The man at the back

Bus didn’t turn up (Stagecoach, an old old story), was about 25 minutes late.  Laurie was well in to a lesson on displacement (when less reactive atoms are exchange for more reactive ones) and I struggled to get to grips with what he was teaching.   He was showing how a battery works.  A negative and positively charged piece of pure and impure copper in a sulphate solution.   He always invites questions if we get confused.  I was trying to remember all the basics we’ve been taught so far so and trying to put all the jigsaw pieces together.  I asked Laurie what I thought was a reasonable question, why blah blah- to which a girl at the front- an attractive BBW as it happens- said ‘Why do you have to make everything so complicated? .’ 
‘Who?” Said Laurie.
‘That man at the back’ the girl said, without even turning round.  ‘You don’t need to know why, it just does.’
And that just about sums it up.  In China I was the monkey, in England I am the man at the back…Perhaps that should be the new name of my blog.
I’ve just devised a way to get to the front but that’s another story.
Having been a teacher myself I must say that I know one of the big problems in the classroom is not (just) the teacher but other students.  If you are discouraged from asking questions by other students what can the teacher do?  Well Laurie did his best- he came over in the break and explained it to me in the time he had.  It’s not really difficult to understand it’s just that there are component pieces to put together and if I’m not careful I’m going to start missing out components. 
Laurie asked us where we were all from, as in previous years some have come from as far afield as Ashford.  One student said, ‘i get extra points because I come from a rough town.  I’m from Margate.’  When she found out where I was from in Margate she said ‘Ohhh, be careful.  It’s rough round there.'  And to think, it's not even the roughest part of Margate.