I want to take a moment to introduce to you one of the most scary places on Earth –
- A place that some would describe as dark and sinister, infested with all kinds of germs and malice thoughts. You must be on guard always.
- A place where you will feel outnumbered, and that everyone is always looking at you. You’re not one of them, and often, others won’t want you around.
- A place with broken chairs, shabby curtains and chewing gum on every surface. A place where you can’t help but gag – the smell of BO is sometimes impossible to escape.
- A place with locked gates with spikes on the end, and sign in books and disapproving glares if you don’t follow the rules.
High School.
We’ve all been there, but I went back and have been a teacher ever since. I was born, went to pre-school, then primary school, then secondary school, then tertiary education and now I’m back to secondary. It just goes to show, that sometimes you just can’t escape it!
Let me start off by telling you about a kid named Cody – I was excited one day to be giving out class novels to Year 9 English. I think we were doing a Terry Pratchett novel, ‘Truckers’. You’d love it, it’s about these little guys called Nomes who live really quickly – they move so fast, that we never even see them – they live in a large department store and BAM! One day, they learn it’s going to get knocked down – and from that complication, the story emerges – but my complication was Cody, “If you love the book so much, you fucking read it” and then she threw the novel across the classroom at my head. It missed, and I told her I’d already read it.
And then there was Eli.
“Eli, why did you keep hitting the light globe until it smashed?”
It looked at me funny.
OK.
And then there was that time Eli decided to pull the gutter off the school hall.
“Eli, why did you pull the gutter off the school hall”.
It looked like fun.
OK.
Now, the truth is, I’m not a particularly high strung kind-of-guy, and not a lot phases me – but gee, some young people say some weird things. Our future is bright, they said. They hadn’t been to High School in a while.
There’s this little fellow named Stewie, whose quirks are really rather delightful. One day, he jumps out of his seat and walks straight out the door. Alarmed, I can’t help but wonder, what had triggered him? It was only a poem, I said, but it was about the native people, he said. The connection wasn’t clear, until he said, ‘I’m white, they’re not’. Turns out Stewie is an open racist whose parents had decided to instill their own values. Yep, this is our future.
And then, again, is Eli.
“Eli, why did you throw Mason’s school bag in the dumpster?
It looked like fun.
OK.
And the thing is, with all that chaos, sometimes it is nice to think of the staffroom as a refuge. One day, a pleasant enough older lady came back to this safehaven, particularly flustered – what had she been teaching in Geography that day, you might have wondered. I don’t think it was anything to do with longitude or latitudes, or any other map reading skills – but, she exclaimed that someone had just drawn a penis on the back of a classroom chair. ‘It was the biggest I’ve ever seen’, she noted with embarrassment. The only person more embarrassed was her husband, also a teacher, also listening to the explanation.
And finally, a ‘Knock, Knock Joke’ for your amusement.
Knock, Knock –
- Who’s there?
Whose shoes
- Whose shoes who’s
That’s grammatically incorrect. Perhaps you need to go back to High School.