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Jeff Curtis ('69) - Alumni Sandstorm ~ 05/01/05 
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>>From: Jeff Curtis ('69)

IV. Lights, Camera and Some Serious Action
Oh God, how we loved it when we got to watch a movie in class. Not a crappy
little filmstrip, although those would do, lacking anything else. But a real
motion picture with color (sometimes) and sound. The lights would dim, and
we would be entertained for some all-too-brief period of time, lazing and
gazing upon whatever edu-tainment offering presented us, and not diagramming
sentences or dividing decimals or naming the capitols of every blessed state
in the blessed union or.... thinking...or anything. Just sit back, relax and
let the miracle of modern technology do all the work while you observed and
absorbed the intended lesson(s). Now that's real teaching! Judging by the
size of the previously noted dual film cans, it was going to be a long
two-parter. We never got two-parters. I LOVED two-parters. Lacking a
three-parter, a two-parter was my favorite kind. I felt that I must have
been living right or something.
Into the room strode our teacher. I had had women instructors for my entire
school experience to this point. Unless you don't count the nuns at Christ
the King as female. I think they count as women, but I swear there was a
time when I doubted they were even human. I did half a year in the first
grade there and won't go into the grotty business of why I, um...moved on.
Anyway, the fifth grade was the first year ever that I had a male teacher, a
remarkable and life-shaping difference.
Mr. Ron Taylor was a heavy-set, jovial looking man in his early thirties
with a crew cut, a sarcastic coolness at times, and a generally happy
disposition that could turn as black as a thunderstorm on the Gulf Coast in
an instant if pushed once too far, or provoked once too often. He and his
family lived right across the street from the school, so he could walk to
work in probably less than a minute. I currently live in Seattle. You don't
go anywhere in a minute here. Less than a minute? Unbelievable.
He loved science and taught it with an enthusiasm that was contagious. I
mean, he had a good go at all the other material too, but the sciences were
near and dear to his heart, and evoking their magic with logic and labs to
the wonderment of the unenlightened (us) seemed to make him the happiest of
all. Thus, a significant portion of our class work and assignments had to do
with astronomy, geology, biology and a touch of physics. He taught
convection with conviction; conduction with electricity and radiation with a
warm glow. His enthusiasm was infectious.
Mr. Taylor strode to the front of the room, sat on the front edge of his
desk, one leg cocked across its corner and quietly did the attendance thing;
glancing up occasionally as he came upon the name of a potential renegade,
or at understood, due to precedent, trouble spots in the seating
arrangement. A wary eye panned in my direction and I quickly opened my desk,
feigning concern for finding my history book, as my elevated desktop blocked
his critical line of sight. The time honored principle "out of sight out of
mind", while applicable in many settings was not the case in Mr. Taylor's
classroom. Sometimes he seemed to have eyes in the back of his head and
could trace the origin of a flying spit wad or a hastily passed note at
twenty paces without ever noticeably looking up from his desktop. As a
result, spit wads seldom flew and notes were rarely passed. Not that he was
despotic in any terrible way. At his best, which had proven to be a
legitimate majority of the time, he was rather good-natured, nearly jovial
in his deportment. He often spoke to, rather than at his charges, which
conveyed a sense of one's being taken seriously, even proffering a bit of
respect. Being taken in any way seriously was far from the normal experience
of the average 10 year old kid, and as a result, Mr. Taylor was generally
well liked by his students and considered to be one of the cooler teachers
on the K-6 campus. But you still had to watch your back.
As I deliberately lowered my desktop, waiting an appropriate (but drawn-out
as long as possible) period of time, his head slowly came into view like an
Atlantic sunrise over the desk's lip.  He was still staring me dead in the
eyes. I had the distinct impression that he had been visually boring holes
through my desk the entire time I was ducking out of sight.
"Did you have your chocolate-covered motzah balls this morning Mr. Curtis?"
he inquired simultaneously demonstrating his surprising grip on the lesser
known intricacies of the Bozo the Clown Cartoon Show and my tendency towards
preferring the Bozo the Clown Cartoon Show to doing my homework. Pretty good
burn when you think about it. Just the kind of attention you really didn't
need.
Kind of stunned from the unsolicited Bozo-slapping, I responded with
something like, "Uhh..myea..huh...mmm. " driving home his point, I believe,
and shutting me up for the rest of the morning, guaranteed. He stood and
spoke to the whole class.
"This morning, " Mr. T opened, "We will be watching the science film, Hemo
the Magnificent, a feature with some animations about the human circulatory
system."
Animations?...oh, this was good...
"I must warn you that there are some scenes in the film that are fairly
graphic in nature and may make you a little queasy."
Really? That gory? It just couldn't get any better could it?
