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| It Will Try And Kill You If Given Half A Chance. In Fairness, It Was Framed For This Job |
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Emergency Room For Fake Appendicitis
Shooting Arrows in the House.
One
of the things I liked to do was impress my friends. Any chance I got
I would try and take my friends to the borderlands of good sense and
safety by pilfering some of my dad's 'hands off' type stuff and
impress them. My dad had a few bows and arrows that were off-limits
to me because I was not responsible in their use. I wanted to impress
Nate and Ryan so I took them down from their hiding place but I was
still concerned we would get caught if we shot them out in the open.
I didn't want to get caught and so obviously we didn't shoot them
outside where everybody could see us all out in our praise and
glory. I decided instead to shoot them in the shop which is what we
called that house in the front of our property that was full of
parts. Nate, Ryan and I set up some targets on the far side of the
bid room and we had a great time shooting. The only problem was the
front room of the shop, where we had set up the targets, is where my
dad stored all the new appliances that he was using for is storefront
which was up by the hardware store on main. Our crime went wholly
undiscovered until my dad took one of the dryers still in the box
over to a lady's house for delivery and there was a perfectly round
field tip arrow head hole right through the center of the panel. He
apologized to her and said he could get her another on or take some
money off of this one she opted for the latter and he came home
looking for blood. I honestly had forgotten all about the arrow
shooting by this time and when my dad was asking who punched a hole
in the control panel of a dryer I was not lying when I said I didn't
know. It was not until he described the hole and how it had gotten
there that I knew that it was our target practice that was to blame.
My dad's investigative abilities were quite good and he thought for
sure That something that ridiculous had something to do with me, that
was honestly very reasonable. When it was sorted out I had to work
for free until I had paid back the damage cost which I did by
organizing the shop.
Faking a Major Injury and Getting Bored and Quitting
I
got so little attention from having my head really bashed by a motor
that I thought what I should do it again and cause a major injury to
myself and try and get a lot of attention. The problem with that was
to get some attention from getting a major injury I would need a
major injury. I am not a huge fan of pain so I was trying to work out
a compromise between lavish sorrow for my plight and minimal actual
plight. I hit upon a plan, called faking, where I would be getting
all of the sympathy and none of the pain. To set up myself up right
I went out to that shop one day making extra certain that I told my
mom that I was going out there working and that she better come check
on me sometime your make sure I'm not hurt badly or anything. I went
out and organize a little motor avalanche scene in the which it
appeared that some motors and transmissions would've fallen, quite
plausibly from a broken shelf I had arranged, down on me. I was going
to play the part of the crushed and nearly killed victim and got into
character by wedging myself back into the pile and then set dressing
a few pieces on top of myself. It was completely authentic and I set
them up like they just fallen over caught me unaware all I had to do
now is wait for my unassuming and dutiful mother to come check on me
and the pathetic trap of sympathy would be sprung. I laid down there
in the midst of motors, transmissions and obvious distress waiting.
Now it is important to know I am not overly patient and after twenty
minutes of waiting to be discovered and saved I started to get bored.
I gave it about five more minutes and was ready to call it quits. I
had been gone an hour and my mom never come check on me so I was just
there bored and in a mess of appliance detritus and getting no
sympathy. I decided on a plan to so mournfully relate my fake injury
and entrapment that I could get some real sympathy so I shuffled off
the motors and went inside. I told my mom I had an accident up there
in the shop and that I was trapped under some motors for some hours
and she had never checked on me so maybe I would have died. She said
that it was good I didn't die and that she was glad I was okay. She
didn't even give me the time to check out my wounds. Stupid dang fake
tragedy is stupid good for stupid nothing.
Motor on the Brain
When
we moved to the other side of Santaquin and away from the trailer
park we bought an acre lot that had an old house still on it. When we
first moved there all we did was bring our mobile home and park it in
the middle of the lot and use the front house as storage for my dad's
appliance business. He collected a lot of old remaindered appliance
parts which he was going to use to rebuild some other appliances
sometime. This actually never happened. We had stacks and stacks and
shelves and shelves and piles and piles. All throughout the house
was just full of motors, transmissions and different crap and
miscellany. If we wanted to earn money or we were in trouble or for
anything we had to go out and organize the shop. That was the mantra
of our child hood 'organize the shop'. I don't really know what my dad
thought that meant because it was never organized in the sense that
there was a logical and systematic order to the items making them
useful and valuable. There was far too many things to be organized in
any sensible system and I was not sure what things went where so I
would just take stuff and put it on shelves or into organized looking
piles. Around our house friends were often press-ganged and so this
day Nathan, Ryan and I were all out working and I was putting a motor
up on a shelf. I had placed the motor up on a shelf about eight feet
off the ground. We were listening to the radio as we toiled and when
I finished putting the motor up high a quite popular number by the
name of 'Can't Touch This' by Master of Ceremonies Hammer came on.
I started doing a goofy 'Can't Touch This' dance to amuse my friends
and somehow in my dance I flailed into the the shelf and caused the
recently reposed motor to fall. It fell onto my head and as far as I
could tell knocked me unconscious. I am not sure if it knocked me
unconscious because I don't remember a small swath the time there before I was getting revived by my friends from what I can only
assume is unconsciousness, but like I said I don't know, I wasn't aware of what was
happening around me at the time. When they got me up I had a big
bleedy gash on my forehead and was quite woozy. I now recognize these,
after the years passing and the brain tissue healing sufficiently
to think properly and remember stuff, as the signs of cudusioun or
something that sounds very similar to that. When I told my dad that
I'd been hit in the head with the motor he comforted and reassured me
as was his caring and sweet way that I should not be and idiot
stacking things in a stupid way and it was my own fault. If it was
anyone's fault it was Mr. Hammer and his irresistible beats.
Hanging out with Nate and Ryan
The summer after my
first year in junior high I wanted to spend a lot of time with my new
Payson friends because they were worldly and all kinds of cool. We
had our budding relationship hamstringed by a lack of non-parental
transportation. Living six miles away meant the play time had to be
planned and scheduled and not a drop in kind of thing that kids need
for friendship to thrive. Missing out on what I imagined was pretty
much limitless fun and debauchery by my unfortunate mechanical
separation was not a easy thing for my FOMO (fear of missing out)
neurosis. In lieu of those friends I started hanging out with a
couple of guys who were two years older than me. A couple of cousins
named Nathan and Ryan who I mentioned in the story about Ryan getting
stomped out. I was originally Ryan's little brothers friend but by
this time I had not hung out with him in a few years and had made the
transition up the the family tree. They were pretty cool kids and
they thought I had lots of cool projects and opportunities for
mischief available so they were along for the ride. Nathan was
actually the older brother of the girl my sister tricked me into
saying that I wanted to have sex with. That didn't seem to make him
like me less and that was good. We spent most of our time riding
bikes, fishing and trying to find some girls to talk to in person or
on the phone. We had some really good times but they were in high
school and I was in junior high so as the summer came to a close we
parted amicability and except for a few camping trips with the scouts
and getting in fights with some other kids at church basketball never
really did much more together after that. Friendly yes, friends no.
Phone Get's Stomped Out
When I got into Junior High I started using the phone a lot and my
sister was already using it more then that and we had one phone at
our house and my dad was trying to use it for his business as well.
He would beg and threaten and plead and fuss and cajole us to not use
the phone from 8-6. You Know? Business hours. That was not going to
be possible in most cases because School got out and the bus dropped
me off sooner than that and those girls were not going to call
themselves. So, day after day my dad would try and call in to get
some help or information and there would be a nonstop busy signal. In
those ancient days there was no reliable alternative to a land-line
and we had neither call waiting nor voice mail. There was actually a
machine with a tape in it that would record a callers voice. So after
months of this probably loosing business and sanity my dad purchased
us a second line known colloquially as the kid phone. That one we
could use to our hearts content and leave his, and these are his
words so please excuse the vulgarity, 'damn phone' alone. Well seems
like that would have solved the problem right? Nope. Now we just had
two lines to be on all the time and my sister and I didn't need to
argue about who was using what at what time and whatnot. This,
naturally, made my dad a little bit put out and he swore out death to
the person who would dare use his business phone now that he had gone
to the effort and expense of installing a kid's phone. One day there
was a pressing emergency that I needed to attend to and my sister was
on the kids phone so I decided to call a girlfriend from the business
phone, because no one would ever know. It turned out to be a little
bit of a last straw type situation because my dad had been calling in
to talk to my mom so that she could rescue him after some car trouble
and he had been getting a busy signal on both phones for two hours.
