I Get Tricked Again - Floppy

 Even though my sister had really stung me for her and her friend's amusement I still idolized her and wanted to be in her inner circle. Another night just her and her 'bad influence' friend were over. I always thought it was funny that my parents thought that this girls was a corrupting influence because my sister was the naughty driver this girl was just the passenger. This night they were having fun with our camcorder and making little skits. I definitely wanted in on that so I was puppy-ing around behind them like a pathetic little extra willing to do anything for some face time. I told them I could do a back-flip on the tramp if they wanted to film that they were unenthusiastic but agreed. I went and did my flip and they all the sudden started giggling and whispering to each other. That should have been a warning but they said they just really liked my flip and that I should do it again. In my experience older sisters never legitimately like anything you do and if they claim to it was to suck up to trick you. She was sucking up to me to try and trick me. It worked. It turned out after I had done a couple of more tricks and then they ran off in the house laughing that what they really found funny was the exaggerated motions of my boxer-behind-sweats genitals. Yes, constant reader, they had just been trying to film my crotch and exploit that to my embarrassment. They ran into my sisters room and locked the door to re-watch what sounded like comedy gold judging from the laughs that were coming from behind the door. My sister was making a live foley track saying 'ba-gong' in a funny voice every time I was bouncing in the film. I was outside the door knocking and begging and just about to cry. I was terrified that she was going to do like she had the last time and spread my shame far and wide for her amusement. She yelled at me to go away and I didn't I told her to erase the tape and I would go away. She finally opened the door and said I needed to calm down and not get her in trouble because you couldn't see anything on the tape anyway and she was just trying to antagonize me. I demanded to see the footage before I would negotiate with this terrorist. She was right they had been trying to track me through a eye piece with a old camcorder that didn't have the resolution to make a joke of a young man's improperly secured cargo. I was relived I had been imagining a horribly embarrassing tape being transmitted hand to hand to every student in the school but this just looked like a couple of little girls badly filming another boy doing tricks on the tramp. Sweet tricks by the way, super sweet tricks.  

I Get Tricked Into Being That Kid

 My older sister, in general, was not really interested in having me around. If she ever did 'friendly up' there was usually that first whiff of exploitation in the air that would perk my senses. Sometimes the allure of having my older and cool sister pay attention to me clouded my judgment and I payed for it. One night my sister had her friends over and they were allowed to lock the door to the bedroom and keep the undesirable little brothers out. There was a lot of laughing and fun going on in there and the sound of it was eating a hole in my soul. I wanted to be included in the fun so badly and they didn't want me in. While I was resigned to doing something not fun in my room out of the blue comes a knock and it was one of my sisters friends who was asking if I wanted to come back to their room and hang out. I didn't play it cool and I jumped and followed right with her and didn't notice she was smiling and giggling in a odd way. When I got to the room with the four older women they shut the door and my sister who was 14 told me, 12, that they were wondering who I would want to have sex with. At first I thought they were offering and was terrified. I said no one. They said it was not for real they just wanted to know who I thought was the cutest girl in school. I should have smelled the trap at that point. I hemmed and hawed and tried to change the subject because in reality I didn't want to have sex with anyone, I hadn't even kissed anyone. I put off their requests for a while but worn down and with the qualification that I was just saying it because they were asking so much and that I wouldn't really have sex with the girls I mentioned I gave them a name. They asked who else. Now that the levy was breached I figured there was no harm in giving up the names of two more girls I thought were cute. Well, as may come as no surprise to anyone my lapse in judgment cost me dearly. My sister and her friends took the opportunity in the next week to tell each of the girls I mentioned that I wanted to have sex with them and I told them as much at a party. Ladies, especially young ladies, love to hear that a creepy nerdy kid is hanging around parties telling everyone that he wants to have sex with them. This was kept absolutely secret and was passed on to no one except for everyone. I had people asking me for weeks why I wanted to have sex with the girls I mentioned. At first I tried to explain that I had been pressured into giving up names of girls I liked after I had mad clear I didn't want to have sex with them but that argument was lost so I just went with ignoring and denial. Eventually, the news that I was a pervy horny creepy dork got back to a girl I had mentioned parents and they contacted my parents which ended with my dad having a little talk with me about the serious nature of sex. I tried to explain to my dad that I did not want to have sex with those girls I wanted to be included by my sister. Was that such a crime? Crime no, mistake yes. Big mistake.   

Faking Sick to Miss Performances

 I had a problem of wanting to be in the limelight and being terrified of being in the limelight. Whenever there were public speaking opportunities in school or church I always volunteered. I was sincerely planning on doing it when I volunteered but then I would start to think of how nervous I would be and I would start to get second thought. Second thoughts would become third thoughts and third thoughts are a dark place in my mind which is right next door to equivocation. Finally, as the day and time approached I would be in full retreat not even bothering with rationalization. I would sometimes just 'forget' the occasion and try to miss the whole event or at least appear so unprepared that the MC would recognize I must have forgotten and let me off the hook. If the situation was dire I would fake sick sometimes getting the back story established the day before to make sure that I was believable. One time when I was faking sick to miss giving a talk in church I had stayed home and was taking a nice hot bath when my brother burst in on me and told me that my dad had told the congregation that I was home but if I had a talk to give he would round me up. Instead of talking first the allowed me to move into the back time slot giving me time to get to church. I got dressed and walked the two blocks to the church in abject terror barely able to breathe and feeling like I was going to pass out. I made it before the close and walked up to the podium and choked something out and felt vindicated somehow. This seems like a time where I would have learned my lesson because my bluff was so spectacularly called but the next chance that I had to take on the public speaking responsibilities I jumped at the chance and then didn't show up. Over the years I flaked on virtually every possible performance from speaking, to musical, and even dance. If I could volunteer for it, I did and then I didn't.

