I have credentials

I don’t think I’ve told you this. If I did, just humor me. I get so little pleasure out of my life. If it makes me happy to tell you something, you should quietly listen. Like when you grandfather tells you the story about how he was fishing and almost caught a mermaid, ten million times. If your grandpa is anything like mine, by the seventeenth telling you start wishing he’d caught the darn thing and leave us alone.

Either way, what you probably don’t know is that I actually warp young minds professionally. In other words, I have actually taught school. Seventh and eighth grade honor students to be exact. And those minds are pretty tough to warp, but I do my best.

A favor for a friend

You see, my friend Mike teaches honors English. Several years back he got the school board to hire me to give a lecture on mystery writing. He then hired a local detective to solve my murder. The kids love it so much, other students actually cut class to participate in our lectures. I’m taking this as a compliment, but detective Leo hates it, saying things about proper education, attendance, and all that crap. I mean, I cut a few classes in my day and I turned out… Maybe that’s not the best example.

Leo and I have started a contest to see who can beat the other. If the kids can’t solve the crime, I win. If they solve it, but don’t get all the clues, I win. If the students solve the crime by saying Eugene the unicorn told them the answer, I win but the student gets detention. Everyone knows you should never name a unicorn Eugene. Unicorns hate that name. Dragons, sure, but not unicorns.

Never goes as planned

All this is irrelevant; except for the fact my friend Mike knows I’m comfortable in a classroom. Another fact which I should’ve included in my useless description is, Mike’s wife teaches history. Last month Mike won a three-day spa package from the radio, and asked me to cover her Friday class. He asked me, because he wanted to surprise her at the last minute. As I have teaching credentials for the school, no one could argue when I walked in, and took the class.

Actually, I guess they could argue, but it would have been a waste of time. Unless they really liked to argue. I mean that way they’d get some pleasure out of it. But they still couldn’t stop me from teaching. And that’s really the point.

The night before, I asked Carol what was in her lesson plan. She said all I had to do was show a movie. It was already ordered, so there’d be no problem. Sadly, problems tend to follow me around like mosquitoes waiting to bite my butt. C’est la vie, they went on their mini vacation and I reported for school the next morning.

Classroom antics

The very first class of the day went wrong. One of the urchins decided it would be fun to aggravate the substitute. He told me I was useless, and didn’t look as good as Mrs. Kellar. I said, “I know, but on the other hand I’m taller, and my legs are better when wearing a skirt, and three-inch heels.”

 That shut the kid up. Unfortunately, successful or not, apparently this was the wrong thing to say. Especially when one of the vice-principals is standing outside the door. I got called into the hall for a ‘talking to’. It seems instructors aren’t supposed to make such references in front of impressionable fifteen-year-olds. Yea Right! I was fifteen. I know how un-impressionable they are.

I’m in trouble

I tried to defend myself by saying it was true. Carol has terrible legs. This did not go over well. She used a lot of words but the basic message was; I could continue with the morning classes, but they would have someone else by the afternoon. My services would no longer be required.

One thing’s for sure. Vice-principals haven’t changed much in the past thirty plus years. Thing is, this was really all their fault. They should never have given teaching credentials to a comedian who believes in dragons.

I returned to the room with my tail between my legs, and honestly tried to keep my head down. I played the video as instructed, and went to the back of the room to watch. I might’ve said the video was bad, but I really couldn’t. The word ‘bad’ didn’t even begin to describe how awful and boring this thing was. And I thought the films I saw in school were terrible. Those things could have been blockbusters compared to this trash.

I wasn’t really surprised, when one of the rug-rats randomly screamed, “This is boring!!” Frankly I’d had enough of it as well. By this time, it’d rotted my brain to the point that I was going to do something stupid. Or perhaps brilliant. With me It’s sometimes very hard to tell.

A better look at history

I walked up to the front, brought up the lights, and flipped off the TV. The movie was about Julius Ceaser. I decided since I was being thrown out anyway, I’d teach them what I knew about Ceaser. It went something like this:

Ceaser’s real name was Julius Smalowicz. Since bullying was legal, in fact encouraged back then, everyone made fun of him saying, “Julie’s a girl’s name. Are you a girl?” This made him very angry, especially since he had trouble talking to the opposite sex. In fact, Julie couldn’t figure which was the opposite sex. His uncle would take him to the forum, locate an eligible young lady, and say, “Julius, seize her!!” The name stuck.

All this made him angry, so he started a gang called The Roman Legion. They wore their togas on backwards, wore laurel leaves on their heads, and hung out in the vomitorium drawing pictures of gross food on the walls.

Later his gang started a turf war with the Gauls, (or was it E-Gauls). Either way he claimed their territory, and ended up in control of most of Europe. With nothing more to conquer he applied for the job of Dictator, and won senate approval. It was a close vote though, with two prominent Phoenicians abstaining.

Never eat the last one

Now, Ceaser loved donuts. You’d think it would be salad, but no. He sent a dozen to every senate meeting. There were eleven senators so everybody got one. However, the bakery usually sent a baker’s dozen so the fat guy in the room always got two.

Without warning, Julius changed bakeries. They only sent a regular dozen. Fatty ate his two without realizing. When Ceaser arrived, there were no donuts for him. He looked over to the heavy senator and screamed, “Yo, Brutus! Did you eat my freaking donut? That is not cool man.” In Latin this approximates too, “Et tu Brute!” It loses something in the translation.

Brutus, being a man of action, did the only thing he could do, to save face. He Stabbed Ceasar to death. End of lesson.

The real problem came as school gossip got to those in the afternoon classes…

They had to watch the video!!!