The Coolest Science Teacher
I forget the topic. Let us say it was fire. Fire and water, though I realise no such topic exists.
There, on the front bench, was a fish tank three-quarters full of water. Through it, we could see the blackboard swim. Its formulae swirled, made more chalky-sense than before. Before the water.
And then, this last day of summer term, the last day before pints of Newcastle Brown and varied sexual relations, the last day of childhood, he opened a book. He said it could be any book, but he had chosen Dante’s Inferno. One girl knew it. The rest of us had little understanding of ancient literature.
He said he had chosen it because it was a book he had once been forced to read. He said: unleash your fears, set them free, sail away to an adult-land. He wished us luck wherever we were going, he would be surprised if any of us became science teachers.
Then he glued some pages together, sat them upright, the fanned pages looked like a sail boat. He poured a liquid on the sails, placed it on the water, lit a match and set the book alight.
He said: watch it live its last moments in fire and water.
Some giggled and nudged each other. Most sat, mouths wide, so wide they formed tunnels, and watched our fears burn on the water.
He smiled and said goodbye. We watched him go. As if on fire. As if on water.
Mark Russell was born in the USA, brought up in Somerset and has lived in Glasgow for twenty years. He has published poetry and prose in West Coast Magazine, Rebel Inc and From Glasgow To Saturn, and had plays performed in Glasgow, Edinburgh and St Andrews. His short story Waiting at the Big Red Rabbit will be published shortly in the anthology Sushirexia: 32 Stories About Hunger. His short story Ruck and his poem In the Garden of Smack & Weed will be published later in 2010. He teaches Drama and once lied to the KGB and got away with it.
