W Is Tungsten
Dodgeball is the funniest movie I've seen since Zoolander, and follows a similar formula of ridiculous situations and several great cameos. Everyone left the theater with a smile on their face. It's perfect mindless summer entertainment. Now here's another nostalgic high school story.
In the fall of 1996, Fairfax County Public Schools made a decision they would later regret: putting David and Andrew Werner in the same class - Chemistry with Mrs. McElveen. This recipe for disaster also included our best friends (Don Simpson and Lucas Salzman), future Okay Samurai bassist Jeff Chin, and a plethora of nerds. Where do I begin?
Slug of the Day. The year began with Mrs. McElveen explaining her discipline system, which included the "slug of the day" - a rubber banana slug that sat at your desk if you misbehaved. Andrew got it on the first day. And the next. He would ask for it. In fact, Andrew got the banana slug so many times that Mrs. McElveen started punishing him by NOT giving him the slug.
Substitute Snowball Fight. Half the class managed to conceal and bring snowballs to the room during one memorable substitute day. Icy projectiles flew across rows of desks every time the teacher turned her back. I hid mine under a baseball hat on my desk but waited too long to attack. A puddle starting forming around my hat. The teacher noticed this and even made some joke about how I would catch a cold if I wore my hat, but she had no idea I was hiding three snowballs underneath it. At the next chance, I unloaded them at the other side of the room - specifically at Leland Manning.
Leland Pays Up. Speaking of Leland, one day Andrew pretended that he had Leland's test, crumpled it up and threw it in the garbage. Leland leapt over the desks to stop him, crushing Pamela DeGuia's glasses on the way over. Mrs. McElveen assured Pamela that Leland would pay for the damages caused by his wild behavior. The "test" was a blank sheet of paper.
The Test Is Not On!. After a two-hour snow delay, Mrs. McElveen wrote "The Test Is On!" on her board for incoming students to see, just in case they thought the late start would postpone things. Andrew snuck in and added a "NOT" in there, which later made Mrs. McElveen delve into a furious speech about integrity and consciences - but she never found out who was behind it.
Wake Up, Tony. During one particularly long lecture, a nerd named Tony fell asleep. Some kids thought it would be funny to throw paper to wake him up. As looseleaf crumbled in their corner, I took my shoe off and chucked it across the classroom, nailing Tony cleanly in the head. His neighbor quickly recovered the shoe and passed it to Andrew on the other side of the room. The best part was that everyone saw me do it except Mrs. McElveen. Hey, I was just trying to help the kid stay awake and learn.
"GET OUT!" A paper airplane was making its way around the class one day. It got to Tony, who attempted to throw it at Don. In one fluid motion, Don grabbed Andrew's binder, jumped out of his seat, smacked the airplane to the ground and yelled "GET OUT!", cutting off Mrs. McElveen in mid-sentence. Don couldn't stop laughing when she yelled at him.
The Rest. The four of us were always together in lab groups, usually taking great care to intentionally spill water everywhere as an excuse to clean up instead of returning to our desks. We wore safety goggles for every experiment and even during some written tests. I explained some chemical property in class by jumping up to a window and hiding behind the venetian blinds. Andrew always mispronounced beral pipet because it drove Mrs. McElveen crazy. One plump substitute always ate cake during class, and we swore she used the bunsen burners to heat it up. If we ever had to change seats because of our behavior, we simply rotated between the four of us. I once lied for ten minutes straight about owning a kayak to some student on the crew team. Don spent an entire class period trying to hit a nerd with pieces of his candy necklace, finally plastering him in the forehead right before the bell rang.
Not surprisingly, Mrs. McElveen retired the next year. But even through all the daily trouble, she actually liked having us as students - our definition of "bad behavior" was pretty tame compared to some other students. I tracked her down the next year to write a college recommendation letter. When she safely handed over the sealed envelope a few weeks later, I confessed everything that she missed. She thought the shoe-throwing incident was justified, and vaguely remembered someone telling her about the substitute snowball fight. That was the first and last class the Werner brothers took together.
Thursday, June 24 at 2:06 PM
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