This is a story about one school teacher. When I studied at school our geography teacher was a tall, bald, middle-aged man, Dmitriy Ivanovich by name. We were in the 10th form at that time and our class was "the most problematic one", like many teachers said. Dmitriy Ivanovich also used to say that because it was impossible for him to make us quiet at his lessons. But he got used to it.

Dmitriy Ivanovich was bald, completely bald. It wouldn't be so funny if one strange thing wouldn't be happening constantly. There are many bald men all over the world and there is nothing strange or funny about them. But not every man has a bruise of a funny shape on his bald patch. The thing is that every Monday Dmitriy Ivanovich came to school with a large bruise on his head which looked like.... some continent. It looked so real that he was like a walking map!

When we saw it for the first time we thought it was a birthmark. But then, after some days, it came off and the next Monday it appeared again, but usually at another place. It looked very funny and we immediately gave our teacher the nickname "our walking map". He didn't know that, of course.

We couldn't help laughing at Geography lessons looking at "a new continent" on the teacher's head. Each Friday we discussed, argued and even bet where and of what shape the next bruise would be. "It will be near the right ear and will look like Australia. Because last Monday it was near the left ear and looked like South America!", "I can bet it will be in the middle and will look like Europe!" and so on.

The strangeness was that each new bruise appeared exactly on Mondays. We were so interested in the history of these bruises that we decided to clear everything up.

Dmitriy Ivanovich lived in a block of flats next to our school, on the ground floor. We knew that because we saw him sometimes in the window of his flat. We also knew that he lived with a "crazy" wife, whose voice - when she was shouting - could be heard in our classroom, which was on ground floor too.

One Friday our boys decided to spy on Dmitriy Ivanovich. I don't know in details how they did that, but here is what they told us next Monday.

On Friday nothing happened: Dmitriy Ivanovich came home after school and didn't go out. But on Saturday....the guys were sorry for having no camera with them!

At about 6 p.m. Dmitriy Ivanovich left home having no bruises on his head yet. He went.... to the bar and stayed there till 10 p.m. The boys couldn't come inside so they didn't know what he was doing there. But he left this bar still without any bruises. The further the more interesting!

Our boys were tall enough to look into the windows of the ground floor, so they saw everything exactly through the teacher's window. When our teacher came in, his wife started shouting at him.

Well, 10 p.m. is not so late actually, you may think. Yes, but Dmitriy Ivanovich wasn't to blame for that. He was drunk. And it looked like his wife didn't like it. Hardly he had started justifying himself, she grasped a rolling pin and began to bang him on his head! He was running away from her about the flat. It was like a comedy.

On Monday Dmitriy Ivanovich came with a new bruise and knowing the cause of its appearing we couldn't help laughing the whole lesson. When the teacher asked one of our boys to point Australia on the map and turned away to sit down, the boy took a pointer and pointed at the teacher's bruise on the head.

Our class was the best in Geography since that day.

AM.