In my school district Junior High school was 7th and 8th grade only. My 7th grade science teacher was a (possibly) bipolar ex-hippie who often acted like she would love teaching if not for the students. My 8th grade science teacher was a spectacular teacher and probably ranks in the top 5 on my “all time list” for teachers. The story I’m telling today is about the lousy teacher I had in 7th grade.

My 7th grade science teacher ran one “hands on” activity each week. Sometimes it was something cool such as a visitor with tarantulas and lizards. Sometimes it was something dumb like watching a candle burn down for an hour and recording our observations.

One day we walked into class to be met with a foul smell. On the center bench was a large container of filthy water. We were told that we would be purifying the water that day by filtering it and treating it with various chemicals. We hadn’t really been studying anything even close to water purification but that’s the way it went in that class. Our lab projects seldom related to anything we were studying.

The teacher explained where the water came from before we started. She said that it was actual reclaimed water from the sanitation plant. Apparently she had a friend who worked there. She specifically told us that there was probably urine in the samples and we didn’t doubt it. It had a yellowish-brown color to it with some plant matter floating in there for good measure.

Each group of 2 students was given a beaker full of the scummy water. I loved working in a group of 2 because if our lab partner that day was a friend (lab partners were randomly assigned) then it virtually assured that we could cheat at getting the experiment to work. I lucked out and was assigned to work with my friend who was also in the class.

So we set out doing the experiment as instructed. It basically involved running the water through several different kinds of sand with various grain sizes followed by chemical treatment. We followed the instructions but our water still looked dirty. The teacher had warned us not to add more than a tiny sample of alginic acid (i think that’s what it was) to the water. We added 4 times what she told us. We also diluted our sample with fresh water from the tap so that at the end of class our sample was much cleaner than everyone else’s.

This was the part of the class in which this particular teacher would walk around and praise the groups who did well. Conversely she would embarrass and belittle the groups who did poorly (don’t worry I have a story where that happened to me.) On that day, however, we were being praised. Our water had turned from totally filthy to vaguely pee and rust colored. Our teacher proudly held up the sample that we had cheated to “purify” so well. Then she did something that I’ll never, ever forget.

She fucking drank our sample. 

She drank our still-sort-of pee colored water to show that it had been purified. The class freaked out with a resounding “ewwwwwwww.”

Oh, and in the end we didn’t really learn anything about wastewater treatment. We never actually got around to being taught how an actual treatment facility works.