Chemisty Teacher

by Jill Jonnes

Once Nels was telling with great glee about his time as a chemistry teacher. He chortled and chuckled away, his face just alight with mischief as he described a particular episode: “i told the girls [I believe it was an all girls school?] that I had been working on a major experiment and had finally gotten to the point of being ready to conduct the final test. I told them I would be setting it up in our classroom so they could see how it all worked. The next day the girls came in and I had built this incredible, complicated series of burners and flasks and tubes that took up a big part of the front of the class room and it was all full of strange-colored liquids, a real Rube Goldberg contraption. We lit various burners and the whole thing began bubbling and burbling and out at one end dripped into a glass a concoction that I held up.” Nels then with great drama prepared to drink the liquid–I confess I can’t remember what he told the girls the point was, but he also apparently set off some kind of bomb or dry ice to create a huge amount of smoke as he downed the glass of weird-looking liquid. The whole class gasped, Nels sank out of sight behind his desk, and–here his face with just alight with joy at the memory of all this–he rose again with a monster mask on, emitting terrible cries and groans. The class shrieked and pandemonium ensued. At which point, Nels pulled off the mask and had a good laugh. No doubt this was in service of some greater educational point, but that, too, is lost in the mists of time. Just classic Nels.