It Flew Through The Air With The Greatest Of Ease

No idea where this came from (probably flashbacks brought on by doing math with Thing One) but for some reason I was thinking about my fifth grade math teacher today.  Specifically, the fact that he took it personally when we didn't pay attention in his class.

Granted, I owed him big...after I bombed the placement test in fourth grade because I was trying to finish first rather than work carefully, he was the one who rescued me from the remedial math class and put me in his advanced class, where I did well.  But as far as I was concerned at that stage of the game, once I got the concept of what he was teaching, I didn't need to keep listening, so I would sit in the corner of the classroom with a regular book hidden behind my math book and read peacefully during class.

One day, he noticed this.  Or more likely, by that particular day he had just had enough of it.  He came up next to me while I wasn't paying attention, grabbed my book, and tossed it the full length of the classroom, banking it perfectly into the trash can on the opposite side of the room.  And since it happened to be James Michener's book 'The Source' (yes, I was a precocious reader), which is the approximate size, shape and weight of a brick, it made a very LOUD thunk when it hit the trash can.  Everyone but me thought it was really funny, but I did actually pay attention in class after that.

In retrospect, it was probably good that I learned that lesson in a situation where the projectile in question was not aimed at me.  One of my more eccentric college Chemistry profs regularly chucked chalk pieces and blackboard erasers at students who tuned out during his classes!