Shinboggining

 There was a hill of death on the north side of the middle/elementary school. We we only allowed to sled in one section of the hill and that section would get iced over and extremely dangerous. There were accidents and on-purposes all day long every time there was snow or ice to sled on. I didn't have a sled but I would try and sabotage other sledders by waiting until they started going and then I would jump on their back and ride the 100 feet or so down the hill and then jump off and run away before they could retaliate. There was one boy who was rather portly for his age that had a long fluffy coat made of some sort of very slippery plastic and he used to get a run, jump and then slide down on his coat like an otter or penguin might. This was a temptation too great for me to pass up and I used to stand around and wait for him to get his run up going, time it, and then jump on and ride him down and abscond before he could give me a smack. He hated this game as much as I loved it. One day he was hanging around the top of the hill on the icy sidewalk precipice and a boy decided that he was done waiting for the chance to ride this boy down the hill ambush style and decided to throw him down so we could ride. When I saw what was going down I grabbed on and helped drag him to the edge and then jumped on for the ride. We jumped off at the bottom and he tried to smack us both but we were long gone and the bell rang so we went in. After I was in class, coat off and warming up, the call came over the PA that the other rider and I were to come to the office immediately. I knew what it must be about and my heart went cold and a sticky weight was all around my head and chest. I made the walk down to the now familiar principals office and the secretary told me to sit on the couch with the other perp. We sat and waited while we heard an irate mother yell about abuse and punishment for whomever did this to her son. We were let in and The boy and his mother were in the two available chairs and so we stood to hear what our trouble was going to be. The principal asked our version which I gave about riding him down the hill on his coat. I left out the part about dragging him over and throwing him down. The ridden boys mom was outraged at my omission and asked if I was proud of myself for almost killing her boy. She had her son show us all the cloth burns on his neck where the drawstring had cut into the flesh there as we drug him by his hood and I used it for a handle for the ride down. I was sad for what I had done but I was half this boy's size and I was wonder why I was the focus of the blame when my clearly much bigger and stronger co-defendant was being almost overlooked. I think it was because I had coined the phrase Shinboggining, a term to describe ridding this kid down the hill based on his last name which was Shinberger or something like that. The mom asked if I had called ridding her son Shinboggining and I admitted that it was a term I had used and she asked again if I was proud of myself, I said I was not. I said I was very sorry and that we were just messing around and that we didn't want to hurt him. I felt terrible but worse when they said I was going to expelled for a day and my parents were going to have to come in and have a talk with the principal. My dad was most happy with us kids when we were not embarrassing him so I knew I was in for some spank/grounding situations when I got home with the news. I was spot on in my prognostication. I was grounded for two weeks and got a spanking, maybe the last of my life as far as I remember and my dad made me take a treat over to the ridden boy's house and apologize to him and his parents. After my suspension I steered clear of the sledding hill because like a guy in AA the best thing is to avoid temptation and relapse. I have never ridden a fat kid with a slippery coat down a hill again, but one day at a time is how I get by.

Passing Out in Church

 I have always been a really anxious guy and sometimes when I am having a really bad anxiety attack I don't sleep for days. The first time that happened that I can remember was when I was twelve and had been stressed out about something or something else, it didn't take much to push me over the edge. I had no slept for two nights and stayed up reading both nights. The third day after two sleep less nights was Sunday and I went to church with my brain in a numb sort of haze where my brain kind of shocked itself a little trying to keep me awake. I was supposed to be helping out during the service but I almost collapsed when I tried to stand up so I went to the hall to get a drink instead. I was holding onto the drinking fountain with both hands when my vision narrowed into a small circle and then blinked out. Luckily there was a man walking by who saw that I was in distress and he caught me as I blocked out and set me down gently. I was unconscious for only a few seconds but my brain was ready to shut everything down again soon if didn't get some rest so I went home and slept the rest of the day and on through the night. My mom was naturally worried when se found out I had not slept for days before by fainting and she took me to a doctor that gave me pills that made me sleep for 12 hours ready or not. I don't like the feeling of being chemically compelled and after the first dose of the horrid stuff I would take the pill and pretend to eat it and then go to my room an dread anyway. Sometimes if I was getting really badly manic and anxious I would take one but of the ninety or so I was prescribed I consumed only about 6. After a few months the fervor over my collapse died down and my mom didn't even require me to fake taking pills.  

Naked Problems

We were outnumbered in Santaquin middle school, almost two to one. I am talking about girls, of course, lots of them which normally was no problem but there is that gender specific class, Physical Education, that requires boys and girls be in segregation. Seventh grade was when some of the kids had started hitting puberty and stinking. That meant that we were supposed to have showers after gym but it was also the last class of the day so there was not that much shame in not doing it you could just head home stinky and all and shower later that night. There was a couple of problems with a mixed class, first the girls were not as aggressive and athletic as the boys so in conflict games like the aforementioned war ball girls were a liability if they were on your team and an easy target if they were on the other team. The teachers who chose up the co-ed PE class tried to find the wimpiest and least athletic boys so we would not be over-matched against the girls but it was still not even. You know what? I was just thinking that if the class was the nerdiest and wimpiest boys and I was in the class then I must have been some kind of outlier,a real 6σ situation. The second problem is that the teacher was female and she was not allowed into the boys locker room and we knew it. There was some freedom in knowing that the teacher could only yell at you through the door. Some of the more adventurous and not-shy boys started a game where they would turn on all of the showers in the shower bank alcove and then get a run from the other side of the locker room and then slide butt naked across the floor like a nudist slip-and-slide. I was not that bold but I could appreciate the humor of the situation. One day we were in there way too long and the teacher was yelling for us to knock off whatever was so funny and come out now. She then came up to the door and yelled in that we were all going to get in big trouble if we didn't get out right then. A grown woman at the door yelling at a bunch of naked pre and recently pubescent boys threatening to come in and throw us all out naked scared us to death and we made haste to wrap up the naked-in-school portion of our day. When we got out she had found out about the naked slip and slide and warned the boys who were participating that whatever punishment she would affix would be less intense then the case of athlete's butt they probably just picked up. The idea of a woman bursting in on us naked must have scarred deeply into my psyche because for years I had a sometimes reoccurring nightmare that featured me naked in the gym class locker room and an unseen female banging and pushing on a door that took all of my strength to hold shut. On occasion, in the dream, she would also demand that I hand out my penis. That part was not part of the original trauma of being yelled at by a female gym teacher but it mush have been implied to my young mind. When people tell me that dreams can come true, I relate this dream and then tell them I certainly hope they cannot. 

Getting Choked Out For Being a Jerk

 I was an equal opportunity mocker - boy, girl, man or woman if the joke was there I went for it. This was not a good policy. I know it is de rigueur to pretend you believe in equality but not in the sense that everyone is treated the same, never treat everyone the same or you will be destroyed. I thought it would be funny to make fun of a tall girl, which in terms of strict equality it was a big step forward. I had made what I will admit was a rather lame joke about her looking really skinny but probably weighing a lot because it was spread so thin. One of my backwards, misogynistic, patriarchal, and chivalrous classmates heard me making fun of this girl and told me to shut up. I didn't take his recommendation and tried to work him into the mix as well suggesting that maybe he was into tall girls and he may want to stop showing off for this one in particular or she may fall in love. They say that laughter is the best medicine but the laughter that this joke elicited must not be because he decided it was time to switch from diplomacy and head right into the punching and choking portion of our confrontation. He was much stronger and much larger than I and had a pretty good command of the grappling game and quickly had me in a choke that was making my face turn purple. He would only release me if I promised to shut up and apologize to the girl. I thought the indignity of an apology a fair trade for my consciousness and maybe my life. I gasped out an apology and tried to gasp and wheeze a lot to keep from crying, I think it worked but I can't remember exactly. I didn't even tell on the kid for beating me up because I knew he did the right thing and I was in the wrong, he was a good kid and I was a jerk. I am, in fact, still embarrassed about how I acted that day. I feel terrible about embarrassing a girl that was already self conscious about being different. I would have much rather been the kid that was standing up in someones defense and not the one who needed to be set strait, but maybe it is better that I tell the truth.  

