Unlucky teacher
A long time ago, far far away, I had the misfortune to be a teacher. Crap pay, some dodgy kids, but some very good fellow teachers. One of these entered the annals of legend, by having a spectacular start to his P.E. teaching career. Three weeks into his first term he is taking a bunch of miserable 15-year-olds for soccer. Like many teachers, the occasionally joins in, firing in the odd cross, and generally showing “how it's done.” Towards the end of the lesson, he decides to demonstrate his heading skills, by jumping high and nodding the ball downwards. Perfect. Unfortunately, his landing wasn't. He goes down in a crumpled heap, and after a minute or two, several of the students wander over realising this is not normal. He had managed to break his leg in two places. We still don't know how.

He is out for the rest of the term.

Two terms later, he manages to improve upon this. I am walking past the boys toilets during lesson time and I hear several students chatting away inside. Obviously, being a teacher, I have to find out what's going on. The students were not the brightest, but they were not bad kids. I always remember their response “Mickey XXX just broke Sir’s nose with a baseball bat, and Sir told us to get some wet tissues for him to clean up the blood.” Mickey XXX was okay 90% of the time, but he had a very serious temper problem, and about once a year he would really, really lose it. You may not know this, but most schools have got a coded message, which if used, tells other teachers to drop whatever they're doing, or leave their classes, because one of their colleagues is in deep trouble. So I was going round various classrooms, using this to round up a posse so we could go to the P.E. area mob handed, ready for anything. So we steam into his changing area, and find him quietly supervising the changing room, with blood spurting on his face, and Mickey XXX sitting in the corner saying ” I'm going to get expelled, I'm going to get expelled” over and over. Turns out Mickey XXX is left-handed, so he was swinging the bat in the opposite direction to righthanders, and so he was swinging it into the face of his P.E. teacher. Apparently there was a loud cracking noise. Oops....

He is out for the rest of the term…again.

Bizarrely, for the next five years he does not have one sick day, but he was still known as “Skiver” Smith.
(buriram, Fri 20 Nov 2009, 16:25, Reply)