I’m driving a school bus full of high school students, covering for a coworker who’s out sick. As I glance in the student mirror, I see two students throwing something. (Spoiler, for those concerned: it ends up NOT being any sort of bodily fluid or other human excreta.)

I pull the bus over to the shoulder of the road, turn off the engine, and take the keys out of the ignition so I can walk back to where they’re sitting to investigate. As I’m doing this, I see another student touch her hair and remark in a disgusted tone that this has happened “again”. 

I can now see that she’s using her hands to wipe MAYONNAISE out of her hair. I grab a roll of shop towels (essentially very thick paper towels — all our buses have some on board) and give her a few as I walk to the students who threw it. I hand the roll to them.

Me: “I am not moving this bus until you clean up the mayonnaise from the seats and floor.”

One student sighs and reaches for the towels, but the other scoffs at me.

Student #2: “Really? You’re serious?”

Me: *Still holding out the towels* “Yes. I didn’t think I’d have to tell high schoolers not to throw condiments on the school bus, but here we are. You need to clean up your mess, and I’m not moving the bus until you do. I’m paid by the hour; take your time.”

The other student looks like he is about to argue further, but the rest of the school bus quickly shuts him down with calls of, “Come on, I want to get home!” and, “You shouldn’t have done that anyway!” and so on.

Both boys get the mess cleaned up in a couple of minutes — using all the towels in the process — and put the dirty towels in the bus trash can. When they’re back in their seats, I start the bus and get everyone home. I hear a few students commenting that they’re surprised I was actually watching their behavior, and they are relieved that I’m not putting up with nonsense.

I also drive that same route the following morning. When the two students who threw the mayonnaise get on, I greet them with a smile.

Me: “Good morning! Is all food securely stored in your backpack?”

Students: *Resigned* “Yes.”

Me: “Fantastic. Thank you. I brought two new rolls of shop towels. I assume I won’t have to give you any, though.”

They behaved for me. I hope they continued to when their regular driver returned!

Related:
A Big Mayo No No, Part 9
A Big Mayo No No, Part 8
A Big Mayo No No, Part 7
A Big Mayo No No, Part 6
A Big Mayo No No, Part 5

When I attended university, I did a Creative Writing degree. In my first year, we had regular sessions with a local poet who would take various classes related to poetry or verse. This wasn’t my favourite element of the program, but I still found that some of the writing exercises were interesting.

During one class, he turned his attention to music and how song lyrics themselves are considered a form of poetry. To demonstrate this, he decided to play “I Wish Was A Punk Rocker” by Sandi Thom. Admittedly, this is not the song I would’ve chosen, but still, I could see why he gravitated toward it.

At the end of the song, one student in my class — a quiet, very introverted guy — suddenly stood up looking extremely offended and clenching both fists.

Student: “Are you kidding me? Why the h*** would you choose this song as an example? SANDI THOM IS NOT MUSIC! G**D*** IT!”

Then, he proceeded to storm out of the room and slam the door, leaving his bag and belongings behind. There was a very stunned silence afterward until the poet finally spoke.

Poet: “So… moving on from that…”

We never found out why [Student] was so offended by that choice, and he never explained his outburst ever again. One of the students mentioned that he’d gone to school with [Student] previously, and he was apparently known for pulling stunts like that and getting upset about random things. I’ve never been able to listen to that song the same way since!

In Germany, we have mandatory ESL (English as a second language) classes in school, starting from elementary school. All English classes in German schools are catered toward people who only learn English as a second language and don’t speak it regularly outside of school. Even most English teachers only ever learned it as their second language.

As such, my high school was wholly unprepared for me; having spent almost all of my childhood up to that point abroad and naturally growing up German/English bilingual, I am fluent in both languages.

Sadly, my teacher in my final year of high school was not. In fact, she had only recently started teaching, had very little authority, knowledge, or any idea of what she was doing, and made up for it by being as obnoxiously high and mighty as they come. English was the first language you ever spoke and you were, thus, fluent? Nope, that was a lie, and you could not possibly be more fluent than her. After all, she was the teacher.

She hated the fact that I would just read (English) novels in class but would still always be able to answer her questions and fill out our worksheets flawlessly. After just the first week of classes, she had it out for me. When she handed us back our first graded tests later, it really showed: I — a straight-A student — had gotten a D.

