EXCURSION INTO THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY

As published in the Newport (TN) Plain Talk
Release Date – Mar 22, 2012
Column Number - 1212


In my seven wonderful years in high school; I can clearly remember learning …; my razor sharp mind absorbed …; well, let’s see now, there must have been something I assimilated by merely being close to the spout of knowledge.

I am absolutely certain, beyond all shadow of any doubt that I learned …!

Maybe I learned the art of double speak and time killing. I have at least done that for you thus far!

Oh! Oh! I remember now! One thing I learned was that you don’t mess with Mr. Bray’s “bearclaw” leather strap carried menacingly in his back pocket. Oh yeah, do I ever remember that lesson!

I suppose Mr. Bray got up in the morning, did the usual “getting up” stuff; and then began assembling his “uniform”. His “business attire” consisted of white shirt and dark tie and dark suit with pockets bulging with several essentials: e.g., a cash box to “rob” the apple machine down the hall, a record book that cataloged all the excuses that Taburn Lovin and some unnamed others had given him for being late for the day’s learning experience, another record book that contained a TSSAA approved listing of “Stupid Acts and Actions Committed by Secondary Students”, various keys and “principal stuff” – and the “bearclaw”.

Oh yes, don’t forget the bearclaw strap. After all, he never knew what unsavory types he might have to confront in the halls up on “the hill”; and he might just need to take a swipe at them. Funny how the sacrificial victims were always of the masculine persuasion…

Any way, I learned that lesson at some point in my seven years of tribulation.

There were a couple of other things:

I learned that you cannot just plunge a wad of sodium into water and try to catch the by-product (sodium hydroxide – purty nasty stuff) without some dire effects. Of course, the class was dismissed but we still had to clean up the Physics Lab.

I learned that you couldn’t cut Mrs. Burnett’s Science class without her catching you; even for good stuff like a jazz jam session in the band room with other co-conspirators who shall forever remain nameless.

I learned that Miss McMahan had read and memorized each and every page of each and every book that was then, ever had been, and would ever be in the library; and that attempting to pull the wool over her eyes in the oral book reports was, in fact, an exercise in futility.

I learned that Mrs. Kennedy would identify and pull you out of the cafeteria line as a perpetrator that was deserving of Coach Brummitt’s borrowing Mr. Bray’s aforementioned “bearclaw” for the express purpose of the administration of corporal discipline to a certain part of your anatomy because of your complicity in the aforementioned perpetration of stupid acts and actions that were listed in Mr. Bray’s catalog of stupid acts and actions under the category of “Stupid Acts and Actions”.

I also learned that “nature abhors a vacuum”; and that you cannot open a dark room without spilling all the darkness out (and other miscellaneous variations of applications for this general rule).

“Nature abhors a vacuum”; and when you pop the lid on a void, it immediately fills with whatever is there (to put it in plain English).

That has stuck with me; and since I now find myself in my current calling, I have applied that principle over and over.

Whenever truth falters; whenever authenticity stumbles; whenever the Church fails – the false comes rushing in. Being a minister in my home town might have its drawbacks; but it is a real joy to show people who knew me “back then” that knowingly following The Lord Jesus Christ has far more advantages than blindly following the devil – and the retirement benefits are “out of this world”!

That much I have learned!

How about you? Who are you following and to what destination?


These columns are written by Tom Mooty, Senior (Very Senior, actually) Pastor of Newport’s West End Baptist Church; and all comments can be sent to tommooty05@comcast.net or P.O. Box 851, Newport.

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