He finally had to call a neighbor to come over and tell my mom to
give him a call. When he got home I was still on the phone and he
stormed in like a great big angry bear of hate and vengeance. He
closed in on me in my room talking on the portable phone and yanked
it out of my hand and slammed it down and while he jumped on it
yelled at me in words timed and punctuated by his big two footed
stomps on the phone. Stay (STOMP) Off (STOMP) Of (STOMP) The (STOMP)
F{redacted} (STOMP) Phone (STOMP)(STOMP)! I was terrified because I
thought I might get punched out next but he just stormed out and was
yelling and ranting all night about it. That phone was little tiny
sad little bits of gray plastic and wires beyond repair and almost
beyond recognition. At the time I thought h was a massive jerk who
over reacted, as an adult I think all in all it was a measured and
qualified response. The lesson was learned and I didn't talk on my dad's business phone until late night or Saturdays from then on.
Science Teacher Who is Unstable
I really loved and still love the idea of science and learning and
understanding the world as it really is. My formal education after my
awesome teacher in middle school and before college did not help me
expand on that desire in the least. I was excited to have a real
science lab class that had Bunsen burners and chemicals and animals
to dissect. Unfortunately, the lab tables were used in much the same
way that regular tables were used throughout the school, to provide a
reasonable ergonomically comfortable flat surface to elevate our
books off of the ground. We got science books that were already
dated and contained precious little that a young anarchist could use
to build more effective bombs and weapons. I looked up explosives
which had strangely been omitted from the book's index. Curious. I
then looked up chemical reactions and explosives were mentioned in a
frankly cursory and unfulfillingly vague manner. All it said was that
explosives were a rapid reaction of oxygen producing heat and gas.
Yes, yes I know that I want recipes. Damn the stupid education system
and their everyone is included one size fits all science. The really
great part of the class was the ersatz incredible hulk teacher we
had. He was overly calm and collected talking in the softest of tones
until he completely lost control of the class then he would all of
the sudden raise his intensity level to just below your standard
Macho Man Randy Savage calling on all comers at Wrestle Mania. The
class would be shocked back into silent science and he would compose
himself into a passable Bruce banner and continue the lesson for
about ten minutes and then RAAAAGGGGEEEE. Everything he was teaching
the Santaquin kids had already learned from our awesome science
teacher in seventh grade so I was super bored and hanging out with
the burnouts on the back row because at least they could tell me
something I didn't already know. I learned that three dots on the web
of the thumb was a Mexican gang tattoo that stood for 'My Crazy
Life'. So the class was not a total waste.
All Day in The Sun
One day when my friend was over at my house he wanted to go to one of
my cute neighbor's house. She was a year older than us and quite cute
but I was too shy to just go over and talk to her as a girl even
though I had been friends with her brother and had been in their
house at least a hundred times. I don't know why going over to see
her was so cripplingly nerve wracking but it was. For some reason
when we walked over their we did it without our shoes on and it was a
quite war spring day and our feet were getting burned on the
pavement. We went up and knocked on the door all higgelty-piggelty
like it was no big deal at all and then she came to the door and he
talked to her. I know that doesn't sound like a big deal but it most
definitely was I was vapor locked and barely able to breathe with the
anxiety of the situation. She invited us in to meat her friend from
gymnastics who was spending the night over and was also cute. Oh,
great now there are two girls and two boys, like couples. I
suggested we should go outside after we had talked for a bit and my
friend had started dome playful tickle touching with my neighbor. We
went out and I remembered that I didn't have shoes and was trying to
figure out a way to get somewhere less intimate than a parent empty
house when my friend suggested that the girls give us piggy back
rides up to the park. They did. They carried my friend and I the two
and a half blocks up the road to the park where we were less
susceptible to foot burns. When we were done at the park they
piggybacked us to another friends house where we hung out for a
little bit and then we were piggy backed home. It was a most bizarre
day. I am not by nature very comfortable with people serving me and
getting a piggyback is way to much of a imposition in my opinion but
the girls were willing and my friend was enthusiastic about it. I still felt guilty for making a girl I didn't know carry me for a mile on
her back. As I write this I am embarrassed about asking a girl I
didn't know to carry me on her back because I was too stupid to bring
shoes. If I saw me doing that I would insult myself and tell myself
to get some damn shoes and some damn dignity, damn it. I was not
really thinking anything more would come of it at the time but on
Sunday at church my neighbor told me that my piggyback slave had
really liked me and wanted me to call her. I did call her a couple of
times and we talked a bit but she lived in a town 9 miles away and to
a car-less youth it might as well have been Bangladesh. I never saw
her or was portaged by her again.
Sexy is as Sexy Does
My new friend that knew everything about everything knew about girls.
Specifically, he knew what girls liked and how to get them to like
him. He was always with girls, cute girls, ugly girls , popular
girls, and every other type. He was just confident, charismatic and
and easy going with girls and at 13 that seemed more like magic to me
then if he would have been able to conjure fire out of thin air. I
was always too self conscious at first with girls and then not self
conscious enough and I would end up saying something cruel , or
crude, or offensive or even hit the trifecta on occasion. Correction;
more often than not. He always kept things easy and light and knew
all about good hygiene and cologne and dressing cute for the ladies.
At the time I thought that this was the coolest kid I had ever met
and he had skills that I wanted to learn. I started dressing up more,
but I assume still getting it wrong because my clothes budget still
was in the discount rack and thrift store range. I bought some
cologne that my sister recommended called gravity and I brushed my
hair and teeth more regularly.
Hello, ladies – welcome to flavor country – I will be your guide
to unfathomable sensual pleasures.
You know what? It worked. I was becoming more natural and easy going
with the girls and they were more responsive me. I found that I had
more girl friends than boys who were my friend. You thought I was
going to write boyfriends back there didn't you? Not I, you have to
get up pretty early in the morning to get me to imply that I was a
homosexual. I liked girls better than boys as friends because they
were never trying to punch you to say hello, or goodbye, or I am
bored. I was not a big guy and everyone liked to give me a friendly
tussle and punch when they saw me and it drove me crazy. If a girl
gave me a tussle, well. . .
A New Friend Who Knows About Cool Stuff
About
this time I made another new friend who knew about cool stuff. He was
a kid from Payson who I knew of because his mom had died in a tragic
accident while she was pregnant. She was backing out of her driveway
when a sheriff who was coming down the highway hit and killed her. He
was in my English class where he and I sat by a girl I was madly in
love with. Whenever we were talking about cool stuff he seemed to
know all about it. Michael Jordan – he knew everything. Milli
Vanilli
– he knew all about them and had the tape. Claudia Shiffer –
please – he had her picture in his binder. There was literally no
defect in his pop culture knowledge and I admired that because I
didn't know about latch key kids with access to MTV. Back in those
days MTV had more then over dramatic Italians to look at they played
music and had game shows. He didn't live that far from school so one
day or another he invited me to come over and hang out. I did. I met
his older sister and his baby brother and his widowed father, who by
this twist of fate would become major elements in my families life.
We hung out and listened to some music watched some MTV and then went
over to his really cute neighbors house. It was possibly the perfect
day. We started hanging out more and stayed friends on into the
summer.
An Old Acquaintance and a New Friend
There was a kid from Santaquin that I didn't like that much. He was
friends with the coolest kid in school and was a jerk as far as I
could tell. I knew him but we were not friends and if not for the
neutral nature of the term acquaintance I would hesitate to use that
word. When we went to Junior High somethings changed; first of all,
anyone from your old school was more friendly based solely on the
fact that we had been on the same team; secondly, we had not had any
classes together in elementary school and none that I can recall in
middle school but we happened to be alphabetically very close a G and
an F ended up sitting close in every class. We would also ride the
same bus and just by the sheer weight of all that proximity we
started talking some. I didn't want to like him but he was actually
really funny. So we started talking more and hanging out on purpose.
