Battery acid and shiny bog paper
It’s Chemistry second lesson and as we walk in Mr Fleming has a car battery and a few othe itmes set up on his desk at the front of the lab.
We gather around as instructed as he begins to remove the plugs from the top of the battery to show the acid inside.
In my excited eagerness to get involved I pull out one of the plugs accidentally splashing acid into his face.
An immediate panic ensues and Mr Fleming rushes to run water over his face and into his eyes, I get that all familiar look from some of my classmates that once again I have ruined things for them.
Self-aid complete Mr Fleming drags me from the lab and out into the corridor.
“you are once again the centre of danger and disruption; you could have blinded me, you silly boy”
I have no response, I don’t really understand what I did wrong, it was an accident after all, and he looks ok to me.
“Stand there until I’m ready to deal with you and don’t move!” he shouts with a sigh at the end.
Now the corridor is a place I end up quite regularly during lessons and it feels like home.
After a couple of minutes stood to attention I peer through the wired glass in the doorframe, I can see everyone experimenting with the offending battery acid. I think they could do with a performance from my catalogue of funny faces, Mr Fleming does not agree and swiftly exits the classroom to physically reposition me against the wall.
After what seemed like hours of sliding up and down the wall, counting ceiling tiles and singing an assortment of made up songs, the bell goes. Everyone floods out of classrooms swarming to the next lesson. Not me I am hauled off to the headmaster’s office to explain why I committed an acid attack on my chemistry teacher.
Mr Bleak the headmaster isn’t that bad, I’ve got to know him quite well as I see him often when my teachers are unhappy with me for one reason or another. I try to explain I was only trying to help, but to quote Mr Bleak “that doesn’t wash” and I am sentenced to spending the next lesson against the wall in the main entrance.
This punishment served two purposes, one is so that people could see the naughty boy stood in punishment and the second, I can think about what I have done. The second purpose is a waste of time, I know what I did, anyway, sliding up and down the wall whispering songs seems a much better way to serve my time.
There is plenty to watch here in the main entrance, Sick kids going home with their parents, office ladies looking busy but not really doing anything and people delivering that awful shiny bog paper, the stuff that makes your backside sore without even cleaning it.
No wonder I always have skid marks on a school day!