I Hate The Violin Teacher

Used mainly to swing in my hand by its handle while I waited for school to open 

My mom wanted musicians and with some of my brothers and sisters she got some, with me she just got heartache and sadness. I was a two time piano lesson drop out and I had played a piano recital using a song I wrote myself. It was not good, I should have stuck with Frere Jacques and called it a night. Having abandoned the piano my mom encouraged me to join either band or orchestra. I definitely didn't want to be in band because it was full of nerds who were referred to by even other nerds as 'band fags'. I couldn't risk it, so I went with something non nerdy and definitely heterosexual – the violin. I was actually really excited to pick it up because it would be fun to fiddle and jig to entertain my friends and family and to woo potential love interests. I went with my mom and bought one that was quite expensive for our little families budget but my dad said that if I was serious it was a good investment. I was serious all right I was going to practice for one hour every day. Every single day. I went to orchestra at seven, an hour before school, on the first day and I was so excited and jumping the gun as the orchestra teacher tried to orient 20 kids with different instruments. She got to the four violinists and put tape on the neck where our fingers should go and I was precociously good at plucking out the right string when she called for it. I carried my violin case with me around the seventh grade hall and when people would ask I would give them a casual-cool, 'Oh this? It's my new violin, I play violin you know.'

I went home right after school and forwent the playtime in favor of a little violin practice. It went well and by the end of the day I could pluck out Yankee Doodle. Dandy. The next morning having to get up at six was less entertaining but I got to orchestra on time after walking in the near dark of early morning. I was so excited to show the teacher what I learned and I did and she said I was doing it wrong and that I should only practice what she outlined so that the class could all learn together and we would all do it right. It broke my heart and made me mad and I hated her so bad it hurt. That afternoon I didn't practice. The next morning I told my mom I was sick and I couldn't go. The morning after that I was woken up and bundled out no excuse withstanding and I walked as slow as I could the four blocks to the school and then I circled the building holding my violin and burning time until they opened the regular doors at 7:30. That became my morning routine because I couldn't tell my parents that I had dropped out of orchestra and was now irreparably behind. Late in November after two months of skipping class and practice some cursed newsletter informed my mom that there would be a orchestra Christmas recital. I couldn't come clean so I just loaded up with my family and went to the Christmas recital, violin in tow. I walked in and started getting out my violin and the orchestra teacher came over and asked what I was doing I told her I was here for the recital and she was speechless. She mentioned that I had not been in class for two months and that I had no idea what we were doing but she said that I could sit with the group while they plucked out a Christmas medley. She said that if I wanted to be in recitals I would have to come to class and practice. Fair enough I though, fair enough. I endured the recital miming plucking to fool my parents. And I thought the coast was clear until I saw the teacher talking with my mom who was looking distressed. We shortly had a little talk of our own where I looked distressed as my mom recounted her disappointment personally that I had been lying about going to class and hiding in the snow outside the school instead of going in to practice. She told me how much the violin cost an dhow much sacrifice that was. I was sad but I wasn't changing my mind so I just waited for her to blow herself out. We sold the violin and I only saw the teacher a few more times as she had then moved onto teaching high school and the youth symphony. She was obviously better at her job than I was at mine.  

Getting My Thumb Broke

You would think that a couple of really good beatings would have set me strait on the whole not making fun of kids bigger and stronger than myself. I am no quitter, unless it is something useful or productive. Once while playing a dodge ball variant our gym teacher called war ball I mocked one such bigger strong young man. I was found guilty of smartassery and sentenced to one broken thumb. I went down thusly, I was thrown out fairly quickly by a red rubber ball with a nice parquet kind of pattern that rang a little inside when it slammed into a nerd's head. I was sitting on the stage steps making fun of the more elusive and powerful athletes which to an outside observer seems like a bad move. It pretty quickly seemed that way to an inside observer as one of the boys on the other team was making what I thought looked like some ballet like moves to avoid getting hit. I pointed it out and my team laughed and then I started doing ballet moves and my team laughed some more. The game actually stopped because the boy I was mocking was closing the distance towards me quickly but I was oblivious because my back was turned in a mighty dainty chassé leading to a a rond de jambe en l’air. He was about two feet behind me when he called my name loudly which startled me and I turned in just enough time to raise my hand to stop the ball he was throwing, point blank, into my face. My thumb snapped backwards and made a crunching sound which was orders of magnitude less funny than the ballet demonstration. It swelled and turned purple and hurt worse than my thumb had ever hurt. The teacher who was out of the gym at the time came back in to my howls of pain and got the idea that my injury had occurred in the normal course of war ball and she took me to the medical room across from the office and splinted my thumb and had me wait there until school was over in 15 minutes and then I walked home. When I got home and showed my mom the swollen purple and black mess my thumb was she took me to the emergency room and I got a cast which was awesome because I felt like a cyborg and everyone wanted to know what happened. The awesome wore off as the cast became routine and stinky and itchy. In six weeks I got the cast sawed off and my thumb has always clicked when I squeeze something hard in my left hand which is to remind me that I should only mock people who are not present or good at throwing stuff.

Mr. Creer Has a Breakdown.

 You cannot be nice to kids, they will see it as weakness and wear you down and break you. Mr. Creer was our math teacher and was unquestionably the coolest teacher in school but he made the fatal mistake of trying to be our friend. He would let us talk when we were done with our work and he would give us extra chances to complete work and it started to wear on him when kids started taking advantage of his leniency. He was in his second year when I was in seventh grade and he was trying to tighten the ship and try a little more strict classroom but once freedom has been granted it is very hard to take it back away. I was always being disrespectful and talking out of turn in other classes but I liked Mr. Creer and I was always trying to be good and set a good example in his class because I felt bad for him. He was getting more or more frazzled and snappy but about midway through the year a girl named Kelly got up right in the middle of Mr. Creer's lecture and walked over and started talking with her friend in non-conspiratorial tones. Mr. Creer told her we couldn't get up and talk until our work and homework was done. Kelly said her homework was done. This was not true and everyone knew it but for some reason it was the last drop on the forehead of Mr. Creer's Chinese water torture. He hummed a bit and festered and them he called her a liar. She said she wasn’t lying and he started in with the melt down. He screamed that we were all liars and grabbed some chalk and threw it at her. He screamed about how he was sick of us all lying and he kicked his garbage can hard enough to send it flying into the wall. He swept all of the books and the computer off of his desk and yelled a few more things as he stormed out of the class and out of the professional education gig. We got a permanent substitute that was one of the kids in our grade's mom who was no nonsense and she had us whipped back into shape soon. Mr. Creer's breakdown was all we talked about for a couple of weeks and then it went away except for as a footnote to our education. Years later I was at a job where we were getting a generator delivered and the drivers name was Creer on the manifest so I went out to see if it was Mr. Creer, it was. I talked to him for a bit and he told me he was much happier driving truck and that he didn't regret anything. He thanked me for being a good kid and I told him that I was sorry for how he was treated and that was the end of it.  

I Do Some Chemistry

 My history teacher in seventh grade was always trying to take me down a peg for some reason. He would always ask me questions that were beyond my knowledge to stump me and then publicly tell me that I wasn't as smart as I thought I was. He also told my mom that in my parent teacher conference. He told he that I was too confident in my intelligence and that he wanted to bring me down to reality. What an inspiring teacher and great man. One day he was inexplicably in my science class and was telling us that we really needed to pay attention or we would be burried in Jr. High and High School science. To prove his point he went and wrote a chemistry equation on the board out of a book that was on the shelf. It was long but a fairly strait forward problem that I already knew how to solve. He asked, rhetorically, if any of us thought that we could solve a problem like that. I said I could and he was skeptical but more than willing to let me go down in flames and let me come up and try. I started in quickly and had the problem worked out in about two minutes working as fast as I could. The funny part was that the teacher didn't know the correct solution and had to look it up to check that I was right. Despite himself he was impressed and he went and got a fairly good stack of baseball cards which he publicly awarded me. I normally would have made a sassy comment about how I was as smart as I thought I was but I was too elated by the success to gloat I was just glowing and solidified my nerd credentials.  

