There was a young bored sports teacher covering a class for
a colleague in Rhodes, Greece. He
noticed some loose threads on his trainers while he sat cross-legged. He tried pulling them loose but they were
made of tough nylon reluctant to be parted from his shoe. Inspired he pulled out his cigarette lighter
and burned it off in a flash. Turning
his attention to his other trainer he repeated his earlier success. Unfortunately, in his eagerness to complete
the task he managed to set fire to the material and the shoe began to
burn. He used the class register to
beat the flames out while my son sat mesmerised by this unexpected
entertainment in his classroom.
We had a chemistry teacher we nicknamed ‘Sexy Sam’. In the sad cruel ways of teenagers he was as
far from sexy as we could imagine. The
ironic title stuck and spread. The
class tell tale after some months squealed to the teacher his new name. For weeks after we endured the nauseating
spectacle of a preening ‘Sexy Sam’ convinced he was the object of longing to
the upper sixth. He made renewed
efforts to live up to his heady title and began wearing lurid silk shirts and
skintight trousers. He was renamed
‘Seedy Sam’ and held this title for ten years.
Teenagers hold and perpetuate grudges big time!
