SCHOOL MEMORIES: Of Mr. Sweaty

The sun was up and it was furiously hot. A river of sweat was flowing down his face and neck. But the man adamantly clung to his coat as he taught us that first day. It was possible that he had heard the story of how we put a rat in a new teacher’s coat and how that rat had tortured her into unconsciousness. Nonetheless, his behavior was exactly what we needed to come up with a fitting nickname. Sweaty Pig or Mr. SP-that’s what we called him thenceforth. It was by far the easiest and the most spot-on nickname we had ever come up with. The man was a mountain of a human and his bodily fluids were always squeezing their way out in large magnitudes. In fact, we thought it was a miracle that Mr SP stayed hydrated at all. If he wasn’t sweating, he was pouring out a hurricane of spit as he spoke. He spoke with far too much strength of voice and unjustifiable rudeness since we hadn’t done anything wrong, yet. Because of this, most of us who sat at the front looked elsewhere. He took this to mean that we were afraid of him when in fact, we were afraid of our faces drowning in his dribble. Still, we welcomed Mr SP with matchless hospitality. If you asked him, he would say that we were disrespectful but if you asked us, we would say that our actions were nothing short of kind. By the end of the week, we had gone out of our way to buy him deodorant to contain his sweat, to prevent dehydration. We also brought him two ten-litre jerry cans filled with soapy water. This was meant to demonstrate that he was losing far too many fluids by speaking violently and as good, caring students, we feared for his health. Both of these kind actions were met with verbal hostility, with a choice of words that was very unbecoming. It was clear to us that the train of civilization had passed through whichever village he hailed from and he had not bothered to get on it. Still, we decided to take the high road. We were in the lent period, a time of self-reflection and we weren’t going to give hate for hate. We decided that love is what Mr SP needed. Love has a tendency to make people softer and nicer. We couldn’t love him the way he needed to be loved. But we knew someone who could; Ms Kiconco, a senior bachelorette (or spinster if you want to be blunt). Mr SP and Ms Kiconco had a lot in common. For one, they were both sweaty and they both had patches of sweat stuck to the underarms of their clothes. If not because of anything else, we would bring them together based on their mutual hatred for hygiene. So the plotting began. We wrote a love letter from Mr. SP to Ms. Kiconco. We then wrote a reply letter from Ms. Kiconco to Mr. SP. After they passed the awkwardness the letters were bound to bring, we assumed they would walk together into the sunset or maybe into a house filled with filth. Sadly, our plan didn’t come to be. Another class that Mr. SP was teaching grew weary of his coarseness. They refused to attend class until he left the school. We gave him a parting gift; a carton of water.

Education

SCHOOL MEMORIES: Of Mr. Sweaty