The other day I was grading papers, headphones securely embedded in ears, when a loud noise penetrated my acoustic sphere of invulnerability. Surprised, I pulled phones from ears and turned around to see that behind me in the open teacher's room, a student had fallen out of his chair and was now scooting backwards on the ground in apparent terror. The reason for his scrabbling retreat was the giant, compact mass of female fury that was the PE teacher, who at the time of the accident was launching a hot torrent of vituperative eruptions at the top of her lungs, aimed squarely in the face of the kid. The berate-a-thon continued for some minutes, with all teachers looking on, until the PE teacher, her wrath spent, collapsed into brooding silence and the twitching remains of the pupil were escorted from the teacher's room.

Later I was told that the student had missed too many days of school. "It is if he has been sleeping. He needed to be waked up!"

God help the sleepy-heads.