"If you start feeling sick, please feel free to leave the room. The film is
in two reels and will last over an hour"
Bap! Ding! Home,,,RUN! A gross-out film with cartoons that takes over an
hour-long chunk out of the school day. Who could possibly ask for more from
your standard, everyday, elementary academic learning experience? Not I, no
sir, not I.
So my initial assumption was correct and I had surmised rightly that we were
indeed going to get to view a lengthy movie. And it was one from a series
that I just loved. In the fifties, the Bell Telephone Company (there was
only one telephone company in those days) had produced a series of
educational films centering on the sciences and targeted at a wide audience.
Three of my all-time favorites, Our Mr. Sun, The Strange Case of the Cosmic
Rays and today's selection, Hemo the Magnificent were all directed by none
other than Frank Capra. And they all followed basically the same format
involving a very clinical looking laboratory in which Dr. Research, a bald,
professorial gentleman and his perpetually ill-informed dim bulb of a
sidekick discussed a specific theme of scientific knowledge in front of
several large screens. Upon the "magic" screen were projected film footage
illustrating various topics related to the main theme and, oh yeah, cartoon
animations that interacted with the live actors. It was pretty darn cool.
Much cooler than diagramming sentences.
By the time I was ten, we, and by we I mean the youth of America, were
consensually immersed in multitudes of cartoons. Warner Brothers, MGM and
Hanna-Barbara populated the airwaves with legions of characters in action
that were impossible to resist. They were what we watched when we got home
from school each day. They amused us before bedtime and shared Saturday
mornings with us as we lounged on the carpet or couch, still pajama-clad and
bleary eyed. Yet on this day, a school day, right here, smack dab in the
middle of a milieu traditionally devoid of such pleasurable diversions; yes,
amidst the dismal drudgery of my fifth grade class, we were going to be
"forced" to watch real cartoons. Ostensibly, there would be some educational
significance or learning to be gleaned from them.  Lessons subliminally
presented that would quietly rub off on the unsuspecting minds in the
classroom.  My position on the whole matter was very clear. If the Richland
school system felt that I could get a good education through this form of
personal gratification and amusement, who was I to question them? What a
great day this was turning out to be.
"But first, I want all of your math homework assignments from last night.
Pass them in, snappy!"
And there was the rub. Decimal work. Well, there really is no free lunch is
there? I didn't understand why all the fuss about a lot of zeros. And why
the places skipped from tenths to hundredths to thousandths. No one-ths.
And how to divide them. And how to multiply them. Or why I should care.
The previous evening's events flashed in my mind's eye:
Half-way through my homework, while some of the more responsible and
studious pupils in my class were struggling, I'm sure, against these
weighty, decimalic issues, I was taking a very long break to watch first
Yogi and Boo Boo irk Ranger Smith; then Larry Mondello irk Miss Landers; and
finally Buddy Sorrell irk Mel Cooley. That was enough irking for one
evening.
A matronly voice rang out, "Boys, time for bed, Get your PJs on and brush
your teeth." This was not June Cleaver or Harriet Nelson or even Sgt. Carter
USMC. This was my own mom and it was time to hit the hay.
"But I have to finish my homework." I said in a barely audible whisper. Not
that I was in any frame of mind to want to be doing homework at that moment,
nor did I care that it would be only half done in the morning (I had a well
practiced skill-set for gross rationalization and highly developed
irresponsibility talents...in those days). Morning, after all, could take
care of itself, now couldn't it? Thus, as desired, the whispered comment
relating to my inadequacies went unheard and unacknowledged.
But with the work presently being demanded by my teacher, here and now I was
facing the moment of truth that could not be ignored or rationalized. And
thus, the immediacy of the situation precluded further procrastination and
my point-five, fifty percent, half done homework paper was passed to the
front of the room, mingling with all the other dutifully completed,
one-dot-oh, one hundred percent, totally finished assignments in abject
guilt and shame. But from where I sat, as I watched my paper blend in with
the others and travel hand-to-hand upstream into Mr. Taylor's gaping in-box,
it looked just as complete (for now and from a distance) as all of the rest.
My anxiety began to wane, then disappeared completely as I realized that I
had been granted a temporary stay and would not have to face the
ramifications of my inadequate efforts for at least another day, maybe even
two. Assuming, that is, that there were to be no pop-quizzes, trips to the
board to "show my work", or early grading of papers by fellow classmates.
None of this was immediately apparent, however, and for the moment I was
free to turn my untroubled attentions to current events more enjoyable and
entertaining in nature.
And that attitude fairly well summed up my K-12 academic experience. The
gratifications granted through actual study, i.e. a solid understanding of
the subject matter, the warm and fuzzy comfort of whizzing knowingly through
test material and the total lack of anxietal encumbrances associated with
the inevitable harshness of parental\instructor disapproval, were never
enough to keep me from being easily lured onto the harsh rocks of academic
lassitude by the sirens' song of easily accessible entertainment even for a
mere moment of temporal enjoyment.
