(Pleasant) Memories of Junior High

I had a male teacher in junior high school who wore pantyhose.

He was pretty darn cool. In his 60s and still skiing every weekend, weather permitting, he wore it under his thermals and snow pants to keep his leg hair from chafing.

This was the guy who claimed he could assemble a machine gun in complete darkness and on several occasions rode down the hall on his Harley, though, so nobody wanted to hassle him too much about the pantyhose thing.

He'd jump when the fire alarm rang, drop his books where he stood and then take the stairs two at a time, never looking back to see if the class was following him or not. The school bell made him flinch a little, too.

I was had fun being the teacher's pet in that class - there's nothing like trying to teach History to students who ask, right before the final, which side won the Civil War. I sat in the front row taking notes and laughing at his jokes, so I think I was pretty squarely on the list of Students Not to Use as Human Shields Should the Occasion Arise.

The closest he ever came to snapping was when he tried to kill a wasp with one of those long poles for closing the windows.

As someone shrieked that we had a wasp, he told the class not to panic, but the girls were squealing, getting up from their desks and waving their hands. I froze and remained completely still so not to draw its ire, because I am a big coward when dealing with hunter-seekers bees and wasps and in my experience that's the only thing that's guaranteed not to get you stung.

Anyway, the teacher saw that class could not continue with a wasp in the room, so he grabbed the pole and started laying about him in mad swipes, scaring the class more and making the boys start running, too.

He knocked down a wall map, sent some books flying and tipped a few desks over before he accidentally hit the American flag bolted over the blackboard and knocked it down. Seeing a threat to the fate of the free world, he cast the pole away and dove under it, catching it before it hit the ground. Meanwhile, the wasp went obliviously back out the window.

The next year my History teacher was a guy whose main distinguishing characteristic was that you could literally tell time by his sweat stains. Once his neck stain reached his third button, the bell would ring. A kid in his next class told me that when his pit stains met in back, that meant ten minutes until their class was out.

I suppose he was more useful, as a timepiece if nothing else, but he was nowhere near as much fun.