A Canadian teacher has been suspended for showing a group of teenagers in his class Salad Fingers.
Not because there was a blanket ban on teachers showing students videos or anything like that, but because Salad Fingers is a little, well, weird for anyone who’s never seen it before.
The teacher, James Thwaites, was working in a school district just north of Prince George, Canada, when he decided to show his junior high students some viral hits – primarily Salad Fingers.
I mean come on, a series of videos about a green gangly man with equally gangly (salad) fingers banging on about how much he loves rusty spoons was probably a bit of a culture shock to the kids he showed it to.
Add to that the character’s high-pitched, child-like voice and the fact he seems to get turned on by random objects touching his gangly hands, and I can’t really blame the teenagers for getting a tad freaked out by it all.
Show it to anyone our age (and most likely the teacher’s age) on the other hand, and you’ll get a completely different reaction – primarily one of laughter and joy at the prospect of being reminded of our younger/better days.
For those of you who might not know, Salad Fingers is a British flash animation web series created by David Firth in 2004, whereby the main character is a green, hunchbacked humanoid who has finger puppets as his only form of company. In other words, it’s hilarious.
According to the document outlining the suspension, written by BC Commissioner for Teacher Regulation Howard Kushner, the incident took place in January 2018 and also included Thwaites showing the teenagers two other ‘inappropriate’ films – Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared and ASDF Movie.
The report read:
One called Salad Fingers featured an animated character who says ‘the feeling of rust against my salad fingers is almost orgasmic’ followed by ‘I must caress your rusty kettle.’
The second film was called Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared which shows puppets drawing skulls, then trying to glue glitter on an anatomical heart, cutting a pie made of bloody meat and writing out the word ‘death.’
The third video was called the ASDFmovie which depicts stick characters including one female stabbing each other in a fit of jealousy, and then a number of dead stick children.
You’ve got to admit, it is probably one of the weirdest suspension letters to have ever existed in the history of the Universe.
Fortunately, Thwaites was only suspended for two days and was able to return to teaching after undertaking a short course.
Now if you’ll just excuse me while I go and watch Salad Fingers on repeat.
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A Broadcast Journalism Masters graduate who went on to achieve an NCTJ level 3 Diploma in Journalism, Lucy has done stints at ITV, BBC Inside Out and Key 103. While working as a journalist for UNILAD, Lucy has reported on breaking news stories while also writing features about mental health, cervical screening awareness, and Little Mix (who she is unapologetically obsessed with).