We found that we actually had a very similar and very dark sense of
humor and that we both liked lots of the same things. It is important
to note that while we both had fairly mean senses of humor it was in
the appreciation not in the commission of meanness that we got
pleasure. For example we were once both running late to an assembly
where the cheerleaders we rallying the school's pep. We were watching
from the doorway when one of the girls was thrown high in the air and
then allowed to plummet to the ground. The crowd was full of decent
human beings and all gave out a concerned “Oh!”. My friend and
I's response was a shamefully antisocial and simultaneously
spontaneous gout of laughter that we tried to stifle as we ran out
the door before anyone could see what a-holes we were. We did not
wish that girl harm, she did break her ankle, and we didn't cause the
accident but we were just really tickled at the absurdity of the
situation. Another selling point for our friendship was that he was
from a family that believed in keeping the fridge well stocked with
Pepsi and that was appealing as we were not from that tribe. At some
point we transitioned into being full blown friends and then we
stayed that way for the rest of high school, college, single life,
married life and who knows for sure, but maybe to the death.
I Am Sorry That This Kid Knows My Sister
As I hopefully made clear I had a very conflicted relationship with
my sister. I really wanted her to love and like me or at least be
nice to me and she was at best indifferent to my existence. If she
thought I could benefit her in some way she would turn on the syrupy
sweet and kind act and then turn on me or just ignore me when she got
what she wanted. She was a year older and in the same school as me
but I almost never saw her and we never hung out as she was ashamed
of me. I was in a mixed grade art class and sat next to a kid who was
named Chance and when were were shading a volley ball on a tin can he
mentioned that he knew my sister. I said, in the way brothers
sometimes will, 'I am sorry.' Well, I guess he more than knew her, he
was one of her good friends and he ratted me out as soon as we were
out of the class. My sister found me in the hall and grabbed an
slapped me. She closed in close to me and was asking if I was sorry
that everyone knew her or just Chance. I was embarrassed because she
was assaulting me in the hall and lots of people were stopping to
watch. I told her I was just kidding around when I told Chance that.
She told me stuff like this was why she hated me. Noted. Now let me
go so I can start trying to live down the shame of having my butt
kicked by my sister in the hall of the school where I was just
starting to get some social traction. She slapped me again and walked
off with her fiends and I sheepishly gathered my stuff and headed to
my class trying not to make eye contact with anyone. A couple of
people asked were trying to ask me who that girl was and what
happened but I just wanted for it to be over and get to class. I
think I should have not been sorry that Chance knew my sister, I
should have been sorry that I knew my sister.
We Make Bridges
I actually liked Mr. Breast-weight's class best of the three because
we made stuff. Specifically stick bridges and a metal box for putting
stuff in. The stick bridge was made of some short pre-cut square
sticks that we were supposed to glue onto a template and then in the
next class period after they were dry we would put them on a press
and the teacher would smash them and see how much they could hold
before they broke. It was awesome. I was really intent on building
the best bridge in the class and obsessed over design and the build
to make sure I would win the non existent contest. He had taught us
that triangles would provide the best strength which would have been
true if there were variations in the load a span or joint strength
issues. I pointed out to him that in a strait oppositional span-less
compressive load that a perfectly vertical column would be stronger.
He disagreed with me even when I offered to diagram it on the board
for him. The class couldn't have cared less they just wanted to glue
their sticks to a template. I was frustrated that he didn't want to
know the right answer. It still frustrates me when people do not want
to know the right answer. I am constantly amazed that people just are
not curious and don't care about vital issues like the best shape for
a stick bridge and the theory behind it. I decided to prove him wrong
so he would have to listen and then be sorry and change his ways. I
glued four sticks in a square column and then glued four sticks for a
base and four for a top and knew that my 12 stick solution was going
to dominate the 24 stick triangle girder solutions in the non
existent competition when they were all dry the next day. We were
going alphabetically so I was about middle of the pack and I was
getting nervous because some of the weak looking template replication
bridges were holding 4-500 pounds before they would break. It came to
my turn and I brought mine up and it looked insubstantial compared to
every other bridge because it was more compact. Mr. Breast-weight
popped it in and said something about how we were going to see if I
was smarter then the people who design bridges. I would have been mad
about that because the people who design bridges would have built
something very similar to my idea because we were not bridging
anything but I was to nervous about possibly failing to even get my
feel-bads hurt. He put it in and loved the plate down and started
cranking the jack as I watched the force gauge. 500 lbs , easy. 1000
lbs , c'mon just getting warm. At 1500 I think the teacher was
starting to get nervous about the blow back that would take out an
eye when this thing popped. 2000 lbs and the gauge ran out of numbers
he asked me if we should keep trying until it broke or if I wanted to
save my design. I was all for breaking it so see how much smarter
then people who build bridges were. Well, at least smarter then what
my teacher thought people who build bridges thought. He cranked the
jack once more and we were off the scale. Once more and it was pegged
once more and nothing changed. Once more and the 4000 lb jack stopped
working because it was at its limit. I didn't try not to gloat when
he let off the pressure and handed me back my slightly crumpled but
basically no worse for the wear ersatz bridge. I wanted to brag but
the teacher just said I cheated by not building it in a bridge shape
like the template and none of the kids in class gave the slightest of
craps that I won the imaginary competition that no one was having
except for me. I started building another of the same design but in a
line like the bridge template only more sturdy and set in by to dry
to prove once and for all that I was right about the design. The
problem was that when mine was dry the next class period Mr.
Breast-weight wouldn't get the press set up again to let me have my
own private go. I would have won the not-contest again anyway.
Mr. Titplayer
From my wall facing seat in the back, back, back of the class I got
to see the world from a 'god of schools' eye view. I was separate and
aloof not doing the assignments with the rest of the class because my
teacher in an effort to keep me from causing problems had given me an
old textbook and told me to read a chapter everyday and complete the
assignments in the back. I did and it was actually a pretty cool book
about different engineering problems that people had encountered and
solved. When I finished my chapter and assignment I would start
surveying the rest of the class goofing off and passing notes and
not learning anything at all. My teacher, whom I got to know better
then maybe most of the other students because I sat behind him as
well, was really odd duck. After he had given a lecture and started the kids on a book
work assignment he would come back to his desk and start reading his
nerd hobby magazines and catalogs. The whole time he was doing that
he would run his left hand up under his shirt elbow deep and start
playing with his nipples. The first time I saw him do it I thought he
was maybe scratching or adjusting a shirt of something but it went on
way to long to have been that. He would be there for ten minutes hand
up the shirt, reading about ham radios or something and pinching his
own nipples and waiting for the class to finish up. It was really
creepy but also very zen in a way. I would watch him and the class
all fidget away the hour until we were free to do it for another
hour in another class and then go home and do it until bed time. After 2 weeks of sequestration with not so much as a peep out
of me he must have had second thoughts about his prejudice and let me
join the row with the stinky nerds. He maybe thought that I would not
like sitting next to the stinky nerds while my friends were on the
front row but I was a stinky nerd so I was in the brier patch so to
speak. I did not have any reason to really mess with this teacher so
we got along fine and before I left his class he actually apologized
to me for being so rude when I first came to class. When he did that
it made me feel a little guilty for calling him Mr. Breast-weight as
a play on his name and telling everyone I could to watch him during
quite time to see him play with his nipples. I went ahead and kept
that to myself though so as to not ruin his newly found high opinion
of me.
My Suspended Reputation
My punishment turned out to not be as bad as I thought. I was still
allowed to hang out with friends on nights and weekends and as I
mentioned I was burning up the phone lines lamenting my unjust
treatment. When I came back to school there was a lot of rumor,
exaggeration, and insinuation in the air and I tried to let it stay
up there. Even though the behavior that led to my suspension had
developed in a very organic, bottom-up desire to make people laugh
the story sounded more like I was off the rails and just didn't care.
One girl that sat next to me in history wanted to know why I got so
mad that I broke a chair over a kids head and nearly killed him.
Because, You know? That is how she had heard it. Well, I would say,
sometimes you just have to unleash hell.
