I was reminded of my grade ten drafting teacher, Mr Darling (I think that was his name), when someone bemoaned that everything is done by computers these days. I took his class because I didn’t want to take history or biology and it was another reason to draw, of sorts. <\/p>\n

We were jammed in the back of Brockvegas Collegiate Institute, in a dusty shop class, hunched over angled tables. I did pretty good in his class and I enjoyed making technical drawings with their thick and thin lines and crisp lettering. Mr Darling said that I could have a future in tech drawing, but sadly, computers killed that. <\/p>\n

Mr Darling was a bit of a joker. He was the kind of teacher that taught with one-liners, flippant puns and laisser faire elan. Of course this kind of teaching doesn’t work on some kids and I remember one guy mumbling under his breath repeatedly during Mr Darling’s classes on how unfunny he was. Obviously, these two were going to butt heads. <\/p>\n

A few months into the class, this kid, let’s call him David, decides he’s going to laugh loudly with an edge of fakeness at all of Mr Darling’s jokes. Mr Darling started the class by reminding us on shop safety (we actually never used equipment, it was drawing class, but I do remember him starting the class this way) with a long winded rant about losing appendages and proper maintenance of equipment that blended into a monologue about how his wife never puts the toothpaste cap back on the tube.<\/p>\n

All the while, he’s getting more and more angry. We’re looking at each other, wondering if he’s kidding. His rage is palatable and our unease is thick. Mr Darling comes to the end of his rant. His fists are knuckle down on his desk, his eyes are staring past us to the back window. <\/p>\n

And David starts to laugh.<\/p>\n

Mr Darling is startled out of his zoned out state and asks David if he thought that was funny. Of course! Mr Darling grabs David by the shirt collar and lifts him out of his chair. David continues the laughter. Mr Darling then clamps his big shop-worn leathery hands around David’s throat and drags him from the room. By the throat.<\/p>\n

Like the $20 drafting pen I had to get special for that class, I never saw Mr Darling again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was reminded of my grade ten drafting teacher, Mr Darling (I think that was his name), when someone bemoaned that everything is done by computers these days. I took his class because I didn’t want to take history or biology and it was another reason to draw, of sorts. We were jammed in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":430,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9WjY-sp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1761"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/430"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1761\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}