Grade IX B had a reputation. A notorious one. It was by far the noisiest. It was, by even further, the least attentive. Teachers sweated with stress when they walked in and sweated with blatant relief when they walked out 40 minutes later. It was a room at the far end of the corridor where 23 pupils came everyday not to learn. They were like a collective against education. They appeared single-minded in their purpose. They sought fun and did so with a vengeance.

Trips to the principal’s office had no effect. Calling in the parents didn’t work either. They sat angelically, eyes downturned, fixed on their feet with acknowledged remorse; but altered their expressions and their actions as soon as the parents departed in their cars, suitably satisfied that their offspring was about to ‘turn a corner’. Actually, the change occurred no sooner had the parent turned the corner. It was back to basics, back to square one, back to what the collective did best.

Disciplining IX B, to all intents and purposes, seemed like an exercise in futility. “Sometimes, the answer lies in taking the martial arts approach. Not turning the teacher into a Bruce Lee or anything like that, delivering stunning chops and flying kicks. Nothing of that sort. Instead, using another of the martial arts principle: Make use of your enemy’s strength.” At least, that’s what Mr Gelibolou will tell you. His name — a Turkish form for Gallipoli — connected him, even if in a tenuous way, with war. Gerry Gelibolou. Australian mother, Turkish father.

“They loved cracking jokes, so I got them to make up skits around anything and anyone they hated. That was the proviso. They had to dislike the person or object. And of course, you know, they disliked everyone they had to study about. Shakespeare, Einstein, Newton, Pythagoras. Newton’s disc got ridiculed; As You Like It would have had Shakespeare’s hair standing on end looking like it had been microwaved; and Pythagoras’s hypotenuse somehow got turned into a hypodermic in the hands of a humourless dentist administering a jab to two siblings totally lacking in humour (the squares, as they were called in the joke) which of course made everybody laugh because we were able to see in a weird way the connection with the theorem itself: The square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides.”

Out of all this, continued Gerry, it was discovered that two of the pupils, Solomon J & Stephen F — among the entire bunch of jokers — had a particular aptitude for comedy. They could tell a joke with a straight face and time their punch lines to a nicety. This got noticed one day when IX B was in charge of assembly in the school quadrangle.

“The entire school had been gathered. Some teachers were apprehensive; others shocked that IX B were actually conducting the assembly. This is because they were serial defaulters,” said Gerry.

Suffice to say that by the end of the day, IX B was basking in the glow of a flow of accolades and actually enjoying their moment. “I think they themselves recognised that a moment had arrived in their lives. Instead of getting carried away with the arrogance of it all, they actually found that they wanted more of the attention. They were attention getters after all. So they set about diligently reading their texts. Searching closely, discussing among themselves, looking for that strand that would tickle the funny bone.”

When the exams arrived, they all got through, not with flying colours but they all passed. “Fifteen years ago,” says Gerry, “Stephen found his calling. He’s a top comedian, staging his own shows. As for the rest, some of them are parents awaiting the time when their mobile phones will ring and the principal will be on the other end demanding a meeting. They can see it coming and they somehow find that funny.”

Kevin Martin is a freelance journalist based in Sydney, Australia.