The curtains were drawn, blocking the sunny spring day that was going on
outdoors, and the fluorescent tubes on the ceiling started flicking off row
by row. I had at least till tomorrow to deal with the math homework crisis.
As I said, suppressing the call of future urgencies became a well-honed
talent with me, one in which I willingly traded immediate gratification of
the moment for the inevitable tensions of tomorrow. The dismality of decimal
endeavors and all the potential heartache they would bring, could wait.
Right now, far more pleasant (and immediate) happenings were afoot.
There was an anticipatory rustling in the near darkness of the classroom,
attributable to the shuffle of papers, books, desktops and chairs as my
classmates and I settled in. Then the sixteen-millimeter projector whirred,
rattled and rolled as a bright white beam bored through the air and onto the
silver screen which Mr. Taylor had pulled down covering the center of the
black board at the front of the room (covering up some nasty decimal chalk
work in the process).
The film was scratchy. I think that all of the films we saw in school were
scratchy. It was a requirement or something. The announcer began speaking
and sounded as if he was running his index finger up and down between his
lips.
"Th-be-be-be-Be-be-be-lah-Te-te-le-le-pho-pho-ne-ne-ne-Co-om-om-pa-pa-pa-ne-
ne-ne...". Then the soundtrack finally got a grip on the sprocket (or
whatever soundtracks get a grip on) and his voice steadied into something
intelligible.
The show was simply great. With innovative writing and presentation
techniques, oh yeah, and lots of animated characters, it made the subject
matter interesting to the point of awe-inspiring. Then came the
coup-de-gras. As we watched with untainted innocence, the images of actual
hearts beating; first bird hearts and then a real human heart, complete with
throbbing veins and arteries and blood and slime, blazed in living color on
the screen in front of us.
Now, as a card-carrying ten-year-old boy, this was what I pretty much lived
for. Societal decorum dictated that no matter how much gross-out gore we, as
card-carrying ten-year-old boys desired to experience or could handle, it
was generally frowned upon should we take matters into our own hands and
say, rip the beating heart out of the chest of that perky robin red-breast;
the newly arrived harbinger of spring. So our only real recourse was to see
something like this filmed, graphic depiction from time to time, or to get
lucky driving with your folks in the country, encounter a misguided flock of
starlings swooping up the road into the path of your family vehicle and then
pluck one out of the grill for closer examination or lab experimentation.
This movie had it all and I remained riveted to the screen through the whole
thing, and unavoidably soaked up knowledge of the circulatory and pulmonary
systems as a beneficial side effect. The ever-delicate Kathleen, at the back
of the room however, had had quite enough. I believe that it wasn't actually
the film's fault and that she had downed one to many Pop-Tarts (and Tang)
for breakfast that day. That's easy enough to do. But whatever the root
cause of her malady, right in the middle of the bloody beating bird heart
scenes, Kathleen succumbed to the highly uncomfortable pressures of an
alimentary system in duress and blew chunks all over her desk, the
surrounding floor tiles and, at its outer range, all over the back of
Bruce's shirt, the poor slob who sat in front of her.
It seemed that each and every year, at least one student had to barf in
class. It was stinky but exciting, in its own kind of
"something-has-come-outside-of-you-that-should-never-be-outside-of-you" way.
So it was, "Oh, look at that! " and "Eeewwwwww!" and , "Nasty!". Unless of
course it was you doing the woofing and then it just pretty much sucked in
every way a thing can suck. Vomiting any time was not a treat. Vomiting in
class was not a treat and highly humiliating. Being vomited on in class,
well, it doesn't get much worse than that, does it?
The fact that, due to Mr. Taylor's sharing of his anatomical knowledge, we
knew that the technical term for it was reverse peristalsis, was totally
lost on Kathleen who was humped over, mortified, grunting (and crying).
Bruce, wondering pitifully something like "Why me?" (and now also crying)
was fighting distressful reverse peristaltic rumblings of his own. And all
the rest of us just sat back and watched in a kind of silent, awestruck
respect for the incredible, coincidental intersection of entertainment
events to which we had been blessed on this lovely spring morning.
Then the smell hit us like a sudden wind shift from the rose bowl and
everyone remembered all too vividly what he or she had downed for breakfast
a couple of hours earlier. But in yet another serendipitous turn, Mr. Taylor
hit the lights and shouted "Recess", two of the happiest syllables ever
spoken in an elementary school classroom. So while Mr. Snow, the school
janitor, was summoned with mop and bucket to deal with the mess and Mr.
Taylor escorted a sobbing Kathleen and a stinky Bruce to the nurse's office,
the rest of us poured noisily out the north door of the classroom and onto
the playground.

To be continued....
-Jeff Curtis ('69) ~ Seattle, WA
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