OK OK OK … so here we go. This is a story that I just need to get out there, I needed to put it down on paper, for I fear it may just eventually slip away through the cracks in my mind. Actually what the fuck am I talking about, I will never forget this shit. So here goes.

Thinking back to it, it almost seems like a cartoon in my head, and not reality. But, oh my friends, somehow it was real. It was the first day of my Junior year of High School. I believe it was the fall of 2000. It was 7th period general chemistry class. That’s right, general chem. I was way too much of a lazy slacker in High School to have to be able to memorize the periodic tables or any of that shit.

The teacher had yet to arrive to class, and looking around the classroom it was just the people who I had expected to be in this class. A couple of my slacker buddies, a couple of foreigners, the classic quiet girl who never spoke a word (not even if addressed by the teacher), a couple of ditzy bimbos, the “girl” who most likely had both a penis and a vagina, and some other quasi-retarded people.

No one in the class had ever heard of our teacher before, his name was Mr. Sheehan and he was new to the district.

The bell had rung and there was no teacher in sight, but then I remember hearing the sound of something getting wheeled down the hallway, getting closer and closer. It was a cart of test tubes and chemicals, and the man pushing it was the soon to be legend of a man himself, the one and only Mr. Sheehan.

The guy looked like a Mad scientist, and we would soon find out that is exactly what he was. He was probably in his late 50’s or early 60’s, he was shaped like a giant pear, wore thick glasses, and was bald with a classic horseshoe of red hair wrapping around the side and back of his head and attaching to his beard. He also waddled from side to side when he walked.

So the first thing he does like usual teachers do on the first day was give attendance, give out the syllabus, yada yada yada. After all of the explanations about the class were done with, he says, “Does anyone in here have a cigarette?” and looked around the room.

Some wise ass blurted out “cigarettes are bad for you!” and Mr. Sheehan replied, “REAL MEN SMOKE CIGARETTES,” which got a loud chuckle from the class. Eventually a girl gave in and gave him a menthol cigarette, he took it and said, “Menthol … you disgust me.”

After this spectacle he ushered the class around him at one of the lab tables to view whatever experiment he had planned on doing involving the cigarette.

He brought out all of these different chemicals from his little cart, set up a long and skinny test tube on the table, and started mixing chemicals. After his strange concoction started to bubble, he took the cigarette and dropped it into the test tube.

SHHHHHWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!, was the noise that echoed throughout the room as the cigarette flew into the air and spun around several times, followed by a stream of thick black smoke that flooded out towards the ceiling. The smoke was everywhere, it filled the classroom.

“This guy must be fucking nuts,” is what everyone in that room must have thought to themselves at that time, because I know that is sure as hell what I was thinking at that time, and it sure seemed like it from all the confused and even frightened looking expressions on the faces of each and every student in the class.

Soon after this bizarre display the bell rung, and we were let out of this crazy man’s laboratory. The smoke from the experiment was filling up the entire sophomore hallway and kids were covering their mouths with their arms to prevent themselves from coughing.

I remember thinking to myself that this was only the first day of school, and that chemistry with this man as our teacher was going to be a wild ride.

Little did I know that “wild ride” would be a gigantic understatement when it came to describing our time with Mr. Sheehan.

There was some sort of structure to the class in the beginning of the year, at some point I remember thinking that Sheehan could be a normal teacher, or that this could be a somewhat normal class. Not until a certain point did things really spiral out of control, and thinking back I believe I can recall what changed the dynamic of the class.

During one class someone asked Mr. Sheehan what kind of car he drove. He proudly exclaimed that he drove a 1999 Volkswagen Cabrio, which got a chuckle from various members of the class.

“What is so funny about driving a Cabrio?” he asked the class.

After this someone blurted out, “YOU DRIVE A BITCH CAR MR. SHEEHAN.”

He seemed stunned and then asked what he meant by that. The kid told him that the Cabrio was the No. 1 female-owned car in America, and Sheehan looked disgusted and said, “I don’t believe you,” and made the kid look up the information on the classroom computer. Sure enough, the Cabrio was the No. 1 female-owned car in the country much to Mr. Sheehan’s dismay.

The similarities are striking

Sheehan couldn’t handle the fact that he was driving a Barbie Mobile, and in the ensuing weeks after this happened the class was a free for all because he would literally be on car websites the whole entire class period looking to sell his Cabrio and buy a manlier car.

We would be required to do an experiment each class but it was always some simple shit that didn’t require much effort. Since Mr. Sheehan was on the computer the whole period, this gave us license to fuck around with various chemicals unsupervised.

One particular experiment I will remember until my dying day. It was some experiment where you put these chemicals into a little beaker, then light a match and put it by the opening of the beaker. The reaction was this little “shoooooooooooop” noise and some fire shooting out the top of the beaker, which was then sucked right back in.

This experiment was a hit with the class, I remember hearing the “shooooop” noise all over the class room non-stop. It was very entertaining to do.

