In high school, we had this teacher, Morah Freidman. She was a very strict disciplinarian; you were not allowed to speak and any bathroom trip were to be under 3 minutes in length, and even then if too many people went, she would get mad. That by itself, did not make her extraordinary, by any means. There were quite a few hard-asses in my school. Unfortunately for us, she for some reason believed that we were slow. Not in the repeat-it-a-second-time-so-everyone-understood-it way. Oh no, she assumed the entire class were blabbering idiots who could go incontinent at any moment. She must have believed us to be severely handicapped and mentally retarded, at the very least. Because the things she said and 'taught' were not high-school level. For one lesson she'd have us memorize about 10 different people and their contributions. And she kept quizzing us on it for months. Literally, she could not believe that everyone got it already, so at the start of every class she'd go through everything we ever learned from the first class till now. And maybe had 10 minutes at the very end to 'teach' us something new.
This was a novel experience for everyone, I think. This must have been 9th grade. Some kids are already thinking of college, SAT, PSATs and honours classes. And here's this teacher who treats the entire class as if we're the children of drug-abusing, feeble-minded, syphilitic parents. A few protested; first by speaking to her privately. I've heard second-hand that she ignored such pleas. Then going to the principal, who did not interfere. Finally, a few kiss-ups inevitably decided to just learn the material that she kept 'teaching' us so well, that she would have no choice but to teach us something new. That backfired terribly and she ended up ignoring them for the rest of the semester as show-offs.
Eventually, we realized that we could not escape Morah Friedman and just ignored her. She would rant and rave about how we didn't want to learn anything. We would collectively stare at the ceiling, or, if you were lucky, the window. The whole situation was ridiculous but we had no recourse, we endured.
Come spring-time, everyone was staring out the windows. So Morah Friedman, in her infinite wisdom, decided we can have class outside. So she split the class into 2 teams and had us play 'Red Rover', with an educational twist. She'd get to decide who'd 'Come Over' based on our answering her questions. She'd stand to the side and say: "Evan, what does this and this mean?" And young Evan would answer at her and if she deemed the answer correct, he'd get the chance to run the 100 feet to the other side. If he did not answer correctly, she'd pick someone else.
At this point, we were all successfully trained and just went along with it. Except, apparently, for Evan. He answered the question but instead of running 'over', he stopped in the middle, dropped trough, and ran around in circles screaming gibberish and gesticulating wildly.
Morah Friedman had a major freakout and young Evan was never seen back in the classroom with her; he was punished with detention every day we had class for the rest of the semester.
Its only today while I was sitting in a 3-hour meeting that I realized why he did that. Its not that he wanted to make her mad; its just he's exhausted all other possible ways to protest the utter stupidity of Morah Friedman's rules. He could not take it anymore and he just lost it. That was his protest; taking his pants off and mooning the entire class, because all his other requests were ignored. He was not given any other options.
I bring this up because I'm sitting in this meeting with the team lead talking utter gibberish at me; about stuff that's not even our focus. We're supposed to go around the room with status and problems. Instead, its 3 hours in, and he's still talking. I can't understand what he's saying. I mean, I hear him but it makes no sense. Some 2 hours in, I'm not even sure its English anymore. What am I supposed to do? I can't leave; that's a big no-no. I can't make him stop, cause he's on a roll. What do I do? What CAN I do?
I remember young Evan then and start laughing hysterically.. There's no way of resolving this. I have no options left. All I can do is get up on the table, drop my pants and scream. Cause I've tried everything else to make him stop. Who knows, maybe this will work. After 3 hours, it suddenly begins to seem like a perfectly reasonable response.
When every avenue of protest you have is exhausted, you come up with some pretty inventive outlets for your frustration. Young Evan had the right idea. What he lacked in finesse and refinement, he made up for in execution. Alas, I did not go through with my personal protest. But I'll be fucked stupid if I go to that meeting next week.
