It’s either him or the old (maybe mid 40s at the time) Home Ec teacher that used to come to class wearing low cut shirts displaying her ample, sagging cleavage and whatever hickeys she had gotten recently. Still shiver when I think of that sight.

It was the second-last year of school and I was almost failing maths and science (my fault for doing them on the higher grade I suppose), and I was crying in Mrs McGladdery’s office because I’d never failed anything before – and she had her massive drooly dog at work that day so I could hug it and cry in its fur – and she invited me to her beach-house for a day and generally cheered me up. She also insists that I do something impressive with my English. So I might be a teacher, just like her, moaning at students who write uncreatively: “If anyone uses the word “wicked”, that’s wick-ED, in their next Macbeth essay, you’ll get nought! And 400-year-old corpses CANNOT drip blood!”

My maths teacher was also awesome; she was hardcore, though, nearly killed you if you didn’t do all your homework, with corrections. But the tests were always marked and handed back the very next day instead of weeks later, and on the morning of our final maths exam she handed out all the papers personally and told all of us she thought we’d all be getting A’s – “You’re an A, you’re an A…”. Of course I knew getting an A is a top one percent in the school thing, but it really felt good to start the exam like that. Bless her.

The main honor goes to Mr. Kimura, who dampened our third grader Halloween spirits just after roll call by somberly stating that on October 31, when he was a small boy, his fisherman father went out for his daily haul off the small South Pacific island where he grew up. Apparently, the man’s boat capsized and while he was swimming to shore, two sharks came and ripped him to pieces while the family watched in horror from the beach. That man couldn’t wait to retire, and as it turned out, we were his last class.

Drew

I was in fourth grade at the time and we were having a math lesson. For math we would get out of our desks and sit on the floor while the teacher taught us lessons. The teacher’s name was Mrs. Henderson, and I didn’t really have a problem with her. This was pre-Junior High though, and I was an awfully dense kid back then. Anyway, I was bored so I wasn’t paying too much attention. Math wasn’t very difficult for me, and I already understood how to solve the math problems she was showing us… so I just thought about something more interesting. Then she began to call on people to solve questions out of the text book. Guess who she called? The unattentive me. She wanted me to solve Problem 4, but looking in the book, there were TWO Problem 4s: the practice question and the actual homework question. So naturally, I asked which one. She wouldn’t tell me! She got pissy and told me I needed to start paying attention in class and then she told me to go up to the board and solve the question. I stood up and went to the board… and proceeded to calmly wait for several moments before she let me sit down again. I don’t remember what she said next, I only remember my reply, “I don’t get embarrassed very easily.” Which was the goddamned truth because I was such an airhead back then that I didn’t even realize when people were trying to ridicule me! (Of course, that all changed come 7th grade in which I was teased mercilessly…) Even then I didn’t hate her. In fact, two years later one of my classmates mentioned that Mrs. Henderson hated me… and I was just shocked. Maybe the guy only remembered that one event? I don’t know. But it was awfully mean of my teacher either way.

Another time was in 7th grade and I liked the teacher, though I knew a lot of people, especially guys didn’t. Notes got passed behind her back, calling her a cow. *shrugs* None of my doing. Mrs. Aho was her name, and she was my Geography teacher. We were doing a group project and I was having a hard time of it because my groupmates weren’t doing their fair share of the work. The project was to create a boardgame based on a South American country. I think we had Panama, but the point was that this was a boardgame and boardgames needed dice.

Well everyone in the group forgot about those. It was our fault entirely as we were reminded, but what was insane was that the day we had to turn in the project, the teacher kicked us out of the classroom and woudn’t let us back in without a die. Well we were 7th graders, what were we supposed to do? We can’t just drive out to the nearest Snyder’s and pick up a pack. We tried all the obvious stuff first. We went and interrupted Math classes to see if the Math teachers had any… NO. Eventually we ended up back outside the classroom, trying to figure out where else we could look. Finally I got an idea and told one of my group mates to go back into the classroom and ask the teacher for a piece of paper, some scissor, tape and a marker. I then proceeded to sit down and MAKE a fucking die. It was enormous and didn’t even roll, but it was cube-shaped and got us back inside the room. No thanks to the teacher. Even when the games were graded and tested by other groups, she had to borrow a real die to the game. I don’t think this counted as real cruelty to us, but it does seem awfully dumb to actually expect students with no money and no mode of transportation to come up with some dice in the middle of school.

Alright, one last event that wasn’t really mean or thoughtless… just an example of outright pretentiousness. In 11th grade, I took Chemistry. Not my favorite subject, but it was a prerequisite to Advanced Biology, which I actually enjoyed for the most part. Again, I didn’t really have a problem with the teacher except for a slight tendency on his part to talk down on the students. Well one day he told us that he was quitting his job and that it was his last day. He had a better job lined up with the ‘government’ apparently. Maybe he gave the principal a two weeks notice, but he sure didn’t give us one. So because it was his last day, he was going to have us watch a video that would open our eyes to the truths of society.

Folks, he had us watch a PETA video. Yes, we got a peek at the disgusting and horrible life that pigs, cows, and chickens experienced before they’re off to the slaughterhouse. It was pretty nasty. Chickens with malformed feet, turning cannibal in their close-quarters. But throughout the entire video, I couldn’t help but thinking, “Just because you’re a vegetarian doesn’t make you superior to me, dumbass.”

Lunch was right after that class. They were serving hamburgers. I ate one just for him.