I never found out how long I had been asleep. It seemed that a lot had happened while I was sleeping. One thing that I did find out in my time in Mr. Borman's class, fall asleep and you are missing a lot. I don't think he ever "caught" me sleeping once. Though he must have known, I was always right under his nose. He probably didn't care and knew that you were missing a reenactment of a good story while your mind was off in dream world. That is exactly what happened that day.
From what I gathered from my friends, Mr. Borman had been talking all day about the lesson then triggered by some question posed by a student, Mr. Borman had launched himselfsintosanother one of his stories.
Though I didn't catch that one, I did hear the next two that he told that same day. It seemed that the conversation had changed from bacteria and cellular functions to how Mr. Borman got beat up by a kangaroo when he went down to Australia.
Mr. Borman: "So we went down to this little animal care center, and there were guys here giving a tour of the place. We went through the tour and saw a bunch of Australian wildlife and crap like that. Then we came to the end of the tour. Has anyone ever seen or heard of a Kangaroo fighting? Yeah, you have? You know how they fight? They don't have the instinct or the teeth to be very effective at biting, but these suckers, man, I'm tellin ya, they can punch! Well the demonstration was this Kangaroo that has been trained to box. The tour leaders were lookin for someone to come down and box with the Kangaroo. No, I swear. Well, it seemed I hadn't had my share of humility for the day and said, "What the hell, I'll kick that thing's ass!" So I walked down there, and I was kinda getting in sort of an Ali position. Now at this point I felt pretty retarded. I was standing in front of about 20 or so people all hoping that this kangaroo kicks my ass. Well, you gotta do what you gotta do. I stared that thing in the face, you know, trying to psyche it out a bit. The damn thing took a look at me and…BAM! Got me right across the cheek. Knocked me out cold! The damn tour leaders couldn't believe it, my wife said they called the ambulance and I was taken to a friggin hospital. So I was sitting in the emergency room and the doctor came in and said,‘So, what happened to you?' I looked him in the eye and tried to tell him with a straight face that I got my ass whooped by a damn Kangaroo!"
Immediately after the Kangaroo story, Mr. Borman launchedsintosanother one about his wrestling match at the state championship tournament. He said, "This one is even more exciting than that kangaroo one…" By the time he finished there was barely two minutes left in the period and the homework that we were supposed to do that night was pushed back a day due to "technical problems".
