During my High School years I have to say that I was never very impressed with my teachers. Now I’m not talking about their ability to teach, I did have some that were exceptional in that area. What I mean is that as people, personalities or whatever it is that makes a lasting impression on you, they were just Grits without the fixings. They were pretty one-dimensional; they were just teachers. But there was one guy who to me didn’t really seem to be “a teacher.” He was something different but I could never put my finger on it. This guy left an impression and I have never forgotten being in his class.

There was something more to him. He was a good teacher academically but his mind always seemed to be somewhere else. I often finished a test quickly and am not one to recheck my answers. So while others, more studious than I engaged in this waste of time I would just kick back. I often noticed him standing in front staring out the window, but I knew he wasn’t looking at anything. He was just somewhere else. Sometimes he would snap back and catch me staring at him and just smile and wink as if we just shared some little secret. I wasn’t quite sure how to take that ….

Normally I suppose his drifting wouldn’t have been a problem, but in his case it was! He was my High School Chemistry Teacher and performed lab experiments on the table in front of the class. I know now that this preoccupation that took his mind off of what he was doing was the cause of all the explosions.

Once he was making gunpowder and was trying to pour the ingredients into equal piles on the lab counter before mixing them. He just couldn’t get it right and had to keep adding to one pile or the other attempting to get the balance. By the time he got it right and mixed them together the resulting pile was enormous. He laughs and says no way he is going to light that and takes a small portion to the far end of the counter for the demonstration, tapes a Bunsen Burner to the end of the window pool and proceeds to touch it off.

It flashes as he ducks to the other side of the table just as a spark hits the enormous pile at the other end – WAMO! He eyebrows are gone and his face blackened as the room fills with sulfur fumes and gagging kids. There is bedlam exiting the room.

A few months later and he is extracting hydrogen from water via an electric current. If you ever do this I assure caution is paramount. Seems he let the extraction go on for longer than necessary and was of in Never Land again. BLAMO -  and takes out the class room windows when the unexpected explosion occurs. There were others, he taught many classes.

It was some years later and long after I had graduated from demolition high that the pieces all came together. I then thought I knew where his mind was all those afternoons in the lab. My High School Chemistry Teacher was Pulitzer Prizewinning Playwright and Author Paul Zindel!