Cinnamon

Sorry this took so long, my internet went kaput

Anecdote time!

Okay so mini me was very nervous. It was my first day of secondary school (it’s an Aussie thing). We had done some icebreakers in the morning, your usual orientation stuff, but we still needed to meet our core subject teachers. We had English next and everyone was worried because we knew that there were some really mean strict English teachers. We all stood behind our chairs and in walks this young man with a curly manbun, and a very vibey outfit (full three piece suit with a fun tie and sweater, 100% eccentric English teacher vibes) there is not a hair on his face, walks in and puts his stuff on the desk. Everyone is like ‘who is this? He can’t be our English teacher can he?’ then one kid (his name was Josh, we had three joshes in my class that year) says ”who are you?” THIS MAN jumps on the spinny chair (on his knees) spins around until he is level with Josh, stands up, puts one arm up like he is holding a fencing foil and exclaims “I am Inigo Montoya, you killed my father! Prepare to die!”. That was the best introduction I have heard to this day. It immediately killed the tension in the room.

But Cin! This has nothing to do with hyperbole! Ah yes, but I thought it was important you were introduced to the man who tells this story so you can understand the style and flair with which he told it (he also did voices, he was great at accents and one time we managed to convince the primary kids that he was a French exchange teacher that didn’t speak English, but that is a story for another time)

So the class went on, everybody loved him and we were learning about persuasive language techniques and Mr. – writes “HYPERBOLE” on the board. Then a boy named Jonah goes “hyper-bowl, huh?” Mr. -  swings around and says in the most nasal-y old man voice “It’s Hi-per-bo-lee”. Then he goes, well, I suppose I owe you the story now I say “What story?” and he goes “Well, when I went to high school I did Latin, honestly I only took it for the extra marks and because it was nearly the only time I could see [insert his now wife’s name] because our school was divided into boy/girl sections, anyway, my Latin teacher HATED when people said hyperbole wrong so we would always do it just to annoy him, the people in my class would always ask him if things were ‘an example of hyper-bowl’ etcetera and he would always respond ‘It’s Hi-per-bo-lee’ ” he went to recreate a scene of him being a rowdy student abd asking the teacher about “hyper-bowl” it was HILARIOUS

So that is what I forever associate the word hyperbole with. This guy and our drama teacher are the best teachers in the whole school (that I’ve had). Mr. – was the one who introduced me to Sanderson and lent me his Stormlight books when I finished Mistborn. He is he reason I love English as much as I do.

Hah, that's such a great story! Thanks for sharing!

Yeah, he's such a great teacher, and I got him again this year! I hope he teaches my lit or English language conventions class next year!