Chalk missiles
We had one Technical Drawing teacher who was a crack shot with a piece of chalk. He would be writing on the blackboard and watching the class in the reflection in his spectacles (which were large tortoiseshell horn rimmed ones). If he saw one of us talking or otherwise not paying attention, he would whip round and throw the chalk with extreme velocity and uncanny accuracy, it usually hit the culprit on or about the forehead, unless they were looking off to the side, in which case it struck them in the ear. If you were lucky, it would only be a stub end of chalk, but if it was a fairly new stick, it could raise quite a welt. One day I was idly plucking at the cables on the drawing board, and noticed that I could alter the pitch of the note by squeezing upward on the left hand cable whilst plucking the right hand one (they crossed over at the top of the board to maintain a parallel action). I started to play "When the Saints come marching in", and he looked around because he couldn't identify who was making the sound. He demanded "Who's twanging?" and started walking down my side of the classroom. Someone on the other side of the room picked up the tune without missing a beat. I stopped twanging, and H suddenly realised that the source was on the opposite side of the room, so he diverted in that direction. We had him wandering back and forth across the room several times, getting more and more irate, until eventually he said "If whoever it is doesn't stop twanging immediately, the whole class will get a detention". We stopped, and peace was restored.
I was born left handed, but at Junior School, we had a sadistic teacher, who I could name but won't, even though he would be long dead now. If he saw me (or anyone else) writing left handed, he would give me (or them) several sharp whacks across the left palm with the flat of a 12" wooden ruler, saying "You write with your right hand, it's why it's called your right hand". I got my own back on him, though, just before my 11 plus exam, I broke my right arm (greenstick fracture), and had to sit the exam with my right arm in a plaster cast from palm to above the elbow. I was given extra time to take the exam as I was forced to write left handed, much to his annoyance. He was suspended once, because he had accidentally hit a pupil's hand with the edge of the ruler, breaking a couple of knuckles.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
