Mr. B - the worst substitute ever?

"Well, it looks like Tarzan sure isn't getting off the vine this hour"

 

This is probably the best quote from perhaps the worst substitute teacher I ever had the pleasure of experiencing in my life. 

 

I say pleasure, because it was an experience in some ways, so surreal that I might not have ever had it anywhere else. But so unproductive academically that this fellow was never allowed back in the school district.

 

It's an easy task to measure the qualities of a good substitute teacher, they follow lesson plans, keep students on task and some might even be so helpful as to grade papers. But what makes a truly horrible sub?  This is the question we shall explore with Mr. B.

 

 Now, growing up an in area that was in constant shortage of substitute teachers, I have experienced some true gems. One who showed a tape of Saturday Night Live instead of doing the planned spanish lesson, another  kicked out a third of my biology class for insubordination, while also arguing with us about the races of the world (did you know that Mongloid is a race?  I didn't - not until a certain woman came into my life one fateful morning).

 

But Mr. B, he took the cake. It wasn't his inability to stick to a lesson plan, his haggard appearance, lack of social graces or even his riveting relation of his cancer treatments. No, what truly completed the puzzle was his periodic retelling of how his wife was murdered in a foreign country.  Apparently a distance runner, she had been walking alone in Italy as I recall when she was robbed and stabbed, bleeding to death in an alley.  Periodically he would recount her beauty or how she was always cold because of her low body fat.

 

As a youth, I had witnessed my fair share of tragedy, but I had never come face to face with a man who truly had nothing left to live for, until I met Mr. B. With most tragic cases you witness, the victim still has something he clings to, for some, it's their love of drink or other substance, others, family, religion, etc.

 

This was not so with Mr. B. Unreligious (as my class and I learned together one afternoon in Junior level English), widowed, afflicted with cancer, but apparently sober. I gathered that he only substitute taught to keep a roof over his head. In small engines we fixed his 70's era toyota one day, just enough to keep it on the road so he could get to another school to enrich another day's worth of students.

 

A typical period with Mr. B would involve some retelling of how he barely got to school on time because he slept in past 8 thanks to his cancer treatment making him so tired. Then he would ask us what were supposed to be doing and then sit in the back making occasional comments or telling a story. We never actually did what were supposed to do and he never cared.

 

Eventually he was barred from teaching in our district because of an incident where he did nothing all day except sit at a desk and eat lollipops from a teacher's candy stash.  Apparently this teacher's candy stash was kind of a big deal and they complained loud enough to finally get him off the sub list. 

 

Mr. B, I have no idea if you are even still alive, but if you are, thanks for your insight into the depths of human despair and I hope you finally got all your shit together.