You never know what you’re going to catch on TV on a Saturday morning at 4:45 a.m. Sometimes, luck and insomnia are on your side (especially if you slept most of the previous day away while fighting a sore throat and fever) and you happen to catch a 15 minute Talk Back produced educational segment on Germs sandwiched in between an episode of “The Office” (the original British version) and “The Mighty Boosh.”
Now mind you, this wasn’t your typical 20/20 or Dateline type of expose. No, it was a “quick, don’t let them know what hit them” interactive (“write this down”) episode in the series “Look Around You” spoofing those “made for schools educational science videos” that were forced upon us in elementary school (even then they were outdated).
In reality this write-up should be dedicated to the brilliance of Peter Serafinowicz, creator of these spoofs. However, instead all of those petri dishes brought back memories of my high school Chemistry class, so that shall be the focus of this column entry.
Before getting to the Chemistry, let me tell you what I learned:
-Germs originated in Germany and then spread elsewhere (Not to be confused with The Germs who “originated” in Los Angeles and then spread “elsewhere” )
- If someone consumes a few drops of liquid sewage and coughs in your direction it may take as little as 3 hours for your temperature to go from 98.4 degrees to 107.2 degrees. (I had a fever. Does hot chocolate from the McCafe count as liquid sewage? Because that’s all I felt like consuming.)
- I could easily get sick by kissing a dog or a tramp or by using a friend’s recorder (It’s safe to say I didn’t get sick by doing any of these).
Now on to the Chemistry…
When we last left off with this particular Chemistry class it had gotten me into trouble with an ex-boyfriend. Science and I have never really gotten along. I appreciate it and actually know some scientists (yes, even of the rocket variety), chemists, and NASA engineers, but the scientific route has never been for me. Really, it’s all my fault. Science has repeatedly unsuccessfully tried to sweep me off my feet. I’ll blame it on timing as every time it’s tried to woo me, I’ve usually been in a relationship with History or English.
Sorry Science, I’m pretty faithful when it comes to relationships.
In the family of Science there is Chemistry, which was one of the only classes in high school that I opted to not take the Honors version of and the only class and time in my life that I could be accused of acting out.
Let me begin by stating what should’ve made this class one of my favorites:
- The class was comprised of most of my better friends (seriously by some weird twist of fate most of my good friends, friends I still speak to to this day, were in this class)
- This class took place right after lunch
- The teacher resembled a mad scientist and if you took away the hair-trigger temper, he was overall highly entertaining to watch and listen to
- So long as I showed up and did the work I could easily ace the class
Now let me tell you what made this class one that I would only take one semester of (having to retake a semester of it at a later date):
- Driver’s Licenses – This class came at a time when we we are all beginning to get our driver’s licenses
- This class took place right after lunch. That is the Freshman/Junior lunch, so while this class was taking place the Sophomores/Seniors were at lunch. Now all my friends and I wanted to do was to also be at lunch with our Senior friends, not to mention the fact that all the other area high schools juniors and seniors had lunch at this time.
- Off campus lunch privileges – Juniors and Seniors got to leave campus for lunch, thus making it back for this class was not a priority
I could list a few more things but I think you get the picture. This class was seriously cutting into my time of being a high school socialite. Although I did manage to get a good grade for the one semester that I had this class originally (I’m still not sure how) prior to dropping it once my double lunch request got approved, I proceeded to do the following :
- One of my friends and I would show up at least 10-15 min. late to class almost every day, completely disrupting it. Sometimes we would stop and get late passes from other teachers and other times we wouldn’t bother at all.
- I spent most of my time in class passing notes or making wisecracks throughout class to make time pass by quicker (for some reason our teacher always let this behavior from me slide)
- I would ditch this class all the time (sometimes to stay out at lunch later, to meet some of our friends from other schools, sometimes to do nothing and just go to one of our houses and hang out until 6th period began resulting in mini parties at times) and then have to forge a note from my parents to excuse myself from the class.
- Early on, I recall ordering a pizza once to the classroom as a joke with a couple of other friends. Since I was the one who actually placed the order, I felt horrible once the pizza actually got delivered and the poor delivery guy was sent away without payment.
I’m sure there were other things that happened that I’m not recalling at the moment. Eventually, I got my wish to get out of the class and got my double period lunch. I don’t really condone this behavior, however, I can’t say it affected me much academically. Also, had the class been a History course of some sort I’m not sure I would’ve been so apt to behave in the same manner, I’m not sure that I could even now accurately predict what the me going through the “volatile” teenage years would’ve done.
As I said, I did have to re-take the one semester of this class a year later, so in a sense my actions did catch up with me as they tend to have a habit of doing.
Now, so that you too can enjoy what sent me down this trip down memory lane here you go, the Germs episode of “Look Around You”:
