I Answered Yes!

A true story around the time I was seventeen

“Yes,” I replied after a moment of reflection. The damage was done; there was no use in caving in at that point. Now looking back, it seems strange that, even at seventeen, I understood how such a mistake would turn into a blessing. At well past forty, I see it as the pivotal turning point in my life – I answered “yes” in a loud clear voice.

 

To say I was independent as a teenager is being kind. The truth is I was horribly rebellious and self-centered. Ok, all teens are to a point but what I ended up doing took it to a completely new level. No one could have guessed that by the end of the school year, so much would change. You have to keep in mind, this was a time before classroom shootings and such would dwarf anything I would do.

 

The year started off pretty well, I was a junior, and things looked bright. No longer was I on the bottom half of the feeding pool. In school, I did not have to apply myself much to get by. Studying was easy but I found it to be boring. Boring was something I did not do; besides, I was just arrogant enough to think I knew everything there was to know by that point in life. What I needed was excitement.

 

On that first day, Katrina caught my eye. She was tall, beautiful and spoke with a heavy German accent, which made her all the more exotic to me, like Marlene Dietrich. She was an exchange student attending that year. We only had one class together - chemistry with Dr. Lamb.

 

Without question, Dr. Lamb was a fascinating man and one of the most influential teachers in my life. As a young man, he worked his way though college playing jazz piano in New Orleans. To look at him you would not think it as he was round, bald, with fat little fingers and covered from chest to knees in chalk all the time. He was the quintessential “lab coat nerd” one would expect to teach chemistry. That is until he sat behind a piano. He blew us away one day at a pep rally. He was amazing. Dr. Lamb was one of the few people I had any respect for then. Seeing his abilities in more than one area of interest opened my eyes to my own possibilities, without regard to the boundaries other might set.

 

As luck, and some quick maneuvering, would have it, Katrina and I shared a lab table. We were lab partners. Katrina not only was attractive, she was smart, smart enough to read me right from the start, That point not withstanding, we soon became an item and she did look good in my letter jacket. Katrina stayed with a family a few houses down from us on East Beach. St. Simons Island back then was not the place it is today. It had more woods than homes. Children had the freedom to roam the island at will and there was lots of room. The beach was a major travel route for teens and a good place to raise some hell and not get too much attention. I loved living on the beach.

 

In chemistry, we all had to pick projects to take on and keep a lab book we would turn in each week for review. We had to do a write up on the project we wanted and have it approved. My first idea was a chemical form of perpetual motion. Of course, I knew it would work but Dr. Lamb had his doubts. As he put it, “I don’t think it will work, but right now for the life of me I can’t figure out why so you can give it a try.” Turns out, he was right, but it did start the ball rolling for later events.

 

As the year went on, I was constantly in trouble over Katrina. More than once, we were caught in compromising situations at both her home and mine and one time on the beach by the police. Of course, I was grounded but as I had a balcony outside my window, it was an easy jump to the sand and I was on my way down the beach to see her again. It had gotten to the point where the school was going to send her home for fear of her becoming pregnant. Then, Dr. Lamb took me aside and put some reality in my mind. Rather than speak to me with authority, he simply laid out the facts and told me to make a judgment on how my behavior would affect Katrina the rest of her life. This was the first time anyone left it to me to figure something like that out. They agreed that she could stay, if I would stop seeing her. Neither of us was happy about it and I do not think she really understood why I agreed to it. I’m not sure I did either; I just knew I had to.

 

So, I was unhappy with breaking up with Katrina, unhappy with the school, pretty much unhappy with life. That is about when my chemistry project finally fell apart, Dr. Lamb suggested I look over all the research and see if any part could be used for other purposes. He said most progress came from the ruins of other ideas. For me it was at least a glimmer of hope. Turns out, it was the beginning of events that would change my life.

 

One aspect of my research involved better energy transfer in chemical processes. I thought there might be something interesting to look for there, the nerd in me coming out. Soon, I had reshaped my project for such improvements. All chemical reactions release some form of energy. That is basically how nuclear power works, albeit with physics. Reactors make heat, heat makes steam, and steam runs turbines to make electricity. I was looking to apply the same logic to chemical reactions. It did not take people long to understand that nuclear energy had another use, a darker use – nuclear bombs. Nor did it take me long to come to the same conclusion about my work.

 

I was pretty impressed with how quickly Dr. Lamb figured out what I was up too. I did not refer to chemical bombs, explosions, or anything like that in my notes but by the end of the first week of my reshaped project, he was giving me another talking to. This time, I was forbade from even designing the equations for such things. He warned me it was simply too dangerous. In hindsight, that may not have been the best thing to tell me. I started a duel project in secret. I would apply what I learned in class and worked out the equations and formulas on my own. In the end, I could only do the research as the materials needed for such things were under lock and key in the chemistry lab.

 

Again, there I was, seventeen years old, frustrated over the loss of Katrina, frustrated with the school, frustrated with being grounded (without Katrina, there was little use in sneaking out), and frustrated that the only thing that had my interest seemed beyond my reach. Funny thing about frustration, it too is like a chemical reaction, it builds up energy until it has to be released. That release came one night during a school basketball game.

