I have a sudden flash back of the second grade and my student/teacher inter actions with Mrs. Bircher. She was a rotund lady that tried to teach and I was an energetic/curious student who tried not to learn. I always did seem to have an experiment that I wanted to try out and one day I had the grand idea of putting a thumb tack on the teachers chair to see if a rotund lady could actually jump up off her chair instead of slowly getting herself up as Mrs. Bircher always did. On the appointed day I got into class and put said thumbtack in the middle of her chair while she was up and about getting her supplies ready and then I went to my chair to watch how my experiment played out. Mrs. Bircher would almost always do her talking and teaching from her desk once she had sat down so I was anxious to see if that tack would change her style. My anticipation heightened as she neared her desk and began her descent towards that tack....PLOP...nothing. No reaction what so ever.I was disheartened. What happened or didn't happen as the case may be?
I had supposed she had sat down so perfectly that the tack ended up being placed where the crack in her behind was and the tack, being so short, didn't do its entended purpose.My solution was to try two tacks on my next attempt so such a result wouldn't happen again.The next day I followed through on the two tack plan and sat watching for the outcome ...PLOP...nothing. I couldn't believe it. Was this lady oblivious to pain? Had she endured this before and knew to just sit through it all to dumbfound curious students? Not to be deterred I decided to use 4 tacks to make certain the experiment was fool proof.I must confess in retrospect I was an idiot to start this experiment in the first place, so a whole lot of me is relieved to report that even with 4 tacks on the chair I didn't get to see if Mrs. Bircher was able to jump up. Still, I wonder what she was wearing that protected her from my stupid curiosity???