What's the meaning of " were" and where can I use this?? The second lesson I learned was from my high school headmaster – Mr. K V Narayan (KVN). I was 13 years old. He taught us the importance of treating public property, property that belongs to the community, with even greater care than your own private property. He was conducting an experiment in chemistry, and he wanted to use sodium chloride (common salt). He was being extremely careful with the amount of common salt that he put into the test tube. One of my friends who was sitting next to me thought KVN was very stingy and burst out laughing. So, KVN stopped his experiment, and came to where we were sitting. KVN asked my friend why he laughed and what was so funny about the experiment