For
the record, I didn't learn any chemistry in chemistry class. The
teacher was not very focused, not very knowledgeable, and not very
interested in us. What he was prone to was long meandering stories
almost always with an inappropriate-for-the-age-group payoff, and
spasms of rage which I have discussed previously. In fact we were so
busy not learning diddly that we ran out of time and didn't even get
started on squat. All this not learning left plenty of time in class
for goofing off, messing around, messing off and, God willing, even
goofing around. We would talk, joke, flirt with underclass girls,
you know? The basic required stuff in the core curriculum for
chemistry I would assume. Most of it wasn't very productive but one
day one of my brothers friends who sat in front of me had a book
called the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. I was drawn to it because
it had the words "DON'T PANIC" in large, friendly letters
on the cover. If any of you are fans of the book will recognize that
I stole that last line from the book, if you're not a fan of the
book, I made up that last line all by myself and it's pretty funny.
Anyway, he was a pretty mellow kid named Jeremy and asked if I could
borrow the book because he said he had finished reading it. I got one
page into it and I was hooked. The book I had my hand was actually
five separate books that had been bound together into one big omnibus
edition and from the time I started reading in the alleged chemistry
class straight through until about four o'clock in the morning I was
consuming some top-notch sci-fi parody comedy as fast as I could. I
finished all five books in about two days and then had that
missing-a-step in the dark feeling I get when there is no more story
and I am still unsatisfied. I have recommended it to anybody who
asks me ever since. In all honesty though, the first two or three
books a pretty good but the last two are not quite as clever and
wearing a little thin. Yet and still, one of my all-time favorite
books, so chemistry class was not a complete waste of time. Well, I
thought so at the time until I went to college and had to take
chemistry 101 and realized that I had not learned one shiny sliver
of a damn thing at all about chemistry or following advice from the
cover of books, and I panicked.
