I think it’s reasonable to say that as a pupil I had my fair share of hopeless teachers. Among this select group of people, there is, however, one man who stands out because of his mind-numbingly boring lessons: Mr H.
I had him in German when I was sixteen. If we had a page or two in a short story to prepare as homework, Mr H would ask us to read a sentence in German, and translate it into English. He always started at the front end of a row and went systematically through the class row by row, so if you were able to count, you could easily find out which sentence you were going to get.
My friend Kevin rarely did any homework, and certainly not for Mr H. On this particular day, Kevin had identified his sentence and was looking up a word in his dictionary, which was strategically placed on his lap under his desk.
Mr H noticed this, and declared: “Kevin Coffey, I know what you are doing under that desk!”
Quick as a flash, Kevin replied: “My sex life is my own business.”
We were sixteen-year-olds, so this gave rise to certain degree of hilarity. Mr H, on the other hand, was rendered speechless.