Editorial

Memories of High School

If this is higher education, is grade school lower education?

By Marko Peric This week I decided to do ahumorous editorial for a change. To find a few laughs, I looked to the past, to high school and junior high. After all, I’m sure we all have memories from this period in our lives because everyone had to spend some years in these institutions of ‘lower’ learning.

Junior high was quite an experience. Whereas in elementary we looked at teach-

The kid then stormed out of the class, while my friends and I laughed at him. Of course, when the girl whose books had been scattered around the room came back from the break, she was understandably distressed. You would be too if some idiot threw your book out the window!

Enough about junior high: on to high school, where crazy teachers abound. Something I’ve always wondered is why teachers who cannot speak

ers with fear and reverence, upon reaching junior high, we began to realize that our teachers were flawed. Plenty of fun at times, but most definitely imperfect.

I remember one teacher from junior high. This man was overweight, drank heavily, smoked, ate loads of fatty foods, and stayed out in the sun too long and got severe sunburns. He taught health. He told no short- age of interesting stories, though. A former lifeguard, he had many Cavendish stories about people drowning and other fun things.

The teacher would hit the blackboard on a regular basis with this pointer, leaving dents. From the back of the room the board looked like it had been sprayed with machine gun fire.

English are given jobs teaching English. This mystifies me. I was taught language in grade 10 by aman whopronounced words in new and unusual ways. My ancient history teacher also was very creative with his pronun- ciations. Ifhe didn’t know how to say a name, he made it up. I got quite a kick out of some of his mistakes, the most notable being ‘‘The Acadian Empire’’, meaning ‘‘Akkadian Empire.’’ Some of my classmatesare prob- ably still confused.

This same teacher carried a three-foot pole which he used as

My favorite, though, is The Sum-

mer Savory Story. This teacher encountered a couple of guys who were looking to buy some marijuana. They went to a known drug dealer and asked him for some grass, and he agreed to get them some; however, the teacher saw the dealer go into a grocery and buy several envelopes of summer savory. What happened next is predictable. Later that day, the teacher found the guys down at the beach, stoned out of their minds, smoking what they thought was ‘‘really good stuff, man.”’

Ofcourse, there were other interesting teachers in junior high. ‘Grandpa Ichabod’ comes to mind. I have no idea where the name ‘Ichabod’ came from, but the ‘Grandpa’ part came about when his daughter dropped in during class with her baby. This man had a high tolerance level, because we called him ‘Crusty Killer Grandpa Ichabod’. My class nearly drove him to retirement, though. He threatened to use his accumulated sick days to take the rest of the year off. :

On an interesting note, the name ‘Jacob Marley’ was a running joke that year. I don’t know why, perhaps anything sounding vaguely Jamaican was in vogue. Jamaica aside, at Christmas time ‘Grandpa Ichabod’ decided to read the class A Christmas Carol. This was all fine and dandy, but the book opens with the words ‘‘Now Jacob Marley was dead these seven years.’’ Needless to say, chaos ensued.

Another fun story from junior high involves a kid who had bugged me for the past two years. One day between classes, this twit, who was half my size, decided to punch me several times. This annoyed me, so I sort of, well, kinda threw him over adesk. Not surprisingly, he didn’t like that, so he threw several books at me. Not his books, nor my books, but a girl’s books which happened to be within reach. His aim was poor, because none of the books hit me, but one book went out the window.

a pointer. This was no ordinary pointer, though. At one end there was a golf-ball wrapped in masking tape. The teacher would hit the blackboard on a regular basis with this pointer, leaving dents. From the back of the room the board looked like it had been sprayed with machine gun fire.

Ihad an algebra teacher in grade 12 who said everything three times. ‘‘Okay, let’s check the homework....get out your books, and we’! look at the homework....it’s time to check the homework.’’ At this point I'd lean over and ask a friend sitting beside me if we were going to check the homework.

My favorite high school teacher was an interesting case. He was a great fan of WWI pilot Billy Bishop, and he made certain that everyone was aware of this. His classroom was Billy Bishop High. To get an extra mark on a test, everyone would jot ‘‘Ilove Billy’’ or ‘‘Billy Rules’’ at the bottom of their paper. Sometimes people would even draw pictures, the most commom theme being ‘‘Billy shoots down the Red Baron.”’

This teacher also told the best stories, all related to the course material, with a few slight exaggerations. The tale of “*gorgeous George and his hundred hand high horse’ comes to mind. I won’t tell the story here, but every time the horse was mentioned it grew by one hundred hands. By the time George fled France and commited suicide on his mistress’s grave, the horse was nearly a thousand hands high. I’m not sure how George actually mounted the horse, but I digress.

I know that this editorial has not been especially pro- found or life-changing, but one has to remember that a univer- sity newspaper is intended both to inform and entertain. I hope that this proved entertaining.

Well folks, we have only two more papers this year so you had Teco UMA AEM COMM ame TC eerie

Come on now, don't you want fame and fortune? Sure, everyone does. Submissions must be in by 4:00pm Thursdays.

-PRESS

Content Editor

Marko Peric

Managing Editor

C.A. Schneider

Assistant Content Editor Trent Drake

Production Manager Grace Kimpinski Advertising Manager Aldera Chisholm

Sports Writer

Scott MacDonald Typesetter

Michelle Stevenson

Arts and Entertainment Sean McQuaid

Special thanks to all of our contributors and to our printers the Guardian/Patriot

The U.P.E.I. X-Press is the official newspaper of the University of Prince Edward Island. The X-Press is published three times a month throughout the school year. 2,500 copies are distributed both on and off campus every Tues- day. The X-Press is a member of the Canadian University Press (CUP). Anyone may submit to the X-Press but please note the following:

-- For legal reasons, all submissions must con- tain the author's name and phone number. Author's names can be withheld upon request.

-- All submissions are property of the X-Press. -- Submissions may be dropped off at the X-Pres office (room 06 Main). Mail at your own risk Submissions are processed more quickly if the) are submitted on 3 1/4" or 5 1/4" disk. Disks m4j be picked up any time after Monday.

-- The deadline for submissions is 4:00 p.0 Thursday and ads are due by noon on Thursday Any late submissions will be printed in the follow ing issue.

-- The X-Press reserves the right to edit or reje any submission. Submissions deemed to be racis! sexist, homophobic or libelous will not be printed

Advertising and any inquiries should be directed to: X-Press University of Prince Edward Island 550 University Avenue Charlottetown, P.E.I. CIA 4P3 Phone: (902) 566-0629 Fax: (902) 566-0979 E-Mail: xpress@stul.cs.upei.ca

March 14, |”