I Think I am Funny. Dustin Begs to Differ.

 I had a terrible mixture of smaller than average stature mixed with larger than average smartassery. I was helpless to stop myself from saying something funny but cutting and personal, I was also helpless to stop the almost inevitable beat down that would follow. There was one kid who was a bit of a stoner that had big fluffy butt-rock band hair and wore ripped out pants over tights both looks that were inexplicable manly in the late 80's. He was actually really cool and one of the only kids who I got along with really well but one day at recess I was teasing him about the way he was playing basketball and even went so far as to comically mimic his dribble and jump with exaggerated motions. All undeniably funny, to everyone but him. Everyone was laughing and I was riding high when Dustin pushed me hard on the shoulder and spun me around. He started asking if I thought I was funny, I did but I thought his question may be on the accusatory end of the rhetorical scale so I decided to say something tough. I went with a whiny borderline crying, 'Hey man, just leave me alone, okay.' Admittedly not a line that Clint Eastwood might use but he had the benefit of writers. I did all of my own material and my scared to death ready to cry material was not my 'A' stuff. I Backed up over and over across the whole parking lot that passed for our playground and he kept pushing me hard on the shoulders. Finally, he punched me hard in the guts and I crumpled into the bushes crying. The bell rang and everyone went back to class but I went in the furthest doors from the middle school hall and hid in the gym bathroom until I could stop crying and rinse my face enough to cover up my flushed face and tear streaks. It wouldn't have mattered everyone already knew that I got beat up and I cried. A kid named David, that sat by me in my next class that I came late to on account of the get-it-together-time I had spent in the bathroom, asked me why I cried like a pussy when Dustin punched me. There was no more popular kid in school than David and I wanted to save some face if I could, so I told him that I was crying because when Dustin punched me I tripped and I fell into the bushes and a stick poked right into my ear. My reasoning was even a non-pussy would cry if he was poked in the ear. That is not how young master David saw it and thought that was funny too, I cried because I got punched and a stick poked me, ha ha ha. Perhaps the greatest irony here is that David was a frail little wiener of a kid that had not one ounce of manliness and he was taking me to task for crying. Dustin was not mad at me and felt sorry for making me cry and embarrassing me so he was extra nice to me for the next couple of days. We stayed school friends for the next couple of years and never fought again. He moved away or dropped out I don't know which, they both seem equally plausible and both may have happened.   

Little Old Lady Choke Slam

 In English class I sat right behind a fiery little psycho named Teresa who had some cowboy boots she loved to use for a little shin kicking. She was a sadist who loved to see the brass star from the tip of her boot leave a punch out of stellar bruised and bleeding flesh. She would wait until I was quietly concentrated on a piece of work and then crack me in the shin and revel in my screens while she begged me to let her look at the handiwork. I would sometimes get yelled out for disturbing my class with my whimpering. I would protest that the reason why I was crying out was that I was getting kicked and the teacher, a woman in the late fifties and definitely from the old school would mock me about being hurt by a little girl and tell me to shut up. One day when I had been kicked the last I was going to be kicked I reached up and slapped Teresa in the back of her head as hard as I could after she had kicked me for the second time that day. I was trying to hurt her but she was playing it up with her flopping an wailing. I was telling her to shut up when I was grabbed from behind by my sexist teacher. She snatched me up from my seat and drug me out to the hall and was turning purple with rage. She was livid about me 'laying my hand on' a little girl like I had without provocation punched a toddler in the face for my sick thrills. When she got me out to the hall she grabbed me by the throat and pressed me up against the wall by my neck and was trying to choke lift me while she continued screaming about how a man should never hit a woman. She was obviously okay with the old vise versa, the trachea vise specifically. A Math teacher from down the hall came and told he to calm down and let me go before she did something she would regret. She let me go but took me to the principals office where I was allowed to recover and cry a bit before I had to talk to the principal. He asked me what had happened and I told him about the kicking a showed him the evidence of the weeks of abuse and he was obviously distressed. When I told him that the teacher had done nothing about it until I hit Teresa and then she choked me while she yelled at me He was very concerned because I had some marks on my neck. This was the wild and untamed eighties but still not the south or so far in the past that a teacher could still hit a student let alone choke them. He called the teacher in and had a talk with her while I sat in the waiting area on the couch wondering if I was being vindicated or buried in that little meeting. I Don't know what exactly happened but by how profusely the teacher apologized and how well she treated me and how much trouble Teresa got in I have a feeling it was one of those professional educator 'Come To Jesus' type talks that maybe made mention of the massive liability the school and teacher would face in the event of legal action. I was just glad for three things, I was not in trouble, Teresa was, and the kicking was over. That is all I wanted.

Banned in The USA

 I did not go looking for trouble, in most cases it was just that I was incapable of shutting up or taking the extra 'should-I-really-say-the-thing-that-I-just-thought-of' check. As far as I know I have been kicked out of every single class in elementary and middle school at one time or another. I didn't make it through a class un-kicked until jr. high. One day the girl whom had given me the condom and I were doing a little too much joking in class and we both got kicked out to the hall to stop distracting the other kids. While we were out in the hall we were supposed to be quite and not talk or our punishment may be increased. We started joking about what we should do to really make the teacher mad and I said it would be funny to sing the then popular 2 Live Crew tribute to the freedom of speech, specifically about sex and ho's, afforded by the first amendment. It was called 'Banned in the USA' and doesn't hold up under the scrutiny of time it turns out. The girl said that would be funny and I told her I knew all of the words and so I started rapping it a little and then a little more, and a little more loudly than I had intended and the teacher across the hall heard me and came out to yell at me but I had not seen her so I finnished up my rap while she serupticously listened and was offended. She grabbed me and the teacher who had kicked me out of class and we all went down to talk to the principle about why I was loudly singing a rebellion song by the notorious porno-rap rap group 2 Live Crew in the hall during class. When you say it like that it does sound like I was rebelling and showing off and inviting conflict but that was not the case. My mom was called and mercifully was not reached and I was set in the room besides the principals office to sort PTA flyers and I assume I was forgotten about because at the end of the school day the bell rang all the kids left and I was still running the mimeograph and sorting out papers when I noticed the school was very quite and only the janitors were still in the building. I gave the coast a good look and when I saw it was clear I quick walked out of the building keeping close to the walls and then runnign across the open lawn to the shortcut home. The next day I faked sick to miss school just to make sure the heat was dying down and then when I went back the next Monday there was no mention of my trouble so I just laid low for a couple of days to let things simmer down and keep me on the right side of the law.  

