Mr. Hoff was my 8th grade science teacher. He was also my junior high football coach. He played football in college and made a point of reminding us of this at every opportunity. He was a mountain of a man. A large, notably out of shape mountain, but still a mountain. From the word “go,” we did not get along. He made me run extra sprints during football practice, made jokes at my expense in class and belittled me at every single opportunity.

It wasn’t just me, either. He used to make vaguely lewd comments about the girls in my class and homophobic comments about the guys. He was basically a gym teacher from the 1960’s trapped in a science classroom in the early ’90s.

One time in particular, when I asked to go to the bathroom, he started pouring water from the tap on his desk (science class desk, remember) into a jug and then sloshed it around for a few minutes, stopping the class just to torture my poor bladder. Then, inexplicably, he produced a toilet seat from under his desk, telling me that it was my bathroom pass and I had to carry it around the hallways when I’d go to the bathroom during his class.

I wasn’t exactly blameless in this situation. I did start my own share of shit with him. I made smart ass comments, disrupted class when I was bored and learned to sleep with my eyes open so he’d stop throwing erasers at me when I dozed off. There was also that time I gave him stitches.

Pretty much the only thing to do after we shoveled cafeteria food down our throats was to wander the four blocks up to the general store in our small town, peruse the baseball cards and buy enough candy to keep us awake through the afternoon classes. This meant that most of us came back early from lunch, wired up to our eyeballs with nothing to do but hang out in the classroom where we had 5th period. We had Science class right after lunch. That meant the expansive science room was ours. There were spitball fights, games of tag, general horseplay and grab-ass, etc.

Because this was the science room, the furnishings were very industrial. All of the desks had sinks(most, sadly, not working) and Bunsen burners(also not working, which, in hindsight, was very fortunate), there was an acid cabinet(sadly, locked) and a solid steel, fire-proof door. That door was so heavy that some of the girls in our class couldn’t open it without bracing all of their weight against the knob. The thing was a beast. Apparently, a few years back, some kids had broken into the school and busted down the science room door to get to some chemicals, so they installed a better, less bust-proof door.

This particular day, we were running around the room, playing tag. Like all adolescent games, we had developed these byzantine rules; no immediate tag-backs, crossed fingers that negated a tag, key words that jumped the “it” status to the person who tagged the person who tagged you and so on. By the time it was getting close to actual start of 5th period, there were only two of us who could possibly be “it.” I was one of them. Marlys, the it-ee (I doubt that’s an actual word, but whatever) came screaming after me. We bobbed and weaved through desks, but pretty soon I was cut off. My only possible escape was to head to the “safe” area out in the hallway. I dashed for the door-the heavy, solid steel door-with Marlys in hot pursuit.

The door opened outwards into the hallway, which was unlike all of the other classroom doors and was even more strange seeing as, when the door was open, it blocked the entrance to the principal’s office. I’m not exactly saying my school was constructed by a bunch of drunken Swedes…there were probably some Polacks on the crew, too.

I reached the door and shoved as hard as I could (remember, it’s a heavy, solid steel door). The door started to swing open, got about six inches and stopped cold. Before I could push again, it was ripped out of my hands. Still in flight mode, I looked behind me to see where Marlys was, only to see horror pour down her face before she bolted in the opposite direction.

The next thing I knew, I was literally being lifted off the ground by my shirt collar. I wasn’t aware that it was possible outside of cartoons and I imagine I looked rather cartoonish, with dismay all over my face and my legs fluttering uselessly. I looked over my shoulder to see Mr. Hoff’s beet-red face glowering back at me. A trickle of blood was running down his nose and he looked like he wanted to skin me alive. He tossed me unceremoniously to the floor once we reached his desk and stood over me, quivering with rage. One of my other classmates (who were now all seated attentively at their desks, not moving a muscle) raised his hand and pointed out to Mr. Hoff that he was bleeding. It was then that I finally realized that I was in deep shit.

After grabbing a roll of brown institutional(read:coarse and paper-thin) towels to sop up the blood that was now streaming down his face from a couple of distinct gashes, he ordered Marlys and I to the principal’s office. We quickly gathered ourselves and darted out of the room. Anywhere was better than being near a gigantic, angry authority figure, even if it was the principal’s office.

When a terrified Marlys and myself sat down in his office without any explanation, he immediately asked us what was wrong. Once we explained everything, he went next door to talk with Mr. Hoff. He returned a few minutes later, with a concerned look on his face. He explained that Mr. Hoff wanted us both expelled. We were both too stunned to respond. He assured us that he wasn’t going to expel us. We were to each serve two day’s detention and write a two page paper explaining why horseplay is a bad thing in the classroom.

As we were leaving, he told us, with a wry smile on his face, to try to not slam metal doors into our teacher’s faces in the future.

Mr. Hoff ended up having to get somewhere in the neighborhood of 15-20 stitches, above his eye and on his nose. He never directly mentioned the incident in class and tended to leave me pretty much alone for the rest of the year. At the time, I thought that maybe he was afraid of me and my mighty door-opening power, but he was probably just completely embarrassed that a scrawny 14 year-old kid had busted up his face.