Chapter 69

Sean marched into the room, gave a Roman salute to Mr. Kindle, and then said, “Hail Caesar, Roman Centurion Sean Connery Michaels reporting for final exams.”

Having survived having Sean in his class for nine months, Mr. Kindle was not in the least surprised by the greeting. He said, “I thought you were Agent Double-O Zero.”

“I’m in disguise,” Sean answered.

“You’re wearing your regular clothes,” Mr. Kindle said.

“I’m Agent Double-O Zero disguised as a Roman Centurion who is disguised as a high school student,” Sean said. “Pretty good disguise, huh?”

“About as good as I’ve come to expect from you. Are you ready for the test?”

Sean held up a roll of pens. It must have contained twenty of them. “I’m fully supplied. I studied like a madman last night, and the night before that, and well, forever.”

“You are a madman,” Tom Westerland said.

He covered his mouth and then looked around to see if a piece of paper was going to fly into his mouth. He looked over Sean. Sean was carefully setting out his pens across the desk.

Mr. Kindle said, “If everyone will sit down, we’ll start the test.”

Sean leaned over to Suzie and said, “I love starting the test. You sit down thinking you know it all. After that, it’s more like ‘oh I don’t know that one’ and ‘I don’t know this one’ and then ‘this is not going well’ and then you finish, at which point you say ‘thank goodness that it’s over.’”

“I know,” Suzie said.

Mr. Kindle went to the board and wrote, ‘Who is your favorite historical figure and why?’ He turned to the class and asked, “Are there any questions?”

Sean raised his hand.

“Sean?”

“Can you give us a hint?” Sean asked.

The entire class burst out in laughter. Even Suzie giggled on hearing his question. Everyone knew this was a gimme test. There wasn’t a wrong answer.

“No,” Mr. Kindle answered trying not to smile.

“Boy, is this a tough test,” Sean said. He leaned over to Suzie and said, “I didn’t study anything about favorites.”

Mr. Kindle said, “Get to work everyone.”

Sean started writing. He got through half a page and then wadded up the paper. He started on another page, got through about half of it, and then wadded that page up. He wrote about five lines on the next page before wadding it up. Everyone else in the class turned in their answers after ten minutes and left the room.

For forty minutes, Sean would write a bit and then wad up the paper. Sean was still writing furiously.

Fascinated by what he was seeing, Mr. Kindle asked, “Sean, what are you doing?”

“This test is impossible. I start to answer the question and then realize I’ve got the wrong answer,” Sean answered.

Mr. Kindle said, “Why don’t you unwad all of those papers and we’ll see what you’ve got?”

Sean flattened all of the papers and then put them into a nice stack. He handed the papers to Mr. Kindle.

“You started with Socrates?”

“Yes. I was doing good until I got to the part about him being the mentor for Plato who was the teacher of Aristotle and I realized that I liked Aristotle more Socrates. Socrates was pretty cool in that he drank some poison and then died, but Aristotle was brilliant with his whole theory of metaphysics. Then I started writing about Aristotle and that was going well until I got to the bit about how he was the teacher of Alexander the Great.

“So I started on Alexander the Great. Then I realized, Caesar was a whole lot more interesting than Alexander the Great – I mean, Caesar was murdered and Alexander the Great got sick and died. There’s no comparison there in terms of being interesting.

“Caesar was an emperor of Rome and that got me to thinking about other emperors of Rome. Who is a more interesting emperor than Nero? He was just a sick puppy and that’s kind of fascinating. Nero may have fiddled on a lute while Rome burned, but he didn’t write a symphony like Beethoven.

“The cool thing about Beethoven was that he was deaf. Of course, I immediately thought of Mozart. He was a child prodigy and I think that a prodigy trumps deafness every time.

“Thinking of prodigies got me to thinking about geniuses. Michelangelo lead to Galileo, who lead to Di Vinci, which got me to thinking about Newton. Newton invented calculus. Of course, you can’t think about calculus without thinking of geometry which lead me to consider Euclid.

“Now you might think that Euclid got me to thinking about Plato, but actually he reminded me of the non-Euclidean nature of General Relativity. Who’s the big guy in General Relativity? Einstein. What’s there not to like about Einstein?

“Einstein was a great guy, but then when I was writing about his coming to America, I realized that Hitler was pretty fascinating. He was about as sick as Nero and killed millions of people and was short like Napoleon. I don’t know if you recall, but I wrote a paper on Napoleon and that he was short.”

“I’m going to staple all of these papers together and grade them as a whole. Would that be okay with you?” Mr. Kindle said.

“I guess so. That was a tough test,” Sean said. “Thank goodness that it’s over.”

“You’ve got ten minutes to your next test. You might want to go outside and relax,” Mr. Kindle said.

Sean stepped out of the room to find Mr. Charmers standing there.

“How was the test, Sean?”

“I think I failed it,” Sean said.

“Really? I’m surprised. You usually do pretty good on tests.”

Sean said, “I didn’t know favorites would be on the test. I didn’t study the right material.”

