Tuesday Thinkback - In which my english class resembled an episode of Jerry Springer

Due to Amanda being incapacitated, you will have to suffer through one of my posts.

I have often told Amanda that my high school was ghetto. We have driven past it several times as we have been to visit my parents, but I don't think she has ever really experienced it. Here are a couple of examples of things that were different between our high schools that I have discovered:

1. Amanda's school had a gym and an auditorium that were not the same room (I believe several dances were held in our gym, although not being much of a dancer, I did not attend)
2. Amanda's school had something called "Show Choir" of which Amanda was a member. Apparently it is part choir and High School Musical. Amanda told me once that there were competitions to see who could have the biggest hair. Big hair at my school was usually accompanied by a pick)
   
3. White people were not a minority at Amanda's school. I think she said there were one or two black people in her school.
4. I've never asked, but I think it's safe to assume the pool at Amanda's school did not include a shallow end. (this made for interesting water polo games at MA)
   

Now I did not grow up in a ghetto, but my high school did fall in the middle of several colorful cities. My high school was a cultural experience to say the least. I once had to deliver a pizza (I delivered pizzas for Rount Table in high school) to my school and found a whole wing of classrooms that I had never noticed before and I'm pretty sure it's because nobody there spoke English.

With this background, we now arrive at my senior year English class taught by Mr. Cane. Having previously failed my junior year AP literature test (which I attribute to my confusing Captain Ahab and Captain Nemo in one of my essays), I decided not to attempt another AP English class my senior year. I found Mr. Cane's class to be much more my speed. We were given such assignments as looking words up in the dictionary and reading 3 books throughout the course of the year. Some times we had "debates" in class led by the students. I got through the class by playing tetris on my calculator after finishing my calc homework, or hanging out with Nick (or Duke Nicolas as I see he is known now).

On some of the more exciting days in class, a couple of our classmates decided to have one of their usual shouting matches in class. Mr. Cane was a litte on the pasive agreessive side, so he let them yell at eachother for 5-10 minutes before asking one of them to leave (usually the girl). About half way through the year when the class started to thin out due to dropouts and/or birthing children, the same two people had a slightly more heated argument than usual. I have no idea why they started yelling. It may have had something to do with the guy calling the girl a beast or possibly something worse, but it ended with her leaving the room. However, on her way out the door, she was inspired to pull the fire extinguisher off the wall and hurl it in the direction of her assailant. He was fast enough to dodge it, but it did bounce off his desk and glanced off another student. I'm pretty sure she never came back to class after that.