Blast from the Past IV

4. Funk Soul Brother

Now I am adding this special edition on Mr Funk Soul Brother at special request of Mfcpresident (the name says it all... president of the ?still existing M*#@^%~ Fan Club)

Mr Funk Soul Brother taught Moral classes in school.  Our school was broken up into four houses (yes, like Harry Potter but so much less fun @_@).  Anyways Mfcpresident and I were in the Red House, which was Funk Soul's house.  Now everyone in the whole school was expected to attend our annual sports day whether we were involved or not (to be honest, every year probably half the school only turns up because no one really takes it seriously considering there is no focus on extra-curricular activities in Asian schools.  Who wants to sit in the 30-40 degree sun all day when every year, it was more like a comedy act to see which of our seniors would dramatically collapse on the floor and be made a fuss over after each race from lack of stamina and heat exhaustion - yes, pathetic, I know... but what do you expect where there is no training or practice, just throw a bunch of kids into a running track and expect them to be able to run marathons?)

Unfortunately, I could run sprints, so I was always expected to go to the Sports Day every year.  I don't know who arranges which students to go in which event, but somehow I was placed in some stupid long distance races (even as reserve) which I know I'm shit at (i.e. one of those with no stamina.)  From memory I don't think Mfcpresident was in any events (Mfcpresident, were you?  Correct me if I'm wrong LOL) so of course she didn't bother going.  Anyhoo, I went as usual, and I was supposed to do this 100m sprint, but somehow there was a really long crowd (not even a line, typical!) to give your name and number to the booth before your race started, so I couldn't even get out there as I wasn't ticked off the list in time!  Anyways, I wasn't in any other races so I just went home after that, didn't bother sitting around the whole few hours in the baking heat.

Anyways back to the topic.  Funk Soul calls Mfcpresident and myself out of the class the next day and demands why we "didn't go."  Of course, like I mentioned before there was no listening to reason with Asian teachers... I try to tell Funk Soul I missed the race because of the long "queue" and he stares at me for one second before hollering at us "Immoral people!", with his hand shooting up like an arrow ("Heil Hitler!" style, and with the swiftness of a guy having a hard-on) his index finger pointing rudely at us.  

What the.  Ok, fine.  Immoral people we were.

Being the great Moral teacher he was, Funk Soul decided to pick on us.  He would tell some stupid stories in class and then suddenly point in Mfcpresident and my direction, saying "Why you people never laugh at my jokes?"  Um... because they're not funny?  Why in the world would you force students to laugh at your comments?  It would not be genuine, it would be fake laughter.

And we had to learn all these moral values about being humble, and being sincere.  And according to our textbooks, there was a moral value that was equivalent to "sincerity" which was all about doing something good out of the kindness of your own heart without telling everyone about it so that everyone would think you were such a swell guy.

Anyways, Funk Soul would always boast about the "good" things he would do.  Like he would remind us on multiple occasions, did you know how he was totally "not proud" and that even though he's a teacher (whoop-de-doo), he would always say good morning to the cleaners and the guy who opened the car doors for the younger students at the school porch even though they were "blue collar workers."

WTF.  How rude.  This guy was so totally full of himself.  If you were sincere you wouldn't be boasting about how you were such a nice guy just because you said hi to the "blue collar workers."  And even by calling them that, you're already looking down on them and trying to point out that you're better than them.  Geez, man, even the students and other teachers say hi to them, they just have the grace to not go around bragging to everyone else about how humble they are.

With the sincerity of Sweeney Todd to Beadle Bamford, "You are a paragon of integrity."

Sweeney Todd