‘’The Subject I hated back in High school"@kingmyke

Made In Canva

INTRODUCTION

Shivers run down my spine and all around me is the sense of fear and pure terror whenever I dig up memories concerning this topic.

Sometimes, the topic is one that I love to share the story and yet dread the memories very much. I love to share this story because, while seated around many friends and family members, I have retold this story over and over again and, which each time I share memories from this topic, they become more and more vivid.

The strokes of canes that made contact with my fragile skin, the threatening and frightening demeanour face of my teacher, the classes that make me delve deeper and deeper into unsurmountable confusion, the memories are just endless.

Now, I am going to share this horrifying set of memories with you, my reader.

Enjoy!

PHYSICS: THE ENGINEER

The Engineer and His Family

Being a light skinned man, he had a calm demeanour. He had very large and visibly strong hands. He was also known for his very high disciplinary standards as well as his ability to relay Physics principles in ways that no one but him could be able to understand.

Now I was in love with Physics but for most of my colleagues, his classes were the most dreaded of all; I for one would look for one looked forward to his classes because they were very mentally challenging.

What I dreaded in his classes were when he'd ask questions that one would could solve and he'd have to whip everyone in the class with canes. Being the top physics student in our class back in high school, my colleagues would look up to me to save the class whenever he asked very challenging calculations, and if I failed to come up with solutions, I had failed the class and everyone would be flogged by him.

One specific punishment always comes to mind whenever I remember The Engineer. It was a very hot Friday morning; we had just finished having morning general assembly and somehow the sun had decided to rise up earlier than early for seemingly unknown and frustrating reasons. The Engineer had given us an assignment on the beginning of the week. We were to make calculations pertaining to Simple Harmonic Motions and make graphical representation of our answers.

Now this was not a hard task to do. Here comes the issue. We were in the period when we prepared for our examinations for College (called WASSCE) and we were all bombarded with so many assignments and tasks to perform in school that we somehow forgot to do his assignment (remember, his assignment was given at the beginning of the week, Monday).

When he walked into our class that very Friday morning, I immediately remembered that he had given us an assignment. He asked us all for our assignment booklets and we all sluggishly opened our desks to hide our shame and deceive ourselves.

He then asked me personally in his very low yet frightening voice, "Amaechi, did you do my assignment?". I nodded in negation. He lifted his head and stared down at me hard and filled with disappointment. My heart sank and I felt bad. The saviour of the class was in dire need of salvation.

We were all sent outside, under the scorching sun, to "walk" on concrete, stony grounds, on our bare knees under his inspection. This was the most horrifying punishment The Engineer had ever given anyone in class. The distance we were to use our knees to walk on was about 200m. Most of my colleagues could not make it to the "finish line" for seemingly obvious reasons; their knees had peeled to unbearable extents. I was one of them, of course.

For the lot of us who couldn't finish the race, we were caned mercilessly, very mercilessly. We cried and begged but on and on he caned us. Weird enough, I felt very bad for disappointing The Engineer and my class. I felt bad because he expected a lot from me and I let him down.

Usually, The Engineer and I have a wonderful and fun relationship. He would call me into his office to help him with some work (He was both the school registrar and our Physics teacher). There were also moments when I would come meet him and we would devise novel ways to tackle Physics questions and make up Physics principles easier for my colleagues and I.

Despite the fact that we had moments of shared happiness and I topped the class and did well in Physics, I still have the most horrible high school memories attached to that subject.

CONCLUSION

I'm really happy that this contest was made. It brings back a lot of memories and makes me remember a lot of thigs. It was an interesting contest and I will be inviting three very good friends of mine to this wonderful contest. Here they are @emmanuel-malume, @alphafx, and @rexxalo.

Thank you @lhorgic for this amazing contest.