I Made Him Join the Priesthood — Mr Gaunt

In my sec­ond year of high school I had a maths teacher, who was the end­less source of amuse­ment for me. I was a ter­ror back then with a strong sense of social jus­tice which made for some rebel­lious acts against the “sys­tem” even then.

 To describe Mr. Gaunt to you is a tad dif­fi­cult. My only descrip­tion of him gets rather con­fused because every time I think of Mr. Gaunt, Mr. Bean pops into my head and I crack up laugh­ing. To this day I can not dif­fer­en­ti­ate between the two. I am telling you now, Rowan Atkin­son mod­eled Mr. Bean from My Mr. Gaunt.

I had always been put in the top class but I hat­ed it. My friends were in the low­er grad­ed class­es and the oth­er kids in my class were stuck up snobs. So I made it my mis­sion to be put in the low­er class­es with my friends. Hence not long after the start of my mis­sion I was moved down into Mr. Gaunts low­er math class with all the cool peo­ple and all my friends.

 There was only one prob­lem with that.

Mr. Gaunt was stuck teach­ing the low­er class­es because he was well, Mr. Bean­like dumb.

He wore long socks, long shorts with a short sleeved shirt and tie and I real­ly think his face was more Mr. Bean­like than Mr. Bean. He was a con­firmed bach­e­lor who lived in a tiny flat and the thought of him with a woman was the source of many laugh­ter out­burst by my friends and myself in class. Mind you he did­n’t rate as high on the idiot scale as  Mr. Freame, the Latin mas­ter but Mr. Freame and my deten­tion sto­ries are still to come.

Mr. Gaunt had no con­trol over the class. He would turn to us and ask us if we thought we should have a math­’s test the next week. Well hey, back then every­thing had been sort­ed into lots of life already. He was ask­ing every poten­tial deviant over the years to come in our home if we WANTED a math test? Some­how we man­aged to per­suade him every week that we were not quite ready.

Mr. Gaunt had many pecu­liar­i­ties oth­er than hav­ing his shorts hitched up to his ribcage and a way of walk­ing that at best could be described as Emu Like. He had a weird habit of wait­ing until we were all seat­ed qui­et­ly in the class before mak­ing his entrance and he would EMU into the room and up to his desk, pulling his chair out and turn­ing it to face the class. Then he would stand behind it and swing a leg over it, plac­ing his foot on the seat­ing part and begin rock­ing it back and for­ward lean­ing on his knee as he talked. He would pro­ceed to waf­fle on for forty min­utes about noth­ing. Or preach ser­mons on the great­ness of math. Com­ing from a class where we actu­al­ly did math, this was all new to me but got bor­ing real quick. It seemed to drone on worse than the min­is­ter on Sun­days, day after day, week after week.

One day it got too much for the imp in me. I wait­ed until every­one was in class and watched Mr. Gaunt EMU his way up the cor­ri­dor and then I made my entrance. I EMUED, myself along the cor­ri­dor past the tiny glass win­dows and into the class­room and the rest of the class burst out laugh­ing at me as soon as they saw me. They were used to my imi­ta­tions and I had my Mr. Gaunt act down pat by this stage. Before I even got to my desk he called to me so I got to my seat and pulled it out as I threw my bag down and swung my leg over the back of it in an exact imi­ta­tion of his own dai­ly morn­ing rit­u­al­is­tic actions.

“Yes Mr. Gaunt, present and account­ed for Sir.” I said with a cheeky grin on my face as the rest of the class sat in silent antic­i­pa­tion of what was to come.

“You are late young lady” He said point­ing his fin­ger at me and puff­ing his chest out.

I point­ed my fin­ger right back. “So I am sir” I took at deep breath and stood there grin­ning with my own puny chest puffed out too.

He start­ed rock­ing his chair back and forth as he did when he got ner­vous.

“If every­one was late we would­n’t have a class” He said, his hand still point­ing at me.

My hand still point­ed at him and my own chair start­ed rock­ing in time with his. “It’s not like I missed any­thing impor­tant sir”.

