» Your Weirdest Teacher

Toshitotta sensei
A Japanese language class in an Australian high school (it's common there to have Asian and European language options). Our teacher was an Aussie in his 70s and he had lived in Japan for about 30 years from just after WWII and came back to Australia after his wife died. Anyway, normally this guy was quite mellow. When people mucked about a bit, he did try to raise his voice, but he was kind of frail and ended up shaking so much that people stopped their misbehaving because they felt sorry for him.

One day, though, he totally lost it after he heard someone in the class telling an off-colour joke. I thought the rant would kill him, he was shaking that much. But it wasn't his heart that gave way first, thankfully. It was his teeth.

Mid-rant the falsies flew, glistening saliva in the sunlight, clear across his desk and landed with a clunk in front of my friend in the front row. The room, which was already silent, fell even more so (if that's possible). He stormed around, snatched them away from my friend's desk and left the room. Only then did we laugh. Long and loud. Felt kind of bad for him though - at least until I realised we now had the rest of the period off.
(Tue 15th Nov 2005, 14:42, More)