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Variations on a Theme From Charles Dickens
In a little
back street of Columbus, we find chemistry teacher Ebeneezer Young in
a mercurial joy counting his silver and gold. "Praise, O Dimium!
Praise, O Dimium!" he shouts, as he paws over the fees for broken
beakers. Ebeneezer is so mean that if he finds a student overcome by
one of those titanium chemistry tests, he never stops to be a good samarium.
Instead, he calls in a student council copper and has him phlatinum.
"Are there no workhouses, no prisons? No afternoon study halls?"
he often asks.
In the prep room, poor Rubidium Cratchett, the lab technetium, washes dishes in cold water. Rub, a graduate of Berkelium Collegium in Californium, is no Einsteinium, but he's not sodium either and he does tend right to bismuth all the time. It is 6 o'clock on Christmas Eve and Rub asks to go holmium early. "You've got a lot of gallium," replies Ebeneezer. "I'll be frankium but fermium. Hafnium a day's work, hafnium a day's pay." That's all right," Rub returns, "I'm anti-mony anyway."
Late that night, Ebeneezer awoke to see the ghostly face of his departed colleague, Jacob Roosa (who, ironically, looked worse in life), "iodide neon to three years ago and since then I've had to go out each night trudgin' around carrying these arsenine chemistry tests that are as heavy as lead - mend your ways!" Thus the ghost spoke and then departed.
"That was very strange and very yterrbium," thought Ebeneezer as dozed off. Later, another ghost who looked a bit like St. Nickelous came to wake Ebeneezer. He grabbed the ghost by the sleeve and rhodium off into the Christmas past.
They flew all over Europium - Francium, Polonium, Germanium - looking for old girlfriends that Ebeneezer knew while he was in the Americium armed forces. There was Fluorine and Ruthenium and a couple of great Scandium blondes. They dined on stuffed boar, on fried rice garnished with erbium from Indium - very tantalum. As they were feasting and flirting and fooling as only the young and silicon, it occured to Ebeneezer that being a mean old chemistry teacher isn't the greatest occupation in the world. Unfortunately, the jolly old ghost scolded Eveneezer for actinium up and took him holmium again. Then, just as his dreams were getting mildly pleasant, the most prephosphorus apparition of all (an old headmaster from Purduvium, no doubt) appeared and carried Ebeneezer off to view all sorts of ugly things which might come to pass - like year-round school. First he saw Molly B. Denium, that scavenging scion of the subculture coming out of the unscrupulous undertaking firm, Cesium and Barium, with Ebeneezer's prize green magic marker stuffed in her dungaree shirt pocket! Then on to Rub Cratchett's hovel where poor Tiny Tin lay crippled, with his legs thorium and no way to helium. He was sulfuring and zincing into greater argony. "Oh, what a cad me am!" declared Ebeneezer (who wasn't much of an English scholar either). And with that he awoke a new and nobelium man. He put on a radium smile and swore from xenon never to give a crippling chemistry test to Tiny Tin or anyone else. Lithium and agile and with a magnanous heart, Ebeneezer sprang from his bed, took out a neo dymium and called a doctor to go over and look at Tiny Tin's leg and curium. Tin was tellurium with joy, and said, "Bless us every one, even mean old (or young) chemistry teachers!"
Credit to J. Young, Columbus East High
School, Columbus, IN