Studying the Principles of Trajectory

I’m lurching back half a century here to my days at North Sydney Technical High School in Australia.

Modern thought has it that corporal punishment is not a deterrent to bad behaviour. I say rubbish. It worked in my day—why would it be different now?

Johnny Woods, our woodworking teacher, was ferocious in his application of the cane. Nobody messed around in his class.

By contrast, Mr. Pugh the physics teacher, was only a moderate caner - I was never reluctant to test his patience.

We are led to believe that temptation can be overcome with a strong will. But not all of us are adequately equipped in this department. Take Adam in the Garden of Eden for example. He succumbed to the temptation of naked breasts and other delightful feminine parts.

My temptation—regarding the incident I’m about to relate—was far more prosaic. It arrived in the form of an orange. A green orange. A rotten orange.

It was a temptation I was unable to resist.

The orange—obviously a remnant of someone’s lunch—must have been lurking in the shelf under this particular desk for at least three weeks.

Normally all that would be encountered under a desk in an all-boy school would be gobs of chewing gum and the gleanings from a number of different noses, so I have no idea as to what prompted me to reach under there in the first place.

Maybe simple boredom. It was mid-afternoon on a roasting summer’s day and Mr. Pugh droned on interminably as he wrote up a lengthy dissertation about something-or-other on the blackboard.

Jeff

Whatever it was that had led me to discover the orange however, became incidental at that point. The fruit took on a life of its own. It was dusted with green mould…soft, sensual.

Oblivious to the whirring cogs of my Machiavellian young mind, Mr. Pugh ploughed on as he scratched chalk over the blackboard.

Cradling the squishy green orb in my hand I turned to my desk-mate Jeff Campbell and put to him the following proposition: “If you can hit Pugh on the back of the head with this, I’ll give you a dollar”.*

Jeff was always willing to embrace a challenge that flouted ‘the rules’. He removed the orange from my hand, stood, took careful aim…and let fly.

But he missed. The orange whipped past Pugh’s ear and splattered spectacularly on the blackboard.

Even at the time, I mentally awarded Pugh full marks for his reaction. He simply paused—chalk in hand—and without turning around said loudly but very calmly, “Lawson and Campbell GET OUT.”

Needless to say, Jeff and I failed Physics that year.

*Probably worth around twenty today.