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Let he who has never made a public ass of himself cast the first flame. Who among us survived youth without once or twice overstepping decorum?

Certainly not I.

When I was sixteen, I had the great misfortune of having a twit of a guidance counsellor. Let us call him Smurf, as this is the appellation we bestowed to him at the time. A more useless, frustrate, nagging little man I have seldom known. As he was my misfortune, so was I his own, for I have never been one to gladly suffer fools. As mandated by school policy, I had to endure a session or two in his office - taking tests and answering questions of the most inane variety of psychobabble; such batteries believed capable of divining my natural aptitudes and interests for later life and employ. In short order my shallow fund of patience was drained by this nonsense. At this point I said to the Smurf "Look, I have been answering all these questions. Now you answer one for me: Why should I take career advice from a man who wound up as a high-school guidance counsellor?"

The Smurf, needless to say, was not amused.

This question terminated the session, and was the last-but-one official interaction I ever had with the pathetic little spite-monkey.

Now, in this same year I had the unenviable chore of taking both History and Literature from a teacher new to my school. This woman, Mz. Christian, was a leftist of the generally-pear-shaped variety. You all know the type, I imagine. Frumpy-soft and frumpy-pleasant superficially, but beneath the padding lurks a Stalin. This teacher, with one strange fellow by the name of Oldham, did much to water and nourish my newborn contempt for leftists. But Oldham is another story. Back to Literature...

As I said, this teacher was new to my school, and hadn't quite twigged to the fact that boys at an all-boy JESUIT high-school are not the easily programmed robots one may so readily find in the halls of the State institutions. As importantly, she knew me not.

She would learn.

One class, this woman grew contemptuous of our trained and quite concrete rationalism. She burbled and sputtered and dithered, emitting such complaints as "you all take things too literally" and "there is no black and white" and, the big mistake: "Some questions cannot be answered literally - I mean, what is the sound of one hand clapping???"

An evil glee flared up in my soul at this incredible blunder, trying to fob off a misunderstood Zen koan on ME.
In my great arrogance I raised my hand.

She had not been expecting an answer to her dithering and, as I said, she knew me not: She called upon me.

I took my upraised hand and, without a word, began to slap the four fingers into its palm. Loudly.

The range of hues through which her complexion journeyed was epic... epic...

And, of course, my classmates roared in delight.

She ejected me from her class, followed me out, slapped me across the face, and sent me down to Brother Mulroe for judgement and slaughter. I do not recall whether I served J.U.G. that afternoon, but I do recall the events of the following day.

That morning, IIRC early in the third period, I was summoned to the President's office. Not the Principal's, but the PRESIDENT's. An unheard-of summons. In dread I went, knowing well that this would be very, VERY bad. Upon entering that office I saw the President, the Principal, the Chaplain, the Disciplinarian, The Smurf, and the Teacher. And my mother... who looked ready to bit the heads off of nails and spit fire.

Dread bcame a thing of comfort.

I did not immediately notice the alignment of forces, that the Smurf and the Teacher stood on one side of the table, and all the rest stood grouped on the opposite. All I knew was that I stood before them all, under judgement.

It turned out that the Smurf and the Teacher were attempting to get me thrown out of school. In such a case, a formal hearing is mandatory. In such a hearing, a parent must be present. So they had called my mother to come to the school from out of her busy schedule as a resident doctor in a very busy hospital.

It soon became clear that I stood in no peril, but the event is -ah!- seared... seared in my memory.

I believe I had a point towards which I was driving, but I have misplaced it.
Do any of you know what it might have been?