Quinn

Episode #827

December 7, 2024

Mr. Quinn rolled his wheelchair into the classroom. He swung it around to face the class with the small squeak of a sliding brody.

“Settle down slackers. Take you seats.”
We students scuffled to our desks, put chemistry books down and grumbled under our breaths at our new science teacher.

Ed Quinn ran the bent fingers of his right hand through his long balding hair. The act did not change his disheveled appearance. His button down shirt was wrinkled. The 5 o’clock shadow reflected the fluorescent lights with a pepper of grey. He might have been in his thirties to our teenaged eyes, but the lines in his face spoke of a hard short life.

The teacher rolled up to a table in front of the chalk board. I noticed a large cleared area between the table and the first row of desks where I sat.

Quinn picked up a beaker between two gnarled knuckles. It was filled with silver chunks of metal covered with an oily, viscus liquid.

“NEVER,” he yelled, picking out one of the silver chunks with tweezers and placing it in a tray. “MIX,” he continued lifting a beaker of clear liquid. “SODIUM,” as he poured a little of the liquid over the metal. The tray leaped into flame with a loud CRACK of explosion. I almost tipped my desk backward as my head and body tilted away from the sound. “WITH WATER!” Quinn concluded.

He dosed the flame with another beaker of sand.

The room took in a collective breath.

“Now that I have your attention, direct it to this chart,” said Mr. Quinn, pointing to the large periodic table on the wall. “DON’T MEMORIZE IT!”
He continued: “By the end of this course you will know the periodic table by heart. In fact, it is at the heart of everything you will learn.”

Mr. Quinn spent the rest of the class talking about the groups of elements on the periodic table.

“Hydrogen is at the top of group one alkaline elements but is not a member of the group. Hydrogen is not reactive like the rest of these earth elements. Notice that Sodium is in this group. These elements,” he pointed the the halogen section of the chart, “react violently with alkalies. Notice oxygen is in this group. Water is H2O, two hydrogens and one oxygen. Sodium (Na) plus Hydrogen (H) and Oxygen (O) equals explosion. This reaction creates a salt NaOH, sodium hydroxide. NaOH is a strong corrosive. DON’T GET IT ON YOUR SKIN!”

The school bell rang announcing the end of the class and the day. “GET OUT OF HERE LARDS. Read chapter one for the next class,” barked Quinn. We filed out of the classroom animated in conversation.

On my way to the bicycle rack I saw Mr. Quinn wheeling out to the parking lot. He opened the door to a lowered Camaro with a hood scoop and racing stripes. He pulled his body into the drivers seat, reached down to his wheelchair, folded it and flung it into the passenger seat. Placing his hands on the steering wheel hand controls the Camaro roared to life and squealed out of the parking spot. Quinn swung out of the parking lot in a cloud of brodying rubber smoke and raced down LaPalma Avenue.

The next day at lunch I told my friends about the Chemistry class and about watching Mr. Quinn race away in his Camaro. One of my friends was not surprised. “You know, the rumor is that Mr. Quinn was paralyzed in an automobile accident. Someone told me he was speeding then too.” The story of his accident was never told by Mr. Quinn, but the rumor fit in nicely with his driving.

Ed Quinn taught us the critical thinking that helped us succeed in college while living his own life on the critical edge.

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