“I’m sure you did fine,” Mr. Charmers said. “Let’s see, you’ve got Ms. Woodhill next. That should be easy. She likes you.”

“She’s a great teacher,” Sean said.

“She’s a great coach, too,” Mr. Charmers said.

“That’s true. Do you think she might slip a football question in on the exam? I didn’t study football,” Sean asked.

“I’m sure it will be on English,” Mr. Charmers said.

“Good,” Sean said.

He headed directly over to Ms. Woodhill’s classroom. Suzie, having finished her history test in five minutes, was waiting for him there. He headed straight for Suzie, but Ms. Woodhill reached him before he reached Suzie.

Hugging Sean to her, she said, “Hello, my dear boy. I’m going to miss your insightful and imaginative questions, Sean. No other student that I’ve had has ever come close to having your imagination. My life as a teacher will be much duller without you here next year.”

“Thank you, Ms. Woodhill. You’re the best teacher I’ve ever had. Maybe you can transfer to the college I’m going to and I can take your class there,” Sean said.

Ms. Woodhill said, “It is almost time to take the test. Run along to your seat, Sean.”

“Yes, Ms. Woodhill,” Sean said.

Ms. Woodhill went to the board and wrote, ‘What was your favorite poem and why?’ She turned to the class and asked, “Are there any questions?”

Sean raised his hand.

“Sean?”

“Can you give us a hint?” Sean asked.

Ms. Woodhill said, “Of course, I can. What poem had the most effect on Miss Emery?”

“This is an easy test,” Sean said grabbing a pen and paper. “I didn’t even get through five lines of it and she was all over me.”

Suzie turned bright red. He wrote down the answer and turned it in. It had taken him less than a minute to complete this one.

He handed it into Ms. Woodhill and said, “I know I got this one right.”

“I’m sure you did,” Ms. Woodhill said.

Sean left the classroom and headed towards the gym where the school had set up a decompression area with food and beverages. Coach Slaughter was standing around to make sure that things didn’t get out of hand.

“Hello, Coach Slaughter.”

“Hello, Sean,” Coach Slaughter said worried about what was going to happen next.

It seemed to him that every time Sean was around, life got interesting ... in a bad way. He still was trying to figure out how Sean had managed to do so many pushups. It just wasn’t possible that the scrawny kid could do more pushups than him.

“Am I supposed to show up to gym class for my final exam or should I go to the library?” Sean asked.

“You’ve got an A already as per our agreement. You don’t need to come to the gym.”

“Good.”

“So are you looking forward to going off to college?” Coach Slaughter asked.

“Yes. I’m going to take a chemistry class,” Sean said. “I’m thinking about inventing the perfect spot remover.”

There was a strangled yell from across the room. Mr. Donaldson, the chemistry teacher, ran out of the gym yelling, “Armageddon.”

“I didn’t realize that you were interested in chemistry,” Coach Slaughter said wondering what was the matter with Mr. Donaldson.

“I am,” Sean said. “I’m hoping to reproduce my sodium in the toilet experiment.”

“Have fun in college,” Coach Slaughter said.

“I intend to,” Sean said.

When Suzie arrived, Sean hung around with her eating cookies and drinking soft drinks until it was time for their next test. On the way to the classroom, he stopped by his school locker and grabbed a fistful of pencils along with a few erasers and a pencil sharpener.

Suzie asked, “Did you get enough pencils?”

“I don’t know. Math tests can be pretty hard on pencils,” Sean said.

Never all that confident in her math skills, Suzie said, “I’m worried about this one.”

“You’ll do fine,” Sean said while giving her a hug.

Much to their surprise, Mrs. West had arranged for pizza and soft drinks to be delivered to her classroom. The food was spread out on her desk at the front of the classroom. It looked like she was throwing a party.

She welcomed the students, “Come in and have some pizza.”

“Oh wow! This is great,” Jerry said.

“What kind of test is this?” Sean asked looking over the selection of pizzas.

Mrs. West said, “There’s no test. You passed the class a long time ago.”

“Really?” Sean asked looking relieved.

“Yes.”

“Did I get an A?” Sean asked.

“Yes. All of you got an A.”

“That’s great,” Sean said.

Sid said, “Wonderful.”

“Were you worried?” Mrs. West asked.

“Of course, I was. Those coupled partial differential equations can be pretty tricky,” Sean said.

Mrs. West said, “Do you remember when you did the integral over a single variable?”

“Um, that was back around Thanksgiving,” Jerry said wondering why she was bringing that up.

“Do you mean the stuff we did in that first math book?” Suzie asked.

“Yes.”

“I remember that,” Sean said.

“That was the last of the material we were supposed to cover in this course,” Mrs. West said.

Susan said, “This was the least boring class that I’ve ever had.”

Mrs. West chuckled. “Believe it or not, I can say the same thing. This has been a wonderful class. It’s a perfect end to a teaching career.”

The pizza was great. Almost out of habit, the five students discussed the last bit of their math book. Mrs. West joined in the discussion taking time to point out some topics that she thought was interesting to study. It was, in a nerdish kind of way, a very pleasant time.