ANOTHER STORY IN MY POPULAR SCHOOL "DAZE" SERIES

 

Well, as you can clearly deduce, I've been on the school story kick lately.  As I write school stories, more experiences and memories come to mind, consequently, I write about them.  It's very interesting that more than 40 years later, I think much more about my classmates and my experiences in Public School, than I do of the friends and experiences I had in College, Grad School, and the Navy. I'm sure this is because in Public School I spent 12 years with my classmates during our "formative" years. I'm so glad that there are a few school classmates still in the area that I see every now and then and share our memories and experiences during those 12 years as we grew up together. Hey, Diane! Tim, "Whitey", and I are still planning to see you very soon. The reason for the delay is that we are still working on travel arrangements for the 2-mile trip to your place.

 

At this juncture, I must interject that I sure hope some of you are not becoming too bored by reading all these stories. I post them for 2 reasons. One is that I'm obviously a writer, not necessarily a good one, but I just have to write. The second is that by reading these stories, I hope to whet your appetites and jog your own memories to start thinking back on your own amusing experiences.  I believe such ventures are healthy for overall mental well-being. (Hey, I should know!)  I realize that I "go overboard" at times and post too many stories too close together and may overwhelm some of you, but this is the result of my "obsessive compulsive" nature but mostly your decision to be on the Internet.  AHA! It's all your fault! J  Although I'm nowhere near running out of subjects to write about, I was wondering if any of you readers who know me have anything you remember about amusing past experiences you have had with Tim and/or myself. Let me know and I will be glad to write about them! Please email me with your memories at the following link: Your Story Ideas  (This will also make me feel less guilty and conscientious about posting too many stories too often. After all, YOU asked for them!) ((Heh Heh, ingenious, Huh!))

 

All right, enough of this introspection, I'll save it for the Psychiatrist's couch...

 

The two classes in High School I didn't at all care for were Biology and a close second, Math.  This account is about Biology class. Our Biology teacher in High School was Mr. Carroll Sanders. His nickname, that adults always called him was "Snag". With a first name of Carroll, I can see why people called him "Snag". After I graduated, I called him "Snag" when I ran into him in Berlin Heights from time to time over the years. Of course, in High School we always called him Mr. Sanders. Sadly, he passed away a few years ago.  Interestingly enough, "Snag" was also the athletic coach and the Driver's Education instructor as well. In those days, there were no "specialists" and most of our teachers did "double duty". Another example was our Psychology teacher, Mr. Garland (aka "Bobo"), who was the High School Principal. Then there was our English teacher, Miss Purcell (aka "Ma") who also served as our resident witch.  

 

I have always had a broad range of interests; however, biology is not listed among them. For some reason, biology classes always include dissecting things to get a detailed look at their "insides". I could never figure out why the biology teachers were so adamant about teaching us what are inside worms and frogs. I guess it really took "guts" for the biology course writers to attempt to do that. The first thing we dissected were worms, which as everything we cut up, came in a big jar filled with formaldehyde. I detested the smell of it then and still do. Fortunately, ever since high school biology class, I haven't had to smell it. This is because after high school, I didn't take any more biology classes, assist funeral directors, perform autopsies, or do any elective or emergency surgery on worms and frogs. The first thing we dissected were worms. Each of us carried a dissecting tray to our places at the long tables in the biology lab. The trays were rectangular and looked like cake pans with short sides. Each one had a tar like substance on the bottom. We also got a holder full of round headed pins. The tar like bottom in the pans was used to hold the pins that held the specimen open as we cut it up. Mr. Sanders placed a big jar full of worms on the front lab table and we formed a line holding our pans and fished out a worm using tongs. It this point the fun really started as we guys saw the reaction of the girls as they grabbed a worm with the tongs and put it in the pan. After fishing my whole young life, it seemed odd to handle a worm with tongs for the first time. After we all had our worms, Mr. Sanders then gave us instructions on how to do an autopsy. Rather than spend too much class time with each of us individually, he would draw diagrams on the black board of each step. At that point I wondered if maybe cutting up stuff grossed him out too like it did all the girls. The first thing we were shown was how to pin the worms to the pan bottom to start dissection. After doing this in the already formaldehyde laden air, we grabbed a scalpel, which I already knew how to use from watching Ben Casey on TV, and proceeded to make the first incision. Incidentally, in those days, surgical latex or PVC gloves apparently weren't invented yet and we did everything bare handed which didn't seem to bother us guys. EVERYTHING bothered all the girls, much to our amusement and delight. These days everyone wears surgical gloves for everything, dentists, physicians, garbage collectors, etc. It's a good thing back when I took my physical for the Navy at the Armed Forces Examining Entry Station that the military Doctors didn't have to use a new pair of surgical gloves for each of us. If they had, I would STILL be standing in the "turn your head and cough" line. Incidentally, no matter how many guys were ahead of me in this line, the Doctor's ungloved fingers were always COLD!!!!  EEEEYUUUUUOW!!!!

