The man. The myth. The legend. He is David Sampselle.

Time Magazine voted him the World’s Oldest Man, holding the record for a strong 38,243,999 years in a row.

As he decides to bring his teaching chapter to an end this year, let’s shortly summarize Sampselle’s most infamous teaching moments.

The year is 2187 BC: Sampselle hunts his own food while approaching his first teaching job at Big Rock High. How’d he get the job? He was so sarcastic that everyone confused it for genius. He carves lessons into the cave walls while kids toss the rock around.

Next, he’s Cairo’s very best teacher. He remembers when the ancient Egyptians created paper and thought it would have been better using camel skin, even though this method brought the humped mammals to brink of extinction. It’s because of him that the name went from the original term “cairoglyphics” to “hieroglyphic,” because he thought it was stupid.

Some time passes and he’s the head dean of Stratford Grammar School. What’s so special about this school? Well, he was in charge of proofreading the works of the class clown, William Shakespeare.

July 4, 1776, the United States Declaration of Independence was signed. David Sampselle was in charge of rewriting it 13 times because the colonies were widely illiterate, and only he could decipher the text so they could understand. By this age, he’d already developed enough skin to hold writing utensils in his neck folds, so this was not a challenging task.

March 1, 1965, Sampselle helped organize the Selma march. He was MLK’s good friend and a fan of his well-written sermons. He even offered to write one for him, but MLK said he was fine on his own.

The Current interviewed Sampselle to find out the secret to living such a long, healthy, and successful life, Sampselle simply responded, “alcohol.” When asked which kind and he said, “rubbing.”

Now we’ve reached the present. As Sampselle drones on about the English language, students draw up hypotheses on how their favorite English teacher is really an alien who transcends space and time.

What’s next for Sampselle? The world may never know. He’s too unpredictable. But every Watkins Mill student can say they appreciated his time here and wish him the best of luck to him in his coming retirement!