Anatomy of a teacher

They may look crotchety, stressed and generally evil, but what really makes up this creature called a teacher? Here's a list of abnormal adaptations that teachers are forced to form in their years of training and work:

• Obscure handwriting. This may be extravagant or extremely small and annoying. Whichever way it is, it is usually incomprehensible to anyone but the most studious of students (HA!).
• Super-sensitive hearing. This advantage can pick up the most low of whispers but can rarely acknowledge a request to go to the toilet. Apparantly, the word "toilet", "bathroom", "dunny", "john" or any other synonym for a place of relief is permanently erased from the teachers' minds when they are employed as the strict hypnotic training methods used in educating the to-be teachers are destroyed by these words.
• Another central lobe. Unexplainable by neurologists, but due to the hypnosis training used, it causes an influx of cell growth in the side of the brain, right next to the sphenoid part of the skull. This extra brain capacity is used to expand on the irrationality part of the logic neural pathways.
• Hyper-paranoia. Most often seen when students get into trouble. Teachers have an innate ability to relate the students' offences to their future, their parents' reactions, global warming, UN peace treaties, quantum gravitation and Michael Jackson.
• Rear cranial vision (or eyes in the back of their heads) Teachers can see exactly what you're doing, even with their back to you. Behind their hair (or lack of it) are a set of tiny eyes, similar to those of an insect. It can cover a whole classroom at once with laser accuracy.
• Enhanced absurdity and long-windedness When attempting to explain a critical point to the whole semester, they begin to clear it up and then provide an example. This example is designed to throw the students back into a state of confusion. For example, on explaining electronic configurations in chemistry: "And so due to the Pauli Exclusion Principle, you can only have at maximum 2 electrons per orbital. It's like this: Jeffrey wants to buy an icecream. He has forty cents. So he approaches the icecream man and orders five icecreams. One's vanilla, another a rich chocolate, you know the kind; they've got that normal chocolate stuff and the swirls of that chocolate fudge in them. Now he can only hold two in each hand, so what happens? You see his electronic stability is threatened by the intrusion of another icecream and so he drops it and gets in trouble with his parents for fourteen weeks. You getting this down?"
• Sadism "Now for dropping your pencil in the middle of the test you can write out 'I will not drop my pencil in the middle of an exam because it is disruptive, irresponsible and utterly foolish. I am so greatful for receiving these lines so that I can learn from this experience and grow up to be a better person.' Now write that out.... ten thousand, four hundred and seventy-three times. Don't argue! Okay, it's twenty three thousand six hundred and fourteen times."
• Perfectly honed annoying voices It is required during their training that teachers devise a teaching voice that has one or more of the following attributes: incredible speed or sluggishness, a bizarre accent, mind-boggingly complex ways of saying common sentences ("I say this affirmatively: You may attempt to achieve your objective of relieving yourself in the college's latrines"), a very commonly repeated word, long pauses between words or a spittle firing lisp
• Extensive selective memories "Now you may turn to page 414 in your William Gardener textbooks (Copyright passed in July 5th, 1985) and go to paragraph five, line three, word six, from memory. And now you, um... boy, read the passage." "But sir, I'm a girl." "Do you want me to report you to the principal?" "You don't even know my name!" "Yes I do Miss... um... young lady! Now quit arguing!"

But it has been argued that teacher's powers are less biological and more mystical (maybe even satanic). They can read students minds and can find minor logical errors in exam papers with deadly accuracy. They can hold the biggest bully by the... ear and can control the most alluring seductress in the school without a flinch. They can ruin people's lives at a flick of a pen and inject the most pride in a loser (before cutting them down mercilessly).

Even so, it has been suggested that teachers aren't as all-powerful as it might suggest. Principals hold the power in the school in more ways than one. Thought to be the bane of all students, principals are actually the avatars of them, their saviours if you will. You see they control the teachers with their godsent powers. Prove it? Well have a think where you'd be taken to for excursions if teachers had to choose? Cardboard box factories (a la The Simpsons), the local cemetary or the local Greenpeace outlet. What books would you be reading? The Unabomber's Manifesto, Mein Kampf or 101 things to do with that pitchfork. Hell, what subjects? (Paper Mache 101, Feminism, Quantum Poetry) You see, principals are your friends. Your very stressed out, sometimes deluded, friends.

Some of you out there may be saying "Well I've got a principal that worships Satan!" or "What about Mr Suchandsuch, he's really neat!" Well, in the tradition of Romeo and Juliet, I bite my thumb at you ("Doth thou bite thy thumb at me?" "Yes I bite thine thumb at thou!" (Too many English classes for I)). You see, the cool teachers are actually only students on extended detentions ("Four more years... just four more...") because of the Sadistic principle (NB principle) enforced by real teachers. They have hung around school for so long, helping out that they are practically part of the teaching staff. That's why you never get detentions from them, because simply, they can't give them because they're doing their own! And the "my principal's a Satanist" situation I've got covered. You see, they aren't real principals. They are the most vile teachers promoted to fill in the space left by the original, true principal's "untimely removal from society".

So for all you school-goers, I hope this has clued you in more of the real workings of the school. When a teacher catches you from half a kilometre away smoking (although you weren't and one magically lit itself and then stubbed itself out near your feet), don't be astonished. It's just their supernatural powers. If you want any, try becoming a teacher. But remember, Satan's a hard bargainer.