The Drop Outs

With each day that passed at Emily Griffith, the class size dwindled. When we had first begun, each seat in the classroom was filled, but as Monday of the next week arrived, a seat smudged with a black imprint of an ass was made available. It became a sort of game for me to guess which student would go missing from one week to the next. With the gap in ages of those attending the morning session, it wasn't too difficult a challenge. The older students seems to vanish first. They realized early on that a high percentage of imbeciles spelled disaster in a learning environment that was anchored in place by the youngsters' slow progress. On the contrary, the imbeciles found more value in a few hours of sleep than a completed assignment and they too became scarce. What remained was a core group of individuals who were motivated by whatever driving force had brought them there in the first place. Granted, there were some who stayed that surprised me.

My dread-locked and doctor-to-be counterparts made a showing every day without fail in that first session. They even managed to stay late on occasion to pull driveline components apart with a curiosity that I found rejuvenating. Brad seemed to take heart in the hand full of students that continued to hammer away at the curriculum, and as a reward put us onto cars that seemed to have mysterious problems as riddles for us to solve.

The cars at Emily Griffith had been donated to the school by generous people who saw no use in their repair. They were typically beat-up and neglected, but had some semblance of life left, and thus made the perfect subjects for uninformed cells of students that worked on them. Some of these vehicles ran, but most did not, and as such gave Brad a basis by which to judge our aptitude. Many of the cars were actually still in good condition, but had incurred some seemingly catastrophic consequence which rendered them useless.

Our group adopted a Subaru Outback that, to judge by its interior and exterior, was like new. It didn't run, and as we completed our labs, Brad gave us the time to look into the no-start cause. By taking on this investigation it became utterly clear how the information being conveyed to us seemed to have no real practical use. Popping the hood we seemed to have no idea even where to begin. Although we could install a battery, we had not the vaguest idea of how to test for spark. The ignition system was a complete mystery. Spark plugs were pulled and inspected without a clue as how to test their functionality, keys were turned without a sliver of knowledge about their utilization inside the lock cylinder. Starters, alternators, ignition coils - none of this melded into a cohesive pattern despite the many brains assigned to the task. So, we took off the timing belt. It seemed as good a place to start as any.

Days later, we still hadn't figured out how to put a timing belt back on a Subaru. Pulleys and tensioners and seals and bolts were piled at our feet and put back in any which way but right. The belt had come off so easy! What, in God's name, were we doing wrong? How did everything match up? We spent hours and hours, two or three students together, trying to hold various components in place while one or the other of us would desperately try and slide the belt into place. Once the belt actually did go on, covers would be zipped back together and the key would be turned anew only to discover the same ugly result. No start, no progress, no clue. Brad would occasionally stop by and shake his head and laugh to himself. Doctors to be, Rastafarians, conflict managers...it didn't matter. In the end we were the blind leading the blind. So there the immaculate Subaru would sit for the year, its death a mystery. Lazarus would have to wait.