LJ Idol week 12: Some Assembly Required
Of all my teachers, none had a name as unfortunate as that of my middle school shop instructor: Mr. Wacker. I trust I needn't elaborate on what a bunch of thirteen year olds could make of such a sobriquet. The possibilities were obvious and thoroughly explored.
However, he had apparently made peace with this fact of his life, or perhaps he was simply oblivious; for in seemingly blissful ignorance he compounded the disaster of his name with his voice: a bizarre nasal drawl that turned English into strange atonal jazz. Not identifiable as of any national origin other than Midwestern United States, it still reduced ordinary speech to a soup of diphthongs and strained melismas, so that a phrase like 'drill press' somehow ballooned into eight syllables.
What's interesting about my encounter with Mr. Wacker, though, is not his name, or his voice, or even his drill press. What's interesting is what it taught me about fear.
The project involved working with lucite plastic. We each got a plastic cube, cut out of a big sheet, which we had to polish. Once it was polished, Mr. Wacker would take the cube, heat it up in an oven, then squash it to an inch thick in a die press. He'd then hand it back to us and we would drill holes into it and dye them; then he would put the squashed, drilled and dyed plastic in the oven again, where it would somehow form back into a cube. The result of all this work was a two inch cube with funny, colored, curved holes in it that...well, just sat there and looked like a clear cube with funny holes in it. We didn't generally make useful things in Mr. Wacker's class.
Polishing the cube involved shoving it up against a polishing wheel: several disks of felt clamped together and spun at 1500 RPM by a clanking motor. It turns out that felt gets rock hard at that speed, quite effective at shining lucite. Also, according to Mr. Wacker, at eating through watch crystals, melting plastic pens, or tearing flesh off of errant fingers. Cheerfully telling us this was his idea of Shop Safety with thirteen year olds.
Also, he continued, the thing could break your jaw. Imagine a tiny, fast version of the big wheel they get some eighty year old dowager from Ft. Lauderdale to spin on "The Price Is Right": she always pulls the wheel DOWN. This wheel spun in the same direction. "So you gotta be-a careful," Mr. Wacker said, pushing a cube against the wheel, "because-a this-a thing'll spin what-a-ever yer holding right out of yer hands. If it gets a hold-a the top edge-a the cube--"
And at this point the little plastic cube seemed torn from his hands by a demonic force, up and over the machine and into the wall behind. We all jumped as it slammed into the wall like a bullet.
"So-a be-a careful a-holdin-a the thing, will-a ya?" he admonished us.
Having seen this display, I should not have been surprised the first time it happened to me. But I WAS surprised that first time. And the second. And a number of times after that. Surprised isn't really the word, either. A better one might be 'terrified'.
I quickly learned to fear the polishing wheel. Of course, I never actually got hurt, never mind killed; but at thirteen, a two-inch hunk of plastic flying past my face at eighty miles an hour was as close to death as I cared to get. I began to dread shop class. I was falling behind: I couldn't move on to the next project until I'd finished my cube, and I couldn't finish my cube until I got it polished. Mr. Wacker wouldn't help; the point, he told me, was for ME to learn how to use the wheel. Anyway, I'm sure he thought to himself, What kind of pansy boy is afraid of a spinning felt disk? Certainly that's what the other boys in the class were starting to ask. For that matter, so were most of the girls.
But I couldn't bring myself to do it. That wheel had me cowed. I'd stand in line to use the disk, and when my turn came, I would march up to the wheel, stare hard at its spinning maw...and step aside, politely inviting the next person to go ahead of me. And I'd wait there, and then when it was my turn again, I'd invite the person behind him to take a turn.
I got some very strange looks from people that way.
Eventually I conquered my fear. Or maybe I just made peace. I learned to use the wheel, and got a mostly polished cube, good enough to get a B- on the project. Life moved on, and I started the next project: a flat blade screwdriver that came out quite well. I still use it to this day, to scrape nasty things out of the cat litter box.
