That Incident Last Thursday

"Now dance, fucker, dance!"

You're Gonna Go Far Kid (2008) by The Offspring

Okay, I've been away for more than a week and before I go on, there are some things I need to clarify first, seeing that I have received tons of question from a lot of people about it. Last Thursday, when I was sent out by the ENT lecturer for talking during lecture, I WASN'T talking. The catalyst was a slide he projected on screen which described the use of the chemical compound capsaicin as a treatment for some neuralgia or other and I was sort of surprised because I didn't know that particular use of that drug (the use of capsaicin I'm most familiar with is food flavouring - it's what make chilis hot). So, I did what I do when I am surprised; I mouthed the word capsaicin to myself.

He saw me did that, stopped his lecture midway and told me to get the fuck out of class - for talking. For a bit of background info on this lecturer bloke, he's so anal that his butthole can probably sever the finger of some guy giving him a digital rectal exam. There has to be zero conversation during his class - he's one of those paranoid crazies who thinks that anyone talking in his vicinity has to be making fun of him. We have a term for that in psychiatry; it's called the delusion of reference. Oh, and he told a student to stand up in class once and berated him for leaning a bit to the right while sitting. Yeah, that sort of crazy.

I actually argued because I was wrongly accused and that I was only mouthing a word, and he retorted by saying some shit about him being older, that he knew what he saw and that I disrupted the class and should not debate with him on it. I was teetering on the edge of a full blown explosion - it's one of those rare times in my life when I completely lost my mind (only happened 3 times ever). In all the previous instances I was caught sleeping or talking in class, I have accepted any punishment or scolding meekly and apologetically. Righteous anger tends to rise to the surface when I got framed.

What I wanted to say, and still hope that I have said, was;

"With all due respect, sir, you were lying. You could not have seen me talking because I didn't. I was mouthing a word projected on the slide to myself because I was surprised it's there, and I don't think you ever forbade us from soundlessly mouthing words to ourselves during lectures before. And you kept feeding us bullshit about how talking disrupts the class and whatnot, while every time you are the one disrupting the class the most with your childish outbursts. You think that by just exercising command, you will get the students to fear you - even respect you - but no, sir. No one is afraid or you. No one respects you. Everyone finds you pathetic and annoying and that's what everyone says about you after each lecture of yours. You abuse authority. You are just a bully."

Given his paranoia and severe neurosis, had I been allowed to shoot my mouth off, I'm quite confident that he would just walk right out of class. He always seem to be on the verge of tears and hysteria anyway. Thankfully, I had the wits about me to stop myself. I slammed my notebook shut with a satisfying smack - an act of futile rebellion - packed up my shit and stormed out. I wanted lodge a complaint against his royal anal-ness but I realised that I did not know his name (I still don't). So I drove home. I asked a lot of my colleagues for his name afterwards (ostensibly with the goal of reporting him still in mind) but as it turned out, no one bothered to remember or even learn his name. Now, that's a whole new level of pathetic altogether. And since I still received a mark of attendance for that lecture, I decided to drop it with my usual wad of phlegm (not that phlegm - words have many meanings, you know, so look it up).

I learnt that he was reiterating the case against me after I left, embellishing it by saying that he had had his eyes on me the entire lecture and that I have been conversing with the girl sitting beside me. All bullshit. If that was true, he would have sent the girl out as well. Besides, that girl was Jae Mie, and anyone who knows Jae Mie knows how hard it is to even try to talk to her in class considering how doggedly she writes her notes.

I received an SMS from Shaki afterwards, saying that a girl was sent out after me. Her story was that her friend sitting beside her did not manage to write down what's on the slide quickly enough before it changed, and had asked her to repeat the last two words of the previous slide. She obliged, and got kicked out for it.

Oh, and if anyone still has any doubt that I was not talking last Thursday when I got sent out, here's the my best defense;

I wasn't sitting beside Shaki. Case closed.



P.S. That ENT lecturer is currently learning how to swim. I saw him occasionally in the pool in the evenings trying to learn how to float and kick water while our college's gym instructor shout instructions to him from the poolside. I'll go one of these days to just stand there and watch. Knowing how neurotic and insecure he is, it'll probably irk him like heck.

P.P.S. This entire post was supposed to be just the preamble of the post I wanted to write today, but since it had autonomously grew to this length, I just changed the post's title and run it on its own.



Was not talking,
k0k s3n w4i