When you are 9 years old, and in a public school art class, you learn how to paint flowers. After a few days you start to get annoyed because the teacher can't explain various flower petal angles. You realize Mrs. Yasmine is just another idiot teacher like the one before her, and the one before him. A few years pass, and you're 15. The real world has come harshly, and swiftly to your doorstep kicking you firmly in the ass. Sitting in your International Relation's class, you watch Professor Hardy, affectionately dubbed "Professor Hard-On" by the 2001 IR class, rest his hands on his paunch, put his fingers to his nose and sniff them neurotically while he explains sovernity for the 9th fucking time. You look to your right at your best friend, who is rolling his eyes and doodling...you look at the remaining 12 students in the class, the unfortunate few who couldn't have dropped out, doodling, and it hits you: The world has an endless supply of idiot teachers.

Welcome to the story of my life.

The year before Professor Hard-On, I had the great misfortune to have "Basic Math: A Non-Credit Refresher Course" taught by Mrs. Lard-Ass. The first day, she walked into the class room, my friend and I sitting in the back seats conviently located next to the secondary light switch for the room...if you balanced the switch just right, the lights wouldn't turn on. Mrs. Lard-Ass is perhaps the clumsiest person I have ever met. Not just clumsy, but oafshly clumsy. And slow...very slow. I swear she had the worse luck with over-head projectors (No thanks to me and F). The mirror would be broken, and she couldn't understand why it wasn't working. The bulb blew up in her face, and she spent 3 minutes turning it off and on, asking, "Students...why won't this thang turn on?" in a slow Southern Drawl. Real, hard-core evidance of her stupidity finally came to light when the prongs on the electrical cord were missing. She tried to plug it in, and plug it in, to no avail, "Why won't it stay in the wall?"

The first class was essentially a review of the course, what her name was (Mrs. Davis, I believe, but we just called her Mrs. Lard-Ass...harsh, I know, but she kind of reminded F of a beached whale), and a pre-test. I sat in my little corner seat with my black hat, sunglasses, black shirt, jeans, combat boots, and took her little pre-test. After about 5 minutes, I was done. I had grabbed my black leather bag, snatched up the test to put on her desk, and started heading for the door. "Hunny..." she called, "Hunny, wait a minute..." I stopped, dead in my tracks to the sound of her slow southern drawl weasling away through my brain. F was standing right outside the door gesturing to me, and mouthing, "C'mon! Make a run for it!" --I should have listened to him. He has the thick Wenslow skull...occasionally it thinks. I rolled my eyes, painted a smile on my face, and turned around, "Yes, M'am?" I responded oh-so-sweetly, almost as if on cue.

"Hunny chil'e...I was just wonderin'...are you the mentally challanged one?"

"No, M'am, I can't say that I am." Turning on my heal, I joined F in the hall, continuing along our way to the courtyard in silence. About 3 classrooms down the hall, we burst into laughter. "Well, gee Liz, I always knew you were slow, but damn....if even a beached whale can pick up on it, you MUST be bad."

By the third class period, 18 students had dropped out, leaving a grand-total of 5 for the rest of the semester. It was her own fault really. In her wonderfully successful second day as a teacher, she started us off with ADDING and SUBTRACTING. She took her little midget-like hands, and picked up a piece of white chalk which greatly contrasted with her skin, and said, "This is what ADDITION is, students. When you take 4 things, put them on the table next to 4 more things, and then put them all together...this is what you have!" Very proudly she nervously wrote on the board with her hands shaking the entire time:

4 + 4 = 9