Você fala português?
I went to an all boys Grammar school which when I joined was still very traditional, with a pipe smoking headmaster, a house system and everyone referred to by their surname (this was 1995, not 1895..)

A couple of the teachers there who had been there for a long, long time, starting as pupils and then coming back to teach for the majority of their adult lives. There were some good (Kipper), some bad and some just plain bonkers.

I'm going to tell you about the bonkers one. His nickname was ‘Cat,’ apparently because some sixth formers had once locked him in a cupboard over night and in the morning the teachers that found him discovered scratches all over the inside of the door. Apparently.

He was most definitely odd, walked to work every day with a huge green rucksack, long, unkempt, silver hair flying about, muttering to himself and seemingly scowling at everyone. He also was unpredictable in his reactions –he would send you out of class if you accidentally dropped a pencil on the floor, but would just mutter to himself if people started loudly ‘meow-ing,’ at him during a lesson.

Bizarrely I went trick or treating once and ended up on his doorstep –we didn’t know he lived there –and he was incredibly nice to us and gave us lots of goodies.

Teachers used to talk to us about him and the fact that he was extremely clever. We were told he was due to go on holiday to Portugal once and had ordered a guide book online. Things must have got mixed up because he did receive a guide book on Portugal but it was in Portuguese. Most people would just return the book or accept their mistake and donate it to a charity shop. Cat, however, decided to learn Portuguese instead. So he did. The entire language. In a matter of weeks.

Awesome. Crazy, definitely, but awesome!
(aeloen, Fri 18 Mar 2011, 15:18, 2 replies)

Hah
Bet he didn't.

It's a notoriously difficult language to learn. He might have got to 'the book is on the table' standard.
( Not Pineapple anymore, Fri 18 Mar 2011, 15:40, closed)

hahah ^^ this
it's a right bastard
(gr33npeace, Fri 18 Mar 2011, 19:36, closed)