Calling the Roll, Part III

DARRYL DIM – Unlike Noah Supplies who is failing, not because he in unintelligent, but because he simply doesn’t care, Darryl tries valiantly to do his work, but still fails simply because he was not one of those blessed with a keen intellect. Nevertheless, Darryl perseveres manfully, continuing to hand in papers of mangled, unintelligible scrawl that bear absolutely no relationship to the topics he was asked to address. Darryl doesn’t even know what he doesn’t know. He is usually good-natured though, as blissful as those usually are who think “euthanasia” is a bunch of Chinese kids, or “Roe vs. Wade” has something to do with ways to get across a stream.

NATHAN NERDLY – The object of relentless scorn and ridicule by his peers, Nathan is a hopeless misfit. Usually wearing glasses and sporting clothing that went out style around 1961, he generally finishes his class assignment within 12 minutes without error and spends the rest of the period reading a Star Trek paperback, working out intricate math problems on his calculator, or re-testing Einstein’s Theory of Relativity for errors. All these activities are cheerfully pursued by Nathan in a state of total oblivion to the derision of his classmates. In the future when he is earning six figures as a computer scientist nuclear physicist, or Nobel Prize winning chemist, he will continue to wear clothing that went out of style 25 years previous, and will remain blissfully oblivious the derisive remarks of his colleagues and peers.

F. LESS BELLI – The wise guy, smart-ass student with all the mental attributes to make a first-rate ambulance chaser. F. Lee is always the first one to gleefully point out that you’ve misspelled a word on the blackboard, or that there are fallacies or inconsistencies in the lesson you are presenting to the class. Unlike many of his fellow students who passively accept all they’re told, F. Lee will subject the teacher to a grueling cross-examination regarding why the material has to be learned, what future purpose it will serve him, how it is relevant to his life, etc. In the future F. Lee will head a successful law firm, or replace Ted Koppel on “Nightline”.

JERRY JOCK – Jerry comes to school for only one reason – because that’s where he has to go to get on the team. His only concern about his academic subjects is that he knows he has to pass the damn things to stay on the team. So, with that condition in mind, plus fear that his coach will get a bad report from the teacher, Jerry hits the books hard, get his work done and is the model of classroom decorum. Jerry will remain such a model student until the day his team’s season ends, at which point his conduct and academic grade compete with one another for rock bottom. If Jerry is real lucky and plays hard, the only thing he’ll need to know is how to write his name at the bottom of a multi-million dollar professional sports contract.