"Sit down. Stop talking. Throw your gum away." This is the way my high school algebra teacher began each day. Mrs. Holmes was her name, and being mean was her game. All of my peers had warned about this particular teacher. Strictness was not her only trademark, she was also known to have some bizarre--no, obnoxious--personal habits. Indeed, during the course of my senior year, I began to consider Mrs. Holmes a teacher-creature. (Method #6 - quotation; Method #10 - "dialogue")
             Mrs. Holmes's daily agenda was altogether disconcerting. She was extremely concerned with punctuality. Anyone late to her class received a public reprimand. "If you aren't in your seat when the bell rings," she'd tell us at least five times each week, "I will mark you absent." One day I happened to be sharpening my pencil when the shrill sound of the bell rang out. She demanded that since I wasn't in my chair when the period began, I was tardy. Talking was another pet peeve of hers. While taking a test one day, I asked the person behind me for some paper. Not only did Mrs. Holmes yell at me; she also assigned me two deten-
             tion periods. Gum chewing was the ultimate no-no in her class. If she even thought that someone had some form of "sugared" object in their mouth, she would go into a yelling frenzy.
             Far worse than Mrs. Holmes's style of classroom management were her unsanitary grooming habits. Her hair didn't seem to have been washed in a year. One day as she was bending over at my desk, I actually saw little white and brown things moving around. She had a problem with scratching herself too--in the most private and unusual places, right during class. Once she was walking up and down the aisles scratching her arm. Large, white-brown, crusty pieces were flaking off her arm onto the floor. I grew nauseated when a little piece of her arm crust fell onto my desk. The most disgusting of her habits was pickin
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