Do you ever just have those trigger moments? Something happens, a song or a sound or even a smell, and all of a sudden it triggers a flood of memories that come charging back from the dusty dark recesses of your mind. And I mean 'dusty' and 'dark'. Somewhat like one of those B-grade horror movies, where your little brother decides it would be fun to lock you in the dark cobweb-filled attic with that old life sized clown dummy for four hours on Halloween, and then after about 45 minutes the clowns arm drops to its side without good reason, and you realise you hate clowns and that it might be a good idea to change your pants. Just not while the clown is watching - and what was I writing about again?

Right, Triggers. You see, I heard an old silverchair song the other night, and I'm not sure why, but it brought back memories of year eight maths with Mrs Oi at Normanhurst Boys High School. Now this is going back a few years obviously, but the memories flooded back. Mrs Oi was possibly around 4 feet tall, had a birds nest for hair and spoke with a thick Chinese accent. Obviously, this accent was at its worst when she was angry with us, so we (as multi-culturally correct students) decided to bring out the best in her Chinese ancestry by doing our part to keep her accent strong. Mrs Oi and I had what could be described as a small running feud for the 6 years that I was at school.

It all started when she tried to teach me maths, which I really didn't appreciate. Secondly, she kept giving me lunch time detentions for not doing my maths homework - because I hated it. I mean, you show me a kid that actually enjoys their maths homework and I will show you someone who will never represent the school at anything other than chess, ping pong or dungeons and dragons.

One time, I missed three consecutive nights of homework, and she decided to call my mother. Fortunately she was angry at the time of the call, and so my mother spent the whole phone call trying really really hard not to laugh at her extremely "stwong accent". By the time I got home, my mum was in hysterics and pretending to be Mrs Oi. She was walking around the house laughing and saying "Hewwo... dis es Mssrss OI!! Weeyum has nut been dowing hes homewok!" So I never really got busted for it.

Another time, when I had simply copied the answers out of my book, (and not included any working) she started to tell me that no one could possibly answer those questions correctly without any form of working. Me in all my arrogance told her that it was easy, and implied I was gifted and always did maths without working, and may have implied that if she couldn't do maths without writing down the working she shouldn't be a maths teacher.

She called my bluff and decided to make an example of me to the class. I was dragged to the front of the room, where she proceeded to write up an EXTRA-HARD version of the maths question, and handed me the chalk with one of those "Ok buster - prove it" looks. All eyes were on me, I could feel the class's anticipation. If I could pull this question off, I would totally be a hero in their eyes.

I don't remember what the question was, or the answer for that matter - it just isn't important. But I remember handing back the chalk with all the smugness of a vindicated year eight student. She just stood there - silent as the class laughed and high fived. Not only did I use no working, but the answer, all digits and decimals was exact. After a minutes celebration at the front of the room, I wafted back to my seat, a veritable giant adoring the worship of my people.

Well, needless to say after that effort I noticed that Mrs Oi was out to get me. More lunchtime detentions, more doing maths in the corridor, and definitely more trips to wait outside the maths staffroom, just because I beat her in the classroom showdown. I win, she gets vindictive -talk about triggers!!