My road trip down memory lane continues. Excitingly, tonight I put my first boxes back in the roof space - a box of hard back books and a box of paper backs. There are some more boxes more or less ready to go back in, but I'm going to need more plastic boxes to complete this mission. Which'll mean another trip to Ikea.
Tonight I moved on to the piles of files of school notes that I thought were ready to be boxed only to discover that they were actually of notes I didn't want to keep that should have gone to the dump at the weekend. Oopsy. But in amongst them I found gold! An essay given to me by my Form 3 Chemistry teacher.
I know, essays in Chemistry in Form 3? But it may surprise you to learn that is was a punishment essay! At this point I feel the need to tell you that I never had so much as a lunchtime detention in school so it even surprised me that I had a punishment essay. Then as I read it, it all came back to me. I think the story was that we were supposed to finish off a drawing of apparatus at home for the next class, but it was one of those times when the teacher said it quickly at the end of class (because he'd planned more work than we'd actually done) and only a few people heard him. I was one of the ones that didn't and thus, I was given a punishment essay. Oh the shame. I think I even had a moral dilemma when I got home as to whether or not to tell my mum about it (and I have a feeling, after David's reassurances that she'd never know about it, I didn't.)
If you went to BHS you'll probably already have guessed the teacher in question. But for everyone else, he's best summed up by his nickname, Killer. And not without merit (well, not actual merit, I don't believe he ever killed anyone). The essay we were given was 'Today is today and tomorrow is tomorrow'.
This sort of thing was just up his street. He liked to give pointless essays. It was frowned upon even in those days, but Killer didn't care. He was the man who would spend three-quarters of a double period talking about cricket, school, life, anything at all really before realising we wouldn't have time for the experiment and he'd just tell us what we would have seen happen. I remember one question he often used to ask to class (rhetorically I might add) was 'if there was a rocket out there on that cricket pitch who would get on it?'. To be honest, it's a miracle I ever passed Chemistry.
[I mentioned Killer once before on here before, for his other famous attribute: his handlebar moustache. For balance, I should also point out, he was one of the nicest teachers to me when I was back there as a student teacher.]
Anyway, all that is by way of introduction to my one side 'essay'. Remember, the game was to say it in more words than necessary to get to one side quicker.
Today is today and tomorrow is tomorrow
'Today' is very difficult to communicate. The dictionary describes it as 'this present day' ie that day that is actually happening now. The word is sometimes used in a broader sense to mean 'nowadays' or 'these days' or even 'modern times'. But in its general form of meaning 'this present day' it is a reminder to us of how time passes. 'Here today and gone tomorrow' is a well known saying which again shows us how important to use your time each day to your best advantage. If you don't take the opportunity that today offers, you may not get that chance again. The circumstances can change, the same situation may not come again.
'Tomorrow' in its broadest sense means 'in the near future' but is usually taken to mean 'the day after today'. The expression 'tomorrow never comes' is often heard. It suggests that the things left 'tomorrow' never get done. I have the opportunity to do something today, but by the time the next day arrives, I may not have as good an opportunity, and by that time the chance has passed by into 'yesterday'.
Yesterday I could have completed a chart and didn't, thinking that tomorrow would do. But when tomorrow arrived it was already too late and now I have to write about today and tomorrow tonight. Now if I'd had to write about 'tonight' or 'yesterday' I could have used the words of a song or two!
Now, is it just me or does that essay finish much the same way as the majority of my blog posts, a sort of attempted witty summary sentence to round things up?
It seems that ending my blogs like this was written in the stars.
Or at least in the stupid punishment essay.
(Did it again there, didn't I?)
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