropriate in school for anyone, but she would also have sex with him if they were alone and he would go along with it. I know this to be true because we talked about it after we had gone back to our car. Veronica’s emotions are so strong, and she cannot control them. Her impulse control is so poor. The teachers were both there and we were talking, and I was telling them this behavior from Veronica was not ok. The young man said it was ok. Veronica said, It’s ok, Mom. The age of consent is 17. And he is 17.” The teachers kept saying, “Everything is fine.” Several times they said that as I continued to say several times, It’s NOT ok!” They didn’t understand and they didn’t want to make us feel bad, I found out later. I kept saying that it wasn’t ok, but having a brain injury myself, and feeling so flustered, I couldn’t get my thoughts in order or find my words. So, we left, with me feeling so uptight and upset. The next few days I was so angry as I thought about the fact that the teachers couldn’t get control of the students to quiet down.
I thought and thought about the situation and about why I was so upset. I wrote down my thoughts about what I wanted to tell the teachers about why I kept saying, “this is not ok.” I called and left a message for one of the teachers to call me back. When she did, I read her most of my notes. I had written that the boy was egging Veronica on. But after speaking to the teacher, she was right; he was not egging her on. He was just a teenager talking to a girl. Veronica gets so excited by the attention, any attention, she gets from the opposite sex. She cannot control herself. On the call with the teacher, after a long talk, she finally understood the problem. Solution? We have to set boundaries with the classes. They need to be quiet, are free to ask questions about what we are talking about, and the teachers are allowed to teacher Veronica too. If they notice she is touching a male and my back is turned and I don’t see it, they need to help me by saying something to Veronica to get her to stop touching or saying something sexual and inappropriate. This was a very difficult talk for me to have with the teacher because, as I told her, I was so afraid that because of this conversation, we would not be asked back to speak to the students. She assured me that now that she truly understood the situation, she would surely call us back to come speak next semester and they would help me in any way they could.
Having the severe brain injury Veronica has, makes controlling what she says very difficult sometimes. Veronica wants to be mature and speak with maturity and be in control of the words that come out of her mouth. But sometimes her impulses to blurt inappropriate things gets the best of her, as it does for many brain injured people, and she just cannot control it.
Dawn Corbelli 