We Allegedly Have a Dance

 I like girls and I even liked them before we were supposed to. So when I heard we were going to have a couple of dances in middle school I was I little subtly excited. It was one of those nerd fantasy moments when you think for some reason there may be a chance that someone cute and cool asks you to dance. There is no chance. I wanted to dance, I wanted to dance with girls but I had so much anxiety about it that I could feel my heart beat in my chest and get short of breath when I just imagined asking someone to dance. Because we were only twelve they didn't have the dances at night just in the lunchroom/stage area in the afternoon when we would usually have gym. They were playing music from a very basic sound system when we all get filled in with everyone giving of the obligatory pre-teen grumbles of thinking everything is going to suck. They didn't turn the lights down or serve alcohol the two great crutches of social interaction afforded to adults and so everyone self consciously went and sat on the steps in front of the stage while a few adventurous groups of girls stood around in circles talking. As far as I could tell no one had worked up the courage to come ask me to dance yet so I decide to give myself a little space from the pack of nerds that always seemed to settle, inexplicably, wherever I did and give out that lobo solo vibe so the ladies could see I was ready to dance and they didn't need to be shy. I may not have fully grasped the intricacies of female interpersonal and group psychology because even my 'putting off the vibe' gambit failed to fill the old dance card. After about 45 minutes a group of two boys and two girls started kind of joke dancing in the corner for a minute and then that dried up and we all sat out the last 15 minutes of our allegedly fun-time-reward-dance and then went back to class with me feeling a lot a bit disappointed that no girls worked up the courage to ask me to dance. They were just a little shy and felt awkward I guess.  

Spear-Gun to School

 It seems like whomever is making up advice cliches balances them equally between either side of an issue to ensure that whatever you choose there will be a well turned phrase that proves what ever you picked was wrong and that is why you failed. That is why you should look before you leap but never hesitate or you will be lost. I, however, do not truck in cliches and that is why with the single minded tenacity of a particularly determined rodent of some sort I waded once more into the melee which was science demonstration determined to wow the kids and redeem myself. This is where someone with less imagination and writing ability than myself would say something inane about 'the definition of insanity'. Then someone else who, in retrospect, saw me succeed could counter with a 'try try again' type rebuttal. In fairness the 'try try' guy, though undoubtedly well intentioned, would be in the wrong here. I decided to bring in the big guns, literally. I had recently certified in scuba diving and I was going to bring in my equipment for another science demonstration for Ms. B's class. If you are not impressed by the technological innovations that make it possible to breathe under the water then there is something wrong with you my friend, not with SCUBA. My finale piece was going to be using my spear gun to shoot a jug of water in a pan to show its awesome destructive power. Turns out, and you may want to write this down for future reference, when a seventh grade teacher says you are welcome to bring in your scuba gear for a demonstration she means the tank, the buoyancy compensator, gauges, mask and stuff not the razor sharp knife and defiantly not the spear-gun. I walked into school with my gear to store it in her class until after lunch when I had my audience mandated by law to be in attendance. I stacked everything in the front corner of the class but took the spear-gun out for a little before school special teaser to build interest in my presentation and my street cred. Turns out that in just a few minutes it had generated quite a lot of interest in the hall way and in the, in my opinion, overcautious response of the teachers. One actually ran through the crowd of rightfully awed students and rudely grabber the gun from my hand and grabbed my shoulder with his free hand in what could only be a misunderstanding. I explained to this teacher and the principle that my science teacher told me I could bring a spear-gun to school. I knew this was not entirely accurate because she had said scuba gear and while a spear gun was and is used by scuba divers I am not sure that is what she had in mind. I had to leave the gun in the principals office and we went to talk to Ms. B who was rewarded for encouraging a young mind by being yelled at by the principal about how she should have been aware of what I was bringing into the building. She stood up for me and said it was just a honest mistake and that she would take care of it, I did some hitching air sucking and whimper cried for my part in the unfolding drama, convinced that I had just lost my dad's spear gun for good. It actually turned out okay and the principal brought the gun right on cue but selfishly hogged it all to himself during the 'come and touch' portion of the demonstration. I don't know if the presentation was a absolute success but compared to that microwave debacle it went gangbusters. The principal gave the gun back to my mom after school and she claimed she didn't even know I had brought it, but that was probably because it was wrapped up in a towel and hidden in a back of fins and booties. I think the takeaway is that we all learned I was not to be trusted and that is good advice except for when you should have trusted me. 

Microwaves Don't Win Popularity Contests

 I don't learn. That is why after a few weeks I forgot the pain of failure at science demonstration. I asked for another shot and was given it because Ms. B was awesome like that. This time I decided to do my presentation on the working of a microwave oven. A fascinating topic that I thought every other twelve year old would find as interesting as I did. They did not which would come as no surprise to anyone who has tried to explain molecular excitation of water by non-ionizing microwave radiation by radio waves of 2.45 gigahertz with a 122mm wavelength. Most of us have tried, and sadly failed, to have this little chat with a kid and make it fun while being scientifically accurate. I had a microwave generator to show around and it got polite looks because it was better than listening to me. I even drew a water molecule and a actual, to scale, wavelength diagram on the board but there was little to no interest in the topic from my audience, and physically captive or not they were quickly lost. Luckily Ms. B saw my ship sinking and thew me a precious lifeline of making the topic review a game in which she provided candy rewards. Once again my precocious grasp on electromagnetism and thermodynamics did not translate to much popularity with the fellas or the ladies. In fact beyond saying that I was weird, a nerd and gay some kids started calling me 'Professor Gause' - not as a complement. What backwards bizzaro world was this I was trapped in where a kid good at the stick-hit-ball game should be universally adored and the one who could explain the inner-workings of major household appliances was shunned? Someone needed to wake me from this nightmare and tell me that there was  some sense in the world. They didn't, they haven't and by the looks of it they won't. Ingrates.

I Fake Experimental Data

 The highlight of seventh grade for me was that we had a science class. Before that it was a little nature or geology segment here and there but nothing regular. Now there was an hour everyday dedicated to science of all varieties and it was my favorite class. The teacher was a single woman in her late thirties that was really vivacious and fun like a non-magical Ms. Frizzle. She loved her job and teaching kids and had fun with it which made it a great class. I liked the scientific forum of a captive audience so much that not long after the school year started I asked If I could do a presentation on the phases of water for the class for extra credit. She said it would be great if I wanted to do it the next Friday even though we both knew it was not for extra credit because this is one class I never let slip. When She told me I could do it I was very nervous it is what I wanted but when I had it I was not sure if I had really wanted what I got. I ran home after school as fast as I could conflicted between the sheer exhilaration of getting to do a presentation and the terror of public speaking. I started to assemble the demonstration materials, I got some glass jars, I hotplate, and some ice made to fit just snugly in the glass jars. All I needed was some liquid nitrogen and I asked my mom to please get me some. She was hesitant to get me liquid nitrogen for two reasons, it was extremely expensive and it was extremely dangerous. We settled on some nice dry ice. I had everything ready a week in advance and had written up a script based on my research from the World Book Encyclopedia and had all of my poster boards drawn and annotated. I was so excited I told everyone I got to teach the class on Friday, a claim that all of the other kids greeted with skepticism. So much so that they asked the teacher if it was true and in that second before she answered in the affirmative my heart sank thinking she may have forgotten or I misunderstood and she was going to deny it. If she would have denied it I would have cried left school and never come back, that was the plan at least. She confirmed my demonstration with enthusiasm and I was full up past my eyes with pride and excitement. When Friday came I brought in all the stuff except the dry ice and regular ice because my mom was going to bring that after lunch right in time for class. When lunch was over I ran right to science class and started setting up on the front table I was going from ice on the left to liquid in the middle and vapor on the the right. My mom was supposed to be there right at 12:30 and like many children I thought that meant she would be in the building at 12:30. 12:35 rolled around and she was still no there and a black smiley lump of terror that my mom had forgotten, which she had done before on less important days started to fill my heart and I started to hyperventilate a little. She showed up before I died and she turned over the precious ices and stayed in the back of the room to watch. I started the presentation by placing the dry ice in the first jar and the ice in a pan to the side the idea being that the dry ice would freeze the water in the jar dramatically while the other ice melted showing the phase change to and from ice simultaneously then I would turn on the hotplate and boom! Steam. In my head it all took 60 seconds and was awesome in real life it took forever and was not awesome The ice was melting okay and the water with the dry ice was bubbling a little but it was not freezing. The hotplate was not particularly hot on the water was just sitting in that one. I was loosing the audience and they were starting to fidget and chat so after ten minutes and my script and data were long since spent I stood up dramatically and claimed I saw Ice crystals and a little bit of steam coming off of the hot plate water just to end my moment of not triumph. Instead of making me more popular and interesting I think the kids were mainly bored and uninterested but there is no accounting for taste right?

