The Wave

He had never been able to figure out why he was so inept in that way, and so when it came to anything mechanical, he left it to Christy, his wife. She taught music and choir at Gordon High, and at home she was in charge of anything that required manual dexterity. She often joked that Ben couldn't even be trusted to change a light bulb correctly, although Ben insisted this was an exag­geration. He had changed a number of light bulbs in his life and could only recall breaking two in the process.

Thus far in his career at Gordon High — Ben and Christy had been teaching there for two years — he had managed to hide his mechanical inabilities. Or rather, they had been overshadowed by his growing reputation as an outstanding young teacher. Ben's students spoke of his intensity — the way he got so interested and involved in a topic that they couldn't help but be interested also. He was "contagious', they'd say, meaning that he was charis­matic. He could get through to them.

Ross's fellow faculty members were somewhat more divided in their feelings towards him. Some of them were impressed with his energy and dedication and creativity. It was said that he brought a new outlook to his classes, that, whenever possible, he tried to teach his students the practical, relevant aspects of history. If they were studying the political system, he would divide the class into political parties. If they studied a famous trial, he might assign one student to be the defendant, others to be the prosecution and defence lawyers, and still other to sit as the jury.

But other faculty members were more sceptical about Ben. Some said he was just young, naive, and over-zealous, that after a few years he would calm down and start conducting classes the "right' way — lots of reading, weekly quizzes, classroom lectures. Others simply said they didn't like the way he never wore a suit and tie in class. One or two might even admit they were just plain jealous.

But if there was one thing no teacher had to be jealous of, it was Ben's total inability to cope with film projectors. While perhaps brilliant otherwise, now he only scratched his head and looked at the tangle of celluloid bunched in the machine. In just a few minutes his senior history class would arrive, and he had been looking forward to showing them this film for weeks. Why hadn't his teacher's college given a course in film threading?

Ross rolled the film back into its spool and left it unthreaded. No doubt one of the kids in his class was some kind of audiovisual whiz and could get the machine going in an instant. He walked back to his desk and picked up a pile of homework papers he wanted to distribute to the students before they saw the film.

The marks on the papers had become predictable, Ben thought as he thumbed through them. As usual, there were two A papers, Laurie Saunders's and Amy Smith's.

There was one A—, then the normal bunch of B's and C's. There were two D's. One was Brian Ammon, a quarter­back on the football team, who seemed to enjoy getting low marks, even though it was obvious to Ben that he had the brains to do much better if he tried. The other D was Robert Billings, the class loser. Ross shook his head. The Billings boy was a real problem.

Outside in the hall the bells rang, and Ben heard the sounds of class doors banging open and students flooding into the corridors. It was peculiar how students always left class so quickly but somehow arrived at their next class at the speed of snails. Generally Ben believed that high school today was a better place for kids to learn than it was when he went. But there were a few things that bothered him. One was his students' lackadaisical attitude about getting to class on time. Sometimes five or even ten minutes of valuable class time would be lost while students straggled in. Back when he was a student, if you weren't in class when the second bell rang, you were in trouble.

The other problem was the homework. Kids just didn't feel compelled to do it any more. You could yell, threaten them with F's or detention, and it didn't matter. Homework had become practically optional. Or, as one of his ninth-graders had told him a few weeks before, " Sure I know homework is important, Mr Ross, but my social life comes first."

Ben chuckled. Social life.

Students were starting to enter the classroom now. Ross spotted David Collins, a tall, good-looking boy who was a running back on the football team. He was also Laurie Saunders's boyfriend.

"David," Ross said, "do you think you could get that film projector set up?"

"Sure thing," David replied.

As Ross watched, David kneeled beside the projector and went to work nimbly. In just a few seconds he had it threaded. Ben smiled and thanked him.

Robert Billings trudged into the room. He was a heavy boy with shirt-tails perpetually hanging out and his hair always a mess, as if he never bothered to comb it after getting out of bed in the morning. "We gonna see a movie?" he asked when he saw the projector.