 At that point he dropped his arm across his knee and kept rock­ing, just star­ing at me. I had shocked him. He was speech­less. His mouth opened and closed like a fish.

I stood there silent too, my own hand now dropped into posi­tion to match his and I watched him as I rocked in time to him.

“That is beside the point.” he explod­ed. “You are sup­posed to be here present in the class to get an edu­ca­tion”

 One of the oth­er kids spoke up at that point. He was one of the sporty kids that I did­n’t have much to do with.

 “Well Mr. Gaunt, it is the point real­ly. You nev­er teach us any­thing. You just stand there preach­ing all les­son”.

A voice from the back of the class piped up with “and swings on his chair all day doing it”. That set every­one off. The whole class start­ed laugh­ing out loud, let­ting go of all the ten­sion build up from the con­fronta­tion.

Mr. Gaunt start­ed shak­ing as his face turned bright pur­ple. I was still rock­ing in time with his motions and he turned to me, point­ed and said

“YOU!!! out­side in the cor­ri­dor now, every­one else silence” He stepped off his char and went and stood uncom­fort­ably behind his desk.

 I point­ed back again and stepped off my chair in time with him. “Yes sir, at your com­mand”. The hum start­ed around me as I stepped into the aisle and EMUED my way to the front of the class. It got loud­er as most of the class took it up and I stepped out into the cor­ri­dor where the door was ajar and I could see in.

The moment I stepped out the hum stopped. It was our thing, our lit­tle call of uni­ty when one of us got into trou­ble to let them know it was ok and every­one was behind them. Full cred­it to Don­na Askew for invent­ing the hum in deten­tion with Mr Freame.

I stood against the wall for a minute curs­ing myself for not grab­bing my bag with my cig­a­rettes in it. As I debat­ed walk­ing back in and grab­bing my bag I pulled out a lump from my pock­et. It was my lit­tle round grey plas­tecine ball (like play dough) . I always had it in my pock­et to keep my self busy while Mr. Gaunt droned on day after day. I stat­ed mod­el­ing shapes and then stick­ing them on the door where the rest of the kids could see them but Mr. Gaunt could­n’t. Each new cre­ation bought a fit of sti­fled gig­gles as they tried to keep straight faces and pre­tend they were absorbed in his speech.

By now he was lec­tur­ing again on how if we all learned our math we could become rock­et sci­en­tists and accoun­tants. I, being me, of course began to mod­el the obvi­ous shape. A penis and balls. I care­ful­ly arranged them into a shape that looked a bit like a face and then revealed to the class what I had cre­at­ed on the door.

They erupt­ed into a fit of laugh­ter again. All of them were in hys­ter­ics, not so much by the “penis and balls” con­cept, but at the posi­tion­ing because they could see what was going to hap­pen next…. And it did……. Clas­si­cal­ly…..

By this time I was inno­cent­ly stand­ing on the oth­er side of the cor­ri­dor mind­ing my own busi­ness. When the class erupt­ed into gig­gles, Mr. Gaunt EMUED his way over to the door and threw it open yelling as he did so, “What is going on out here”.

The class lost it at this point and absolute­ly squealed with laugh­ter because what Mr. Gaunt did­n’t real­ize was, that as he opened the door my new mold­ed shape was dan­gling right in front of his mouth.

Sud­den­ly he looked down and saw it in hor­ror. He froze and then screamed him­self and went run­ning off down the cor­ri­dor which made every­one crack up even more. Just then the bell rang for end of class. Every­one was still laugh­ing as they made their way out. We did­n’t see Mr. Gaunt around the school for a week or so after that and things were nev­er the same but that was a good thing.

We got a new maths teacher who actu­al­ly taught Math. A few weeks lat­er, Mr. Gaunt left teach­ing and joined the priest­hood. No I am not jok­ing he seri­ous­ly did join the pri­et­hood and that made per­fect sense to me because he did­n’t cut it as a teacher…. And as for me.. I am always in trou­ble… just the depth varies