In Continuum.

Mrs. Irony Strikes Back

I had, a disturbing image.

I was on a narrow platform that hovered above the lecture theater with a pen in my hands, the end of the pen extended outwards into a lightsaber. I stood there as my enemy approached from the darkness before me, with her flowery dress fluttering in the wind. The platform where we were was cold, the wind strong and blowing in from every direction, making it hard to stand up straight. My enemy revealed herself, and it was Mrs. Irony with a similar lightsaber in her hands. Only, it was not a pen but the remote control from the projector that hung above our heads. Her pink lightsaber waved with much menace before my eyes, and I tried to block her attacks with my own dwindling lightsaber, as it rapidly ran out of battery power.

I wondered where she found that kind of super-human strength, for I was being forced into the corner of the platform, and I looked over the edge as everything plunged into the darkness of the abyss below. Distracted, I must have missed her killer blow from above, for she spotted the moment of fear in my eyes and swung down hard at my face. I tried to block the lightsaber, but it was too late. It sliced through my arm, and my lightsaber tumbled into the abyss with my severed palm, and blood spurted out in every possible direction and blinded my vision. Mrs. Irony loomed over me as I tried desperately to hold on to the edge, and her shadow was overwhelming me now. Her great pony tail stuck out from the side of her head like an antenna, and her droopy face stared down into mine with those cold merciless eyes. 'I have something to tell you, Willy" she said, as she took a step forward to me.

"I, am your mother!"

The image shattered with the long, drawn out scream I made in my dreams. I woke up in my bed after a brief afternoon nap, and wondered about the dream that I just had moments before. I tried to recollect myself, but the image of Mrs. Irony holding a lightsaber, and claiming herself to be my mother was probably the most repulsive image I have had in a long time. After all, not a single part of me was willing to accept the racist lecturer as my family, and the possibility of that ever happening woke me up better than ten cups of coffee combined. It was like the scene from Star Wars Episode V, when Darth Vader told Luke Skywalker that he was his father. I'm not sure what happened after I screamed into her face that it wasn't possible, perhaps I didn't want to find out. I was glad that I woke up, and the smell of dinner being made in the kitchen teasingly crept into my room. Food was being prepared by my mother - my real mother. Star Wars Episode VII: The Irony Strikes Back! Here's why.

It was only a few entries ago, when I mentioned about the atrocity that happened in the lecturer hall, how Mrs. Irony was making all those racist comments about her own race. That wasn't the end of my complaints about her, but there is a mental limit to how long I should type for every entry. I guess the fact that she struck back today, gave me the perfect reasons to make a sequel to her idiocy on Tuesday morning. She slipped a few more notches on my list today, because of her lazy she is with her examination papers. Personally, I have never seen such a showcase of laziness in a teacher in my whole life, and it clearly displayed yet another aspect of her which I find, to be ironic. I guess when you are an Asian Chinese - like herself - you can't run away from your roots. She called us cheaters, liars, and lacked our scholarly dignity just a few days ago. Well, let me tell you what she did today that made her one of us - the Asian Chinese.

Before that happens, let me tell you about the little disagreement we had a few days ago. My group had our presentations a few weeks ago concerning the chapter "Social Penetration Theory". As mentioned before, she does little to no work in class every week, and sits there like a lump of pork in the wet market every morning. So we did our presentation, and I thought we did tremendously well. However, she wasn't too happy with how our group - particularly myself - did our presentation, because she was offended by the sexual undertones during my part of the presentation. She insisted that it was supposed to be a professional setting, and that making jokes in that had sexual undertones were not exactly appropriate. My argument is that the messages I was trying to bring across obviously worked, and my group probably had the most attention from the audience because of my efforts to make such jokes. Besides, the Social Penetration Theory did in fact - according to the book - create false impressions in the readers as being sexual in nature. I was merely trying to emphasis on the fact that we shouldn't confuse these sexual undertones with the true meanings of the theory, but she was obviously unhappy with the jokes that I made.