I had been in two fights at my new school both with Hispanic kids and
both fights had looked rather violent but had mostly been me falling
down. I am not sure what conclusions about me you can gather from
that but I must include that my best friend at the time was, and I
guess still is, Hispanic (I mean he is still Hispanic not still my
best friend, we are still good friends but not best friends). So, it
is not that I was a racist, if that is what you were thinking and I
know it may have crossed your mind. It was not that I was
particularly brave or violent, I am a fairly cowardly pacifist. All I
can say is that I kind of liked my new bad boy reputation and I
didn't correct any of the chair-breaking-over-head vs.
me-falling-backwards-off-of-a-chair-that-broke-from-repeated-misuse
misunderstandings. It would probably just confuse the issue. I
started being welcome with the hard-A kids that sat a t the back and
didn't give a damn. I always wanted to hang out with these kids
because they were the coolest. A really pretty girl named Summer even
invited me to a party at her house, and it was one of those mythical
parties of Junior High lore, a non-chaperoned boy/girl party. I was
really digging this new school. Some other boys and girls invited me
to skip class and go hang out at there house a couple of blocks from
the school. We just went and sat around talking but the thrill of
just blowing off class was amazing. It was not all good though the
teachers evidently talk in secret rooms just for teachers and my
story was evidently well known because when I came back from
suspension I got extra special treatment right off the bat in several
of my new classes. In my carrers class which was the third
installment of the TLC trifecta the teacher didn't even talk to me
when I walked into the room he just pointed at me and said, ' Gause,
to the back.' He then indicated a chair well away from all of the
other students and behind his desk at the back of the room facing
into the wall. I tried to turn the chair to face front and he yelled
back to me that it was facing the wall on purpose and I was to leave
it how it was. Cool. No, actually uncool. Some of my other teachers
mentioned something to me or warned me about misbehavior and others
said they had no idea why my punishment had been so harsh because
they thought I was a great student.
I Am In Big Trouble
I was once again bodily towed from the classroom down the hall this
time with two halves of a chair and a very, very angry teacher. She
had been pushed to far this time and she was not going to stop until
I was gone for good. She didn't even worry about picking up the other
kid or cleaning up or calming the class she was just marching me
strait to the principals office swearing forth oaths of eternal
vengeance. She said I was getting suspend which scared me but then
she said I would have to pay for the chair I had broken and she
estimated that they cost about eighty dollars. Eighty dollars sounded
to me like a life sentence of indentured servitude. I was terrified
of what was about to go down. We got back to the principal's office
in what was now my fifth trip in three months. I was sat down in the
principals office while she told him what had gone on and then went
to get her stack of disciplinary write-up papers. While she was gone
the principal sat down and sighed and rubbed his face and asked me
if I knew how many of his last ten discipline problems were kids from
Santaquin. I thought I guessed high with five. The correct answer was
all ten. He asked me what I thought made us all so crazy. I declined
to offer a suggestion owing to the sudden and intense dryness of my
mouth and the rapid beating of my heart. My parents were called and a
meeting was arranged and I stayed at school for an hour after it let
out to have our pow-wow. My mom was really upset about having to come
back a third time and she seemed to be more sympathetic to the plight
of the teacher and principal then my story of having to defend my
hair from molestation. They told me I would be suspended for three
days which was the rest of the week and I could come back on Monday.
When I got home I avoided my dad and was faking asleep when he got
back from a late meeting. The next morning when I would avoid him no
longer he told me to come to his room and he asked me what this was
all about and I tried to make it sound like I was a blameless victim
and he knew I wasn't. He told me I would be pulled out of school for
a month and I could come to work with him. I loved school, I loved my
new friends, I loved going to class and to lunch and in the hall in
between. I was devastated and I decided that because I had a little
bit of a congestion in my throat already I would really played up a
little hyperventilation fit to hopefully sway him into seeing how
badly I would cope with this news, like it may cause me death or
something. With the threat of my immanent demise hanging over his
head like the sword of Damocles he told me to calm down and shut up;
he was not impressed. I cried and flailed and wallowed in my misery
and then was resigned to my fate. I got sympathy calls from all of my
friends who agreed that what I was dealing with was total bull crap
and that every adult in the authoritative chain of command was rude
and very rude, and stupid and rude. I kind of liked my martyrdom and
started playing that up. The chair ended up being $12.80 which I
could cover so that was not the worst of it as I had originally
feared.
The Hair Defense Initiative
I had really great hair. Longish, middle ear to shoulder at the time,
and luxuriant it always seemed to get a lot of attention. Usually
that attention was from young cowboys and Hispanic males who thought
it made me look like a skater and/or a fag. I know they thought that
because they would mention it to me as often as they could. Somehow
in the cultural distillations of my Junior High skaters became the
archenemy of anyone with a mind over-soaked in the chemicals and
ideals of the machismo cultures that were still current in Payson at
the time. The really sad irony of the whole deal was that I was
neither gay nor a skater and I was taking flack for those jokers
because I liked the look of my hair a little bowl-cutty. Anyway, the
particular instance of follicle oversolicitude was in Ms. Clowns
class where we sat not at desks but in pairs at trapezoidal tables. I
was shuffled a couple different places to keep me from talking to my
neighbors or disrupting in other was. Unfortunately for the teacher I
was a persistent little cuss and would not let a little ignoring stop
me from talking to the good kids she had tried to use to hem me in.
My table mate was the girl who had ratted me out about my Miss Makeup
skit and in front of me was a kid named Seven who I am not sure could
talk. Behind there was a Hispanic kid who for some reason like to
inform me of my sexual preference and pull my hair about twenty times
a day.
“Hey.”, he would whisper.
“...”, I wouldn't answer.
“Why do you have long hair like a girl? Because you are a fag?”,
he would ask, I assume rhetorically.
The irony is that in the next couple of years this kid would grow his
hair out to show how tough he was. After he would whisper sweet
nothings about me and my hair for a bit he would always pull it of
mess with it or something crappy and I was growing increasingly
unhappy with his behavior. A second fact needs to be put on the table
here and that is that I had been a chronic chair tipper and leaner
backer. The teacher had warned me lots of times that the plastic
topped metal leg chairs were not designed for two leg use and if I
did not stop leaning back in it I would break it and have to pay for
it. This turned out to be exactly true at a bad time. I was leaning
back in my chair and the hair kid was doing his thing I thought right
now would be great time to teach him a lesson so when he leaned
forward over his table to molest my hair again I spun on my chair and
kicked his table as hard as I could, driving it into his solar plexus
and knocking him to the ground. The force of my kick broke my chair
into half plastic half metal and I was on the floor too. He recovered
a little and crawled over to start fighting me on the linoleum of the
HomeEC demonstration kitchen. We were both fairly out of it so it was
not really much of a fight more just some sloppy flopping. The
teacher came and broke us up and told me to pick up the pieces of my
chair because I was in big trouble. She was correct in that as well.
The Mankinni Receives Mixed Reviews.
