Standing before a classroom of wide-eyed seven-year-olds, a man with curly hair and piercing eyes paced back and forth. A quadratic equation sprawled across the whiteboard.
"Dull. How is it that you can't answer this problem, oh future of the country? You, third row, stop picking your nose. It's abhorrent."
"What's abren?" The child still had a finger up his nose.
"Ab-hor-rent." Sherlock muttered something under his breath. "It means revolting, disgusting, appalling- no? Why did my brother assign me to the idiots?"
"My mother says I'm smart." Another child raised its hand speaking at the same time. Sherlock clasped his hands behind his back.
"Well then your mother is wrong." Sherlock ruffled his hair. "You're an idiot. No, no, don't be like that, most people are. Your mathematics session is over. Wait for your English teacher."
"We don't have an English teacher."
"What? John!" Sherlock rushed into the hall. John Watson was sitting on the carpet of the room across him, reading from a picture book. "When will the English teachers be coming to relieve us?"
"I-I don't think there are any." John looked around. "Excuse me, I'm reading. Do you mind?"
Sherlock ducked back into his room. To his horror, he found children out of their seats, rummaging through his things. Afraid they would find his cadavers, or worse, disturb his sock index, he shouted,
"Off! Sit down, or I'll report you all."
"We're bored." The children trudged back to their seats.
"No, I'm bored. You are boring." Sherlock searched his desk for something to entertain them with. He found a couple Rubiks cubes and scattered them across the classroom. He took out a couple Newton's cradles. "If you stick these in your mouth, Father Christmas will literally burn your house down and die at the same time." Looking out at a crowd of horrified faces, he picked up his book. It was Isaac Newton's Principia. He began reading from it.
Across the hall, John was finishing up. "And then the little kitten finished its dish of milk. Yummy!" The door opened. Men in suits walked in.
"Hello?"
"We're the school inspection."
"Oh, right. Ok. So, class, what did the little kitty drink?" He held up the book, titled, The Saucer of Milk with a smile. A kid in the third row shouted.
"Oranges." The class broke out into giggles, and the suited men frowned. In a few minutes they arrived in Sherlock's classroom.
Sherlock stood at the front of the class, reading from Principia. Children surrounded him, mesmerized by Rubiks cubes and Newton's cradles. No one looked up when they walked in. They walked out, amazed.
"Did you see that?"
"The man must be a genius!"
"With a class full of geniuses too!"
Sherlock was promoted and John was fired. Two days later, Sherlock was fired when a parent complained of their child being called an idiot and sued the school for three million pounds to cover the child's psychotherapy, which consisted of a vacation to Florida.