History History

1. 

I guess I was truly blessed throughout my public school education. Looking back, I can't recall having any teachers that I really despised. There were those few teachers who had the gift to not only educate, but to inspire and uplift his or her students. Just kidding! Remember, I said I attended public schools.

Seriously, there were a few exceptional teachers. Most of my teachers were about average (because I just happened to attend Bell Curve High School), but there were a handful that stood out because of their highly advanced awfulness. That would be the far left end of that bell curve we're talking about. One of those was my high school history teacher, Mrs. Weaver. I'm reluctant to use her real name (although "Weaver" rhymes with it). It's been about thirty years, so you never know - she could still be alive, or have litigious relatives.

You might be thinking that Mrs. Weaver was an awful teacher because she was difficult, or cruel, or because she took every opportunity to humiliate her students in a manner that might inspire a Pink Floyd album. She wasn't really any of those things. She just couldn't, or didn't, teach.

Here is Mrs. Weaver's lesson plan in a nutshell : sit behind desk, pick at hair. So quickly we've established that a). she doesn't fancy getting up and moving, which precludes other associated activities like writing on the chalk board, or helping an individual student, and b). she had some scalp or hair issues that weren't being properly addressed. So she would sit behind her desk, dig her fingernails into various regions of her scalp for a few seconds, then stop and examine her fingernails. Repeat until bell rings. If you've ever been to the zoo, you've seen this exact kind of behavior. Of course the girls thought it was nasty, and the boys thought it was hilarious. But no one could ignore it.

I considered buying her some Kwell or Scalpicin, leaving it anonymously on her desk. But then I thought better of it. What if it worked? She'd stop picking at her hair, freeing up her time to give us more work. I'd be the pariah of my World History class faster than you could say "fertile crescent".

So you're thinking "With her busy schedule of sitting and picking, how did she manage to teach a classroom full of hormone addled teenagers thirsting for knowledge of 'The Cradle of Civilization'? And just who was going to get up and feed Civilization when it wakes up crying in the middle of the night, not to mention those diapers? " Her teaching method was pretty straightforward. See, we had these history books. We would walk into class each day, and written on the chalk board behind Mrs. Weaver was our reading assignment for that day.

We would copy down the assignment, then sit and read. For the entire class. Monday through Friday. Sometimes Mrs. Weaver actually spoke, but only to clarify what the reading assignment was. I know that right now you're thinking "Wow! She's like the real life version of Dead Poets Society, or Mr. Holland's Opus!" And of course you'd be right, except for the conspicuous absence of learning, inspiration, and non-hair picking.

Of course, after we read the assignment, there were questions at the end of each chapter to be answered. We would dutifully write down our answers, turning in sheaves of papers at the end of class. In a few days, we'd get the paper back with a red check mark at the top of the page. After a few weeks in class, some of my friends put two and two together, and figured out that Mrs. Weaver couldn't possibly be reading all of our answers. She apparently didn't read them in class, and there just didn't seem to be enough time for her to read these papers at home, with the time consuming hair picking and all.

The bolder of my friends started turning in papers with answers that weren't really answers. They would just write down random words and sentences that had nothing to do with the questions at the end of the chapter. But the papers they turned in were filled with handwriting, and apparently that's all that Mrs. Weaver was looking for. My friends got big red checkmarks on their papers just like I did. Bastards. Admittedly, there were some days when I just didn't feel like doing the work, and I too would turn in answers like :

The Hittites were an ancient Anatolian people who never heard of Foghat. But Foghat is a supremely awesome rock band. I especially like "Fool for the City". I think they're touring now, and I hope I can catch the concert when they come here. With their great songs and blazing hot guitar solos, it's my opinion that Foghat is one of the greatest rock bands ever, and that we can look forward to decades of great music from this fine band. In fact, I'm sure I'll still be talking about Foghat thirty years from now.

"Check"

This paints a picture of a teacher who was either 1). slow or 2). lazy. It could have also been "all of the above". I won't judge here, but the indisputable fact is that a parking lot attendant could have done her job. Heck, even a rather clever alpaca could have probably pulled it off too.

I can't leave without mentioning Mrs. Weaver's World History tests. Probably only because the State of Texas mandated it, Mrs. Weaver would occasionally test her students. These were written, true-false tests. I suspect that she used the same tests year over year, but since there weren't any fraternities in high school, there was no way to use that to my advantage. After we had taken a couple of these tests, the brighter of my friends noticed something interesting*. When the test question was stated in a positive manner, the answer was always "true". When the question was stated in a negative manner, the answer was always "false". Some examples:

Napoleon was exiled to Saint Helena. True.

Napoleon was not married to Josephine. False.

Just by being aware of the sentence structure, we could ace one of these tests with absolutely no knowledge of world history whatsoever. And we did.

For some historical perspective on humor blogging, visit Humor-blogs.

* So some of you have noticed that I had friends who were both bolder and brighter than I was. Don't rub it in.