Ms. Clown and I were
far from done after the dickey jokes. Far from done. With the Dickeys we were either
measuring or cutting or sewing every day for two weeks on a project
that would take anyone without a legitimate medical brain disorder 20
minutes, tops. When I finished the project the first day and started
finishing all the other kid's projects on the second by the third I
was bored. Bored. Bored. I was ready for a change of pace but was
more cautious after I had been threatened with sudden death if I
disturbed class again. I started gathering scraps of cloth and began
making a sexy little mankinni. I was quite and not raising hell so
the teacher left me alone, assuming no news was good news. Anyone
with children of their own know that a quite child, like the mighty
Bengal tiger silently closing in on the Punjab caravan the stalking
silence of naughtiness is the most dangerous. She had no children of
her own yet so she was making this massive technical error based on
her strictly academic knowledge of children. Book learning won't save
you in the heart of darkness. I sewed at a Grinch-wrecking-Christmas
pace to finish my joke costume so it would be ready for public
display whenever the opportunity arose. Arise it did. Senorita Payasa
absented herself for some critical business elsewhere and the game
was afoot. I hastily pulled off my shirt and scrunched my shorts as
high up on the virginal white of my legs as I could and popped on my
homespun bra and pantries and mounted the teachers demonstration
table at the front of class and began a sexy booty wag dance. The bit
was absolutely murdering in the 12-13-year-old male and female homEC student
demographic. I was doing so well I was imprudent in the length of my show and things went badly. The door flew open and Donna Pagliaccia
closed the distance on my partly disrobed and provocatively
undulating body and swept me off the table/stage and onto my butt and
the floor. Talk about getting the hook. They say you can't please all
the people all the time and they turned out to be really right in this case because she was one of the people and she was definitely not pleased, not pleased at all. I had thirty
laughing kids and one rude critic had to ruin it for everyone. This
is why we can't have nice things people. She held me with one hand
while I struggled to free myself and get my shirt from off of the
counter while she told someone to go and get the principal. I freed
myself long enough to get the bra off and my shirt on and I had
pulled my shorts back down to the dress code length by the time the
principal had been summoned. I still had the over-panties on and I
didn't see a graceful way to get them off before my ad hoc trial
would commence so things looked pretty damning. Pretty damning
indeed. The bell rang and all of the other kids filtered out as
slowly as they could so they could see as much of the train wreck as
possible without missing their buses and rides home. I was caught in
one of those situations where there is no reasonable explanation for
my behavior and so trying to rationalizes seemed out of the picture.
I was, however, shocked at the blatant mis-truth and outright lies
that I was hearing from the clown princess of home-economics. She was
claiming that I had taken off all of my clothes (you know? Down to my
nakies) put on the bra and panties and danced around the room. While
the truth was only marginally better it turned out that having my
ersatz panties over my shorts still helped me to clarify that while I
did have my shirt off I had my shorts pulled up in a comical and not
sexually explicit manner. The principal looked very tired and very
unamused when he told me I would need to come with him and set up a
private meeting with my mom and dad.
Oh, no. Not dad.
My dad had a very
low opinion of shenanigans and was quick on the punishment trigger.
Luckily, mom was the one who came and with my two baby siblings in tow
and had to endure the shame of another private meeting with school
administrators. She was not amused by my sexy dancing outfit or story
but I was not punished much I think it was some kind of grounding
which I could live with considering they were talking about expulsion
based on the quasi-sexual nature of my performance. This was not the
last time I would be in trouble for being naked at school, not even
the second to last time actually.
Dickey Sounds Like a Naughty Word
 |
| For that classy suit coat with no shirt look. Only she knows. Well, only her and Jesus. |
To the powers that be there was a desperate need for all
eighth-graders in our Junior high to take Home EC which meant a class
in sewing with the angry clown lady. She had chosen an essential
piece of wardrobe for each of us to make during our time in her class
– The Dickey. If you were not around in the fifties and sixties or
you were not a massive nerd during those eras you may not know what a
Dickey is, and good for you if you don't. A Dickey is a disembodied
turtleneck collar that you could wear if for some reason you wanted
to wear a sweater or jacket with no shirt under it but you wanted the classy
look of a turtleneck. When you would want to do that is never.
Regardless of the usefulness of such a accessory we were required to
cut out and sew one to get a grade in the class so we all did. What I
did was work out exactly as many double entendres as were possible to
construct in the English language. The key with a really good double
entendre is plausible deniability so you could play innocent if the
need should arise. An example of a punishable double entendre would
be to hold the Dickey at crotch level and say something like, 'look
at my Dickey.' You see how it was too heavy handed? While good for
the laugh it will get you yelled at and kicked out; steer clear of
this amateurish technique. A better option would be something like
this, “Teacher! Trent keeps touching my Dickey and it is making me
uncomfortable.” Do you see how this is nonpunishable? I protected
myself by having some possibility that I was actually referring to
the actual Dickey and not just using it as a joke word stand in. For
some reason the teacher was getting increasingly frustrated with my
constant stream of Dickey humor. She told me over and over to stop
making Dickey jokes so I would just say something like;
'So you don't want me to talk about my Dickey anymore?'
She would say 'Yes.'
'But what if my Dickey looks funny and I am self conscious about it?'
She would say, 'Shut up or you are going to have to leave the class.'
'okay.'
I would really mean to not say one more thing but then a joke would
occur to me and I would say, 'Teacher, make Danial take his dickey
home and wash it, it smells funny.'
'Get out!'
okay.
Dressing Like a Clown and Hating Me
Just after the first semester ended and I had not been to the
principals office for a few weeks we rotated classes in the TLC group
to the life class which was code for home-economics. The teacher was
a great mound of a woman who was bossy and sassy and mean. She was
one of those people who was probably picked on as a kid but she
really wanted to pay everyone back by being in charge of her little
kingdom and being condescending and rude every chance she got. Well,
in the words of the incomparable Homie the Clown – 'Homie don't
play that'. Every time she would say something in an inconsiderate
way I would ask out loud to the class how she might say that in a more positive
manner. She was not overly excited about a student correcting her
manners. She started being extra picky about my behavior which did
not need a lot of nit picking to find flaw with as it was. I was soon
being written up and kicked out of her class at a regular pace. I
spent many a seventh period out in the hall marking time until school
got out and then sometimes she would ask me to stay after to talk
about my behavior and twice I missed the bus and in the pre-cell
phone wasteland of the early nineties my mom often could not be
reached and I would walk the five miles home. The first time she
asked for some administrative assistance with controlling me was when
she came to school in an all denim one piece jumpsuit with a rainbow
colored belt and brightly colored pompoms for buttons. In short, a
clown costume. When she walked into class I immediately noticed the
outfit and raised my hand until I was called on and I asked if she
was ashamed of herself for stealing clothes from what appeared to
have been a homeless clown. My joke got a decent laugh from the
students but she turned red splotchy with rage and stormed over to me
and picked me up by my hair and shirt and yanked me out into the
hall. I thought I was going to get beat up by a Junior High HomeEC
teacher and was actually fairly concerned. When we got into the hall
she threw me against the wall and I cringed and curled preparing for
a slap. None came but she asked my why I was always being such a
little shit. I said she should not use that word because it made her
sound uneducated. She grabbed my shirt again and dragged me around
the corner and down the hall to the principal's office and threw me
though the door telling the secretary I was to stay there until she
got her class under control and then she would be back for a joint
conference with the principal. The principal actually started with
me before she got back and I told the principal the story in reverse
order so I sounded less guilty and the teacher more so. When she got
back the story was that I had been disruptive, she pulled my hair and
called me a little shit and dragged me bodily down the hall to the
principals office. Much of this story was roughly true and the
principal was concerned over her language and physical assaults more
so than the clever observation I had made about her clown suit
looking outfit. I had left out the part about the clown suit in my
version of events because I wanted to make sure the principal wasn't confused by what he would probably consider extraneous facts. She was
so flustered and out of sorts that when he started questioning her
about her behavior she forgot to mention the initial provocation
either and she was looking like a very violent and unstable woman
while I was putting on my best choirboy face. I was warned to be
good in class and she had to stay for some extra talking. By this
time school only had five minutes left so I just went and got my
stuff from my locker and headed out to the bus stop.
We Tussle
Well, like I said, it was not a huge school and eventually old Mr.
Dirt-Bag Bully and I were bound to cross paths in a relatively
unregulated environment. Then like the cowardly date rapist, he was
going to want things to get physical despite my protests. That day
came when I was at lunch. I had eaten a healthy, well rounded meal of
french fries and pizza from what was euphemistically called the
'snack lunch' line in the cafeteria so I was naturally well nourished
and ready for anything. I had stayed close to some athletic and large
friends of mine whenever possible to keep the high testosterone
Troglodyte at bay. Were were all sitting in one of two Kivas that
were in the common areas. These Kivas were a series of concentric
squares that stepped down at 2' intervals to provided a depressed
seating area that started out about 12' square and the bottom well
was about 4' square. While I was sitting there explaining to a kid
named Frank why my pants had patches on them that simulated that look
of airmail stamps a chunk of rice crispy treat hit my arm and stuck.
