The first time I really lost my cool is pretty well burned into my memory. I was 14 and I was playing in the school orchestra. The teacher was a total monster and had checked out of being a decent teacher years and years before. They ran their classroom in such a way as to inspire the class to absolutely torture the teacher's designated chew toys and fawn over the favorites. Even outside of class the favorites played malicious pranks on the chew toys. And other things. (The older I get the more I realize just all that was wrong with that class.)

Anyway, I was not a favorite. Not even close. And there was this one talented student that wasn't a very technical player, but really had the spark. The teacher teased this student mercilessly. Actually, it was worse than that. The teacher had a hate-on for this one student and made every effort to squash every bit of enjoyment that student got from playing music OUT of that student. It was a horror show, and it ground on me day after day after day.

Anyway, what follows is what I remember but this may not be quite what happened: on a particularly horrible day the teacher had lit into talented-but-untechnical student and then I think, turned to me and told me I wasn't playing in the concert unless I could play this one section from hell in "Poet and Peasant Overture." It's the sort of thing COLLEGE students play and was completely inappropriate for beginning/intermediate middle school orchestra. I had practiced until my brains and fingers were total mush the night before or something but I still had no HOPE of playing this trill. I think the implication was that both the other student and I were being uninvited from the concert unless we could play it right then, right there.

So I lost it, right then, right there. My entire vision washed over in red, I'm certain I was baring my teeth like some sort of savage animal. I either yanked out my end-pin (basically a small, sharp metal spear) and gestured with that or used my bow in the 'en garde' position. I may have been foaming at the mouth as I screamed that we would never be good enough because the teacher wanted us to fail, and set us up for it. Realizing that I was mere seconds from deciding to assault the teacher, I fled the room. I was so mad I sprung a bloody nose and ended up hiding in the bathroom with toilet paper crammed up my nostril for a bit.

tldr: craptastic teacher was asking for it and nearly got assaulted by idiot 14 year old me, but I was the better person and gave myself a bloody nose instead.