[QUOTE=fluiddruid]
I had a few bizarre experiences in high school.
During my freshman year, I had an elderly gentleman as a teacher in World History for about a week. He then disappeared, and we discovered through the local papers that it was due to having been arrested for soliciting prostitutes. We then got a ditzy but well-meaning teacher who knew approximately negative three about World History. I remember that she showed us the movie version of Clan of the Cave Bear during our unit on prehistory, but that she didn’t realize there was sex in it, and became too panicked to operate the VCR, so she just ended up frantically waving in front of the screen.
My sophomore year was even better. I had one teacher who basically looked like the Unabomber when he was cleaned up for his court case. He had salt and pepper hair in a pony tail, a beard, and big bulby eyes that he could jut outward weirdly when he stared. He was something of an aging hipster and would drink coffee out of his thermos and lecture the kids about how terrible our generation was and how the world was going to hell. The class was American literature, and I do remember reading a few things, but a lot of classes were taken up by his ranting. He’d also mention, on a frequent (near daily) basis, exactly how many years he had until retirement.
I found him completely awesome and became a teacher’s pet. I’d hang around with him before school with a friend of mine. He made up a song about my name based on something from the cartoon Ren and Stimpy, and would sing it every time he saw me. I tend to think a lot of the ranting was put on because he was irritated by dealing with petulant, entitled little rich kids all day. Ranting is kind of a harsh word, as it was basically a freeform lecture having little to nothing to do with the topic at hand and moving frequently into backhanded criticisms of other teachers, the school administration (very frequently), other teachers, politicians, public figures, or pretty much anyone, really. He was never outwardly cruel, as most of the rants about specific classroom members went over the heads of most of the class. He hated most of the literature we studied, but he loved Walden and deeply admired, and discussed at length, about Thoreau and Emerson and their ideas. I know he fantasized about going and living in the woods someday. He also would show The Last of the Mohicans every year – I think so we could avoid reading the stupid thing but technically meeting the curriculum requirements - and ever after, even after we moved onto other topics, he’d make daily references to “Daniel Day-Lewis, the man no woman can resist” somewhere in his lecture. Every day, for months and months.
He also had something of a rivalry with another teacher I also had, who taught sophomore history. His name had a “chess” sound in it, so my English teacher started calling him “The Big Cheese” and adding him to his frequent rants. After awhile, it became, “The Big Cheese. [dramatic pause] Le Grand Fromage. [dramatic pause]” then he would continue his rant/story/stream of consciousness “lecture”. The other teacher was actually pretty cool, but had a lot of energy and was generally cheery and used to jump up and down and on his desk during class, and absolutely loved to spend time with students, and I’m sure his youthful enthusiasm bugged out my literature teacher something awful.
I moved away after that but he used to write letters back and forth with me (I started them). He was cool but so very weird. He also recommended some interesting 60s hippie music to my friend that she shared with me, and I’ve enjoyed ever since.
[/QUOTE]
His name wasn’t Mr. Piper, was it?
