The Waffle Iron

I HATE Chemistry...

Yeah!! I've always HATED Chemistry... Right since I used to sit in Ms. Mathai's class, as a 14 year-old and try hard to stare in bleary-eyed stupour at the mindless equations and complex chemical behaviour that were being scrawled across the blackboard, with what is popularly believed to contain Calcium Carbonate. (I sometimes hoped there'd be traces of cyanide in it, so I could die right there.. and take the rest of 'em Chem-loving humbugs too.. Ha Ha!!) And, the half-hour lecture before each lab was like performing (an extremely harrowing form of) hara-kiri. I'd be one of the back-benchers, pretending to be so involved in the goings-on.. that you would think I'd fall off my perch on the top of the theatre-like (for lack of a better phrase) arrangement of benches, in anticipation of just how many spatulas of the nitrate I'd have to add after heating half a test-tube of conc. H₂SO₄... Oops!! Did I just make an explosive?? Geez.. I didn't know I was this GOOD at Chem!

Ewwwwkkkkkkk.....

The only thing that kept up my morale (with regards to %$#&istry) was the Chemistry Laboratory at school. It was this quaint, old lab that managed to exude a Gothic aura!! There'd be rows of shelves stacked with beakers of highly concentrated acids and foul-smelling salts. The huge desks had a range of 'paraphernalia'(hope I've spelled it right), including a Bunsen-burner for each victim. These burners, had some kind of gas-fuel that was supplied by old, rusted metal pipes that ran overhead across the room. In moments of despair (which were not so rare), I'd imagine those metallic monsters writhe and cry out shrill-ly and then turn upon me, twist themselves around my puny person and squeeze the air out of my lungs. My eyes would pop out and I'd barely get a yelp out of a terrified scream... and then... Well... I never got that far!!

In High-School, no girl with olifactory receptors could miss the Chem Lab. Especially when a hapless bunch of Chem scholars were manufacturing SO₂ . Even a rotten-egg doesn't smell like that! And there were rumours rife, of how a lab-assitant fell unconscious after a leak in those terrible metal pipes... Imagine how dreadful it is, to open the lab one fine, sunny Monday morning after a hearty breakfast of bread and scrambled-egg, have a whiff of toxic-smelling fuel, choke and fall as-good-as dead only to wake up in a sickeningly-sweet smelling room with green and white curtains and a whey-faced nurse staring down at you in evil satisfaction at being able to wield absolute control over poor YOU!! I'd mourn for days, for the breakfast that went down your throat but came right back out, only.. the wrong way!!

On that distressing note, I have to say a strained Goodbye... and wish all Chemistry students, luck in their endeavours! May God be with your breakfast!!

posted by Cos Θ @ 1:06 AM