I have mentioned in long previous stories that I really liked my
drafting class from junior high and I kept on drawing as I come to
high school. The drafting teacher was an eccentric fellow that was
strict as could be on the first year students he would spend the
first week or two of drafting class, which was still done on paper
with pencils, teaching us what to do and how he wanted our
assignments turned in. He had been using the previous teachers
curriculum for so long that he knew what every drawing should look
like and so all he had to check for was what he called burnishing.
Burnishing is when you push the line hard into the vellum producing a
nice crisp line that you can feel on the back of the sheet. He told
us what pencils to use for which lines I found that if I used one
size down that I could get a better score with less effort and that
is what I was into. I loved the problem solving and critical thinking
needed to draft so I would never miss class and I would sit for the
entire period drawing as quickly as I could in complete silence.
Anyone who knew me or saw me in my other classes probably would not
have believed my single minded focus. A couple of times a class I
would take a finished drawing to the teacher who was in the back
drafting houses in a little side business he was running to be
checked. He would look at it and find something wrong in the finish
but not the rendering and give me a nine out of ten most times. My
best friend was in the class as well and he obsessed about getting a
perfect score and taking his time. I would just burn through and then
finish the curriculum a week or two early giving me time to do extra
credit which earned 2-3 points each and were more challenging so I
liked them better anyway. The instructor wanted more than anything to
be left alone and when someone disturbed his peace and quite with
goofing off, he was brutal in a very nerdy way. He had a few weird
things that he would say as insults that almost no one understood
because the pun in the insult relied on very dated slang. He would
tell kids who were messing around that he was going to pt a rubber
band around their heads and snap it a few times to make them 'smart'.
Using the double meaning of smart that no one had heard since the
50's. Gee, mister that sure does smart. After a few insults like
that and some nerd-rage yelling he would escalate the conflict and
physically remove the kids from the room screaming about how they
should not let the door hit them in the butt on the way out. That
only had to happen once or twice but it was always entertaining to
those not under indictment.
