The minute I stepped in, I purposely raised a scrutinising eye on every pupil, before speaking in a lesser-than-normal tone of voice about the importance of keeping quiet. (And all boys and girls should be on high alert when their teacher speaks in hushed tones and whispers.) The pupils were undoubtedly surprised because just earlier in the day, I had stood on stage with a microphone in my hand, barking at the entire PM session to "close your big fat mouths". (I have hall duty every Friday.)

In general, the pupils of 5E were very well-behaved, if you place them side by side with those from 5F. They kept their noise level to a minimum and generally did their own "last-minute revision" for Mother Tongue Paper 1 (also known as composition), looming in the next period.

However, a few very persistent boys provided me with the perfect opportunity to demonstrate my powers of mental torture. (I don't do this a lot okay, only with the deterrent ones.) I decided to cool it off first, merely flashing them a look of warning. They stopped in silence.

Until a few minutes later, that was. Again, they started and this time I thought, what the hell, let's get on with it and be over and done. So I simply picked up a pair of scissors and some double-sided tape (from my basket, where I had laid them there for an Art lesson afterwards), strode up to the unsuspecting victims (one of them had his back to me) and stood before them.

They stopped in mid-sentence but I wasn't going to change my mind. Oh, no sir. When I hand out a threat, I see it through. And what did I do? I cut out four strips of tape.

Since these are big boys we're talking about, what better way to keep them in check than to humiliate them? Humiliate them I did. I handed over the strips to the two victims and told them to tape up their mouths themselves. Of course, they refused at point blank. They merely sat there, looking pretty dumb.

I shifted the task to an innocent classmate. He didn't dare disobey this dwarfish-looking teacher. And tape up their mouths he did. Hurhurhur. The two idiots didn't flinch a bit. They even kept up the tape with their own hands. *clap clap*

I guess they got my point.