I looked up and there was my nemesis sneer laughing from about ten
feet away. I picked the morsel off of my shirt and fired it right
back at him trying to hit him in his stupid looking face. I missed
but I hit his shirt dead in the center chest and he instantly
switched from bully chuckle to bully rage and closed to distance to
me in what seemed like preternatural time. I was still sitting and he
pressed in close to me, face to face, him standing and me twisted at
the waist. He asked me what in the heavily accented eff word I
thought effing doing – and as an addendum to to question declared
once again that I was a pussy. I told him that he had accidentally
dropped some rice crispy and I had given it back to him, helpful soul
that I was. He got madder and told me it was not an accident that he
was trying to hit me with it. He told me I had better get it off of
him or I was going to die. I straitened and stood up on the top of
the Kiva, slowly as to not release the chemicals of alarm into his
barely developed brain. I imagined that is acute stress reaction
might just be fight-or-fight and I needed a second to get in good
posture. When I was standing on the edge of the Kiva I was actually a
few inches taller then my antagonist and in a burst of white hot nerd
rage instead of brushing off the crumb and trying to avoid the fight
I punched him as hard as I could on the collar bone. He was shocked
and staggered for a tick as were most of the spectators then he bull
rushed me which sent us both tumbling into the small square well at
the bottom of the Kiva and may have saved my life. In that space we
were both unable to mount a serious offense or defense and there was
a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing (I guess you know what
that means about the narrator.). We were broken up, I was disheveled
but basically unscathed and my opponent looked much the worse for
wear as we were pressed by our shoulders into the principals office
to have a chat. This was my third trip in six weeks so I knew my way.
When the principal asked our story the bully said that I had just
attacked him for no reason and showed him the bruise that was
flowering between his shoulder and neck. I told him about the
constant bullying and that he had thrown food on me and then attacked
me tackling me into the bottom of the well. I was much more eloquent
and forty pounds lighter then this kid so it was not hard to sell my
victim story. It was mostly true with a little shading and with the
parts about starting a joke about him being an exhibitionist left
out. I was cautioned to avoid fights and the other kid was suspended
for two days. Ha ha ha ha ha. I was smiling uncontrollably as I
walked the empty halls back to class and when I walked into class I
had trouble keeping the smile in check as everyone disregarded the
teacher when someone asked what happened. I said I would tell whoever
was interested later and class went on while I whispered the details
of the fight and the suspension to my closest neighbors. Then the
story was embellished and compounded until it was I who had initiated
the fight and threw the much bigger bully down the Kiva steps before
I broke his collar bone with a precision punch. I didn't disabuse
these notions. The next Monday when his suspension had been served
the bully was back in classes much subdued and as far as I remember
never said anything to me ever again which suited me fine. He dropped
out a few years later and I never saw him again.
I Get in a Fight
While constitutionally I am basically a coward I have a cognitive
defect much like a mild form of Tourett's syndrome that makes it
impossible to not say the joke that comes to mind. I can know it will
not go over, I can know it will offend, I can know it will end in me
taking a beating and still I press on. Rather; blurt on. The joke
must go on. I had already taken a few beatings in my scout troupe, elementary school, middle school, home and at play by reason of my
unbridled smartassery. Then there was Junior High. We were a school
that mixed together about ten small cities and brought kids into
close proximity for the first time who had very different cultures
and pecking orders. That meant they all had to be re-evaluated and
amalgamated or assimilated in a very short time. There was a Hispanic
kid from Payson who decided early on in the year that I looked like
and easy target for physical bullying because of how small I was. I
was only about 60lbs and 4'8” when I started eight grade so not a
real imposing physical specimen even by the shrimpy standards of Junior High
but even by shrimpy standards this kid was a king prawn. He started
to go out of his way to pull my shoulder length blonde hair and tell
me to get an effing hair cut because I looked like a skater pussy. I
appreciated his honest and forthright appraisal of my looks for what
it was worth but declined to entertain the idea of a drastic
reassessment of my personal style based on one review. I did,
however, take great pains to avoid his physical and verbal assaults
in the hall way but it was not a big school and at least once a week
he was trying to antagonize me because he had little fear of
retaliation. He didn't realize that he had engaged in a multi-front
battle with one of the premier smartasses working in Payson and the
surrounding environs at that time. I knew he could do nothing to me
in the three classes we had together and he was no match for my wit
so I started an unrelenting psychological campaign to bring him down
a notch or ten. An example, in our English class I would walk in and
then give an exaggerated stinky face and start waving the air and
make a big to do about it smelling rancid. Then I would loudly ask
who farted and ask for a confession and then all of the sudden I
would make a show of realizing that this kid was in the room and call
off the dogs. I would tell everyone not to worry about trying to find
out who farted because he just smelled like that all the time. In gym
class I would jog passed him and then yell out for everyone in class
to hear, 'No! I don't want to look at your penis!” and then run off
before he could hit me. This last one would cause a gym class chain
reaction that would have lots of other boys also telling him they
didn't want to inspect his member either. Then the joke migrated to
the hall and several people were telling him in passing that they
also would not be interested in seeing his boy-bits. If he was
picking on me before out of boredom and unfocused aggression my
campaign helped him to want to hurt me for more personal reasons.
That is when the whole thing got to the boiling point and went
pear-shaped and other mixed metaphors indicating a problem coming to
a head including, but not limited to, straws and camels and fans and
poop.
Little Miss Makeup
In Junior High we were required to take a three part class called
TLC. Technology – Life -and Career. I did not have much success in
these classes. All of the eighth graders were divided into three
groups and You would spend a third of the year in each class and then
switch. You know? Like circuit training for young minds. My group
started out in the technology section which was supposed to teach us
to use computers. They definitely succeeded in teaching me how to
pick a computer furthest from the teacher and to play Oregon Trail
for the whole class. I say the whole class but a good part of the
class was spent goofing off and hanging out with the other
disruptions and chatting. The teacher had been nicknamed 'Little Miss
Makeup' in reference to her diminutive stature and her penchant for
piling on the foundation, base, blush and eye shadow. Gobs of it. I
did not make up the name 'Little Miss Makeup' but at that stage of my
comedic development I was not above riffing on someone else's low
hanging fruit. I worked out a little mime routine wherein I would
show how 'Little Miss Makeup' might prepare herself for the day. When
she was out of the room I would gather an audience and proceed to sit
prissily on a chair. Next I would slide over a huge imaginary tub of
base and scoop two big handfuls out and trowel it onto my face. I
would give it a quick check and see that there was not enough
imaginary makeup on my face and dip my whole face in the bucket for a
wallow. The bit was always killing at this point. I would then grab
another tub and make similarly exaggerated blush and eye shadow mimes
and then pull out a grotesque pretend mascara wand and slather my eye
shut with fantasy mascara and then comically pry my eyelids back
open. Absolute comedy murder. Then she would come back into the room
and we would have to play it cool. Except if I could get behind her
and I would make a hand full of makeup maneuver and pretend to
freshen up so the other kids could see and she could not. She was
sweet and pleasant and she would always turn and ask me what I was
doing to make the other kids laugh and I would say I didn't know. The
joke would have tapered off and died with a whimper if I hadn't been
ratted out by a little suck up tattle tale. I was unexpectedly called
into the principles office for the second time in my first four weeks
at my new school and there was the little miss obviously in post-cry
dishevelment and the principal looking very unhappy. I knew what it
was about but I decided for a little of the old play dumb. When the
door was closed the principal took a slow measured look at me and
tisked before he told me what the situation was. He told me that a
student in my technology class had told my teacher that I had been
mocking her by miming out a makeup routine. I was going to try for a
'What? Who me?' but I could tell by his tone is was telling not
asking and I decided to keep quite and not make it worse. He asked if
I would care to demonstrate what I had been showing the class. I told
him I would not. I was so ashamed and sad that I had hurt my
teacher's feeling that I felt like crying. The principal asked if I
thought how my joke would make the teacher feel and I had to honestly
tell him that I had in all the purest honesty of my heart never
contemplated her feelings I was just enjoying the attention of my
peers. This was when Little Miss Makeup decided to compound my shame
by telling me she wore so much make up because she was embarrassed by
the many deep acne scars she had on her face from when she was a
teenager. She then asked how I would feel if someone made fun of my
facial scar and I started to cry because I did know how it felt and
now I was doing it to someone else. Luckily, breaking down made them
ease up on the guilt trip and they just told me I needed to consider
other people's feelings before I made a joke. They let me have enough
time to finish bawling and saying sorry before I had to go back to
class. I wish I could say that little intervention changed my life
and I was always kind from that day forth, not so much. I left off
making fun of anyone who was an obvious target and stuck to making
fun of the popular kids and jocks from then on and I never made fun
of someones face or what they did with it ever again.
