The First Complaints

 A few weeks later on the announcements I got some more complaints. This time it was really a surprise to me and I really didn't see what was wrong. Instead of the live announcements we prerecorded them a few minutes early starting with me wearing lots of coats and jackets and behind me on the white board the rather obscure lines of pseudo-Norse Monty Python moose jokes that runs under the credits on 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail'. This, among other things, is what it says:
“A Møøse once bit my sister ...

No realli! She was Karving her initials on the møøse
with the sharpened end of an interspace tøøthbrush given
her by Svenge - her brother-in-law - an Oslo dentist and
star of many Norwegian møvies: "The Høt Hands of an Oslo
Dentist", "Fillings of Passion", "The Huge Mølars of Horst
Nordfink".

We apologise for the fault in the
subtitles. Those responsible have been
sacked.

Mynd you, møøse bites Kan be pretty nasti...

We apologise again for the fault in the subtitles. Those
responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked
have been sacked.”


Every time I would finish and announcement I would take off a hat or coat and we would change the line of moose jokes behind me. When we played the tape back it was a fast paced, entirely modest, disrobing in front of inoffensive 20-year-old jokes. We got a couple of comments from students who liked or were confused by the jokes and we thought that it went pretty well. Wrong. The next morning as I was coming into school I was accosted by the vice principal who said he had to meet with me immediately. There was a parent who had been so offended by what her daughter had seen on the announcements that she had come to the school personally to have a little fluster about it. She was in his office waiting for me to explain why she thought I thought it was funny to put references to pornography on the morning announcements. Her daughter had watched the announcements read all of the jokes that were rapidly flashing behind me and picked up on the dentistry double ententes and got her sensibilities tarnished by reading “Fillings of Passion”. Which was a joke name for a joke movie about a joke dentist who gave a joke toothbrush to a joke girl who used it in a joke to carve her initials on a joke moose who bit her in a completely made up joke. I didn't get the problem at all. We had not shown the film, we had not read the name and pointed out that the word 'fillings' could have two meanings and one of them could be naughty. We had not even said, “Wink, wink, nudge, nudge – know what I mean?” I said the closest thing I could muster to an apology, the classic non-apology – I am sorry that your daughter was offended. That was not going to cut it for the mom whose daughter now had been irretrievably soiled and dragged through the filth that I choose to inflict on her against her will. She wanted me kicked off of the announcements and punished because she was mad that I wasn't even remotely remorseful. She was right, I wasn't. She left still mad and the other vice principal came in and we all had a chat about what a crazy prude that lady was and then we talked about how I should leave out anything that could seem offensive in the future. I agreed and went about my business for a bit.