Mr. Amsel

From The Extended Group

Mr. Ansel was a teacher at Shorewood High School who took over teaching an Integrated Sciences 9 class containing, among others, Terry Lee, Matt Kristek and Matt Gamber after the original teacher left under undisclosed circumstances in the middle of the first semester. He immediately received unusual attention and talk among the students due to his right hand, which was severely deformed. Mr. Ansel immediately chose to discuss the origin of the deformity with the class, which was due to a water-skiing accident, though the details of it were over the head of most of the students and likely scared them away from the sport forever. Terry Lee was credited with being the first to describe him as the "Crabman" though due to the sophomoric nature of the nickname, a claim for shared credit could be valid. As Terry and both Matts became increasingly interested in Japanese Pro Wrestling aka Puroresu, a link was established between Mr. Ansel and Michinoku Pro wrestler Gran Naniwa, who wrestled with a crab-themed gimmick and often wore oversized foam crab hands to the ring. References were also made to how Mr. Ansel might use his hand as part of a submission move if he was a professional wrestler, perhaps similiar to Mankind's Mandible Claw. Mr. Ansel was a above-average teacher especially interested in the concepts of flight and engineering. His classroom environment was at times overly laissez-faire, letting the students work on packets in small groups while listening to music. This situation let to a semi-famous incident where Matt Gamber was over-stimulated to the point where he would not stop talking during the designated work time, leading an increasingly frustrated Terry Lee to tell him angrily to "Just shut up already!" Still, two major projects, the toothpick bridge and motor car assignments, led lecture topics to be applied to real-life situations, causing higher-level learning among the students. Shoreline historians argue that Mr. Ansel's general popularity among the students taught a valuable lesson to their developing minds to not be judgmental and insensitive to people with visible disabilities. No one knows what happened to Mr. Ansel, though admittedly research in this field has been underfunded and rallied against by the Bush administration.