She marked our group down for that, and I was furious about it. I confronted her at the front of the class about our grade, and she said that she marked us down because of my sexual undertones that weren't appropriate, the ones that made her uncomfortable. So I argued that I did not say anything that wasn't already said in the textbook, which made my jokes legitimate in the first place. She didn't believe that Griffin - who wrote the book - actually had his own sets of sexual annotations in the book, and was doubtful of my words at the beginning. That was of course, until I showed her the page and the paragraph where it appeared, and that was when she changed her testimony and said that she didn't mark us down for that comment, but for something else instead. I wasn't satisfied with her answer, and didn't allow her to finish at all. I walked off from the front of the class, and couldn't be bothered with the grade any longer.

In retrospect, it is kind of funny how she was offended by my sexual undertones, when she was oblivious to how we were offended by her racist undertones. I mean, at least I am honest about my sexuality, and I love sex. Who doesn't. I don't think that there is anything wrong in making those jokes, especially when they were the same things being mentioned in the damn textbook. Our course is all about communicating with people, and I effectively communicated with the audience that day - very well at that. I don't think her own personal discomfort should have had anything to do with our grades, especially when she is the same person that made a worse mistake of being a racist against her own race. Everything about her is contradictory, and there is an urge inside me to give her a tight slap across her droopy face. Her smiles and her purposeful emphasis on her name can really drive me up the walls.

So the nightmare started this morning, when she called me "Willy" instead of my usual name. The sequel began this morning, when she wanted to use the overhead projector to show the class something on the wall, and was too lazy to pull the projector to the front of the class herself. I was there in class earlier than the rest with Naz, and she remembered only my name out of the rest of the early birds. So she called my name a few times, a name that sounded like my own but not so - Willy. Now, Willy is a name reserved strictly for Kania, and she raped that name from the inside out. She was smiling at me with her million watt smile, and waving at the projector at the same time. So I went to the front and obediently pulled the projector to the front, adjusted it so that it faced the screen and pushed the plug into the socket underneath the staircase. When I was going back to my seat, she asked if I could put the plug into the socket for her as well. That was when I made another one of my trademark sexual undertone in her face:

"Yes, I plugged it."

Today was Mid-terms Day. That exam in the middle of the semester to test our proficiency in the subject, and see if we are good to go for the rest of the semester. The question papers were given out, and the examination started. I flipped to the front of the paper and started doing the questions, when the questions felt awfully familiar to something which I have seen before. I looked through the other questions, and realized that they were exactly the same as the questions they have on the companion website of the book. You see, for every textbook in our school, there is a companion website attached. It is possible to go online and visit the book through the net, and do some of the quizzes that they have provided, in regard to every chapter in the book. Mrs. Irony so conveniently lifted every question off the book and placed them into our exam paper, without proper citations at that!

I had a smirk on my face throughout the paper, thinking about the words that she said to us only two days before. If the readers remember properly, she did call the Asians to be a bunch of people who likes to cheat, plagiarize, and lie about their schoolwork. It's funny how she couldn't see it, because she was lifting those questions off the companion website without proper citations too. I'm sure it is a form of plagiarism one way or another, and how dare she have the guts to accuse us for being so? Her ignorance to her own actions was appalling, and I could hardly contain my hatred for the woman. I've never felt so strongly for a teacher before, and she certainly gave me a reason to drive a screwdriver into her ear.

But of course, who can help it? She is an Asian Chinese as well, I guess none of us can run away from our fate. Like Luke Skywalker can't run away from the fact that Darth Vader was his father, we can't run away from our Asian roots as well. Once Asian, always Asian. We are bound to that genetic chain that is going to curse us for the rest of our lives, and what can we do about it? We just have to go with the flow, roll with the punches. We make do with what we have, and we cheat and we lie. We plagiarize summaries and copy from companion websites. We are just being ourselves, as true as possible - like my sexual undertones. Perhaps she hasn't had that experience for a while, and I understand that people do get offended when others speak of such issues especially when you are deprived of it. But I guess, the next time it happens, stop making it so obvious that you are deprived of sex. Lie about it, at least you are Asian about it.