Chapter 7. Johannsen’s Skooldaze
When writing an account such as this one really has no excuse for not giving a nod to one’s schooldays, and so I tender the following excuses:
You see, in essence, as you may have gathered, I was a free-spirited lad, and not one who might expect to find his name being set in gold-leaf on the school’s honour board, there to glow for all eternity. And indeed, I was not; and neither did I hanker for such elevation.
I mean this school-business cut severely into my valuable time and I only really went because of having no option. Turning up punctually, putting in the hours and making an effort was something that simply Had To Be Done, it was explained to me in clear and unambiguous terms after having been caught playing “hookey” one time too many, especially should I wish to maintain amicable relations with my parents vis-à-vis food and shelter etc – following which I was confined to the house with extra duties and told to reflect on my sins.
Education-wise, though, broadly speaking (in the wider context of all things schoolish and everything taken into consideration by and large), I was hopeless. I mean for a start my writing was abysmal. You see, chronologically, this was taking place post feather quills but pre- ball point pens, placing us in the latter part of the inkwells and steel nibs era. As a result most sections of my different workbooks were a mess of blots and smears joined together by “writing”. Other less formal pages illustrated major WW2 air and tank battles or had been sequestered to make paper planes.
Then one day our Grade-six teacher gave up trying to decipher my writing. Thereafter, he informed me, I was to print all my work in capital letters.
It wasn’t much better.
The thing I remember mostly, though, was the continuous stress-knot in my guts – caused in general by the previous lesson, the lesson in progress and/or the lesson immediately to follow.
See for the most part I had no idea what the teacher was on about – possibly to do with the fact that, instead of listening to what he might have previously taught us, I was filling in the details of an exploding German Mk 3 Tiger tank or some such.
Exacerbating this classroom stress and anxiety was my having failed earlier to take note of such things as Horatio’s doings at the bridge, the population of the Pushquahti capital Dunghwadi and/or the principle product of Rasputistan – without even thinking about how I’d done nothing whatever of the last three days’ homework assignments and had neglected to get my diary signed anyway.
Yet there were things of interest to me at school besides capturing archival moments of World War Two. These were 1) Astronomy, 2) Rocks and Minerals, and, 3) (from grade 5 onward), contemplating to distraction the delights of a roundish young lady named Mary Bennet – situated at once, I regret to say, on both the other side of the classroom and the other end of the intellectual spectrum to myself.
Regrettably (and naturally, I suppose), she spurned my every lunging attempt at friendship, regarding me I now believe as a primitive form of primordial life from Jupiter or somewhere. And whenever I waxed bold enough to utter something in her immediate presence she would clap a dainty hand to her rose-petal lips and gasp in feigned wide-eyed astonishment: “…it talks!”
Equally regrettably, rocks, planets and the way to sweet Mary Bennet's heart formed no part of our educational curriculum. And while rocks and minerals were certainly collectable, I’d never had to bother, because my Dad had amassed a pretty comprehensive collection himself over the years. I’d made a few minor contributions to it as well, here and there, and more or less knew what each of the specimens comprised.
Then one day our teacher announced it was term projects time, the subject of which I can’t actually recall. And in due course the well rounded, porcelain-skinned angel of my heart's desire and most of the other pupils produced project books fairly bulging with cuttings-out, researched facts and information, figures, examples, maps, tables, illustrations and diagrams – along with lengthy dissertations on the required subject.
I, however, handed up an exercise book containing about a page and a half of mostly indecipherable scribble, completed during breakfast that very morning (if completed is the right word here, exactly).
The teacher glanced at each offering briefly as we put them on his desk. Then, when we had finished lessons for the day, we were called up one by one before departing. Interestingly, for some reason best known to himself, I was the last pupil to be so called.
"... I don’t know,” he said to me in quiet exasperation – after searching a while for just the right words. "Is there anything at all – anything – that might fan some tiny spark of interest within your mighty brain?"
I could hardly mention my dreams of sweeping the fair Miss Bennet from her bicycle an instant before the runaway locomotive / roadtrain / stampeding mob of wild buffalo ground her derangingly fragile and precious body to mince under its pounding wheels / hooves, so I said, "I um ... er... Rocks, sir. I'm interested in rocks."
"Well then," he replied (as a drowning man might grasp at an overhanging twig), "Why don't you do ... a project ... on rocks?"
Well, this was a breeze. I mean it was so easy I didn't even have to try. At the appointed time I handed in two project books and three trays of specimens, all indexed, cross referenced and described in detail. In the project books were hand-drawn and coloured reproductions of every geological map I could lay my hands on along with a number I'd more or less made up.
Mineral specimens and rock types I’d not been able to find, outsource or steal from my Dad's collection were illustrated (though he did donate a number of items voluntarily). And there was also a short treatise on the basic principals of geology, complete with appropriate sketches and diagrams.
So you'll fully understand, then, how it was only natural that on entering high school I should take up the subject of Book-keeping.
The problem, see, was that all the bigger kids kept telling us younger oiks how hard Physics & Chemistry was, and how we should avoid it at all costs. More importantly, there was, at that particular time, no vocational guidance whatever available to a pupil, let alone someone who might advise on that pupil’s aptitude – or give a shove, at least, in the right direction. And, as a result of all this, I'm prepared to confess here and now that not once did I ever manage to get a balance sheet to actually balance.
I mean how on earth were these two totally unrelated columns of figures somehow expected as-if-by-magic to arrive at the exact same total?
Meanwhile, the beautiful Miss Bennet et al were up to profit and loss statements and bank reconciliations and stuff.
Then one day my Dad suddenly withdrew me from high school. This was mid-way through Year-8, and so ended forever my dreams of selflessly saving the poor helpless Miss Bennet from one incredible peril or another – despite the fact that she had a right hook the envy of every boy in class and could look after herself pretty well anyway.
Apparently Dad wanted me to work at his copper mine, a proposal that suited me perfectly in the main. There I could learn to spit properly and to swear; there I could be a man amongst men.
Later in life I was to visit the Geology Department of Queensland University as the guest of my friend Dr Steve Dobos. He was lecturing there at the time, and one part of his afternoon's duties that day was to review (with two others) the field-project work of four third-year geology students.
And I couldn't believe how little enthusiasm each of the four showed toward their chosen subject. I have to say, too, that it was only with some determination that I was able to keep my mouth shut and to refrain from shaking them all one by one until their back teeth rattled.
So what was wrong with them? It was all so basic. I mean bloody hell, I could have done a better job of it when I was ten – and all whilst saving the entrancing Miss Bennet from her stalled bicycle and the sudden horrendous firestorm that was about to engulf her ... my fractured arm slung in the tattered remnants of my shirt and my geologica
l notebook clamped firmly in my teeth, as I abseiled her unconscious form the thirty metres down the escarpment I'd been mapping to the safety of the waterhole near my base camp.
So there you have it. We won't dwell on the subject of subjects other than the subject of geology here as I've probably gone on long enough.
Mind how you go. And remember: Failing eyesight is God's way of hiding your wrinkles.
Me? Coupla plastic lenses; vision like a hawk.
Rocks Johannsen*
*(Not his real name.)
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