But it wasn’t just me; the entire class got an average of two to three grades below their usual results. And that’s when I noticed something on my test: she had marked countless words and phrases on my test as “wrong” or “misspelled” or “made up” — when they were all perfectly correct — and deducted a full point for every single one. I whipped out a dictionary and Post-its and went to work, proving every single mark-up the teacher had given me wrong. I pointed this out to my friends in class, too, and told them to check their own results, and soon I ended up with the entire class’ stack of graded tests to re-correct them.

It turned out that our teacher had, apparently, never gotten past the cover page of a dictionary, and her “corrections” were all blatantly wrong. The class and I went up to her and tried to point out her wrongful “corrections” to her with the help of a dictionary, the Internet, and common sense, but she was having none of it.

We eventually escalated the matter to the head of the language department at our school who then re-graded all of our tests. The average score went from a D- to a B, and my own grade went back up to an A.

And our class teacher was livid when she was no longer allowed to grade tests. She tried her hardest to make my life in her class miserable for the rest of the year, and she never missed a chance to tell me how full of myself I was and how she’d make me come to my senses once she’d get to fail me in my finals. (Never mind that she wasn’t allowed to grade us anymore, especially not on our finals).

I got through the year with her out of spite alone, but I have to say, when I got to rub my fifteen points (full score, A+, for everyone unfamiliar with the German grading system) in her face during our award ceremony at the end of the year — the only one in the entire school who got full score in the English final exams — and watch her stalk off while barely keeping it together in front of all the other teachers, that was a beautifully cathartic moment!

Reading this story made me think of when I was in medical school. There was an array of cubby holes for coffee mugs labeled with our names just outside the lecture hall. I rarely drank coffee but occasionally would drink hot chocolate. Nearly every time I looked for my mug, it was missing. I’d find it in one of the labs with cigarette butts in it. (This was more than forty years ago.)

I solved the problem by photocopying a card I was given when I was returning from serving in the Peace Corps. It was intended to help treating physicians if I turned up ill at a clinic or emergency room in the US. I laminated the photocopy to my mug.

Card: “[My Name] served in [Country] in West Africa from 1975 to 1977 and may have been exposed to the following diseases.”

It listed about twenty tropical diseases. Below the copy of the card I wrote, “Use at your own risk.” No one ever swiped my mug again.

Related:
A Steaming Cup Of Karma

I got a call from my old college one day soliciting me for donations. I told them I only donated money to GiveWell, but the person on the phone was rather persistent in trying to convince me that I should donate to the college. I was starting to consider hanging up on him when he changed tactics.

Man: “What did you study when you were here?”

Me: “Computer science.”

Man: “Oh, really? That’s what I’m taking. Any tips for me?”

Me: “I don’t know. What year are you?”

Man: “This is my second year.”

Me: “So, you would have had [Teacher], then?”

Man: “Oh, yes.”

Me: “Great! Any interesting stories about her?”

Man: “No, not really. Why?”

Me: “Because she was the most memorable teacher we had. I used to collect interesting [Teacher] stories from everyone who told me they graduated from [School], and they always had a few. Love her or hate her, you always remember her.”

Man: “Oh, yes, I know what you mean…”

Me: “You had her for discrete math?”

Man: “Yes.”

Me: “Have you learned about polymorphism or data races yet?”

Man: “Umm… no, we haven’t gotten there yet.”

Me: “Can you tell me what the differences between Java and JavaScript are?”

Man: “I just asked for tips. What’s with all the questions?”

Me: “Okay, you want a tip? How about this? [Teacher] never taught discrete math and was transferred to the math department the year I graduated. Polymorphism is taught to first-year computer science majors, and Java and JavaScript have almost nothing in common besides their names, which is something I knew before even starting college. You’ve utterly failed to convince me that you are a computer science major, but you have convinced me you are definitely not an acting major because your lies were all terribly forced and blatantly obvious, even to someone like me. Also, if you want someone to believe you’re a computer science major, don’t act confused when you’re told the most basic of geeky jokes like at the start of our call.”

Man: “I’m sorry if…”

Me: “Another tip: trying to make me nostalgic for my college years will not make me waste my money by giving it to you rather than an efficient charity, and lying to me will especially not help. Remove me from your contact list, please.”

I hung up on him after that, though I’m curious if he still kept using the “I’m in your major so let’s be buddies” approach with anyone else. I almost hope he did; he was so obviously false when he said it that I imagine he would get called out on it more often than not. It would be fun to see how others responded to such blatant lies.