Those Duffers

Oh the joyous memories of highschool! They haunt me with glittering visions of stupid homework assignments that I freaked out over, of strange peers I will never forget, and of 90% me/teacher obstinacy.

I will start my story with a lovely woman named Mrs. Satre. We called her Satre, or Sats, or Fido, or whatever we wanted, because she was so out of it she didn't notice anyway. It was biology and I was in tenth grade. Now Sats was into three things: her dogs (cocker spaniels, whom she resembled with her ear-like hair flaps,) her fish tank, and the movie "Contact". We started the year watching Contact on THREE tv screens (simultaneously) in the bio room (she liked technology a LOT) and enjoyed this feeling: "Ahhh, it's one of THESE teachers."

Satre had her grade book sitting in one of her drawers, behind her desk. About half the class would actually just go up behind her desk and get the grade book and change their grades... I don't doubt that some would scribble out the "D-" and replace it with a wobbly "A+". Sats was so out of it that even if she would catch them doing it, they would just apologize and then do extra credit to keep their grade up.

Now, Mrs Satre didn't have a bathroom pass, so she would just tell you to grab a stapler or a magazine or anything that wasn't bolted to the floor to take with you. Even when I was a senior I would see a kid walking down the hall with a giant test tube or a VCR I knew they were coming from Satre's class.

One Year Later... (and this story has nothing to do with Sats.)

I had just arrived back at school, happy. I had finally finished an errand I had wanted to do for a long time... it wasn't really that important, but when you are in highschool everything is important (except for the important things...) Anyway, I had gone to the mall, to the store "Perfumania" to buy some cologne. The cologne, "Drakkar Noir," is actually very expensive and I didn't really buy it all that often. ("All that often" refers to the fact that I had never bought it before this point.)
I arrived back at school - I had some break between my last class and band practice - and sat in the cafeteria. Pretty soon, a pretty girl (with pretty good taste) who was a pretty good friend of mine, walked by.
Here is a snapshot of our conversation:
"Hey, how are you?" I asked, happily.
"Good... hey, do we have band today?" she replied, sitting down across from me.
"...yeah I think... but you never know for sure, DW is such an--"

She suddenly began to sniff the air with great curiosity.

"What IS that smell?" she looked around inquisitively. I shuddered, just having put on a little on my new smell.
She continued, "... Seriously... what is that?? OH! It smells like really cheap cologne! Oh well."

What a great feeling that left me with!

ANOTHER STORY.

My senior year I was in English class. Mr. Sinclair, my teacher, was pretty cool... he understood we all were in the "senior slide" mentality as he explained to us at the beginning of the semester, "You all have the senior slide attitude. You guys will pretty much be useless to me in a couple weeks." Haha, now we would be.
Anyway, one of the projects we did was a debate. I was partnered with one of my friends who was gone the day we picked topics. "Well," I thought, "too bad for him!" I chose the topic "After School Activities" and, being the wise person that I am, chose to be FOR after school activities... my friend would have to be against them.
On the say of the debate, I arrived prepared. I took it seriously at first, but then stopped. This friend must have realized that, duh, there are no good arguments NOT to have after school activities -- he had nothing to say! So, what he did was print out pictures which he then handed out to the entire class. What were the pictures?? They were pictures of horrible world leaders, Hitler, Sadam, and Stalin with MY face copied over theirs! That's right! MY FACE, ON HITLER'S! The class ate it up - they loved it, and all thought and reason was gone from the room. My arguments stood, his argument was that I was a Nazi... I can't remember too well, but I think he won the debate.