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For those of you who don't know her, Ms. Valerie Norwid was our Physical Science teacher in 8th grade at Baypoint Middle School. Currently, she is the Chemistry/Biology teacher right at our very own Lakewood High. This is where we will document our doings in her class last and this year, to share our experiences with the world.
All year we were obsessed with her ceiling. We supplied a constant barrage of pencils, forks, paper clips, K'Nex... anything you could imagine we put into her ceiling. I've even heard the story of a chair getting put up into there. It was said to have come down, IN CLASS WHILE SHE WAS TEACHING! She went ballistic. We built other things that were smaller, but no less leathal. I once used a candle and a bunch of nails to make something that always stuck in the ceiling. I put the nails through the candle in different angles, then threw it up there. It was great! One day (for those of you who know, it was the day of Celebration of Me) while I was supposed to be watching the classroom while she went running errands, I put a whole bunch of shit in her ceiling. I grabbed a butter knife and put it in so you could only see the very bottom stub of it. Later in the year she had us jump up on the desk and pull everything out. One of my friends pulled the knife out and yelled, "What the hell?" I was trying to suppress my laughter, because it was just so goddamned funny!
She had a way of not paying any attention to anything besides what she was doing. We would throw K'Nex and fling rubber bands at each other and she hardly noticed. One time, my friend flung a rubber band and it landed right in Norwid's lap! She just went right on grading papers. I remember one incident that happened in my class. We were working on a project where we had to do 9 tasks like pop a baloon, move a wheel 30 cm... stupid stuff like that. Well, one of my partners, Masa, felt that he had to melt some string for something. So he burnt the string with some matches in his backpack. Mrs. Norwid smelt the smoke and yelled "Who's got the matches?" She came by our group and told us, "It smells like it's coming from over here." I didn't say anything. That's when someone suggested it could be a sort circuit or even the oven in the closet next to us. She called the office and had them check on it. It was great. Probably the only time she noticed us doing something really wrong.
There were other projects we had in her class. My personal favorite was the K'Nex roller coaster. That was great because we had a reason for standing on the tables, which gave us more opertunity to put stuff in the ceiling. Not only that, but it made us get creative with our weaponry. Several of us created a contraption to fling small pieces of K'Nex across the room. They were pretty accurate and deadly. It also gave me a chance to put other objects in her ceiling. We also made a weapon that went into the ceiling that was made out of a paper clip and a rubber band. It went in the first try most of the time. I have to give the credit to Bennett though. While I was attempting to make something like that, I never succeeded as he did. So, wherever you are, buddy, know that your big daddy still knows, and cares. I put fins on nails so I could throw them in without having to work as hard. See, we also found ways of throwing a nail so it'd go right into the ceiling. But you had to throw it really hard and move in a funny way. It made it easy to be caught, which rarely happened.
I can remember the closest I came to getting caught. One day, Mrs. Norwid told me that "someone" was saying I put all the shit in the ceiling. I looked at her blankly, as if I had no idea what she was talking about. Then I shook it off by saying, "No, of course I'd never do that!" I asked who told her that I put all that stuff in there. She just told me it was someone in first period. That did me a lot of good-there were 30 people in her first period, and I couldn't possibly beat them all up. This incident was repeated after the Celebration of Me. See, Norwid had this thing where we were to present all of our best work throughout the year. I presented for just a short while because someone else hadn't shown up, and the rest of the time I was the camera guy. But, during fifth period, which was a planning period for her, she let me and some other people watch her room while she left to get supplies. That was a terrible mistake on her part. I put more crap in that ceiling then than I have ever before or ever will again. I even left some things right over her desk. I was the first and last to use that "virgin" ceiling tile over her desk. But, that was only the beginning. When school was out, everyone went nuts and trashed her room while she was preparing on the stage. Broken test tubes on the floor, chemicals spilt on the carpet, paint all over the walls... you name it, it was there. The day after, she said that someone had claimed, once again, that I was at fault for everything in the ceiling. I wanted to beat the shit out of them! I denied it, once again, and she believed it. I love my power over teachers!
A couple of my friends made a crossbow out of k'nex and launched straightened paper clips at people's projects and the ceiling. we also started jumping on a project about 4 seconds before she said we were supposed to keep it for the end of the year. we all had a habit of running off with things that belonged to her. note the past tense of belong... the trend seems to have continued... but yeah. the year before our class, someone melted some steel wool into the carpet. we would always go through her cabinets, too. one day we found a bottle of some kind of pill that looked like m&m's. we spent the entire class period trying to get someone to eat it. for one of the projects, there was a detonator, set off by a marble, that launched rockets. (hehehehe...) someone hit the contacts too early and set them off, and they barely missed mr. maseman's room.
Submitted by Elise
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