I Have a Hole in My Shoe

 My mom would buy me shoes when I needed them, every time. However, I was the type of kid who never thought about what I needed until it was too late and then I would get into dire straits. Once we were having an assembly, which in Santaquin middle school consisted of the four classes of students coming out and sitting in the wide part of the hall. There was no room for chairs so we had to sit on the ground Indian style. Maybe we are not supposed to call it Indian style anymore but back then in the wild and wooly 80's sitting with your legs crossed in front of you may have had a racially insensitive name. I was sitting Indian style at first and I remembered that I had a hole in the sole of my shoe and tried to tuck it under my leg so no one else could see. My plan of hiding my shoe hole was working flawlessly until I got excited about answering some question or another and popped up to my knees to be a little more visible to the the raised hand recognizer. When I did the cute and cool girl sitting right behind me noticed the hole in my shoe and mentioned it to the girl sitting next to her load enough for me to hear. She said some thing about her gosh, and how she couldn't believe I would come to school with holes in my shoe, and then something about how I was a scrounge and my family was poor. I was humiliated but it was to late to back up and re-cover my shoe hole, even though the thought crossed my mind. I decided on a recency gambit and turned and told the girl that my shoe had ripped a hole in the sole at recess and that I was going to get new shoes tomorrow. She said I better or else I couldn't come back to school because you had to have good shoes at school. I should had known she really didn't have the authority to kick me out of school for not having good enough shoes but it made me nervous non the less and I went home and told my mom that I couldn't go back to school until I had new shoes. She yelled at me for not telling her before I had a huge hole in the bottom of my shoe and we loaded up and headed over to Pay-Less to get a pretty sweet new pair of XJ900s. I went from shoe shame to shoe unreasonable pride in just a few hours. Being basically fashion retarded I somehow brainwashed myself into thinking that the other kids would be pretty impressed by these cool looking shoes. The next day I was conspicuously showing off my new shoes to the cute girl who had insulted my holes ones and she said she thought I said I was going to get some nice shoes and not just XJ900s. Well, that required another layer of lies that had me claiming that these were just temporary and I was going to get some Nike Airs just as soon as we had the time to get up to the mall. This was not true but I was so low below her interest she never followed up with me to call my bluff.  

Pinchy Ho-toes

This story is well out of order but when I was talking to my friend Casey the other day I was reminded of it and see how I have very little editorial oversight I will include it here. When I was about 12 and my brother Matt was about 10 we were on a trip to visit someone somewhere and for a day trip we had gone swimming at an indoor pool. It was fun and everything was going swimmingly, so to speak, when a group of kids about our same age started harassing us. I can't remember exactly what the primer was that set off the powder keg of splash and dunk fighting but at some point my brother brought out the big guns and decided to insult our Hispanic antagonizes in their own tongue. The main problem with that was that he, or I for that matter, really knew what our Spanish insults meant, let alone how they were pronounced. He started in with calling them 'Pinchy Hoe-toes' his approximation of the very vulgar Spanish insult 'pinche joto' which would be F-wording homosexual in English. It was not intended to calm the waters. The kids didn't understand what her was trying to say at first and then after he repeated it a couple of times they caught on and then they thought it was hilarious and then kept asking him to repeat what he had said. Nothing is worse when you are trying to insult someone then to have them laugh and ask you to repeat it again. Somehow the cross-cultural multilingual insult attempt really relieved the tension and I don't think we ended up as friends but it seemed like the fighting stopped and we both coexisted in the communal urine vat.

Arm Wrestling

 There was a movie that came out in the late eighties the featured Sylvester Stallone fighting evil rich fat cats greed and dirty tricks by arm-wrestling for justice for his son and himself. No kidding. The thing is that the plot is absurd and contrived to somehow try and build an emotional conflict that can only be resolved by arm-wrestling and that was the most awesome thing any of us at the Santaquin Middle School had ever seen. Literally the finest movie since Tom Cruise fought communists with shirtless beach volleyball and one-liners. After the movie had time to percolate down to video rental and then cable television and many of the boys and girls had seen it we got right to work on arm-wrestling at any occasion. The rules were the regular ones except you could not go 'over the top', the cheating move that Sylvester Stallone used in the film ' Over the Top' to win a truck. That maneuver involved re-positioning your hand to a higher position to increase your leverage and thereby dominate your opponent. Before home room everyday for a couple of months we were going around to different desks arm wrestling and then talking about arm-wrestling. We settled out that Andy was probably the best arm wrestler and then the passion fizzled out as there was no point in retrying to challenge the son of a tow truck driver who did real work when he was not at school. I don't think I have arm-wrestled ten more times in my life since that spasm of arm-tacular battle. Got it out of my system I guess.  

Faye Spits in a Drink

 While we were in middle school the special ed department was trying to fully mainstream their students so that they were more included in the school experience. The problem was everyone knew they were the special ed kids and that made them easy targets for mockery. Mr. Black was not overly excited about having some extra work placed in his class so he was more or less openly hostile towards the special needs kids and would segregate them to desks at the back of the class with different work than the rest of us. The problem was that special ed had no distinction between kids that were a little slow and those that were fetal alcohol syndrome and various forms of mental retardation. Which meant that some of the kids were not going to catch up with a little extra help but others would. Mr. Black didn't seem to mind the quite ones but if they were dumb and disruptive he was from the old school of education which emphasized belittlement and yelling. One day one of the special ed girls named Faye was being particularly disruptive and Mr. Black yelled at her and insulted her but quickly thereafter had to leave the room to take a call and Faye was set on revenge. She went up to his desk and took the lid off of his water bottle and coughed up something and spit it in, instant karma and whatnot. Mr. Black came back and no one told him anything and we let him take a big drink of justice which was when he discovered something was amiss. His water was more slimy and chunky than usual and he started right in with the accusations but it didn't take long to find the culprit because Faye say she hated him and ran out. We waited until Mr. Black had left the room in hot pursuit before we laughed and retold the highlights to each other. Faye was not welcome back in class but there has to be some kind of intelligence math that tells you where you stand when you are outsmarted by the special ed girl.  

