During sophomore year of high school, when first period band ended each day, I scurried as fast as I could to Mr. Jeff Weatherly’s geometry class. I always finished my previous night’s homework at the beginning of class.
I started it there, too, so there really was no time to waste.
A few extra minutes were granted to me because second period began with school announcements. Filled with trite homilies and reminders to be attentive, students unironically ignored them all.
Working feverishly, I always paused when Mr. Weatherly read out the cafeteria offerings for the day. I was intrigued and delighted by his curious pronunciation of the inevitable green selection du jour, “ssshef sssolid.”
Mr. Weatherly was, as Shakespeare might have put it, “a man of finite jest”. I don’t recall that he ever smiled or joked in class, not once. I’m sure that, unlike us, he found no amusement in the name “Pythagoras,” nor in any theorem involving the “length of the hypotenuse,” which we regarded as a sly and naughty euphemism.
As in many classes, students were seated in alphabetical order. Holly Anderson was in the first row, first seat. I was to her right, in the second row, first seat. To my right, the third row, first seat was inexplicably empty. That fact is germane to this tale.
Behind Holly sat Steve Anderson, a student with whom I had never spoken nor had another class. Steve’s usually inattentive manner told me that he did not care if we were studying algebra or vertebra. I was quiet and serious; my laces were far too straight for his consideration, and he was too much a consummate goof-off for mine.
Mr. Weatherly had a curious habit of standing just to my right, between my seat and the empty seat on the third row. He would rest his left calf flat on the desktop, his shoe sole facing me at a distance of perhaps 20 inches, as he pontificated on the doctrine of original sine.
One day, as Mr. Weatherly was standing with his leg on the desk, I experienced an intense odor of putrefaction. Had some varmint expired in my proximity? A brief investigation led to an undeniable conclusion; noxious fumes were wafting my way from Weatherly’s nearby Oxford. I turned my head aside, tucking my face away from the stench, and covered my nose as best I could without being too obvious.
I observed Steve sitting with fingers wrapped tightly around his desktop, hunched over as if struggling to resist gale force winds. Conspiratorially, he whispered, “Stinks, don’t it?”
Oh, that such an innocuous phrase was my undoing! I had to laugh, but it seemed injudicious with Mr. Weatherly standing RIGHT THERE. Trying to hold back giggles, I started to squeak a little, producing sounds like air escaping from the stretched neck of a balloon. Steve was making noises as though he might hack up a hairball any second.
Mr. Weatherly had returned to the blackboard with his back to us when our repressed cackles grew too loud to ignore. He turned, sincerely unentertained, and asked, “Mr. Hendricks, WHAT is ssso funny? Would you care to share it with the clossss?”
His precise and extra sibilant enunciation, equally funny and horrifying because it was directed at me, had a detrimental effect on my self-restraint, now only a single control rod away from total meltdown.
What could I say in this situation?
“Can you honesty not smell that?”
“Do you have a sick dog at home?”
“Sir, have you considered that you may have stepped in something unfortunate?”
I tried to devise a response that would not guarantee a disciplinary excursion to the office. Desperate, I glanced over my shoulder at Steve. No aid or succor was to be found there. His eyes were shut and his face was screwed tight. He looked as if struck with dysentery in the vicinity of precisely zero toilets.
“Ummm, well, ah…” I offered with sublime oratorical brilliance, playing for time.
As my wife Angelina lovingly and frequently attests, I am a fantastically bad liar. At that moment, balanced on the knife-edge of hysteria, my beleaguered mind could only supply inappropriate verses about a fellow from Nantucket.
Attempting to throw the teacher off the scent, so to speak, I stammered out a minimal “no, sir.” By answering the second question, I had artfully avoided the more perilous first. Alas, it did not quell the oncoming tsunami within me.
Soon, Steve and I were laughing like crazed hyenas. You know, if hyenas studied geometry. The whole class stared at us like we had gone mad, perhaps watching our mouths for telltale foam and froth. I suspect Mr. Weatherly was contemplating a barrelful of the Ole Yeller treatment for each of us.
At one point, reduced to flaccid husks with tears running down our cheeks, we were too spent to laugh. Like pugilists hanging on the ropes, we uttered only the occasional helpless whimper until the class bell spared us.
Having escaped the consequences of our reactions, Steve and I gathered our books and filed out of the room. We nodded to each other almost imperceptibly, acknowledging an unexpected and newfound brotherhood, and continued on to third period.
