“Sure enough, they did trip up. Turns out they’d had cigarettes in their shirt pockets, & didn’t even try to hide them! So Mr. Midow doled out an assignment. We had to take our biology textbook, & copy the first two hundred pages, doing all the questions in between, including the essay questions.”

All this, just because of two or three idiots?!

But it didn’t stop there! “I worked pretty much every day except for Christmas on that assignment. When we got back…” He paused, briefly reminicing & shaking his head. “When we got back, he stood by the door, next to the garbage bin.” He stood next to the classroom door to demonstrate. “He called each of us up individually, like graduation. He would take the stack of 200, 300 handwritten pages, glance at the first few, ripped it up, & threw it away.”

I don’t think my eyebrows have ever gone higher. I couldn’t believe it.

I raised my hand. “All this because of two or three idiots?” I asked in disbelief. He nodded, an ironical smirk on his face.