Tickets! Tickets, Please !!

Speaking of having fun with teachers ... in high school we had a teacher named Mr. Musser. He taught German and Joe and I took this as our language course. I took it because I already knew a little German and felt it would give me a start. Joe took it because he needed to take a language. It was clear from the start that he and Mr. Musser were going to have a battle of wills all year. Joe was not a good student of language, and Mr. Musser was determined to make him so. Two hard-headed personalities at war.

Joe did poorly at German but Mr. Musser always kept after him. Joe and I paired up for an exercise where we had to come up with a conversation in German and do it in front of the class. The conversation went like this:
Me: Joe. Nice to see you. How are you?
Joe: Not so good. Could you tell me how to get to the hospital?
Me: The hospital? Sure? It's down Fuhrer street at the third traffice light. Why do you need to go to the hospital?
Joe: I have a broken arm.
Me: How did you break your arm?
Joe: My mother broke my arm.
Me: Your Mother broke your arm? Why would she do that?
Joe: Because I got an "F" in German class.

The class liked it but Musser was annoyed.

We decided to spring a major prank on him. Surrepticiously, for a couple of weeks, we worked on a story to give to him. The title of the story was "The Death of Vernon E. Musser." Basically we made him out to be a Nazi who was using his home oven for nefarious purposes. He was defeated and killed by a 350 pound bull (looked a lot like Joe) and his body was disposed of in the Lake. We were trying to finish it up one day, in class, when we had a substitute teacher. He discovered what we were doing, and we had a big fight as he confiscated it and said he was going to turn us in to the administration. We told him we had planned to read this to Musser when completed and he didn't believe us. He didn't think we had the cojones (and he told us this) to do that. We pleaded to get the story back and swore we would. He eventually gave it back to us but said he would check back with Musser in a week. If we hadn't made the presentation by then, he'd turn us in.

Four days later, we interrupted class right after it started, and made a big deal of both presenting, and reading aloud, the story to Mr. Musser. He was red as a beet. He was offended, embarassed, and laughing all at the same time. When we were done we presented him with the story and goosetepped back to our seats. We always wondered whether he took it just to be gracious, and that we had offended him, or whether he liked it or not. We found out that for years afterward he kept it in his desk and would tell other teachers about it. So we made an impression. Perhaps it was Joe's bloody red handprint on the front cover that really set it off.

It's sad to know that stuff like that today would either get someone sued, or would probably get us expelled. Interaction and fun between teachers and students, and the inability anymore to find ways to express feelings and frustrations without getting into more trouble, I think are fueling some of the violence and frustrations in our schools today. People really need to learn to lighten up.