The nose, I once
believed, was the organ responsible for both the sense of smell and for time
travel. All I need is a whiff from the exhaust of a passing two-stroke
motorbike and for an instant I feel exactly as I did when I was seventeen,
riding and falling off my own bikes. Conventional physics says no to time
travel because to move into the past one would have to exceed the speed of
light and to accomplish this would require the conversion of an infinite amount
of energy. Slightly less conventional physics (there was a programme about this
on BBC 2) claims that the "many worlds" theory of quantum mechanics
does allow for the possibility of time travel.
On occasions I
have speculated on the consequences of going back in time. Always I return to
the nightmare of the worst pupil. The scenario, which I may try to write a
novel about some day, involves a time-travelling teacher being saddled with his
or her worst possible pupil. Alone in my classroom, its walls decorated with
science posters and the kids' Skills for Adolescence work, I review my own
past, searching for my own worst pupil.
There was Fatman,
the boy who made obscene shadowgrams on my screened drawing of the female
reproductive system during a Standard Grade science sex education lesson. He and
his pals gave a first year probationer a hell of a time twice a week for a
year. I met them long after they'd left and they told me it had been
"nothin personal", offering me a swig from their Bucky bottle as
reparation.
It didn't start
with probation. On teaching practice there was a prototype Fatman called Paul
who took a dislike to me and was always going to get his old man up to see me.
During a second year science lesson he realised that he'd seen the element
sulphur before. He'd seen it in a joke shop and referred to the substance, in
stage whispers, as "fartin' powder" until I finally found a sanction
which made him stop. I told his "real" teacher.
Tommy - not his
real name - was another science pupil who and contender for the
"worst" tag. He belongs to my more recent teaching experience.
Lacking the scatalogical streak of Fatman and Paul, although he did once
threaten to show me his elephant impression which involved him turning his
back, pulling out his trouser pockets and pretending to take down his zip,
Tommy specialised in chronic attention seeking. They wanted to parachute him
into Iraq to wear Saddam down. When you upset Tommy he went straight to the
top, swearing never to return. He always did, usually with some bizarre prop -
a plumbline or a bird's foot.
Would it be a
torment to go back to meet those pupils as they were? Armed with the knowledge
of how they would behave I might be better able to deal with them. But I have
not revealed who the true worst pupil is. I did not teach him but he was a
pupil in what is now my own class room. I found his book the other day. He is
one pupil whose alternatingly shy to cocky behaviour I would have no sympathy
for. His futile attempts to impress the girls in the class would not amuse me.
I can picture him coming for a physics lesson, a subject which he copes well
with. He is thin - he would say wiry - and his hair is ridiculously long in a
style that was then fashionable. He mutters smart comments to his pal Scotty,
thinking he is being daring and rebellious. Under his blue parka with its
orange lining, its pocket on the sleeve for pencils and its furry hood, is his
school uniform. He sneaks a look at his Honda catalogue before the lesson
begins.
He has no idea
that he will be a teacher in his old school, teaching physics in his old
classroom.
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