The Speedy Shy
My chemistry teacher was a guy with glasses about two inches thick, hair like an explosion in a pube factory, and a screeching high-pitched voice like nothing else I have ever heard.

Oh and he didn’t have any legs.

He wore this pair of tragically, pathetically awful wooden legs that went straight as rods all the way up to his arse cheeks, and propelled himself around school on a pair of old crutches.

Sadly he was about as gifted in the use of crutches as he was at ballet dancing. Watching him clomp, drag and grunt down a corridor was certainly a sight to behold – it occupied a fine line between heartbreaking and hilarious.

We nicknamed him Speedy.

One summer we had a school fete, at which one of the attractions was a “soak the teacher” stall. Teachers stood behind a sheet of clear plastic sheeting with a head-shaped hole cut out; pupils and parents could then take it in turns to hurl wet sponges at their heads. Oh what fun.

Speedy, being a good old sort really, did his bit and lurched & wobbled up to the stall to undergo his stint behind the plastic sheeting. It went quite well considering, you could see most kids’ respect levels rising as he took a few sponges in the face and yet remained smiling, as always.

Then one fifth form girl, not the brightest, grabbed a soggy sponge from the bucket, skipped & giggled right up to poor Speedy – and shoved it into his face really hard.

What happened next could perhaps best be visualised by imagining a coconut being knocked off it’s perch at a coconut shy. Except that the coconut was Speedy’s body, and the perch was his wooden legs – from which he rapidly became disengaged in a flurry of flailing crutches and strange yelping noises.

All that was left was a tangled pile of artificial limb and wet cripple.
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(Ali Bongo 9000 Ali Bongo 9000, Wed 9 Nov 2005, 17:39, Reply)