"Has anyone seen my stapler?"

For anyone who has seen Office Space this little anecdote will be a lot funnier than for those who have no idea who Milton is because I had one student who reminded me so much of that particular character that it was almost scary.

I had two boys named Matt in my class- the first Matt is the one who was dumb enough to poke Nick in the "Shut the Fuck Up Ice Cream" story. The other Matt we shall hereby refer to as Matt F.

Matt F. was very tall, very skinny, and very unhygienic. He always had bed head, just like Nick, only Matt's was held in place by weeks of grease and oil. His face was prone to major bouts of acne and he rarely brushed his teeth. His glasses were broken and sat cockeyed on his face and when he walked he was undeniably pigeon-toed. That being said, Matt was also a genius with computers. He was a master at taking computers apart and putting them back together correctly and could, nine times out of ten, get the junk machines that were lying around in the maintenance closets to run again. However, because this is the DarkSide and these kids aren't here because they won the Nobel Peace Prize, Matt was also very good at taking computers apart in order to steal various pieces which he tended to squirrel away in whatever sweatshirt he happened to be wearing that day. It took me a while to catch on to this but once I did...well it didn't really make a difference. If I took a part away from him, he would just manage to gank another one from some other poor, unsuspecting teacher. It turned out he had unscrewed the front plate on the heater in his room so that he could hide everything inside. He had then taken a stolen CD burner and somehow (don't ask me how) hotwired it in order to burn CDs to a flash drive. I would sometimes tease him and call him MacGyver as I felt certain he could make a bomb out of a ballpoint pen, a paperclip, and a stick of gum.

The thing that got me about Matt wasn't the stealing or the masterminding of a superior computer generated race of robots in his bedroom. Rather it was his propensity to sit in the back of the room muttering to himself, occasionally having mild arguments. He would start out mumbling quietly, then after a few minutes would get louder, but only when he said certain words like "fire" and "explosion". This, folks, is why I say he reminds me of Milton who sits in his cubicle all day talking about burning the building down but no one really pays attention to what he's saying because he just looks like a crazy old guy who talks to himself. Anyone remember how that movie ends? That's right. Milton burns down the whole kit and kaboodle.