"Mesenteric. " I said in a bored voice, causing her to give me THE LOOK.
"Yes. " She nodded, obviously taken aback a bit, and then went on.
She called on me multiple other times during the lecture, making the questions harder and harder. We covered the carotids, the circle of Willis, and all of the coronary arteries. Some of the questions I knew were not even part of her lecture, were not even part of high school curriculum. I came up with the answers every time, spouting them out in a monotone voice with an expressionless face. It quickly became clear to the entire class that some sort of battle was going on between Mrs. Crookshank and I. Finally, bored, I conceded the battle, telling her I did not know the answer to a question she asked. The look on her face was of weak triumph and more than a little relief.
She wrapped up her lecture just before the bell rang and assigned us our homework for the next day. As the class filed out she called, "Billy?"
I turned to her questioningly.
"Do you mind if I speak to you for a moment?"
"Sure. " I said, walking over.
Her eyes looked me up and down as I stood before her desk. "You seem to have quite a bit of knowledge of anatomy and physiology. " She almost accused.
I shrugged. "I like to read. " I said.
"Really?" She said. "What books have you read?"
"Oh the usual. " I told her. "Gray's Anatomy, A Physician's Guide to A amp;P, stuff like that. "
"You've read them?" She found this hard to believe.
"Yep. " I nodded. "Fascinating reading. I've even read your textbook a little. It's not bad but it oversimplifies things a little, wouldn't you say?"
She swallowed deeply, took a deep breathe, and then said, "Billy, I majored in Biology in college and I have an extensive background in A amp;P. I asked you questions today that are well beyond high school level knowledge and you answered every one correctly except one. "
"I only pretended I didn't know that one. " I told her. "I felt you were, shall we say, singling me out, and I wanted you to stop. " I smiled cynically. "Kind of unprofessional for a teacher wouldn't you say?"
She dismissed the subject of her professionalism, or lack thereof, with a shake of her head. "I see. So you're telling me that you've known the answers to my questions all of this time, but that you haven't answered any of them, either in class or on your tests or in your homework until yesterday?"
I shrugged again. "What can I say?"
"What can you say?" She asked, getting a little angry now. "This makes no sense. Why would you do such a thing?"
"Well Mrs. Crookshank," I told her. "I'm what's known as a classic underachiever. That means I have above average intelligence and good reasoning ability but that I am bored to death by high school because the curriculum is so scaled-down that the work is not challenging to me. This sets up a vicious cycle in which I stop listening and doing the work and therefore get far behind and fail many classes. It's mostly my fault of course, but the system itself is also partially to blame since it sets such absurdly low standards in the first place in an attempt to pad the statistics. I mean, when regional test scores are low, what do you people in the education business do? Do you beef up the learning or reevaluate your teaching methods? No. What you do is scale down the curriculum and lower the standards for passing, therefore making it easier for those "struggling" students to pass, but boring the crap out of those of us who would probably benefit from harder, more challenging classes. What then happens is that many of what could potentially be your best students simply don't give a damn while many of the less intelligent and less worthy ones have their good grades spoon fed to them by teaching them with Dick and Jane methods. "
She gaped at me. I knew I'd hit upon the very subject that line teachers like her had bitched about for years to their administration. In a few years, after several lawsuits about people graduating at a functionally illiterate level while promising students were actually dropping out, education reform would hit the State of Washington like a sledgehammer, improving things remarkably. I almost wished I could tell her that. She would still be teaching when it occurred. But I didn't.
"I read psychology too. " I told her instead, heading out the door.
I ran into Debbie at lunch. She giggled over to me and smiled. I greeted her, looking her up and down, remembering what her young body had felt like naked beneath mine.
"Word has it I'm the biggest cock-tease in the school. " She told me.
"Well what do you know about that?" I smiled. "Better than being the biggest slut, isn't it?"
She nodded, giggling again. "All the girls are asking me why I made out with you. "
"Yeah?" I grinned. "What you tell 'em?"
"That you were a totally awesome kisser. The best. "
"Thanks. " I said gratefully, wondering how long it would be until one of the other stoner girls decided to try for herself. "How are you today?"
She smiled shyly. "I could use another 'kiss' myself. " She said, blushing.
I chuckled. "I got something to do after school today, but why don't you give me your phone number? Maybe I'll give you a call on Saturday. "
She handed a piece of paper over to me. She'd already taken the time to write her number down. "Call me ANYTIME. " She said, walking away.
Period four, which I hadn't gone to yesterday, was Driver's Education. I was gratified to see that at least they took this subject very seriously. The information, though very familiar to me, was not the least bit scaled down. Period five was PE. It was spent learning the finer points of basketball. And though I enjoyed seeing all of the high school girls jumping around in their school sweats and T-shirts, I was no better at sports than I had ever been. I did enough to get by and let the rest ride.
As I dressed in the locker room some of Richie Fairview's cronies were in there. Usually they were the terror of the locker room. They eyed me nervously and came nowhere near me. When they started to approach some poor freshman slob, probably intending to make him cry just for the fun of it, I gave them a glare and they immediately found something else to do. I smiled to myself. Maybe I couldn't change the world, but I was doing a little bit at least.
Period six, the final period of the day was English. The subject was paragraph writing. I listened blandly and noted down my homework. I kept my mouth shut. When the bell rang I shouldered my backpack, found Mike, and headed for home.
Shortly after arriving home I gathered up a bottle of Windex and a roll of paper towels. Tracy had been lying on the couch flipping through a rock music magazine and had only grunted a reply to my greeting when I'd come in the house. However when she saw me heading out the door with the cleaning supplies she favored me with a pitying look.
"Going to clean Anita's windows?" She asked me.
I nodded, putting on a look of resigned disgust. "Yep. You know how it is. "
"Yeah," She nodded. "I know how it is. I gotta watch her little brats on Saturday night. " She shook her head in disgust. "Saturday fucking night! Can you believe the nerve of Mom and Dad? Volunteering me for that shit on Saturday night. And do you know why she needs a babysitter that night?"
"Why?" I asked, pausing in the doorway.
"Because she's going to a party. A party! Well what the hell do they think I was gonna do? I'm tired of them springing this crap on me at the last minute. I have a life too. "
I smiled. "Yes you do. " I told her. "Let me talk to her. I'll see what I can do. I'm not doing anything Saturday, maybe she'll let me baby-sit instead. "
"You?" Tracy asked with horror. "You can't baby-sit. "
"Why not?" I asked, already knowing what she was going to say.