Spin Cycle
I
forgot one significant instance of abuse when I was writing about all
the things my older sister did
to me for her amusement. Two facts are necessary to keep in mind for
this story; first, I have a really sensitive dizzy-ness thing
in my inner ear. Second, what a tire swing is.
 |
| This can only be used for evil. |
This is a tire swing
of the model that we had hung from our front tree. This model has two
sides that when twisted tighten the two rings together making escape
impossible. So as she would do she tricked me into playing with her
because she said she just wanted to hang out with me. I wanted to
hang out and so I thought, 'how nice that my super aggressive sister
would just like to hang out with no ulterior motives.' I did not
think that in as many words but it was probably there in sub-text.
She had me sit in the swing as I protested any sort of twisting on
account of the hyper-sensitivity of the nerves in my semicircular
canals. Once again that is not what I said but it was in the subtext
of, 'Just push me, okay? Don't spin because I will get dizzy and
puke'. She pushed regular for a few times to put me off my guard and
then sprung the trap and spun me as fast as she could tightening the
rope and cinching the tire shut into a cruel torture device. I fought
to try and escape but the tire was so tight and she was winding up
the swing so fast I couldn't work myself free. She didn't stop
twisting until the rope's repeated twistings had so shortened it as
to put it out of her reach. I was begging her not to let it go but I
knew it was too late for gods or man to intervene. She turned it
loose and I spun so fact the centrifugal force was pulling my head
and feet straight out of the top and bottom of the swing. I was
trying to create some counter pressure on the walls to keep the swing
from re-twisting once it had hit bottom. But it was no use at the
R's I was doing PM resistance was futile and the swing spun past the
bottom point carried by momentum into a dreadful counter rotating
re-twist. Then it did it a third time then stopped. I staggered out
of the swing and puked and then laid on the ground with my eyes
closed feeling the world spin and my sister's breathless laugh. I
laid there for a long time because I was unable to walk and the
lingering nausea lasted for days but I was not mad at my sister just
sad that she didn't really want to hang out with me and that it had
just been a trick. I have not sat in a tire swing since.
Calling Girls
Once I got my feet wet in the girlfriend game I took my new found
confidence on the road. By the road I mean I looked up cute girl's
phone numbers in the phone book and cold called them. Girls I knew,
Girls I didn't know whichever struck my fancy. Just so long as they
were cute. It actually went okay at times I would look up someone
with a generic last name though and I would run into troubles. A
Jones or a Johnson might require some calls to wrong numbers before
pay dirt was found. But in these heady times of pre-callerID a missed
call was no big deal just a quick request for the girl and then when
they said I had the wrong number it was checked off the list. One
could only hope that the girl they were searching for had an
alphabetically precocious father. Sometimes I would hit and then
begin an awkward conversation about who I was and why I was calling.
It turned out that my plan extended only so far as a desire to talk
to cute girls on the phone and I had a good plan for getting that
result. When they would ask why I was calling I would usually not
have an answer because I couldn't say my real purpose that is the
first and cardinal rule of the girl game – never tell them what you
really want. I would usually try and make up something about homework
or projects from a class that we had in common and then try and segue
to a regular conversation. It did not work very well or very often.
Once when I actually had some friends over helping me call and talk a
girl who was very cute but unaware of my existence became the target
of our phone solicitations. She answered and I tried to chat her up
with some furor because I had friends on the line in some need of
being impressed by by skill with the fairer sex. She just kept asking
who it was and why I was calling until she put her uncle on the line
and he yelled at us about calling girls we didn't know and bother
them and he ended up by threatening to kick our asses collectively. I
hung up a little shell shocked and embarrassed that my friends had to
hear me wuss out when a angry man yelled at me. In the frantic
imagining of my twelve-year-old mind I thought that he may actually
try and find out who I was and where I lived and try and find me and
follow through on his treats. I gave up cold calling from that day
forward. In a strange twist of fate the uncle of the girl ended up
being my uncle-in-law by marriage. I have never told him that it was
I who was calling girls and needed to get yelled at. He would
probably not remember anyway.
Crystal Pepsi
There was a time when the big wigs over at Pepsi were thinking that
they may be loosing market share because Pepsi was too brown. True
story. When I was in junior high we had a closed circuit television
system that played what was alleged to be knew but was more like a
vehicle to advertize Pepsi to a captive audience. Selling caffeinated
sugar water to pre-teens is not exactly hard but you need to make
sure they buy your brand of sugar water and not the evil other brand.
At one point they introduced a clear version of what was purported to
taste like Pepsi. I drank my sugar water from cans a except for a
little bit that got caught in the gutter I was unaware and
unconcerned with the color. The started pushing it on every ad and
they wheeled in special vending machines that sold Crystal Pepsi for
25 cents. That got my attention. 25 cents was the price point at
which I would buy as many as my budget would allow. Which was many,
many, many, cans of Crystal Pepsi. I didn't like it, it tasted horrid
and I couldn't stop buying it because it was a quarter. If I didn't
buy it I would be losing money and that is not reasonable.
Eventually, they dropped the promotional pricing and I was unwilling
to purchase and consume the horrid stuff at fifty cents a pop. I
guess everyone else on earth also discovered it was foul and it was
quickly no more. They say every man has his price and it seems like
mine is twenty five cents.
Breaking Up With my First Girlfriend
I don't know if I made it clear enough but I was really sensitive to
being 'whoo, whoo-ed' even when it was by mostly good natured
teasers. I was also mortified by the idea that my girlfriend might
want to hold hands at school where I could be teased, Finally, and
this was a biggie, I had never kissed a girl on the mouth and just
the idea of it would cause me to hyperventilate a little and start
planning my exit like a man leaving a burning building. For all these
reasons my relationship with my first girlfriend was getting off to a
rocky start. Where we had developed some effortless and fun chemistry
in our interactions before we were official I suddenly was very self
conscious about talking to her and our conversations were really
stiff. I also have a tendency to not look people in the eye when I
get nervous or am unsure what to do in the social situation I am in
and that is disconcerting to exactly everyone who is not autistic. So
my days had become a over-thought maze of avoidance and carefully
planned interactions that left no time for any PDA potential. When I
did see her I would try and give her a quick wave and head on my way
while she look at me confused about why I wouldn't come over the
twenty feet to talk to her and share a laugh or two. When I got home
though I was just fine I could be charming and funny and engaging on
the phone because no one could see me and there was no chance that
she would be able to try and cuddle up and kiss me. So every day when
She or I would call she would always first want to know why I never
talked to her at school anymore and my excuses were starting to get
more and more ridiculous. On the second week of our 'going out' she
had made some plans for us to get together Friday night at the
movies. Oh, crap. There was no way that I was going to go into a dark
secluded place with a potential kisser it was just not safe. It was
Wednesday when she told me the plan and it sent me into a tailspin of
anxiety. I told her that sounded awesome and that I would definitely
get a ride over to the movie theater to meet her on Friday. I was
lying, there was no way in hell I would be going but I didn't know
how to get out of it. I thought I could frame up my mom and tell my
girlfriend that I was grounded or something but then I thought it
would only delay the inevitable. My life had been miserable as a
committed man and I decided I needed out. It also did not help that I
was getting a constant stream of mockery from the guys in gym class
who inexplicably accused me of being a homosexual for having a
girlfriend. An example, “Gause, are you really going out with
Sarah? You are such a fag.' - and punch shoulder. I was not yet
confident enough in my rhetorical skills to point out in a funny way
that I was they guy with the girl while they were having a dude's
night in on the weekend. I called my girlfriend up on Thursday and
told her that we needed to break up, and here is where it gets
classic, but I still wanted to be friends. I did really want to be
friends but ones with no chance of being kissy face friends. She
started to cry a little and asked me why and for some ridiculous
reason and with a little bit of very tenuous logic I claimed that one
of my good friend-girls, the one who was always trouble, from
Santaquin said I should break up with her. As I write this I am
ashamed of what a coward I was that I had to throw a friend under the
bus in a misguided attempt to save face. I am not even sure what I
was trying to get across with my weird excuse but that is why
twelve-year-olds should not have girlfriends, because it is
ridiculous. We stayed friends until she moved away a few years later
in high school, we were never kissy face friends.
