Chapter 7 - In Honor of My Misunderstood Teacher

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OK... OK... I'm back! Geez, I'll tell ya... you take a break for a couple of months and people start to think you're dead!! Well fear not my feeble friends! I have returned to once again give you a commentary on the ways of our civilization... something that you will always cherish forever and take as the words of a messenger of whatever god or gods you bow before. And if you have no god, then perhaps honoring me by making me your new god is the best path for you... in fact... taking a second look at you I KNOW it would be the best idea for you... you need all the help you can get. So listen attentively, ye feeble mortal... as I tell you about the things that you dare not even think about.

I once had a teacher. He went by the name of Mr. X (As you might have figured, his real name has been protected.. it's not really Mr. X... geez... nothing gets by you!). So anyway, Mr. X was of an Indian heritage. And not the Indian that waves the hatchet around and smokes the peace pipe. The OTHER Indians. The ones from India. He was one of those. And Mr. X was very very proud of his heritage. He used to tell us stories of how he grew up in a small village in India named Mashanuka, and how he used to play with all the other Mashanukan children, and how he was circumcised with a lobster when he was 10. OK, so Mr. X didn't always have the best stories... but he was a good guy nonetheless. And he didn't take any crap. He was one of those teachers who would get right up in someone's face and put them in their place by just staring them down. He had these eyes that could penetrate the back of someone's skull, burn a hole through that skull, and then stare someone else down directly behind that person. He was a lean, mean, Indian teaching machine. He was also only 4 and a half feet tall. For most teachers, this unfortunate drawback would have prohibited them from being so brave in front of hardcore gangsta' students. White ones. That wore Fubu. But it never stopped Mr. X from chastising his unruly students. I remember a few times he would finish arguing with a student and turn to the rest of the class and shout "Manga yahu jopanaful bree-na!" Then he would begin to point and laugh hysterically at his students who sat in awe. "Himanu wad-ja hubu hubu hubu hubu! HUUUUUBUUUU!" he would continue to shout, the entire time laughing loudly, until he would turn around and slam his head into his desk repeatedly until he passed out. Being the insightful students that we were, we one day decided to get an Indian-English dictionary from the school library and try to translate his words of wisdom that he shared so frequently. Unfortunately, we didn't know how to spell any of the words, and found only the word "hubu" in the dictionary... which translated into "testicles". Perhaps we just got the spelling wrong.

Now I know what you're all thinking, that this teacher was wierd and that he shouldn't have been allowed even remotely near the school building, or grounds for that matter. But the truth is that he was a great guy. And our families were safe as long as he kept his "American employment", as he called it. So it wasn't a bad deal. But the best part about Mr. X was the way he could teach. No matter how many bad things you could say about Mr. X, he could teach. It didn't matter that he received mysterious calls every hour on the hour, it didn't matter that he never cut his toenails, it didn't matter that we once found machine gun cartridges in his desk drawer, because that guy could teach. It wasn't so much the way he said stuff, and it wasn't the way he gave out notes. It was the way he made us WANT to learn. We wanted to learn so bad. We NEEDED that information. We hung on his every word. We took copious notes on everything he said. And when it was quiz time, we knew ALL the answers. Because, if we didn't then he would bite us. Hard. Sometimes he would leave teeth marks, and sometimes he would just take chunks of flesh with him. Someone who didn't do their homework would find that before they could even break out some lame excuse, Mr. X was already midway through the air with his jaws wide open, drooling all over himself and snarling and the fresh meat that awaited. There was no use in running or hiding, Mr. X's short figure and muscular limbs allowed him to run extremely fast on all fours, such as a pit-bull would. I remember we used to laugh so hard when the class-clown would run screaming and pleading for our help with tears in his eyes out of the classroom, followed by a rabid Mr. X on all fours chomping at his feet and gaining. And the best part was that Mr. X would always bring back his target, in his teeth, and present them to us by dropping them on the floor and urinating all over them. Now tell me what other class is THAT much fun. He was very sneaky, which is one thing that we didn't like all that much about him. For one thing, every morning before the pledge he would inconspicuously get up from his desk, and with one quick movement swap the American and Indian national flags. Many times no one caught him doing this, and when we got up to say the pledge we would have the surprise of staring into an Indian flag, while Mr. X danced around his desk at the front of the room with a burning U.S. flag shouting and laughing with buckets full of girlish glee. What a guy.

We really grew attached to Mr. X. That's what made it so sad when our class was raided by a SWAT team one day and Mr. X was roughly taken into custody. I don't care how many nuclear warheads they found in his house, they had no right to be so rough. He was a good guy. And a good teacher. And completely made up.