Baseball Cards Are Somewhat Effective

 Mr. Black liked to bride us for a good answer and a good effort but what he chose seems like it shouldn't have worked. He had bought a huge box of worthless baseball cards that were of the cheapest variety and we were several years past even the feigned passion for card collecting. But when he dangled them, boy or girl, smart or dumb we all sat up strait and tried extra hard. It was really inexplicable because after the class was over and the passion of the possible reward of a small card with a picture of an athlete that I had no interest in was passed their talismanic powers evaporated and they became useless again unless you needed a lot of book marks for some reason. The next day when we were in his class the magic would return and once again we would give our all for a single baseball card or absolutely lose our minds for a small stack.  

The Kremlin? Who the Heck Knows That?

 Every year there was a battle of wits in the state of Utah called the Geography Bee. It all started out with a teacher asking everyone in their class geography questions to whittle down the winners and losers. Strangely, the winners in this game were, in general population, usually considered losers. I was in Mr. Blacks class when they were culling the intellectual herd and the starting questions were easy. When the unworthy were sat down one by one there were two girls and another boy and I that went to the middle school final where we faced the four students from the other class in front of the whole school. Everyone was sat indian style in the hall and the eight of us were at desks and I was excited based on the questions we had been asked in the classroom round I was feeling confident. The questions started at the other end from me and they were all pretty easy. I was the last one to go in the first round and the kid next to me was asked to name a phase of the moon. Oh, I wanted that one. The boy answered and then it was my turn to show everyone how smart I was and the teacher in charge asked me where the Kremlin was located. I was crushed, I had never heard the word Kremlin and I feigned deep thought to buy time but there was no info on that topic in my brain. I answered badly wrong and was eliminated and had to go sit down with kids of average and below average intelligence. It was like that moment at a party when you think, 'Man only nerds come to things like this.' The you realize that you are, in terrible point of fact, there and ipso facto nerdy. Well I was sitting down with not the smartest kids in the school which means that someone up their on the panel was the smartest and it broke my heart. I had so little going for me socially, in being cool, in having girlfriends, in having cool clothes or stuff and now my one best thing I was not best at and it hurt deeply. Because I am a jerk when I didn't win I just wanted the winner to lose a quickly as possible in district competition,he did and I was happy. Stupid Kremlin stealing my chance of geography immortality.  

Little Girls Accuse Mr. Black

 It was common knowledge among the girls in the middle school that if Mr. Black came over to help you on an assignment he would try and look down your shirt. I am not sure if that was true because I never had first hand knowledge and besides a small few chestily precocious young ladies I am not sure what he would be looking at. I was a talker and therefore was sat very close to Mr. Black's desk where I could see the whole class and when I would finish my assignment I would just watch Mr. Black walk around the class room while girls would gather the necks of their shirts and lean forward as he walked by. Then after class many of them would be talking about how he was totally trying to look down their shirts. I don't think that it ever went to a formal complaint but it was a rumor that had circulated at least since my sister was in the school when she was so incensed by it that she wrote a hate poem:

Star Light, Star Bright,

First Star I See Tonight,

Wish I May Wish I Might,

Mr. Black Die Tonight.

Then she circulated it for signatures, of which she got quite a few, and then gave it to him anonymously. Well, I think you may have spotted the problem with anonymously delivering a signed hate note. She was suspended and the other kids were disciplined, all because they were fighting injustice. To be fair, I never saw him make the effort but who knows?  

I Will Step On You

 The History teacher I mentioned, Mr. Black, was a piece of work. He was one of those teachers that was incapable of taking the adult route of conflict resolution and was always engaged in power struggles with students. One notable battle was between Mr. Black and a long haired stoner kid named Dustin. Dustin was a hardcore kid with a bad-a attitude and he was always pushing the limits with teachers. It was usually fun to watch especially if teachers chose to do battle in his arena, namely – smartassery. He would goof off and then a teacher would ask him what he was doing and he would invariably have something funny and sassy to say back. One day Mr. Black had engaged in a little verbal sparring with Dustin and had clearly come out the loser based on the children's laughter at his expense and that is when he ran across the room and grabbed Dustin by the hair and shoulder and marched him out in the hall to yell at him. We all listened intently to the escalated battle in the hall which was the usual back and forth about 'you will respect my class' and that type of nonsense. When Dustin said one more thing inaudible to us and Mr. Black flew into a rage and yelled out, “I will step on you!” Then he sent Dustin to the principals office and huffed his way back into class. He was still being snippy and told another kid to put something away and the kid asked, 'If I don't will you step on me?” That is when he lost it and started screaming at all of us at such a pitch and intensity that the English teacher from across the hall came over and told him he needed to calm down because he was disturbing the whole school. He yelled at us all to read but we were to out of sorts at that point to do anything but look at the page and try not to laugh until the class was over. Dustin was not ever stepped on but 'I will step on you became a common treat on the playground and in the halls after that.  

A Tampon is Not A Joke

 That same girl caused quite a stir in the middle school when she used a tampon to vandalize the girl's bathroom with a practical joke. We were all sitting in class when a girl came running in and was hysterical crying and freaking out about something she wouldn't say in front of the class so the teacher went out in the hall with her where our scout who selflessly placed him self in eavesdropping range heard something about a tampon. I think most if not all of the boys in the class did not know what that was or why it would make a girl freak out like she did. Luckily, one of the young ladies, unencumbered by shame, demonstrated what a tampon was by gesturing spread legs with one hand and a finger representing the tampon with the other hand rather violently jamming into her finger crotch. She was saying “You know? For that time of the month.” No actually, no. The teacher came back in and asked if any of the girls had made a mess in the bathroom. None said they had. One girl who had been in the bathroom and came back told us all said that there was a bloody tampon stuck to the mirror. I at least was not sure what that meant but it sounded nasty. Well, someone ratted someone out and it was discovered that it was a rather tasteless practical joke involving a tampon and a ketchup based blood analog. The teacher came and gave us all a talking to after it was cleaned up and told us that, 'a tampon is not a joke'. Everyone talked about it and speculated about it and I was still not sure what exactly had gone on but I was not showing my ignorance so I repeated the story with the gravity it seemed to merit. Years later when I understood how truly foul of a joke it was I a little more disgusted and was glad that even though I didn't know what it was for sure that I had lived my life by the, 'a tampon is not a joke' maxim.  

