Honors Chemistry

I promised Ann a story from our days in Honors Chemistry.  I’m a little surprised that she doesn’t remember much from that class, since she sat right behind me the entire year.  Yes, I know.  I’m amazed I survived that as well.  At that point, she was, shall we say, a bit more “socially conscious” than what she would be even two years later, so she didn’t bother me much, and I was nice enough to keep her from falling out of her chair (as she constantly had her feet on the back of mine.

Anyway, jumping back to the story.  I remember one day during the spring (I remember it being during baseball season) when our teacher, Mr. Wolf, was talking about something related to flower or dyes or something like that.  A few people were interested, and so Mr. Wolf said something to the effect of, “If you want to, get some flower petals tonight, bring them in tomorrow, and we’ll do some experiments on them.”  I looked over at Bob and Scott, who sat to my right, and we all kind of shrugged.

The next day, we come to class, and Mr. Wolf has everyone head to the back of the room to begin the experiment.  Everyone, that is, except for Scott, Bob, and me.  We didn’t bring in any flower petals.  Mr. Wolf looks at us and asks why.  We looked at each other and responded, “You said, ‘If you want to.’  We thought it was optional.”  He frowned at us, but couldn’t do much, because he did in fact say that, even if that wasn’t what he meant.

So the lesson to you teachers out there, never begin a homework assignment with the phrase, “If you want to,”.

At some point in the future, I’ll teach my readers how NOT to be left at school like Ann was one afternoon as a senior.