By Karen Lamb.
Love of English drew him to teach, though not at all temperamentally suited to the classroom.
With hair and beard streaming behind him, and a hapless colleague in his improvised sidecar, he tore into the car park intended exclusively for the older students.
Centre stage in front of our classroom, he recited Hamlet. Not designed to be read, we were told, and so he performed it with Brian Blessed level gusto.
But ‘Why was Hamlet ‘too much in the sun’??!’, was the bellowed demand. We quaked and murmured and were pronounced fools. Easily bored, he bullied us for his sport.
Pointing out all the bawdier passages of Shakespeare, recounting an experiment with his partner that apparently proved tickling was a sure defence against rape, and reliving the time the school inspector happened upon him play-acting paddling a male colleague over the staffroom ping-pong table – he surely wouldn’t survive in the profession today.
But he was the best English teacher I ever had.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Karen Lamb moved to Geelong from Melbourne to enjoy an early retirement. Always interested in writing, she is now taking advantage of her extra available time to try her hand at memoir – particularly focussed on the experience of homeschooling her son (before the pandemic made it fashionable). She enjoys Geelong’s urban, yet relaxed lifestyle and is passionate about creative pursuits and climate change activism.
Guenter
This teacher of English you have so scantily outlined, I wonder what became of him. Did he join a theatre group? Become a regular at ‘open-mic’ poetry performances in boozy venues? Sell his soul and become an advertising copywriter? A theatre critic for Green Left? A much-admired flag-bearer for Extinction Rebellion? Karen, your 160 words have set my mind racing!