CHEMISTRY INTERRUPTUS

I sat in the first row next to the door in “Wee Willie” White’s chemistry class and we were usually the last to turn in test papers and first out the door when the period ended. I liked this arrangement, plus I was surrounded by the brightest in the class and this often came in handy. Now, I am not saying we cheated, but we often double-checked our answers before turning in our test papers!

This particular day I am remembering involved a “pop quiz” that had caught me completely off guard. I was really struggling with some of the answers, and wished more than once that I was not one of those that studied only the night before test!

Just as I was about to offer up a prayer for some assistance, the fire alarm sounded! What a break! “Just weave yo papers on yo desk and file out da door,” Mr. White directed.

As we had been drilled many times, we quickly filed out the door, turned right, and headed out the backdoor to the fire-drill designated area outside. Once we stopped at the top of a small hill and looked back toward the school, secretly hoping to see real smoke, the whispering began. “What did you get for number 3?” “What?” “How did you get that?”

I was taking it all in and memorizing answers to the three questions with which I had been having problems. Just as I was about to get the last one from someone, “Wee Willie,” who had a German accent, and spoke English with a sort of lisp, mounted the hill and walked among us warning everyone to not discuss the test.

He scanned the little crowd and it was obvious that answers were being exchanged.

As soon as the all clear was given, we filed back in and took our seats. Some of us, me for one, began frantically erasing and changing or filling in blank questions.

“Puease pass yo papers to da front,” Willie announced!

I heard what he said, but still thought I had time, especially since his voice came from near the window seats. I continued to write and somebody began to tug at my paper, “Wait a minute,” I said, thinking it was the student sitting in front of me.

Then, I noticed the old dark skinned hands at the top of the paper and realized that I was playing “tug of war” with “Wee Willie” himself!

“Oh my God,” I thought with eyes wide open and mouth agape!

“Musee, I said no changin’ answers! For dat you get a zewoe,” he said as he tore up my test paper! I do not remember a teacher ever being that mad at me…well, maybe one more!

It was a long time before I was ever more embarrassed than I was at that moment. Everyone looked at me, my face flushed, and bountiful beads of sweat dotted my brow. Oh, I hate that hot glowing feeling that makes you feel dirty all over.

I sat back in my desk and contemplated killing myself with the now dull number two pencil I was nervously rolling between the fingers of my right hand. “Naw,” I said to myself, letting it pass, “that would be entirely too much pain!”

This was the second very stupid act I had committed in a chemistry class. If there were to be other imprudent incidents in school, I decided to let them happen in other classrooms.

Yeah…I know what you’re thinking…there is at least one more on the way!

…and yes…I did pass high school chemistry with a C+ average, but that was the end of my chemistry education. Here it comes…it seems me and chemistry just did not mix!

THE FIGHT CLUB

Looking back, I had a lot of fistfights in school, starting with the third grade, having had a scary episode with the “beast within” that I described earlier.

David was the first guy I met in Harriman that junior year that I felt deserved to have his head taken off. I do not know why he first rubbed me raw and instilled such a dislike for him, but it happened.

The first fight episode ended with the principal getting in the last and more memorable licks!

Purely by accident, because I am not normally a bully, my foot hit some books hanging out of David’s desk and they went sprawling out on the floor. “Don’t do that again,” he said before I could excuse myself!

I looked up surprised and caught the eye of two other fellow students with that “Go on! Do it again and see what happens,” look in their eyes.

So, I nudged the books out again and again David warned me, “Do it again and I’ll beat the crap out’ta you!”

There were those looks again – straight from the devil and prodding me on. This time I kicked the books so hard they shot out the other side, and before I could look up for the rewarding look from my fans, David was on his feet laying blow after blow on my head! “Gees, I guess he wasn’t kiddin’,” I thought!

Somehow I avoided a killer blow and managed to loose myself from the desk swinging around my waist, and pushed David back enough to allow me to recoil into my fighter pose.

David had stepped around between another row of students and desks, and like in your favorite western I flung myself across them, knocking the cards, chips, and whiskey bottles off (just made that up – it was test tubes that were breaking), and grabbed David around the waist and wrestled him to the floor between screaming girls and “get’em!” yelling boys.

Before David and I could finish one another off, Mr. White, our chemistry teacher, reentered the classroom and started yelling at everyone to “get back” and “Mushy (not his real name) and David! Stop dat right now,” he said with his German accented American lisp!

Holding each of us by a shoulder, and with his special sounding lisp, “Wee Willie” said, “Daveed and Musee (not his real name), u two r vaweey vaweey wooed” and lead us out the door!

Later, as we sat snickering in the principal’s office awaiting our sentence, we realized we had just committed a grand act. The significance of the “cowboy fight” seemed to wash over us at the same moment. We were legends – we had destroyed the chemistry lab (well, turned over several desks, broke several test tubes, and flasks) and disrupted “Wee Willie’s” chemistry class! We would be famous! “Now these towns, they all know our names…”

Principal Crowel walked in and handed down his decision…ten licks each, from his wooden paddle with the holes drilled in it! Believe me, there were tears in our eyes by the time the corporal punishment ended, but the thought of what we had done carried us through.

For days after that, guys would try to get David and me into another fight, telling first one then the other what was being said about the other. David and I kept our cool, though we still did not like each other very much, and talked when away from school. We finally came to the decision of putting on fake fights after school! Stupid? Yes!

However, that is just what we did, well, about five times that year. We would begin by barking slurs at the other and talking up what would seem to be the worst fight ever.

After school, behind the Gulf Station, a crowd of a dozen or more would gather and the name calling and posturing would begin. Soon David and I would be exchanging blows – real blows, with bloody noses, black eyes, and torn shirts! We were really fighting and for nothing more than the attention!

Seriously, for those that have never had fist fight, after the first good stinging punch that numbs your nose, cheek, or ear, you hardly feel a thing until several hours later. The only bravery comes in standing your ground long enough to get that first blow over – then adrenalin and the taste of blood protect you from any follow up.

The only real benefit from all the fisticuffs was that none of the senior bullies, actually no one, ever bothered us in school. They figured we were crazy and experienced and that it was best to leave us to kill each other.

For David and me…we chalked up one of the greatest “school daze” stories ever to come out of SHHS! We had torn up the chemistry lab! As I look back on it I now realize that I love David for being part of my life – part of my youth!

We have seen each other several times since and we have great respect for each other and behind each smile are the memories of the “fight club” – and its two youthful members. David and I have been friends ever since.

My days in the fight club finally ended my junior year, same year I joined, out behind the Gulf Station, in one final exhibition “cowboy fight” for schoolmates, with my “fight partner” David. It ended like the first, with someone else getting in the last licks - my dad for getting mud and grass stains on a new pair of “white” jeans.

It was the final showdown, because we finally became “seniors” – time to act like men.