Regular readers of I, Asshole may recall Professor Jackass, of last quarter fame. (Professor Jackass’s hobbies include: being smarmy, not listening, and giving final grades based on your first paper.)
ANYWHO, I was waiting for my friend in the buttcrack breezeway between two libraries at school when I see Professor Jackass strolling towards me. Oh Christ, I would’ve given up opposable thumbs to have been able to turn brick-colored at that moment. I squashed myself against the wall and turned my head in at an unnatural angle, the same way Jackie Onassis used to when that horrible Ron Galella was chasing her around. It was the only time since last May that I regretted having pink hair.
“SJ!” He practically shouted at me and I felt myself jump a little. “How’s your quarter going?”
He was wearing this awful suit coat that looked like it crawled out of some trunk that time forgot and forced itself up onto his body. Once it got settled in comfortably to feed on its host, it relaxed a bit and hung in the limpest, most unattractive manner possible. It was all I could think about, or see.
Instead of answering his question I started talking immediately, to pretend like I wasn’t trying to disappear. I have this bad habit: when I get nervous I start complementing people, on anything. I have been known to complement crooked prison tattoos, moles on the back of peoples’ hands, and the way a person was holding a pencil (authoritatively). I am a giant dorkwad.
“Well, HELLOOOO Professor Jackass! You look nice today! Do you have a meeting to go to?”
Professor Jackass chuckled a little and swung his head down. “Ho ho, no. I’m just on the reference desk today and wanted to look the part.”
We exchanged a few more bland pleasantries, and then he was on his way, thank God.
Eeep. I felt so guilty after he left. I ripped him in my class evaluation, and vowed never to take a class from him again. And I think he actually likes me. There I was, being a nice girl to his face even though last quarter I had vivid fantasies of choking him with those dreadful, book-themed ties he always wears.
Well, I just recalled that the man only returned two out of a few papers we turned in, so I forgive myself. I always forgive myself.
In Other News
Words that should be banned from usage permanently, because I say so:
Suss: Suss. Suuuuss. SSSSuss. Sussssssssss. Yessss, my precious. Ugh, hate “suss.”
Subsequently: Professor Jackass always used to pronounce this word “sub-SEE-quent-ly.” I had never heard it like that before, but all the subSEEquent snorking made iced latte creep up the back of my throat to make friends with my sinus cavity. You are NO LONGER allowed to pronounce it the normal way, “sub-suh-quent-ly.” Ex: “I lost sight of the shampoo bottle. SubSEEquently we had to make a trip to the emergency room.”
Focheezy: alternate spellings include: fosheezy or forcheezy. Keep your damn focheezy OFF my nizzie, or whatever, thank you very much.
My experience at every school I ever went to was that if I hated a teacher on sight they’d be my favorite teacher by the end of the quarter. Not so the U.W. Every teacher I hated at the U.W. stayed hated. I never learned to like them. I always thought their teaching methods were stupid. I occasionally considered suing the school to try and get them fired.
A certain self-important no-time-for-office-hours creative writing teacher who recently published a piece in the Stranger comes immediately to mind.
I had this professor who used to say ‘iiinnnnerrresting’–‘interesting’ without the ‘t’…I still hate that word but somehow because I hate it I find myself saying ‘inneresting’ a lot.
My mum says peperation. Not pReperation. That gets my goat in an extremely compromising position and fondles it inappropriately.
I still don’t understand what a focheezy is.
My astronomy prof always says “relatively speaking”, and he stutters. Not a good combination when he gives a 50 min. lecture in only one breath. My psych prof says “lit-ral-ly” a lot and “set” instead of “sit”. Wonder if these kind of quirks are a requirement for being a teacher. Students have to have something to remember you by. Why not that?
My poli sci prof has the annoying habit of ending every sentence with “or what have you”, and using the phrase “you know” between every three words. I was keeping stats during our last class. To make things worse, he’s from Boston but has been living in Missouri for a few years now, so he has a freaky accent. Though I’m sure I sound really weird to other people. I look pretty weird too. Or something.
Monkey: The forcheezy thing comes from some old American hip-hop song, I can’t remember which one. Missy Elliot just sampled it on her new album, but the kids were going crazy for it before that.
A few weeks ago, every time my sister should have said “really?” she said “forcheezy?” instead. I assume she is not alone in this. I have heard it in other songs, as in “being on the forcheezy.”
I think it would be really cool if the kids got into some real words, and if the b-boys and girls found something that rhymed with “verisimilitude” or some such. You could out-rap people with your giant brain and sterling vocabulary! But that would be missing the point, I suppose.
My boss uses “type thing”. Seems nothing is ever cut and dry with him.
Hello!
Helloooooh!
I’ve been meaning to catch up with your new blog for ages, but have been crap.
Anyway, :-)
The phrase I hate is ‘may as well’. It didn’t come from a teacher, though. It came from a friend who would use that phrase to try to persuade me to do what he preferred. “You may as well …” was how it went, unless ‘you may as well’ was just tagged on at the end. It was his way of trying to be persuasive, and it just irritated the hell out of me. I even find myself now, something like twenty years later, mentally saying, ‘I may as well’, and then I get hacked off with my brain’s tendency to do that.
As for distinctive, oddly-pronounced things that teachers said, I always rather fondly remember ‘consider’. It was a maths teacher who we called ‘Clint’, ’cause he looked like a young Clint Eastwood (a lot!). He would say things like, ‘Konsidaar y [pause] as a function of x…’
Now, I think I have an explanation for many of these idiosynchracies (I don’t actually know what that word means, but my lack of knowledge of its meaning never seems to have been a problem), and it comes from a teacher I knew (a friend’s father). When he was about to become a teacher, someone told him to adopt a habit, such as throwing and catching chalk in one hand, so that the pupils would pick on that. The rational for this is that it will draw the pupils’ attention away from a real quirk, or whatever. As it happens, the thing the pupils picked up on was how he had a tendency to rearrange his genitalia while standing immediately behind a supposedly unsuspecting pupil.