The Abject Lesson

After the previous night spent doing all the things which might not be considered homework, an incredibly difficult task to engage in as one sat in an empty room devoid of furnishings or distraction save a thin exercise book and the stub of a leaden pencil. Purple eventually spent the night with her face and belly set to the floor singing Transoxianian nationalist operas while combing her hair with the pencil and eating small balls of chewed up paper-surely this could not be thought of a homework-though she wasn't entirely certain.

It was with some trepidation that she arrived in class the next morning, hoping that again the teacher would not show or would not ask about last nights non-homework related activities.
Everyone sat in silence, only punctuated by the discreet clearing of the throat and the scrape or squeak of a wooden chair, waiting for something to happen.

From the distance, two voices could be heard approaching the class room, engaged in a heated argument though is wasn't until the teacher entered the room that Purple and the other students realized that it was one person, miming the voices of a child and an old man locked in violent debate.

'I have it!!! I now realize why you are so incredibly stupid, lazy, dirty, poor and ignorant, I can't believe I didn't understand this earlier!', said the teacher.

'Oh right, why is THAT?' the teacher replied sarcastically.

'I am so fucking great because I make so much money, and I make so much money because I don't give a shit about exploiting people who I consider inferior to myself. But then the losers come to me and say, you're creating inequality, the majority of the world suffers because of your selfishness and to prop up your prosperity we must live in abject poverty, blah, blah, blah, but now I realize the solution is-wait for it- the poor scum need to be more like me!!!'

'Oh really, do tell us more your excellency!'

'Right, because I am so fucking benevolent, generous and philanthropic, I am gonna teach you how to me like me, I'll throw you some pittances to give you basic amenities, some brutalist school rooms and some Dark Age water pump technology, then send in some 'capacity builders' and preppy, gap year, 'EM, BEE, AAYS' to teach you a thing or two about how to be a top shelf, grade 'ALPHA' entrepreneur, like myself, and ONE, TWO, THREE, PROBLEM SOLVED, YOU'RE WELCOME!'

'Wow, you really think it's that simple, you idiot?'

'Uh huh, please allow me to demonstrate...'

By now, the class of girls was severely embarrassed, not only by this bizarre internal dialogue and the offensiveness of one of the interlocutors, but also by the crude language and the fact that the teachers pants were on back to front for some reason.

Now the teacher began doing something even more bizarre, first he placed a ceramic basin in the middle of the room between the desks where the girls sat, balanced precariously between two desks, then inexplicably began flicking gold coins he pulled from his deep pockets into the basin. The poor girls began snatching the gold pieces, not believing their luck as each of their families could easily live for a month on one piece, but as soon as they collected a piece, the teacher would snatch it off them and swallow it whole. After doing this for about three hours, the teacher unzipped the fly on the back of his pants and squatted over the basin and preceded to shit the coins, one by one, which he would then pick up, lick clean and then swallow again. The entire revolting spectacle lasted an entire afternoon until the coins had gone through an entire cycle of being eaten, shat and re-injested then shat again after which he piled them in a small pyramid on his desk. When the final coin was placed on the heap, he zipped up his pants, gathered up the coins in his shirt and said,

'And that is why you should never trust anyone who claims to be a philathro-capitalist, class dismissed.'