By Xanni Brown, ’10, Lighter Fare Section Editor
Despite the recent economic downturn, many teachers enjoyed thrilling summer vacations in locales as exotic as Mexico or the Broadwell House. Some of you students may be wondering how teachers can afford to take a vacation in such difficult financial times, but when I talked to science teacher Brock Miller, he said, “How can we afford not to? You kids are terrors! I spend every single second counting down to the end of the bell, every bell counting down to the end of the day, and every day counting down to the end of the year when I can go on vacation and build sandcastles and never have to talk to students!” Then he chased me out of his office with a meter stick.
I needed to relax a little after that, so I went to see Mr. Greg Faulhaber, who had spent the summer chilling out on the shores of Hawaii like the typical beach bum that he is. When asked about the high point of his summer he commented, “Dude! I caught the gnarliest waves when I was hanging ten off the big island! You should have been there, bro!” However, in this tough economic climate, some teachers couldn’t afford to fly across the ocean and so scaled back their plans. For instance, Mr. Bob Plummer had planned to fly to Turkey in order to keep the Holy Grail from falling into the Nazis’ grasp but was instead forced to travel to Peru, where he and Shia LaBeouf were attacked by Russians and aliens.
Mr. and Mrs. Dunn were thrifty this summer, spending most of it at home, but they managed to fill the long days with loads of fun activities. They joined a couples’ kickboxing class, but they had to quit for their own personal safety when Mrs. Dunn got sucked into an underground ultimate fighting ring. It got ugly when her arch-rival, the Masked Avenger, (who I suspect was none other than Mr. Matt Dahl in one of his many disguises) tried to set fire to her house. Luckily, Mr. Dunn had seen the lab safety video enough times to know that you stop, drop, and then roll, so no one was hurt.
In the course of an emotional interview with Mrs. Dunn about her brief stint as the Editor, I asked her why she fought and she answered simply, “Because I’m good at it.” Throughout our conversation she shared many moving stories about the dedication of her fans and the joys of life on The Road, but the interview ended rather badly when she roundhouse-kicked me in the head after I asked if her experience might have negative effects on her teaching.
After that, I went to talk to Dr. Jane Kairet, who traveled to Spain over the summer in what she described as “a verrrrry rrrrewarrrrding experrrrrrrience.” Although she is already proficient in English and French, she spent the summer learning Spanish, and as a result she can now speak all three languages with a Belgian accent. Mr. Mark Femia spent the summer working on the script for a musical set in Spain but with a protagonist originally from Brussels, and he has been giving Madame Kairet vocal lessons in preparation for its super-far-off-off-Broadway debut. You can expect to see A Singing Sprout in Seville at Playhouse in the Park next summer.
All supposed “quotations” in this article are completely fictitious. I never talked to these teachers; I just made up quotes. Most of these vacation stories aren’t even true. (One of them is–I’ll let you figure out which.) I mean, did you really think I was going to go around asking teachers for quotes for a made-up article? Because I didn’t. Not even a little bit.
