Herbert Garrison

Herbert Garrison (during sex change Janet Garrison) is the fourth grade teacher at South Park elementary. Mr. Garrison was a man through out the first eight seasons of South Park, but in the first episode, Mr. Garrison's Fancy New Vagina, of the ninth season, he got a sex change operation, and became a woman, turning male again in Eek, a Penis!. In the epsoide About Last Night he was one of them who voted for john macain.

Appearance
Mr. Garrison sports a green jacket and wears glasses, and also has a bald spot on the top of his head, and gray hair around the sides. His voice is deep and masculine, even after his sex change operation.

As a woman, he tailored his jacket into a tank-top, wore lipstick and earrings as well as shorter pants and new white shoes.

After becoming male again in "Eek, a Penis!", Garrison wears an outfit identical to the original one, with the only exception being a belt added to the trousers and a very minor change to his collar. Mr. Garrison is also left handed.

Personality
Herbert Garrison suffers from many psychological problems that are touched many times throughout the show, though it appears nothing is ever done about it. The most noticeable of his problems is dissociative identity disorder. At the beginning of the series, while Mr. Garrison still taught Grade 3, he held a puppet on his hand known as Mr. Hat. Mr. Garrison used this puppet to show a second, more aggressive personality and to emote some of his most inner conflicts. One of these conflicts being the fact he was gay, yet would not come to terms with that. It was hinted many times that he was gay, but Mr. Garrison would take deep offense, and insist he was straight. He would say Mr. Hat was gay, and later admitted his second hand puppet, Mr. Twig, was also gay. Mr. Garrison denied the fact he was gay so much, that he even appeared homophobic, and believed gay people were an abomination and weren't human.

Mr. Garrison is racist, first shown at the start of a running gag, where he proposes the town gets rid of all the Mexicans every Christmas. When rich black people were moving to South Park, he was able to gather the town's men into getting rid of them, under the pretenses that the rich people were taking over the town. He got people to dress up like "ghosts" to scare them away, and burned lower case T's on the black peoples lawn standing for "Time to Leave." Once the town was rid of the rich people, Mr. Garrison said they could all get rich by selling the houses. This confused the town folk, who replied that they would then become what they didn't want in the town. Mr. Garrison then exposed his true motive by saying "Well, at least we got rid of those damn nig-" (although technically the line was unfinished). Mr. Garrison was also seen among a KKK group, but said he wasn't a member, but Mr. Hat was, again using his puppet to dispute the conflicts inside himself. Mr. Garrison appears to be on good terms with Chef though, a black man who works at the school, and was even at his funeral.

Mr. Garrison is an incompetent teacher, who teaches his students useless things, such as why Chubby Checker left the Beatles, and once spent a whole week of just showing his class old Barnaby Jones tapes. He has also taught his students a few times subjects far too advanced for them, like Stalin and Communism. There have only been a few instances when Mr. Garrison has taught a normal subject for a Fourth Grade class, mostly Times Tables. Yet he goes about it by insulting the kids when they get an answer wrong, which is often. It is possible that Mr. Garrison teaches the students more about pop culture because he himself does not know a lot about the school curriculum, or just doesn't pay attention to it.

History
Herbert Garrison grew up in Arkansas, where the beginning of his problems began. Even at a young age Garrison showed signs of homosexuality, when he felt unloved by his father when he wouldn't molest him. Garrison had read about and seen on the news many cases of child molestation, and saw it as a form of love, not something commited by a pervert. Garrison received a degree of mechanical engineering in college. It is unsure when, but Garrison then became the third grade teacher at South Park elementary, despite his lack of knowledge of his subjects. He was caught trying to molest a boy, Eric Cartman, who was looking to find an older and more mature person to hang out with. After Garrison was released from prison, he was fired from his job for what he had tried to do, and was he left to the mountains to live in solitude. When Miss. Choksondik comes to see him in the mountain for advice on how to handle his class, he realized that he must admit his sexuality, and gets another job at South Park elementary teaching the Kindergarten class.

After Ms. Choksondik's death, Garrison was promoted as the fourth Grade teacher, and was reunited with his old class. He had started a new relationship with a man called Mr. Slave, who in the episode The Death Camp of Tolerance was used by Garrison to try and get himself fired for being gay, so that he could sue the school for millions of dollars. Unfortunately for him, his plan failed, and he ended up having to get to Tolerance camp because of his intolerance of homosexuals. Garrison then got a sex change operation, realizing he wasn't gay, but just a woman stuck in a man's body, and changed her name to Janet. This led to the break up of him and Mr. Slave, who said he liked having sex with men, not woman. It was at this point that Mrs. Garrison became homophobic once more, and returned to her original beliefs on homosexuals. Mrs. Garrison was very promiscuous with her sexuality, claiming to have let truckers 'do' her in their trucks.

