He was actually a graduate agriculture engineer, but ended up teaching chemistry in my elementary school. Either he liked it that way, or he was just not fit to work in production, I never knew.
He was largely distracted, not exactly aware of all the details of the reality around him, and probably not too competent either. Good enough to teach chemistry, though, we did learn a lot. For a while I was at the chemistry club, where we actually did nothing but bend the glass pipes on an alcohol burner, which was fun.
His talk was a bit weird, with stress shifted somehow. While it was obvious that he practiced and really tried to talk like we did, he'd slip back into it every time he got annoyed or spoke faster. Later, when I learned the intricacies of various dialects, I'd put him anywhere in the south half of Serbia.
One of the experiments each generation did was the electrolysis of water. Two iron rods would be stuck through a bottom of a plastic cup (not the thin stuff of today, the plastic was about 2mm thick), sealed with some glue (don't remember what kind), fitted with wires and hung on a little wooden holder, just two planks of 200x200mm, one horizontal and one vertical. The wires would go into the 12V outlet (that each desk in the chemistry cabinet was fitted with, although the format of it was the classic black bakelite 220V schuko, which was confusing), the water with some salt would be poured, and you'd get oxygen on one electrode, and hydrogen on the another. Two vials, without air in them, would be placed to cover the electrodes, and the gasses would collect in them.
There's a story from a couple of generations before us, that someone has switched the vials at some point, so now there was the explosive mix in them. Cink accidentally took that and guessed which one contained oxygen, and then went to demonstrate how the incandescent sliver of wood would light up when immersed in it. The vial exploded in his hand. What does a properly trained chemist do in such a case? He runs out into the corridor, down one flight of stairs, into the class which was doing PE in the hall (the gym was not built yet, it came a couple of years later) and jumped into the arms of the PE teacher.
At another time, he opened the window of his cabinet and spat out a heavy wad of slime. Except these were double windows, and he didn't open the outer pane. He just took the rag from his pocket, wiped the glass and went on about "you should not be spitting around, it is not healthy".
21-II-2013 - 28-VIII-2025