What funny quirks did/do your teachers have? Did any have a funny name or maybe they were supplied one unknowingly by the pupils? Our head teacher has the unfortunate name of Dr. Nutall, whilst a new teacher to the school this year is called Mr. Beer. That raised a few laughs when announced in assembly!

-- Tim (tim@newmail.net), September 10, 1999

Answers

Well, I *could* tell you about something that happened at my (former, now my sister's) high school a few years ago... One of the Spanish teachers and one of the PE teachers (yes, Tim, we Americans *do* know what PE means!) decided to get married. Of course, that school is a hotbed of faculty pregnancies and lust and nepotism, so....

Anyway, your question focused more on names (plus my blurb wasn't a quirk, it was just sad), so here's my $0.02: The head of the math department at the aforementioned high school is short, balding, and has a quiet, self-depreciating, yet humorous manner, drawing comparisons to the comic strip character Ziggy. Adding to that is the fact that his last name is Zaccardo. (Y'know, the Z factor...) Fear not, though, he loves the nickname. (Although my sister tells me today that perhaps that nickname has faded away into obscurity...)

-- Tim L. (mediabrat@hotmail.com), September 10, 1999.

First off, I would like to say that I love my new name. And your new design. And that now that I'm catching up on your entries, you know what that means! :)

All the teachers at my school are insane (okay, most of them), but I'll only mention two tonight.

First, there's the computer teacher, who at present I have for Accounting. Today in class she was in the middle of talking, when she just trailed off and said, "Oh my goodness!" After a while I realized she was looking at a bug. Now, it could have been a bee or something of the sort, and she might be allergic to them. But anyway, she immediately sprang for the lights and turned them off, reasoning that then it would fly out the window. Then she ran to get her fly swatter, and was rifling through her cabinet, complaining that someone had stolen or borrowed it. A guy in my class then took a rag that was sitting on top of the vcr (we had just finished watching a dumb, dumb movie), went over to where the bug had landed, and smushed it. Then the teacher came over and swatted it several times to make sure. I go into convulsions of laughter just thinking about it, which causes me to go into coughing convulsions... painful.

The other one is a part-time teacher and also our principal. First of all, there's something wrong with his mouth, and he can't pronounce things properly. No one understands him, but he repeats things over and over. He's notorious for his awful jokes, and for just generally being an odd, odd man. I haven't yet had the privilege of having him as a teacher, but I've heard stories. He goes through chalk incredibly quickly because he presses so hard, he uses chart paper all the time, and that doesn't help understand what he's saying because his writing is illegible also. I feel as if I'm not getting across the full picture here, but then that would be impossible.

-- Yojjeth (bursa@cgocable.net), September 10, 1999.

The math teacher that I had two years ago was really stupid. He would cuss in front of the class and stuff, and he was just a big jerk. But that's beside the point. Here's my story:

the year before I had Mr. Forthoffer (forth-offer), he was teaching an Algebra 1 class one day, and there was a group of guys sitting in the back of the class room, huddling over something and laughing during the middle of class. Mr. Forthoffer asks them what's up, and this one guy who sat in the corner stood up and he had something in his hands. He opened them up and a grasshopper flew across the room and landed right on Mr. Forthoffer's balding forehead. But the really funny part was that he couldn't get it off! It just sat there and he tried swatting at it, but it just clung to him and wouldn't let go. By then the whole class was laughing hysterically. When he finally got it off, the whole class started calling him Mr. Grasshopper instead of Forthoffer.

To this day, I feel like whenever I walk by his room I just want to yell out "Grasshopper!" and see if he remembers.

-- Jessica (jtillson@ix.netcom.com), September 12, 1999.

Well, a few years before I entered high school, the principal had been caught in the woodworking classroom, laying on top of his secretary. I'll let you use your imagination at what they were up to, but when word spread of this deed....it caused quite the scandal in the school. From that point on the principal was known as "woodchips"... Of course, he left the year before I began attending the school...but that's my story.

Commixion @ gbdesigns.com/commixion

-- Greg Barber (gbarber@gbdesigns.com), September 22, 1999.