Crazy Lady Day at BHS

Here's hoping two posts in one day is not illegal...

One of my (many!) favorite BHS teachers was Mrs. Horn.  Here is a recollection of her ability to make sophomore English class interesting.

Mrs. Horn always had one day a year when she went (pretend) stark raving mad at the beginning of a class period.  Since she taught creative writing, her goal that day would be to present an interesting (as in over-the-top) scene for us to observe and then describe in an essay.  When the bell rang to start our particular class's date with destiny, she stepped in from the hall and screamed at the top of her lungs.  She did a couple of other weird things I, sadly, cannot remember.  Ed Dimit's older brother, Rob, had the misfortune to giggle at her antics, so she took an eraser and bopped him on the head with it.  Rob stopped giggling...and spent the rest of the hour with white hair.  I was smirking away because I had been tipped off a year earlier, by older friend Doug Dahl, to expect this episode sometime during sophomore English, and this was obviously the moment.  Mrs. Horn sensed I had inside information.  She had a backup plan for such students, and "kicked me out of class."  Not so coincidentally, Mr. Karnes just happened to be standing out in the hall, ready to take any in-the-know students (me, in this case) to the chemistry lab to wash bottles and beakers for the hour.  So I spent that class period with my hands in dishwater, noticing what I thought was an unusual number of faculty members walking past the chemistry lab door.  I remember thinking, "Wow, more teachers patrol the halls during class time than I realized!"  It turned out that the faculty looked forward to this particular day every year.  They would head for the hall outside the chemistry lab, compose themselves, walk by nonchalantly, say hi to the bewildered dish-washing dweeb inside, and continue walking to the teacher lounge, chuckling all the way.  Once safely behind the closed door, I am guessing they indulged in what social media nowadays refers to as ROFL and LMAO behavior.

I hope that many Class of '69 members got to experience such an episode, too.  I would assume Mrs. Horn kept doing the routine annually, until too many students knew about it ahead of time, at which point Mr. Karnes would probably have run out of beakers and bottles to be washed.