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| Image courtesy of Stuart Miles – FreeDigitalPhotos.net |
As I move through middle age, I reminisce more and more
about my schooldays. One salient memory involves a terrifying science teacher
and a gaggle of semi-illiterate chemistry students
It was spring 1972, and examinations were looming; important
ones that could determine our academic futures. Sitting in the chemistry laboratory
along with my 14-year-old school mates – almost all boys (it was an age when
girls rarely studied science subjects) – I awaited the arrival of Mr Webster,
the head of the science department.
Mr Webster terrified any pupil who ventured within 50 yards
of him. He didn’t need to shout; one look sufficed to instil bowel-blasting dread
in even the bravest of teenage students. So when he entered the classroom at
9.00 am sharp on that sunny April morning, the chatter amongst us instantly
ceased. He strode to his desk, turned to face us, and his laser-gaze scanned
the arc of potential victims who were all head bowed, avoiding his stare.
Suffocating silence lay over the room like a huge polythene blanket. It must
have been 30 seconds before Mr Webster spoke; it felt much longer.
“Procrastination”
Nobody responded. All one could hear was the faint whistling
of Bunsen burners from the adjacent laboratory
Mr Webster grimaced, grabbed his white chalk, turned to the
blackboard and wrote:
PROCRASTINATION
He turned to face his perplexed class, pointed at the board
and asked, “Anyone care to comment?”
I later realized that the point he was trying to make
related to our lack of revision for the imminent examinations, and how we were
all putting off until tomorrow the work we should have been doing today. But,
at the time, none of us understood what the word meant; we were all 14-year-old
scientists, not English scholars! I sneaked a peep inside my chemistry textbook
to see if the definition of procrastination lay in the same chapter as the one
describing distillation, evaporation and condensation, but to no avail. For one
terrible moment I wondered whether he was privy to our solitary night time practices,
and had concluded that our daily “cranking the shank” was impairing eye-sight
to an extent that interfered with our ability to name the elements in the
periodic table.
Frustrated by our lack of comprehension, Mr Webster threw the chalk onto the table, commanded us to "look the word up in a dictionary," and walked out of the classroom, leaving us teacher-less for the remainder of the session. He was a strange, strange man.
Ah, happy days!
