The stricter the teacher, the greater the triumph in aggravating or ridiculing him or her and getting away with it.  Almost always, with few exceptions--that's how I remember the treatment of teachers like Dorothy Comfort (Spanish, English), Alice Daldry (7th grade), Norman Ross, and a few others.  This morning while I was writing a piece of family history about my mother attending school, reading her notes, I realized how universal this behavior is. 

"Emma [my mother] who played the man when she and her friend Helen Conklin dressed up, became a tomboy in grade school.  “I enjoyed beating up the village sissy,” she said.  Teachers gave them a chance to study adults close up for long periods.  “One of our teachers, Mrs. Parsley, wore purple bloomers which amused us.  We were innocent of sex and seldom saw anyone’s underclothing.  Those purple bloomers were a great source of amusement to us.”   She liked her teachers, or most of them, but she joined the pack in that universal willingness of students to seek out a teacher’s weakness and exploit it.  “In my day we abused teachers mentally.  I recall Mrs. Ramsey leaving the classroom to cry outside the door.”