 

While anyway, the first incision we made was to split the worm from end to end and then spread it out and pin the sides with a bunch of pins. I wondered why they started us with worms, since there's nothing much inside them. I later figured it was to prepare us for major surgery on frogs later on.  I think another rationale was to weed out the faint of heart and those with weak stomachs. Heck, it never bothered any of us farm boys. Before this, Tim and I used to play around with decomposed dead pig, cat, dog, wild animal, and cattle carcasses all the time. After years of smelling our dogs' "dead rotten woodchuck breath", after they ate the old carcasses of all the woodchucks we shot, we were used to all that. One time, Tim and I watched a veterinarian perform on autopsy on a dead Hereford cow that mysteriously died in the north pasture. We watched the whole thing, then went to eat lunch, and never gave it a thought. The only thing that ever gave me a weak stomach in biology class was smelling all the formaldehyde! I would much rather have smelled a dead worm or frog without formaldehyde. Now that I was accustomed to.

 

A few days after the worm autopsy, came the illustrious frog dissection. After years of playing around with frogs, I never realized all the stuff they had inside them, nor did I actually care. I never flinched as I cut up my frog and pinned all the skin aside, but here again, I had to contend with that nauseating smell of formaldehyde! Later in the week, Mr. Sanders brought in a dead cat in a big jar of, UGGGH, I just can't say it. This time HE did the dissecting, which didn't seem to bother him much. I guess he was only grossed out by dissecting worms and frogs. Another time, we messed around with a bunch of cattle eyes of all things. They were all faded from the formaldehyde. By this time, I had more than enough of that smell, and was overjoyed when the dissecting phase was finally ended. I've often thought that it was very fortunate, while I was in the service and held a Top Secret Clearance that I wasn't ever abducted by a Communist agent and tortured to reveal information. It's a narrow escape for National Security, because if I had been tortured all they would have had to do (if they had known) was to force me to smell formaldehyde for at least 5 seconds, and I would have told them everything I knew! Although why they would be interested about the inside of worms, frogs, cats, and cattle eyes, I'm not real sure.

 

After this, we entered the lab phase and messed around with stuff in test tubes over a Bunsen burner. One of the things we fooled around with was copper sulfate. We soaked various metallic objects in it and it would put a copper coating on each one. I brought in a beer can opener and turned it into a copper-coated one. Sometimes we would sneak out the container full of mercury and pour it out on the table and roll it around with our bare hands. Good Grief! Now days I've read that for a little spill of mercury, they close down the whole school and have a PVC coverall and mask clad biological hazard team clean it up! We had no lasting effects. I used to love fooling around with various biological concoctions in test tubes. One time Tim brewed some unknown biological substance in a test tube over the Bunsen burner and it exploded out the top of the test tube. The stain on the ceiling may still be there if they haven't repainted the old biology lab with some bright color. This is maybe one reason why Tim and I never took chemistry in High School. We were not encouraged to do so by our class advisors. I wonder why?

 

Another source of amusement for some of us guys, was messing around with the lab faucet. It had a thick dark tan rubber tip on it, which I assumed was used to rinse out the sink. We would turn the faucet valve on to a trickle and hold the tip and it would blow up like a balloon. We then let go of it and it would shoot a stream of water all over the place.

 

I think if all this happened today, we would have been classified "a biological hazard"! Well, in retrospect, I never enjoyed biology class, but in spite of that, some of us managed to have some fun, nonetheless. Say, I wonder if high school kids these days have to take biology and dissect various creatures? Does anyone know? What about that, Sue...

Well, there is one practical use for the stuff we learned in biology class. If someone wants to be the one that cuts off frog legs for expensive restaurants, they would know where to cut. One thing I've always wondered is why they didn't teach us how to make prosthetic legs for frogs?