Mr. M

Since not too much has been going on around here this weekend, I've been having trouble thinking up content. Before the holidays, as I was going for the promotion at work, they brought in a couple of external candidates to interview for the position. Somehow, a friend and I started joking about how we should start a fight when the person came through our room to make them think it is a bad work environment here, thereby increasing my chances. I know, kind of childish, but it was simply a joke and it seemed funny at the time. Anyway, that reminded me of a story from high school that I thought I'd share. Stick with me; I'm going to give a little background before I get to the story eventually.

My freshman year of high school, there was a new theatre teacher, who I'll call Mr. M (not his real name, it was actually a really long name that just happens to start with the letter M) who had just graduated with his teaching degree. As he was only a few years older than us, everyone hit it off pretty well with him. We had a lot of fun over the years, hanging out in his class and doing plays.

My best memories from school are from the times when we would work over the course of a couple of weekends building the sets for the plays. We'd start after school on Friday and work until around 2am. Then we'd all go to the local 24 hour diner and have breakfast together. Mr. M would buy a big banana split for everyone to share. There's nothing quite like the taste of bacon and pancakes and ice cream. After the diner, we'd go home to sleep and then be back at school around noon. We'd work all day Saturday until around 2am when it was back to the diner again. Sunday we usually spent a few more hours working, depending on what was let to do on the set.

I spent so much time with that group of people over the years. My parents allowed me to host 2 cast parties in our basement. Mr. M's house had a pool which he invited us to a few times. (Don't even start thinking inappropriate thoughts, you perverts! It was all completely harmless.)  He also had a large backyard where we had countless bonfires into the night. I was student director for the 3 shows we did my senior year. My senior year, I was also on the yearbook staff, which meant I had a standing hall pass. So, what did I do with that hall pass 90% of the time during the hour I was supposed to be in yearbook class? I spent it in Mr. M's room doing whatever the theatre class was doing. Looking back now as a parent, I'd be mad if I found out a teacher was allowing this kind of stuff, but it seemed fine back then. We all just had a ton of fun together.

Now the story I was reminded of... One of the productions we were doing had a fight scene in it. Mr. M decided it would be good to spend a little time in class going over the correct way to stage a fight, so that everyone could practice the safe way to do it. We practiced various types of fist and sword fighting for the next couple of days in class. Two of my friends decided it would be fun to stage a fight and see if they could fool everyone. They made a plan to do it in the hall outside of a teacher's room that everyone hated. There were about 10 of us in on it, and we were to spread the word that these guys were really going to have a fight. The appointed time came and they started going at it, fists flying everywhere, a couple of blood packets for good measure, and lots of us gathered around in the hall cheering them on. The hated teacher heard the commotion and came into the hall AND JUMPED INTO THE MIDDLE OF THINGS TO STOP THE FIGHT! It was one of the funniest things ever. Of course, the crowd quickly dispersed, leaving the 2 guys to fend for themselves. They tried to explain that they were just practicing for theatre class, but the teacher was so pissed that he dragged them down to the principal's office.

The principal was not too pleased by what had transpired either and decided to make an example of them. They each got suspended for 3 days for fighting, because as he put it, "The rules for fighting don't differentiate between pretend fighting and real fighting. Someone still could have been hurt." In addition, Mr. M was called down to the office, got a slap on the wrist, and was told not to teach stage fighting anymore.

I've got lots more stories from my high school days. Maybe it would be fun to relive more of my youth, instead of the normal day-to-day stuff. I'll try to get to them in the days ahead...