SIX SECONDS IS ALL IT'LL TAKE

As May creeps around, it marks the beginning of the end of yet another school year for loyal teacher blog reading friends of mine--Kathryn, Ryan, and Derek. And when I saw the Bottoms Up soda, it brought to mind a school reflection of 1977.

I was blessed with teaching English III to a class of 31. Four of the 31 were females. The rest--the football team, or at least half of them anyway. My first fear was for myself, of course. Secondarily, for the four females whom I grouped together rather than separate to the four corners. I mean I was a veteran in my 6th year of teaching.

One day, a tight end showed up for class with an Orange Crush in hand. "Clay, you know you can't have that in here."

"Six seconds, Mr. Quinn. "It'll only take me six seconds to drink it."

Now he had peaked my interest. "You can drink that in six seconds?"

"Oh, yeah."

"Let's see."

And I can't remember exactly what he did, but he flipped the can upside down, pulled the tab or used an opener and it gushed into his mouth. However he did it, he didn't use the full time allotted.

I was impressed, Clay was pleased, the class had been diverted for a few minutes that are so valuable when you think class time has been wasted, and we proceeded on with the lesson. Or was it lessen?