A Real Girl
There was a girl in my typing class who had just moved to Payson from
Arizona and she was into me. I was really wary because no girl had
ever flirted with me like she was. She would sit by me want to talk
to me she gave me her number and told me to call her at home. I was
worried because a girl this into me would probably want to 'go out'
and that meant kissing and I did not know how to kiss a girl, you
know, on the mouth. She was persistent though and pretty cute so I
started to entertain the thought of maybe having my first girlfriend.
I flirted back a little even started calling her on occasion to chat
about what we had in common which was typing class and the people in
typing class. I was building up the courage to ask her to 'go out
with me' which at thirteen meant exactly no going out because we
lived in different cities an I had no transportation. Then she surprised me by coming up to me at lunch in the midst of all of my
friends and asking me to go out with her. I didn't answer I just told
her I would call her later because I was too embarrassed by the
'whoo, whoos' all the other guys were giving me. I was blushing and
walking with my head down to get my books and go to my next class and
I chose a path I knew would not cross this girls path. The specific
path I chose was to exit the building wait for the bell to ring walk
around the long way around the outside of the building and come into
class late. Discretion or cowardice? Hard to say, hard to say. I
avoided the halls she would be in for the last three periods and made
it onto the bus un attached and un-'whoo, whooed'. I was safe and
riding home finally able to enjoy the feeling of flattery I had from
being asked out by a girl, a real girl. When I got home I wanted to
call her and tell her yes but I didn't want to seem over eager and amateurish so I went outside and played until I thought I had given it
enough time to seem cool. I went in and called her and when her mom
answered she asked right away who it was when I told her she seemed
relived and got her daughter for me. When she got on the phone I
could tell she had been crying as she was still short of breath in
the halting manner of a post-cry breath catching. My heart sank
because I knew she was sad because I had rejected her but I couldn't
tell her it was just because I was a massive wuss and was too shy. I
chatted to her like there was nothing particular I had called to talk
about and then she asked me why I didn't want to go out with her. I
said I did I just didn't want to tell her that in front of my
friends. She took that to mean I was ashamed to be with her but I
told her some cleaver and false excuse that didn't make me sound like
a wussy. She asked pointedly to make certain that I was on board with
going out and I said yes and had my first real girlfriend. I made an
excuse to get off the phone and spent the rest of the night worried
that she might want to hold hands at school or more unfathomably
horrible, kiss. But like Big Daddy Kane warned - Pimpin' Ain't Easy.
Tons of Weird Food
My mom and dad were not into organized meals that were cooked and
presented eaten and cleaned up in a modular fashion. My mom liked to
cook huge batches of weird food that she would store on pans in
plastic garbage bags and we could have some whenever we wanted. One
of my favorites was a little dose of fresh baked goodness she called
toads. It was a roll stuffed with ground beef and onions that she
would bake up, wrap in the aforementioned garbage bags and refer us
to when we asked what was for dinner for the next week or so. When
the hunger was on you all one need do was fish one out pop it in the
microwave and then dip it into the container of sour cream and enjoy.
Then double dip into the container of sour cream and enjoy some more.
My dad also would get in the baking mood and bake up a huge batch of
over kneaded and under-risen hockey puck like bread and forbid the
purchase of commercially produced, or 'good', bread until it was
eaten. He would be suspicious of too fast consumption so we would
feed it into the garbage a loaf at a time for a week or two until we
could return to the sane world of purchased bread. The exception to
throwing it out was our friend Moroni who inexplicably loved the
stuff and would eat it on purpose and with great relish when he saw
it was available. This means that there is no accounting for taste
some people eat boogers, some people eat my dad's bread. What ever
weird thing they were making they always made a huge batch and
coasted for a couple of days.
Doing Some Homework
I never did homework at home except for big projects that required
binding and/or collating. I would quickly dash off the work in class
or not do it. The was once that I did a whole years worth of geometry
over a weekend because a girl needed me to cheat for her. She had
been a friend from Santaquin and we had a geometry class together.
Math had always come effortlessly to me so I would almost always be
goofing off in math class distracting those who were trying to learn.
I even got kicked hard in the butt by the cranky old man teacher one
time because I had the class rolling on a good joke I was working and
I couldn't stop myself. So, he kicked me. I hopped around holding and
rubbing my buttocks in a comical fashion and gave it a funny 'Ow! Ow!
Ow! Ow!' which did nothing to calm down the class. He had a policy
that if you were able to pass the test with a perfect score you were
not required to do home work but homework would make up as much as
50% of the class grade. I had already mastered geometry and therefore
abstained from taking school work home with me. My friend though was
in danger of failing and she had also not done any homework but she
was also failing the tests. We hit upon a brilliant plan because I
had not done any homework and had an unknown handwriting to the
teacher I could do her homework. For a fee, of course. There were 35
worksheets that needed to be done and so I thought a buck a pop
sounded like it would be about right she said that sounded awesome to
her and our corporation of deceit was founded. I took all of the
papers home and was able to knock out about one every five minutes
and went through them in just a couple of hours with only one break
for something to eat. I gave her the papers on Monday and collected
my earnings. She turned them in and got an A. So, really an win-win
minus the fact that she never learned any geometry. This was not the
first or last time I did someone else's homework for money or as a
favor, I just never did mine.
Cheating in Typing Class
You may have heard the adage about giving a lazy man a job and he
will find the fastest and easiest way to do it. Well, that happens to
be true, if he actually does it. In a world which requires the
constant use of keyboards to interact with the world at large a good
skill for me to have acquired would have been typing but I also had
lots of friends in typing class and I wanted to hang out with them
and talk instead of doing what we were assigned. I unfortunately for
my life of typing struggles knew a little bit about keyboard
shortcuts and knew how to copy and paste blocks of text. This skill
was very useful because the way the class was taught was that we had
a typing book that we would set on the side of our monitor and we
would copy a paragraph and then recopy it. Or in my case I would copy
and then paste and paste and paste it making it appear that I had
amazingly fast word-per-minute speed. I would even do this for tests
type, Control+C, Control+V. 120 wpm? Yeah, easy if you cheat. The
problem was that I didn't know what was realistic and by the time we
were six weeks into class and I had posted several WPM rates well
above a hundred the teacher was starting to be really impressed even
in a class of forty I was standing out. It is bad to stand out if you
are a cheater. He was a quite practiced and skilled typist and his
times were only at those at their peek and here was a kid,
12-years-old, blowing the doors off this keyboard game he wanted to
tell everyone about his new phenom. He told the whole class that I
was the fastest and most accurate typist he had ever worked with and
he wanted everyone else to work hard like I was. Then he asked me to
come up to his desk and show everybody my proper form and technique
on the demonstration computer at the front of the class. I agreed and
went up because I didn't think to defer out of pretended modesty. I
got the the front and his computer had a box over the keys so the
typist would only use the correct technique of looking up all the
time. I myself didn't use that technique so much as I looked down all
the time and typed out the sentence or paragraph and then copied it.
I was in way too deep but I went up and tried to type as quickly and
as accurately as I could without looking at my hands. I did about
seven misspelled words in thirty seconds before the instructor told
me to stop and come with him to the office. He didn't accuse me of
anything because that would have been below both of our dignities at
that point he just asked how I had been cheating. I also showed him
enough respect to not try and lie and showed him how a clever student
could game the system b using the cut and paste shortcuts. He was not
unimpressed by my ingenuity and told me so but he did remind me that
this was a typing class not a computer class and I should learn to
type because I could use that skill my whole life. He told me to mark
on his master record which tests I cheated on and I would get zeros
but that is all the punishment I would receive. I came out of the
office feeling relived that I only got in a little trouble. I learned
my lesson and only cheated within reason for the rest of the
semester.
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