History Teachers

One of the few subjects I didn’t mind in school was history. History is fun to learn about because it’s 25% Nazis, 25% Aliens, 25% Bible/Vikings, 25% Ice Road Truckers. I had some lousy history teachers though and it kind of ruined what could have been an enjoyable learning experience.

I’ll start with the dumbest thing anyone told me. My 8th grade history teacher was a crazy woman named Mrs. Chernoski whom I have mentioned before at some point I’m sure. She would dress up in character and do dumb voices then try to be relatable. I never bought into her bullshit. She tried getting me to fill up her vase with water once while I was doing homework during study hall. I told her no and we argued. I absolutely hate flowers. I would do anything to make sure they died of dehydration. I would have done the same for Mrs. Chernoski. She was annoying and still to this day when I see a child crying I know she is somehow responsible.

(Chernoski was here)

The fact Chernoski told me that was untrue was that Abraham Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theater located in Pennsylvania. I’m not sure if she was becoming senile or she really thought this was true. The whole class thought it was true. Then we brought it up on a field trip and Mrs. Chernoski was killed by firing squad for being a lousy human being. Or so I wish.

https://maps.google.com/maps?q=ford’s+theater&rlz=1C1AVSX_enUS418US418&aq=f&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&sa=N&tab=wl

(In case you are interested in where Ford’s Theater is and are too lazy to look it up)

Another strange thing a history teacher told the class happened a year after the Anthrax mailings that occurred post-9/11. The post office they were mailed from was our town’s local post office so it was a trendy thing to talk about. He told us he had a former student whose dad worked for the FBI, not the Federal Booty Inspection. He told her classified information. Daddy told daughter that the government found the Anthrax mailer and he was locked up. He was a scientist from Maryland who drove up to New Jersey to mail his weapon. I don’t know how much of this is true. The same teacher also spent an entire week talking about how cool Rasputin was. It was the story that got him into history. It was also the story he told us that I think ended up getting him fired before Christmas.

(I don’t get why everyone freaked. Mailing someone a thrash metal band doesn’t seem like a big deal to me)

I had another history teacher who was intelligent enough other than for the fact he told the class he voted for Condoleeza Rice. Could there be anyone in the world who would have been less qualified to be president? Even Osama Bin Laden seems like a guy who could get the job done better. Well, not now. He’s in Davey Jones’s locker. Did I really just use the phrase “Davey Jones’s locker” and use it properly? I have never felt cooler.

Finally the original inspiration for this piece and inspired by a WordPress conversation, the worst thing a history teacher has ever told me.

It was sometime in elementary school when this happened. I don’t remember which teacher it was, but I know it happened. A teacher very nonchalantly told the class that Asian people have small eyes because many centuries ago when humans were nomadic that they had to travel through the deserts in Asia and sand blew up into their eyes. They had to squint to protect themselves from the sand and evolution happened. This is similar to how in kindergarten my teacher told us that Q’s are O’s who would stick their tongues out at others and they did it so much it got stuck that way.

Curious for the right answer I found this the real reason why Asians appear to have smaller eyes. “For the sake of answering, we will skip the fact that the illusion of “smaller” eyes largely applies to just EAST Asians, and not the many other peoples such as Iranians, Indians, Arabs, etc. East Asians don’t really have “tiny” eyes; it is really the same size as non-East Asians. They simply have a patch of extra skin (called an epithelial fold) above their eyes, because that sort of thing combats the extreme cold and fierce winds of Tibet, where the ancestors of East Asians lived for many tens of thousands of years before migrating down into warmer places. Since the epithelial fold is a part of their DNA, it stayed, even though the need for it no longer exists for all Asians but the Tibetans.” – Wiki Answers

I really wish I knew which teacher this was because I would love to get in touch and ask her why black people are so dark, why Mongolians look so retarded, and why Japanese vaginas are so crooked. And when I say crooked I don’t mean like a vagina who takes bribes from criminals to look the other way. Although, she might think they do that too.

(They should really make a sequel to Serpico where he tries to take down a dirty crooked vagina. Or don’t. That’s just silly)

What’s a lie/something stupid a teacher has told you?