 

Earlier that day, I had devised a plan to leave one of the windows open in the chemistry lab. It was easy to make the window look locked while it was still open. I did need an accomplice at that point, as I was too large to shimmy over the wall and through the dropped ceiling tiles between the lab and the locked supply room. I will not name my accomplice here (you’re welcome, M-), but had he known what I was up to, I don’t think he would have gone along with it. The stage was set.

 

During the game, we slipped into the lab, then into the supply closet and soon my device (let’s call it a device) was finished, all that was needed – a place to test it. I did not know was just how powerful the device would be. I mean I knew the numbers from my calculations, but to what end? Numbers can only take you so far, until you put a tangible scale to them, numbers mean nothing. That scale was coming.

 

We went to the near by pond and without much thinking, threw it in. What happened next was beyond my wildest expectations. The device went off with the loudest explosion I have ever heard. Later in my military life, the explosions in combat came a close second to what I heard that night. Of course, I was much closer to mine than I ever was in combat. It took us off our feet, a water plume rose at least 75 feet in the air, there was a blinding light of every color possible, the percussion took the air from our lungs, and we felt like a boulder had hit us. After the steam cleared and we picked ourselves up, the water level in the pond was down about a foot or so. What was worse, we could not hear. Thank God that cleared up. Later we learned the basketball game, some half-mile away, stopped to find out what had happened.

 

Needless to say, we did not get away clean. It did not take long at all for the truth of the matter to come out. So there I was, if front of a peer review board (that’s how they do it in private school, they gather your friends together and they throw you out!) of four students and four teachers. I took the lion share of the blame as that was fair. Besides, Dr. Lamb knew the truth of it and I dared not disappoint him more than I had already. At my hearing, for lack of a better word, Dr. Lamb spoke in my defense. He said it would be wrong to end my scholastic career for being overly exuberant. Here’s where a difference of opinion came in. Dr. Lamb and I saw it as simply an unauthorized experiment gone wrong, everyone else saw it as breaking and entering with intent to destroy.

 

In school, I had two teachers I really admired; of course, Dr. Lamb and the  other was William “Wild Bill” Coursey. I owe my interest in writing to him. I had the pleasure of being in Mr. Coursey’s English and literature classes all thought high school. His classes were anything but boring, he looked like Walt Whitman in his younger years and could bring the driest classic to life. Shakespeare was even a hit with teenaged boys under his guidance, he referred to Bard as “Good ol’ Bill Shakespeare.”

 

It was Mr. Coursey who presiding over the day’s events, somehow that made the whole of it more tolerable to me. After all was said and a short deliberation, Mr. Coursey delivered the news - I was no longer welcome as a student. Rather than belittling me or trying to make some moralistic point, he simply asked me one more question, “Do you think it was worth it?” After taking my moment, I replied “yes!” Then explained that right then the answer was no, but I was sure as years past, it would be absolutely yes.

 

Now as my life has moved on to many wonderful places and adventures, I can honestly say being kicked out of school was the watershed event that made me who I am today. I would not trade it for anything. Mr. Coursey, I was right, the answer is still a strong, loud, absolute “Yes!”

 

Author's Note

Rough Draft, with changes. My thanks go out to Constance for all her help. I am going to look at making it longer, seems to be the feedback I am getting.

Reviews

[Chiquita]

You had my attention throughout the piece. I would be interested in knowing more about how being asked to leave the school changed your life. I would enjoy seeing a final word on Katrina. Even something as simple as: I never saw Katrina again but thought of her occasionally.

I like what is here thus far but would like to see more.

[Valentine]

This is some tale..it makes me think of my own school years and being the "BRAIN" that people avoided the things I did to make them notice me..Not this kind of thing by far but some I regret//others I am glad I did them..you were just over bright and Mr Lamb for all of his kindness must have missed that..Loved your story..God bless and yes..the tale could have been longer giving more character to those mentioned so we could have had a glimpse of what made them tick..Valentine

[[untitled]]

Wow what a super tale! Such a unique experience and one I have never come across in a reading. Just a couple tweaks that pulled me from the read. "I need to tell you about Dr Lamb..." it stands out and is weak as an introduction of such a main character. Dr. Corsey could use some further development for us to engage ourselves into his character. I also think you could consider taking the most powerful statement "Funny thing about frustration...during a basketball game." And make this part of your introductory paragraph. I was an interesting read about your youth and I loved the heroines name!! :)

[Constance]

Very nicely done. :) As you know, I often write about the events in my young life that shaped who I was to become, and I thoroughly enjoy when someone else, particularly a writer who expresses things as well as you do, takes it upon himself to do the same.
Since it's a rough draft, I'll give you a chance to look it over yourself before I go correcting the spelling and grammar errors I see. There are a slew of them, though. Fix those, and this story is perfect. I love the way you repeated yourself a bit about your frustration, and this analogy: "Funny thing about frustration, it too is like a chemical reaction as it builds up energy until it has to be released. That release came one night during a school basketball game."
I do have one question- magnesium reaction?