Read these first:
The Stumbler
The Stumbler: Part II

My 7th grade English teacher was absolutely obsessed with The Rosie O'Donnell Show. She loved it so much that she had us spend months of class preparing to do a mock Rosie show. Her plan was to ultimately record our show, send it to Rosie and get on TV. After the first month we thought she was nuts. After the second we thought she was the greatest teacher ever because we didn't really do anything. Case in point, my job was to play the drums to One Headlight by The Wallflowers, as the rest of my "band" played air guitar and lip synched. Since my dad had been giving me drum lessons for three years, I rocked out on the real thing.

Our class was broken into two groups. The other group needed one more band member and asked me to play air guitar to Korn's Blind. The Stumbler played lead guitar and vocals. Everything was going well during the final taping, until Dookie started spraying water at us with a spray bottle "for effect," as he called it. When I jumped up for a power cord, I slipped on some of the water and did the mini-splits. I think I pulled something, but I was a trooper and continued playing.

Meanwhile, Dookie sprayed The Stumbler in the face and he was furious. Somehow, someway, our crazy teacher didn't see this occurring. She also somehow didn't notice when both The Stumbler and I flipped the bird to Dookie. The Stumbler was caught on camera. I wasn't.

This was before the days of digital editing, and nobody told our teacher about the incident. So, she finished taping the rest of the show and gave it one last look-through before sending the tape to her idol. And that's when she saw The Stumbler blatantly sticking his middle finger in the air to the left of the camera. The words "fuck you" may also have been mouthed.

I thought both groups beautifully executed our skits and produced one hell of a mock show. Our crazy teacher disagreed and had a near-psychotic breakdown. "I didn't even know kids your age knew what that was," she said. Lady, I'm pretty sure I knew when I was just getting out of diapers.

The Stumber got suspended, our teacher scrapped all our work, and I couldn't have been more grateful the camera wasn't focused on me. Is it wrong that the entire class thought it was the absolute perfect ending to the three-month extravaganza? Except our crazy ass psychotic teacher, of course.