A Condom Evidently

 It is important at any stage of life to be the one who knows what other people do not know. This is how you make money and keep everyone in awe of how you get a computer to work. When I was in seventh grade it was important for me to know about all things adult and worldly. The main problem with that plan was that I knew nothing about all things adult and worldly. Somehow I fell in with the most knowledgeable and crazy girl in our grade who knew everything about everything that was naughty. I didn't have a lot of friends so I had to go with what I could get. She was always making really funny perverted jokes and saying really bold and funny things to adults, which I loved to observe. One day when we were in our second period class she handed me something under the desk and was laughing about it. I looked down in my hand under the table and I had no idea what I had in my hand. It was a two inch square silver packet with something round in it. She was smiling and giggling like I should be getting the joke but I was trying to play along while I tied to find out what was so funny. The rest of the class was being fairly quite and our little exchange got the attention of our crazy history teacher Mr. Black. He had walked up, silent as a panther, behind me while I was looking at the package under the desk. My friend noticed him first and sat up strait and stopped laughing which I didn't notice until I felt a hand on my shoulder. Mr. Black asked me what I had in my hand, and I not knowing what I had in my hand just showed him. He picked me up with a shoulder pinch and told me to come with him. He kept his hand on my shoulder as he gave the class instructions to keep them busy in his absence as we walked toward the door and to the principals office. What I didn't know besides that I was holding a condom was that my friend had been quite busy vandalizing the school with this condom's box brothers and the teachers were on the lookout for the culprit. I was dropped off to talk to the principal after Mr. Black told him the story he left me. He asked me where I got the condom and that is when I knew what it was because I had heard the term before but I had not, as yet, actually ever seen one. I would like to say at this point that I was a loyal friend who stood up under the pressure but when he told me that whomever had placed condoms on the teacher's antennas on their cars was going to get suspended I told him what he wanted to know. I actually started crying and blubbering and saying that I didn't even know what a condom was. I must have looked like way to much of a wussy to be a vandalism mastermind and he turned me loose. My friend was coming in to the office as I was heading out and she never said anything about me ratting her out.  

Old Dan and Little Ann Break the Class

My seventh grade home room was English with Ms. Macafee who loved to break kids hearts. Not in any mean way she was really sweet but she was always reading books to us which were just too sad. At eleven and twelve the boys were passed where they could cry without public shame. The girls, those lucky ducks, were never constrained by social shame to hold in the sadness. Right at the start of the year she broke out one of the most sad books in the history of the world with 'Where the Red Fern Grows'. She would read to us for about 30 minutes every morning so we were only a week or so into school when she got to the part about the dogs dying from trauma and sadness. She was reading through the part where he has to bury Old Dan and there were the start of whiperign and choked sobs from the class. I was so sad I couldn't hold back the sadness so I hid my face in my elbow and let out the tears. She read right on through to Little Ann dieing from grief and that was just too sad for even the no crying tough boys in the class and we were all crying and trying to avoid eye contact at all cost. She finished up reading for the day and then wanted us to answer questions but no one could gain the control necessary and she let us deal with the vicarious pain of loosing imaginary dogs. We were all trying to pull it together to avoid mockery from the other kids in the hall when classes let out but our faces were to white and our eyes to red to cover up the fact of our emotional breakdown. When the bell rung and we had to go to the hall the kids from the other home room switched with us and they all noticed that we had been crying and we just told them that the part they were about to read in the 'Fern' was really sad. They walked into the lachrymose lions den cock sure about their abilities to keep it together in the face of overwhelming sadness. We saw them after their class let out and saw the effects of the power of great and terrible literature on their faces too. No one ever said anything about anyone lack of toughness, because we all knew, we were all there. We learned that the no crying rule is not hard and fast and there is no shame in crying when your, or someone you love's, dog dies. 

I Knock About 100 Holes

 In my first week back to school after my one year hiatus the janitor Mr. Goudy asked a couple of students to help him with some task that I cannot remember the details of. At some point though I was supposed to take a push broom from the Middle School hall to the office where they were stored. I started walking back and I lifted the broom by the bristles like an upside down tee and reached the handle up to hit the roof just to see if I could. I could. I decided to give the ceiling tile a little pop to just see what would happen. What happened is the broom handle popped through with little resistance. Not really thinking about the long-term consequences and just enjoying the pure sensual rush of destruction. I was in a trance of hole making when I was suddenly snapped back to reality by a, 'What the hell are you doing?' In that moment I really didn't know. I looked around and saw Mr. Goudy and then looked up and saw about 6 tiles riddled with holes and my normal verbal onslaught was strangely absent. I had no recourse to an excuse or a lie so I just went with, 'I don't know why.' He just gave me a little exasperated look and my heart sank. I was working through all of the worst case situations ranging from expulsion to having my dad called. Mr Goudy just took me with him down the hall to the janitors closet and got out new ceiling tiles and a ladder and had me carry the new tiles to the scene of the crime and had me hand them to him as he replaced them one by one. Then when we were done he had me carry the broken tiles to the dumpster and then he sent me back to class with no further punishment. I was unsure if the incident was over so for the rest of the day and the next I was so scared of further repercussions that I was too sick to eat or to think clearly. It was over and I have never deliberately broke something for the feel of it again.  

I Go Back to School

 At the end of the summer my mother decided it was time for me to get out of the house and go back to school to work on my social skills. I didn't see the need. I had some friends three to four years younger than me a psychopathic one my own age. Social skills, Schmoscial skill I say. But it was once more into the breach and everyone else already knew how this home room and then changing classes thing worked I was terrified that I would be hopelessly confused and then mockery and shame would inevitable follow. What I didn't know is that I was beyond the bottom of the social ladder and mockery a nd shame would have at least made people pay attention to me which is the unofficial bottom rung – Acknowledgment of Existence. I went shopping for clothes at all of the usual thrift stores and bargain retailers and assembled what looked to me in the bathroom mirror at home, like a pretty sweet look. I probable thought it looked pretty sweet because I had not had contact with kids my own age in so long that I had failed to notice that gray corduroy paired with a red and gray stripped polo was not cool, and had never been cool. It was only passable if you were too young to protest what your mother was putting on you. I was actually starting to get excited to go to school as the day rolled around and I was able to to get my reintegration in action. It was a little embarrassing to re-meet all of the regulars and meet for the first time some of the kid who had moved in. They asked where I had been for the last year and I went with an instant classic, I told them I was too smart for school so I was working on my own preparing to go to college early and I was just coming back to work on my social skills. This little exaggeration was quickly seized upon by the mockers and I was teased about being too smart for school and one kid would always ask me if I was in college yet. No not yet smart ass. Not yet.  

Bloody Nose Car Ride

 Growing up we had a lot of family get togethers sometimes with family that we didn't know but my dad did so we would go to some park and eat food with people we did not know for a few hours and then head home. After one of these trips we were coming down from a park up Provo canyon and Matt and I were having some sort of disagreement in the back of the car and it devolved into a full blown fight. We were tussling in the back with my mom yelling at us to stop from the front seat as she tried to navigate the dangerous canyon road. Sometime during the fight I was able to get behind Matt and I was going for the sleeper as per usual when Matt shifted it up at the last second and instead of trying to choke the life out of him I tightened the forearm over the bridge of his nose bloodying it badly. Matt struggled free and was bleeding all over the back of the car and everyone and everything in it. My mom looked back and was horrified thinking someone was dying. Not in the 'we are all dying on along enough time line' sort of way but in a more immediate sense. She pulled the car over to see where all the blood was coming from and when she saw it was a fairly harmless bloody nose she started in on the shame and punishment phase of a fight breakup. I was actually kind of impressed by how easily I bloodied Matt's nose and kind of felt like a bad-a so I wasn't sorry at all and she could tell. She called me a barbarian and a monster and those sounded like compliments. We were separated and loaded back in the car when the bleeding had stopped. When we got home my mom had my dad make me sorry for giving Matt and bloody nose by way of spankings. That worked, well kinda I was not a fan of getting spanked but I still wasn't sad that I was such a dangerous man, rather young man, okay, fine - boy.