But the sense of pride I felt in subduing the polishing wheel doesn't echo in my mind anymore. The fear is all I really remember.
However, he had apparently made peace with this fact of his life, or perhaps he was simply oblivious; for in seemingly blissful ignorance he compounded the disaster of his name with his voice: a bizarre nasal drawl that turned English into strange atonal jazz. Not identifiable as of any national origin other than Midwestern United States, it still reduced ordinary speech to a soup of diphthongs and strained melismas, so that a phrase like 'drill press' somehow ballooned into eight syllables.
What's interesting about my encounter with Mr. Wacker, though, is not his name, or his voice, or even his drill press. What's interesting is what it taught me about fear.
The project involved working with lucite plastic. We each got a plastic cube, cut out of a big sheet, which we had to polish. Once it was polished, Mr. Wacker would take the cube, heat it up in an oven, then squash it to an inch thick in a die press. He'd then hand it back to us and we would drill holes into it and dye them; then he would put the squashed, drilled and dyed plastic in the oven again, where it would somehow form back into a cube. The result of all this work was a two inch cube with funny, colored, curved holes in it that...well, just sat there and looked like a clear cube with funny holes in it. We didn't generally make useful things in Mr. Wacker's class.
Polishing the cube involved shoving it up against a polishing wheel: several disks of felt clamped together and spun at 1500 RPM by a clanking motor. It turns out that felt gets rock hard at that speed, quite effective at shining lucite. Also, according to Mr. Wacker, at eating through watch crystals, melting plastic pens, or tearing flesh off of errant fingers. Cheerfully telling us this was his idea of Shop Safety with thirteen year olds.
Also, he continued, the thing could break your jaw. Imagine a tiny, fast version of the big wheel they get some eighty year old dowager from Ft. Lauderdale to spin on "The Price Is Right": she always pulls the wheel DOWN. This wheel spun in the same direction. "So you gotta be-a careful," Mr. Wacker said, pushing a cube against the wheel, "because-a this-a thing'll spin what-a-ever yer holding right out of yer hands. If it gets a hold-a the top edge-a the cube--"
And at this point the little plastic cube seemed torn from his hands by a demonic force, up and over the machine and into the wall behind. We all jumped as it slammed into the wall like a bullet.
"So-a be-a careful a-holdin-a the thing, will-a ya?" he admonished us.
Having seen this display, I should not have been surprised the first time it happened to me. But I WAS surprised that first time. And the second. And a number of times after that. Surprised isn't really the word, either. A better one might be 'terrified'.
I quickly learned to fear the polishing wheel. Of course, I never actually got hurt, never mind killed; but at thirteen, a two-inch hunk of plastic flying past my face at eighty miles an hour was as close to death as I cared to get. I began to dread shop class. I was falling behind: I couldn't move on to the next project until I'd finished my cube, and I couldn't finish my cube until I got it polished. Mr. Wacker wouldn't help; the point, he told me, was for ME to learn how to use the wheel. Anyway, I'm sure he thought to himself, What kind of pansy boy is afraid of a spinning felt disk? Certainly that's what the other boys in the class were starting to ask. For that matter, so were most of the girls.
But I couldn't bring myself to do it. That wheel had me cowed. I'd stand in line to use the disk, and when my turn came, I would march up to the wheel, stare hard at its spinning maw...and step aside, politely inviting the next person to go ahead of me. And I'd wait there, and then when it was my turn again, I'd invite the person behind him to take a turn.
I got some very strange looks from people that way.
Eventually I conquered my fear. Or maybe I just made peace. I learned to use the wheel, and got a mostly polished cube, good enough to get a B- on the project. Life moved on, and I started the next project: a flat blade screwdriver that came out quite well. I still use it to this day, to scrape nasty things out of the cat litter box.
But the sense of pride I felt in subduing the polishing wheel doesn't echo in my mind anymore. The fear is all I really remember.