Bam! The podium fell as if in slow motion to the floor. “I said cut it out!” boomed the voice at the front of the classroom. I sat in delirious awe, wondering what would happen next. At the time, I was nothing but a giggly, hyperactive seventh grader, but the man at the front of the classroom changed my life.
The day had been the same as the one before: chatted away by nonsense. But unlike the usual, the gibberish only lasted through the beginning of 6th period Social Studies. Up until then, I was in my own world, loving school for the time given me to have fun goofing off. At the beginning of Social Studies we were given an assignment due at the end of class; no one cared. As soon as Mr. Mann’s tall, lanky figure hovered over his computer, the room erupted into chaos. Someone even had the brilliant idea of throwing erasers into the ceiling fan to watch them hit different things. The erasers being thrown kept being exchanged for larger ones, and after a few minutes an extremely over-sized mega-eraser was being launched across the room.
One of my classmates had been inactively observing us catapult erasers all over, when he burst onto his feet, grabbed the eraser and hurled it into the fan. He was successful in that one of the fan’s blades hit the eraser and sent it flying across the room into the dry erase board with a loud noise. Over the past couple of weeks Mr. Mann had put up with a lot, but that day we had pushed him beyond sanity: he was furious. He sent his wheeler chair flying behind him as he abruptly jumped up and strode towards the podium. Hitting it with great force, he smashed the wooden podium to the ground, making an immense noise. This sent us all scurrying to find an open seat. The old man was mad, and we were sorry.
No teacher enjoyed teaching the class of 2011; we were naughty, loud, and disrespectful. Stories about our horrible behavior spread across the high school campus rapidly and our new teachers would kick off the year...