After she learned she could not have periods or get pregnant, Mrs. Garrison realized she was not actually a woman, but it was to late to have the operation undone, and she accepted what she was. When Mrs. Garrison learned that Mr. Slave was going to marry Big Gay Al, he tried to stop the governor from passing the law for gay marriage, by having two of his male students(Stan & Kyle)take care of an egg. He expected the two to break the egg, thus proving gay couples were irresponsible and could not take care of a child. The egg though was still intact by the end of the project, letting gay couples marry. Mrs. Garrison was morally opposed to teaching Evolution in "Go God Go", and was replaced by Richard Dawkins as the teacher. After initially fighting one another, the two form a relationship and Richard Dawkins convinces Mrs. Garrison to give up Christianity and become and atheist like him. Dawkin's views on Athism and Mrs. Garrison's 'assertion' combined would apparently lead to the world becoming atheists. Their relationship ends though when Eric Cartman reveals that Mrs. Garrison use to be a man.

Mrs. Garrison explored her sexuality some more after mistakenly going into a Lesbian Bar, and ending up having sex with a woman named Allison. She took to her new sexuality quickly, defending Lesbian rights and Les Bos, the bar where she became a gay again. Yet in "Eek, a Penis!", after watching a show of Oprah about a woman who had a sex change, but is still having a child made him realize that even though he had a sex change he is still basically a man. He pays to have his penis re-grown using his DNA and became a man once more.

Mr. Hat, Mr. Twig, and Mr. Slave
Through out the seasons, Mr. Garrison has had three teaching assistants. The first of these was Mr. Hat. It was through this puppet that Mr. Garrison channeled deep emotions through him he was afraid to show, like the fact he was gay. Mr. Garrison would use Mr. Hat to voice things he himself would never have said at the beginning of the show. Mr. Hat was gay and racist, according to Mr. Garrison, who he himself denied being. Yet surprisingly, Mr. Hat was able to do things without the help of Mr. Garrison, which makes many people wonder if Mr. Hat does have a mind of his own. Some of those instances are when Mr. Hat drove a car through a prison wall to rescue Mr. Garrison and Chef, and he has blinked and moved his eyes around a few times. Mr. Garrison had a debate with Mr. Hat about whether or not to go to a KKK meeting, and when Mr. Garrison refused, Mr. Hat disappeared from the room.

Mr. Garrison replaced Mr. Hat with a new hand puppet, Mr. Twig. Mr. Twig is a twig wearing the same shirt as Mr. Hat, and spoke in the same voice until his final episode, where he spoke in a french accent. Mr. Garrison's students did not receive Mr. Twig well, and wanted Mr. Hat back. Mr. Garrison insisted Mr. Hat would never be coming back. In the episode Chef Aid, Mr. Twig kept on ending up in unfortunate accidents. Mr. Garrison soon discovered they were being caused by Mr. Hat, who wanted him to take him back. In the end of the episode, Mr. Twig helped Garrison realize that Mr. Hat was the best choice, and Mr. Garrison discarded him, and Mr. Twig has not been seen since.

Mr. Garrison disappeared for a number of episodes, having been fired for trying to molest a boy. Soon though he came back to his old class in Grade Four, with a new teaching assistant, Mr. Slave. Mr. Slave was literally Mr. Garrison's slave, dressed up in bondage clothing. Mr. Garrison thought Mr. Hat was too young for students in Grade Four, though he may have discarded it, no longer needing something to channel his homosexual feelings. The relationship between the pair lasted longer then either of the two puppets, but it was after Mr. Garrison get a sex change that it ended. Mr. Slave said he was gay, and wasn't into woman, and left Mr. Garrison, later to marry Big Gay Al. Mrs. Garrison no longer has a Teaching assistant.

Quotes
"Spank my ass and call me charlie, isnt this exciting."

"Well you don't see that every day...

"You go to hell! You go to hell and you die!

"Can we get rid of all the mexicans?" (running gag)

"I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die."

"Okay, now lets get an answer from someone who's not a complete retard."

"Right. But who was the fattest, oldest skank on her period?"

"No, that's wrong, Cartman. But don't worry. There are no stupid answers, just stupid people."

"Gay people, well, gay people are EVIL. Evil right down to their cold black hearts which pump not blood like yours or mine, but rather--a thick, vomitous oil that oozes through their rotten veins and clots in their pea-sized brains; which becomes the cause of their Nazi-esque patterns of violent behavior. Do you understand?"

"Holy poop on a stick!"

"Now I know choirs are totally stupid and lame, but lets give her your full attention."

"Oh, I can't control them. The little fuckers say what ever the fuck they want."

"I'm not gay. I act this way to get chicks, dumbass."

"And the award for worst costume this year goes to ... Stan, for his stupid little clown-thing costume. Let's all point at Stan and laugh, children!"

"A haiku is just like a normal American poem except it doesn't rhyme and it's totally stupid."

"A ladder to heaven, that's fucking stupid."

"And that, Children ... is what you need to know about the facts of life. So lets review, Tootie left in the 4th season, but Blair & Jo stayed on and got husbands leaving the 5th & 6th seasons hideously stagnant."

"Oh fine! have your way with me! I wont struggle!......hey, where you going?"

"I hope you're not entertaining thoughts of raping me in this prison cell, Chef."

"Eric, did you just take a crap on my desk?"

"They're all over the place!" (Randy: What are?) "They're really furry!"

"How should I know! I'm a fucking MONKEY!"

External Link

 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Garrison