From the articles that I have read and what I’ve seen on my beloved T.V., some bullshit rules concerning student interaction have gotten just a little out of hand. There’s just so much sensitivity to every little remark and every little touch (between the kids, of course). The over-analysis of these age-old rites of passage if you will (and you will…) is really robbing kids of some of the best stuff about being a kid. I’m talking about things as innocuous as holding hands or playing “footsies” under the cafeteria tables.
A lot of these incidents have been labeled everything from assault to rape for Christ’s’ sake! Some of my favorite junior high female friends would have been charged with assault on me. Their way of showing they liked me was to usually bust me over the head with something. They certainly got my attention all right. This was of course, at that tender age (12 – 27), the way kids start to explore the fascinating differences between themselves, “flirting”.
These types of antics are as common now as they were when boys used to dip the tip of girls’ pig-tails in their desk ink well, don’t worry I’m even too young to have witnessed that one. So what do girls do now? Just run up to a guy that turns them on and shove a hit of ecstasy in his mouth? Then tell him to check his email for the location of the upcoming booty-call? They can’t use the old quasi assault method of attack; with the size of today’s backpacks she could take his pimpled face right off, not a good alternative.
Texting! Holy shit, Holy fucking shit. I can’t imagine the carnage that would have transpired if we had that kind of advantage over our enemy (the faculty) when I was in eighth grade. A mass coordinated assault on Mr. Harger, our eighth grade science teacher, just might have made me a career Army man. I had led our barely pubescent posse to oppose this foe because I was the proverbial “insufferable little shit” and he seemed like a good candidate to me.
He was new, that was a massive sign of impending doom (for his ass), and had NO fucking personality whatsoever. Duller than dogshit I’m afraid my friends. He bored the living shit out of us and he didn’t seem to make one iota of effort to make the lessons less fucking insufferable. Some of the hell we put poor Mr. Harger through was really very innovative I must say, but he had it coming to him (keep reminding yourselves we’re all twelve years old here).
He knew damn right well we hated his class because he was fucking boring, and he couldn’t care less. We knew it, he knew it, and he knew we knew it. This was WAR.
He had just returned from a teaching assignment in South Africa. The first and only time he tried to tell the class a “Tale of Africa” all he talked about was the fact that they allowed corporal punishment. He didn’t get into the details of this however (lucky for him).
My buddy Dana (not his real name, nudge, nudge, wink of the eye) got just a little bored and fed up with this guy’s bullshit and decided to set the rear wall on fire.
Don’t be taken aback, dear readers. This was done with such alarming frequency and was so fucking funny by this time that none of our classmates even mentioned that the room was on fire. Until the wall-sized relief map (plastic) of the world started to go up in flames we were even able to suppress our laughter.
Even then it was just the gaiety and laughter of young children, giggling at the geeky asshole trying to put out the fire we just intentionally set. Oh, we hid the fire extinguishers, too…
One incident that still cracks me the fuck up to this day is this one:
Our Junior High School Principal use to have to come down the short hallway to Harger’s class quite often, usually to tell him to shut his class the fuck up. He was a pretty good guy even though he was treated as enemy high command back then. We showed no mercy and took no prisoners (we didn’t know how).
On one occasion when we were particularly unruly (we were going fuckin’ nuts!) our over-burdened Junior High School Principal had to make the short trek down the hallway to the eighth grade science lab. Being a professional man of reserved and quiet dignity he asked Mr. Harger to step outside into the hallway to have a little tête-à-tête.
Well with the both of them out in the hallway the unruly classroom was unsupervised. And we were ready. We quickly ran to the blackboard at the front of the room. I took my place as recon officer. I was keeping watch, observing the enemy talking in the hallway, ready to signal any warning to my squad. These were well trained men (men?) they worked quickly, quietly and with amazing precision.
In no time at all the words “HARGER SUCKS MOOSE COCK!!” appeared in huge letters mere seconds before the Principal and teacher decided to finish their conversation inside the classroom. As they stood talking right in front of the blackboard our esteemed principal noticed our artwork. He looked at the teacher, rolled his eyes towards the blackboard, and lightly tapped the board twice with his index finger. As he looked out over the rim of his glasses he was off with barely a whisper.
We collectively wet ourselves. I still laugh at that one to this very day. If we had motivational tools such as You Tube, cell phone cameras, and text messaging I can only imagine the kind of mayhem that would have ensued.
Mr. Harger had a routine for starting the day’s lesson. He would close the classroom door, walk over to the blackboard, open his briefcase to remove his notes, and then proceed to bore the shit out of us.
I would have loved to have captured the moment when he opened his briefcase and was startled by the hardcore gay porn centerfold we put in there for him. A true Kodak moment!
YouTube indeed.
Selah.
**Big thanks to ri and most of all, cld, for the much needed motivation.
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