Mr. Darling

Teaches: Math Major Accomplishment: Grew the world’s 14th largest grapefruit Loves: Neckties, pinkfish, mints

Weirdly strict. Obsessed with his pinkfish, and every day, during recess, he takes them for a walk around the school yard and then usually reads them a story.

He also loves to take them hiking, and to the beach.

Always wears a necktie and is believed to have over four thousand of them in his collection.

Mr. Darling lives on the top floor of a tall building which is exactly 3.3 miles from Swedhump Elementary. He walks to school every day, with his pinkfish, and always follows an identical routine.

The first mile is on the left hand side of the road, and on the way Mr. Darling says good morning to every tree. He has named each one and he remembers them all. They then stop for a coffee and croissant at Jean-Paul Patisserie, where Mr. Darling does his daily math quiz from the newspaper.

They then cross the road and walk the next half-mile on the right hand side of the road, making sure to not step on any cracks in the sidewalk, or on shadows. If there is a long shadow that’s impossible to cross, Mr. Darling is allowed to do so by holding his breath.

They then cross back to the left hand side of the road and stop at his favourite store, Spider-Murphy’s, Purveyors of Gentlemanly Neckties and Breathmints. Every day Mr. Darling buys a new necktie for school, and puts it on in the mirror, usually to the nodding approval of both Mr. Spider and Mr. Murphy.

He then purchases 13 mints, pops one into his mouth, one into the pinkfish bowl, pays, and then crosses back to the right hand side of the road for one mile.

They then cross back to the left side of the road for the final mile to Swedump Elementary. Mr. Darling makes sure, for good luck, to hold his minty breath as he passes under the school gates. The fish do the same. As far as we can tell.

When he was young

Obominus Darling has not always been good at math. In fact, when he was young, he was terrible at it. He was pretty-much bottom of the class.

Little Obominus actually always wanted to be a citrus farmer. He loved oranges and lemons and he especially loved grapefruits.

Despite being terrible at math, he was very entrepreneurial. From age six to nine he maintained a lemonade stand outside his house – every single day; sun, rain, snow or sleet. He saved everything he earned and by the time he was ten he had purchased a modest grapefruit plantation.

Unsatisfied with the size of the fruits on the trees, young Obominus developed a secret recipe to make them grow bigger. Soon they were all huge, some the size of watermelons.

One evening, he was twelve at the time, Obominus was standing under tree 28 admiring the largest grapefruit he’d grown, when it suddenly snapped off the branch, hit him on the head and knocked him out stone-cold. He was rushed to the hospital and only woke up a week later.

For reasons that have never been explained, he woke up with a mustache, speaking in a foreign accent, and was suddenly BRILLIANT at math. He’d completely lost his interest in grapefruit specifically, and all citrus fruits in general.

In fact, he seems to be completely allergic to them.

The grapefruit that had hit him in the head turned out to be the 14th largest such fruit ever grown. Quite an accomplishment for a twelve year-old.