So without Mr. Sheehan watching over the class, a couple of my friends in the class decided to take this experiment to a bigger scale. They took a very large beaker, filled it with a lot of the needed chemicals, and instead of lighting one match to the top of the beaker, they lit the entire matchbook up.

I will never forget the sound I heard it make right behind me as I was filling out my lab sheet on another lab table. A gigantic “SHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOP!!!” noise was made and I knew the sound wasn’t good because it was so close to me.

As I turned around to see the result, I saw the terrified, jaw-dropped expressions on all my friends’ faces as they realized that they had sent a giant burst of flame directly at my face.

It happened so quick, I turned around just in time for my face to be totally engulfed by the flame which was shooting about 10 feet out of the beaker. Just as quick as the hot blast hit my face, it shot right back into the beaker, and I stood there stunned as everyone in the class looked at me with their jaws dropped.

Someone yelled out, “HOLY SHIT! YOU ALMOST BLEW UP BYRNE!”

This got the attention of Mr. Sheehan, and he asked if I was OK. I said I wanted to go to the bathroom for a second to see what happened to my face. My face felt like it had just spent 10 hours in the hot sun without tanning lotion.

When I got to the bathroom I looked in the mirror and saw that my face was very red, and that my eye brows we singed at their tips and turned a really weird light brown color.

When I got back to the class I remember people telling me that I should report Mr. Sheehan’s negligence to the Principal, but I am not that kind of guy, so I let it go. If I had reported that, Sheehan would have been fired a lot earlier than he when he actually was shit-canned, which wasn’t too far away from this particular incident.

A little bit after this episode, at the end of a lab period, Sheehan gathered us all around a lab table for what looked like another one of his wacky experiments. I remember looking at him and seeing a crazed look in his eye as he brought out all of the chemicals and placed them on the lab table. He told us all to “get a little closer ...” He got up on a chair to pour in all the necessary chemicals into a tall beaker. Then he jumped down and literally bolted out of the classroom, the fastest I had ever seen that man move.

We were all left standing looking at each other with either stupefied or horrified expressions on our faces. The chemicals in the tube reacted and a foamy looking substance flew out and splashed into the ceiling and then went all over the place. I looked toward the doorway and saw just Mr. Sheehan’s eyes and nose peering in. Needless to say, many of the students were outraged by the fact that our own teacher ran out on us. This event started the snowball effect that led to his demise as a teacher.

Parental complaints began to pile up from various students in the class. At one time an expensive scale was stolen from the classroom and Sheehan falsely accused a student of stealing it for drug dealing purposes. The parent of this kid was none too pleased and was furious over the allegations, but this incident was not the straw that broke the camel’s back.

What really got Mr. Sheehan into deep shit was that there was a particular instigator in our class, a kid named Jan that would be constantly disrupting class and making big scenes left and right. Apparently Sheehan would leave multiple messages on Jan’s answering machine telling Jan’s mother that Jan should be taking Ritalin, even after Sheehan and Jan’s mother had talked about the subject and she stated that she did not want to put Jan on Ritalin.

I believe eventually Jan was put on Ritalin and would behave somewhat normal and be somewhat subdued in class. But on one particular occasion it was clear that Jan had not taken Ritalin that day, as he was acting out big time in class. Little did we all know on that day as the bell rung that we would be seeing the final moments of Mr. Sheehan before he was sent packing.

As we all headed towards the door, Jan was the first student in line to leave. As he walked by Mr. Sheehan, Sheehan grabbed him by his shirt with both hands and pulled him towards his face, and in a really creepy tone said “HAVE YOU TAKEN YOUR MEDICINE YET TODAY, JAN!?!”

Jan’s expression looked stunned, and then he said, “You know what buddy, suck on my fucking balls, suck them, suck on my fucking balls, that’s what you can do, you can suck on my balls.” Sheehan looked enraged, like he wanted punch him as hard as he could, but refrained and still held onto Jan’s shirt and they stared into each others enraged-looking eyes from a close distance.

The whole class looked on as this scene unfolded. I remember walking around them still at each other’s throats and out the door and then bursting out with laughter along with the rest of the class at what we had just witnessed as we entered the hallway.

For about a week after this incident we had a sub everyday and were uncertain if Sheehan was actually coming back.

He never did come back and was replaced with a Richard Nixon look alike, a former Marine named Mr. Seagraves who ruled the class with an iron fist for the rest of the year after he was called out of retirement to replace the Legend that was Mr. Sheehan.

Lord only knows what became of Sheehan himself. Some said that he went on to teach his wacky blend of chemistry somewhere in Connecticut. Some said he was taken to a mental hospital, others claimed he retired after all the commotion.

The one I can claim that is for certain out of all this is that I will never forget the outrageous shit that unfolded in that classroom, and if you ask another student from that class the same, they will give you the same answer.

Questions? Comments? Updates on the location of Mr. Sheehan himself? Write me at itsbyrne@hotmail.com or contact me VIA the forum. See ya next time.