There’s an art to the spitball. It must be aerodynamic, and shaped to suit your particular pen tube. It must be firm enough to fly true, but moist and squishy enough to induce disgust when it finds its target. Entire geography lessons went unheeded as we unleashed volley after volley at each other, and the floor was thick with the disgusting things.

Screamers, slappers, biters zingers and doosrahs, we took a lot of pride in our work.

The worst failure in spit-balling was the “zooter”. Quality control often slipped when an instant retaliation was called for, and a zooter could result. The zooter was too small for the tube, and slightly flattened and/or asymmetrical, resulting in a pathetic two-or-three-foot downward-arcing trajectory, with an accompanying “bzbzbzbfbfbfbfbzbzbzbtttt” noise.

The zooter resulted in humiliation for one’s lack of skill as well as your inability to hit back with extreme prejudice at the fat fuck who just landed one on the side of your nose, but almost as bad was its maker’s easy detection by the teacher. This usually resulted in being screamed at, copping a Detention, being kicked out of class, and possibly having to pick a few stray spitballs off the floor on your way out.

Mr Wilkins changed all that. Wilko was a hard-arse. I went to school in the days when it was still cool for a teacher to fling a blackboard duster at miscreants (if you ask me, it’s still cool, it’s just not allowed in these days of holistic learning, empowerment, spotty little oiks’ “rights” and overly litigious parents), or clip someone over the ear. Wilko thought these things and all kinds of other violence were cool, but he also had a sensitive, creative side.

Scratch that, he was about as sensitive as Paul Keating. But he was creative, so the challenge of engaging in an all-out spitball war during one of his classes had more than the usual frisson of danger and excitement.

I must say in Wilko’s defence that he was the best teacher I ever had (except for Miss Bowles, the well-stacked hippy art teacher who ranked a constant Top Three in everyone’s Wank Bank Hall of Fame). When I scored fifteen points above the next best kid in my final English exam and essay assessments and got all kinds of Awards and Prizes, he dropped the results sheet on my desk with disdain and sighed “It wasn’t really vintage Shaw, was it?” When I produced the best short story I’d ever written, he wrote “10/10, but you really must cut down on the wanking.”

So one day during Wilko’s class we had the Mother of All Spitball Wars, and for me the delight, and pride, of hitting Retallick on the cheek with a one-off High Velocity Shrapnel Ball (with staples in it, yeah baby!!) was matched only by being able to see Wilko’s carotid pulsing from the other end of the classroom. He remained strangely deaf, though, and if we were smarter we would’ve remembered why he was so fucking terrifying. You don’t teach fifteen year old boys for thirty years without being a completely evil bastard who’s always at least three steps ahead.

No need for him to plan, because he’d won the battle before he even walked into the room. He knew what he was going to do, and he knew when – he was just waiting for us to get confident enough to push too far. And we did. We were teenage boys.

Retallick, the gimp, decided to bring out the heavy artillery in an effort to save some kind of face. Crimson with anger and humiliation, he eyeballed me. His eyes never left mine as he unscrewed either end of a texta, and carefully, almost silently, tore off a full quarter sheet of paper and started chewing. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Wilko’s hand slow, just for a second, on the blackboard, as Retallick tore the paper. But I said nothing, gave no indication.

It was a stare-down, a duel. There was no way I would be allowed to dodge, and no way Retallick could miss. His jaws worked silently, and I saw his cheeks go concave as he sucked the excess saliva out of what was going to be the biggest spitball ever attempted in an English lesson.

He loaded up, and by now all eyes in the classroom, except for Wilko’s, were darting anxiously between Retallick and me. Would I flinch? Would he miss? How big would the splat be when it hit me? I stared into his eyes, unblinking, and the muzzle of his spitgun looked like a Howitzer.

He inhaled to arm the spitgun, and everyone else drew breath. Time stood still, stiller than me, stiller than Wilko. An explosive exhalation from Retallick, and the 14 grams of paper and spit was on its way.

“RETALLICK!!!!” and all of us turned as one to see Wilko, the best shade of purple he’d ever turned, right arm already letting fly with a piece of chalk. Retallick, texta tube still in his mouth, caught the chalk right on the bridge of the nose, as the spitball ricocheted wetly off my shoulder and into Carlyon’s pencil case.

We froze. Retallick stood, awaiting his sentence.

“Retallick, front and centre. The rest of you, one move, one breath out of place, and it’s Saturday detention. Shaw, pick up every single spitball from the floor.”

While everyone else studiously avoided eye contact, Retallick stood, quietly weeping, in front of the blackboard. I crawled around the classroom on hands and knees, collecting cold and slightly damp lumps of chewed-up paper. Eventually I had quite a handful, and presented them to Wilko.

“Give them to Retallick.” Retallick cupped his hands and I poured them in.

“That was an exceptionally large spitball you fired at Shaw, wasn’t it Retallick?”

“Yes Sir.”

“I like large spitballs, don’t you, Retallick?”

“Um, not sure, Sir.”

“Well, let’s see, shall we? Perhaps you could make a giant spitball for me, Retallick. Out of all those spitballs in your hand.” Pause for the horror to sink in.

“All of them, Retallick. I think you’ll find it easier if you just shove the whole lot in your mouth at once. Now, Retallick, before I hurt you.”

Once when my daughter was a baby I accidentally gave her a spoonful of minced ginger. That’s the only time I’ve seen a face anything like how Retallick looked that day as he chewed on the collected saliva of his classmates. But he wasn’t allowed to spit it out.

“Are you done yet, Retallick?” Retallick nods, sheepishly. “Shaw, don’t go anywhere. I’m positive there was a good reason you were Retallick’s target, and we won’t go into that. However I feel a little bit guilty that I put him off his aim, so it’s only fair that you get to keep this…. Item… as a keepsake.”

“Sir.”

For the rest of the year, in addition to the standard homework and assignments, I had to produce 800 words a week on my upkeep of and relationship with the giant spitball.

For the rest of the year, not another spitball was fired anywhere near Wilko’s classroom.

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