I had a problem in third grade when a classmate named Heather had an increasing habit of calling me a bitch. It was a lovely past time of hers to insult me and it entertained her through most of the school year. As with most public schools we had a counselor, named Mrs. Tooms (I thought her name was amusing merely because it was shared with the liver chewing and bile gargling serial killer from the X-Files). I went to see Mrs. Tooms when I couldn’t get Ms. Heather to stop. I remember telling her how I was tired of being harassed and called a bitch up to 15 times a day. She took notes in her binder and then asked me what I would like her to do about it. I told her that that type of profanity from one student to another shouldn’t have been tolerated, particularly after the issue hadn’t been resolved after six months. Her bizarre answer was that no third grader would intentionally use the word if they understood what it meant. That Heather probably used the word as it originally was meant for—a female dog. She then asked me if that was really insulting. I left after that with an odd sense of surrealism with Mrs. Tooms mindlessly stating not to be so overdramatic and to stop with the complaining because that would get Heather in trouble. School counselors have always seemed entirely ineffectual, shimmying from classroom to classroom hanging personified ‘cold pricklies’ and ‘warm fuzzies’. Sometimes I have the same impression with people with psychological backgrounds in the professional world. Is their job worthless? Are the majority of psychiatrists and psychologists worth paying hundreds upon thousands of dollars for? Of course school therapists are cardboard stand-in jokes (I’d be scared if most had the intellectual capability of Mrs. Tooms, though). So, I’m curious for opinions, stories, and/or examples in general…whether amateurs or professionals are involved.