He blinded me with science

By The Chemistry Marauder

As I walk into that room, I know it plain as day as those piercing eyes stare at me below that bald head; I have, of course, walked into another day of class with a can of pop. For you freshmen (or remedial sophs) who haven't guessed it by now, I am walking into the dreaded Chemistry class, where, of course, food and drink are looked upon as the Anti-Christ. Forget the fact that normal classwork means I'm dealing with acid that could burn holes through my flesh and kill fat men from a hundred paces, as well as inferno-producing Bunsen Burners; the real threat to my personal welfare is my afternoon snack. Back to my teacher. I won't give the name that goes with this Jurassic tempered bowling ball head, but he's the teacher who says "by the way" at least five times every lecture and then ends up talking about a "by the way" for half the class, while everyone tries to figure out if they should take notes. To protect his anonymity, we'll just call him "Mr. Tingstock."

Anyway, this class is after all, Chemistry, and Chemistry means test tubes, of which I have accidentally broken three of my original 10, only one of which this Tingstock knows about. Add to my list of casualties a dropper, a beaker, a lot of wasted matches, and, almost, the entire chemistry room, due to a mistake by a lab partner which ended in a gas outlet being turned into a flamethrower directed into a stack of notebooks. I won't go into too many of the details, but I assure you that it was purely accidental. I swear!

However, the truly remarkable part of this pointless story is that this Tingstock, the eagle-eyed detective who had caught me every day of the semester with a 5" by 2" can of pop, did not even notice our 3 foot long (I swear to God) fireball. This thing was big enough to singe my eyebrows. But it probably isn't an issue that Tingstock would too upset about, because, as we all know, a raging inferno pales in comparison with the danger contained in a can of pop.

Note from the Editor: As a student currently enrolled in Advanced Chemistry Seminar, and a big fan of chem teachers in general, I would like to say that I, personally, have yet to destroy a single piece of lab equipment, or bring pop into class. The Liberator and myself in no way endorse illicit soda or humungous fireballs. The preceding article was representative of a very, very important student viewpoint.