My 5th grade math teacher, Mr. Matula, had to excuse himself from the classroom one day for a few minutes when the office summoned him. Of course, he instructed us to keep busy, reviewing what we had just learned.
That’s all the time this one profoundly immature student needed, to do something profoundly immature .Now in order to fully appreciate what this profoundly immature student did, you need to understand that every single day, without exception, Mr. Matula came to school dressed in a jet-black suit; perhaps purposefully to match his jet-black hair. Always perfectly groomed, with never a single strand out of place, he was the personification of GQ Magazine back in the 60’s.
During the very brief moments while the Professorial cat was away, the profoundly immature mouse began to play. He pounded Mr. Matula’s off-white desk chair with a chalkboard eraser. You get the picture. Now it was covered in white chalk dust. The student was already laughing to himself about the Oreo cookie he had baked.
When Mr. Matula returned to the classroom, the guilty student looked the picture of a perfect student: diligently working at his desk on some math equation. The rest of the students were looking intently at Mr. Matula to see how this scene was going to play out, to see if he would sit down before he noticed his newly”dusted”to see if their profoundly immature classmate would survive the day.Mr. Matula walked straight from the classroom door to the chalkboard, never glancing at any students, much less his chair. Then with his back turned to all of us, and beginning to write some equation on the board, he matter-of-factly, yet clearly and firmly, stated, “Mr. Hampton, you’ve got 30 seconds to clean off my chair.” How’d he know??!!
Fear gripped me as I saw my short life just made shorter. I had always known that every mother has eyes in the back of her head, but I learned that day, at least one math teacher was one better – he even had eyes that penetrated walls!Why not join us this Sunday to learn of my fate?No you won’t – but you will hear how this cat-away-good-mouse-won’t-play parable of Jesus.
