Colonel Baker’s chemistry class

As far back as I can remember – no pun intended – I’ve had trouble remembering things. Take, for instance, Colonel Baker’s tenth-grade chemistry class. He spent an entire school year teaching us about the periodic table, electrons, neutrons, and atoms. Don’t remember learning much chemistry back then, but thanks to my selective memories they are a few things from that year and his class that I’ll never be able to forget.

Colonel Baker had to be addressed as Colonel or he’d get red-faced and start to yell. Somehow, every day, one of us guys would simply forget – then the entire class would watch as he ranted his way through the rest of class.

The Colonel was only one of two science teachers left at Briarwood High school after the now infamous frog incident. At the start of my tenth-grade year 20 frogs set for dissection somehow ended up in the lunchroom. Now to be honest, I don’t really know if the departure of one of the science teachers and the frogs were connected, but I do know it was the reason I took chemistry that year instead of biology.

Standing 5-foot-8, Colonel Baker had thick black plastic bifocal bottle cap glasses and possible the worst comb-over any of us had ever seen. He always wore black shoes, gray slacks, a thin black belt, a white shirt – short sleeved, of course — and not one but two pocket protectors. A unique style of dress, I will admit, but his strange choice of dress wasn’t the only thing I remember from his class.

Colonel Baker taught me how to use a slide rule — a skill which really hasn’t served me well in the world of today, but if I ever find myself back in a tenth-grade chemistry class I’d be ready.

Being a veteran of two wars, he taught us that war is bad. Being a prisoner of war is really bad, and being disrespectful while saying the pledge to the flag is the worst possible thing one could do while in his class. It was an unforgivable offence - one which earned the offender an “F” on his weekly test. But as memorable a chemistry teacher as he was, there was something from his class I remember teaching myself.

If you “by accident” mix everything in a chemistry set together you’ll get one giant stinky, bubbling mass of dark gray growing snot. A growing ball of gray snot which will continue to expand until it angrily breaks out of its container, quickly spills over the desk, slimes across the floor, under the metal door and out into the hallway. The gray blob cleared the chemistry class and the entire south end of Briarwood High School before it finally stopped growing. It landed its mad creator in the office with detention and mopping the hallways for a week.

A week of detention was nothing compared to the punishment Down The Street Bully Brad got for the hand grenade. Well, if my selective memory serves me right it really wasn’t a live hand grenade.

Bradley McAlester was the resident bully on Flamingo Street and head of the bully gang at Briarwood. He was feared as a bully but was no match for the warrior skills of the Colonel. Bradley thought it was a good idea to stand up and threaten to pull the pin and toss one of the green seed pods he got from the giant Magnolia tree in front of Sir Walter P. Holcomb’s house. He announced that it was a live grenade and the class scattered. It was a big mistake – good entertainment, but big mistake.

Colonel Baker covered the distance between the chalkboard and where Bradley was standing with lighting speed — disarming Bradley with a quick karate chop to the wrist, a skill he learned during one of his tours in Vietnam. When Bradley got out of the infirmary and was allow back in class, he never brought a fake hand grenade to chemistry again. He had learned his lesson. We all did. Ya don’t mess with the Colonel. I guess even with my selective memory, I really did learn something in his class after all.

So for my fellow Neanderthals out there with selective memories, here are some helpful reminders. You don’t bring a seed pod from a magnolia tree to chemistry class and say it’s a hand grenade. You don’t forget your anniversary (mine’s etched into my wedding ring), birthdays are on the same day each year - you simply have to remember which one, and there’s only eleven more days till Valentines Day. Try not to forget this year.