The Battle of The Sexes

 My older sister and I had one great big fight to send us on out of childhood for good. She was a budding athlete and had made the school basketball team twice already and I had not and that was a sore spot for me. She was the kind of sister who wouldn't mind touching you right on the sore spot if that was what she thought needed to happen. One day when she was in high school and I was still in junior high we had a disagreement over who was tougher, physically and mentally, boys or girls in general and she and I specifically. Christy's best friend Summer was over and she was pitching in here and there in the verbal portion of our argument and when we were unable to come to agreement we conjoined the physical contest to determine who had the right of the argument. We tussled back and forth and forth and back without making much headway until we ended up on our knees in a double side headlock stalemate and both in tears. We both were cranking down as hard as we could on each other's heads and crying and cursing. Summer had stopped cheering on Christy and was now just taking in the spectacle of our indomitable wills. We stayed locked in mutual side headlocks torquing away for a very long time and I don't remember how or why we were broken up but it was not by the capitulation by either of us so insofar as our family was concerned on that day the battle of the sexes was a war of attrition that ended in a tie.  

I Dance Around Like Some Kind of Fagot

 The thing I always wanted, and to a large degree still want, was to be cool. I wanted to be able to just look cool, act cool and hand back and let the ladies flock to me and my mysterious bad-boyishness. My brain, my traitorous brain, would never allow me to do that and I would always loose interest in being cool and start goofing, and clowning. Sometimes I would catch myself and try and dial it back but usually it would just spiral out of control and soon I would be in trouble of one sort or another. I have written about the lame attempts at having a dance at our middle school but in junior high more people danced and it was at night and there was a real - realish, DJ. What drove most of the dancing, actually all of the dancing in Junior High dances were the girls and the levels of testosterone in the boy's bloodstream that were finally sufficient to overcome early teenage social timidity and would at least get them on the floor for the slow dances. We lived in a rural area and gender roles were fairly well respected in the community and most families except mine. When I saw the girls all out dancing to the fast dances my coolness decayed with the half-life of one of those exotic quantum particles and I was out and goofy dancing without realizing that boys didn't do that. Luckily, there were a bunch of hillbillies with plenty of testosterone sitting on the stage steps and along the wall there to point out my faux pas. They indicated to me that in their opinion only girls were allowed to dance to fast dances and that my participation was indicative of my homosexual tendencies. One kid, a star of the football team and overall tough guy, remarked quite loudly that I should quit dancing around like some kind of fagot. He sounded threatening in his tone but he was able to clear that up in his follow up remark when he promised to kick my queer ass if I didn't stop dancing with the girls. That terrified me. I really don't like being punched, kicked or actually physically abused in anyway. However, I did really, really like girls and it seamed like the best way for me to maybe make out with some, one, most or all of the girls here at the dance was to keep dancing and pretend like I didn't hear my nemesis. He saw that I was not stopping and pretending like I couldn't hear him so he picked up the volume and intensity of his requests for me to discontinue my gay dancing. It was becoming increasingly improbable that I could not have heard him so my plan to ignore him was becoming less realistic and I needed a new tack. I choose to pretend I had some pressing business unrelated to the threats of homo-cide from the redneck real manliness committee chairman. I asked a girl a year older then me that I had been interested in for a couple of months if she wanted to go for a walk outside for a bit and she said sure so we headed out through the doors manned by teachers so I would not be followed and beat. We got out under the homo-patrol's radar and went around the south of the building to the same place where the girl got shot and participated in that most homo-erotic of behaviors, of kissing someone of the opposite sex. I guess it turned out all that gay boogieing worked directly to plan. A fact I pointed out to the psycho when he asked me where I went during the dance when he had scheduled me for a punitive thrashing. Knowing that I left to make-out with a girl somehow deflated his rage entirely and he never bothered me at dances again.    

New Girl Shot In The Face In Drive-By Intended For Me

 I don't want to prematurely reveal what happened to this poor girl on her first day in our school too early so you will just have to wait like everyone else. We were behind the gym starting to walk to the East when the car with the miscreants came by for the third time but this time they were driving really slowly and I noticed, too late, that one of the boys in the back seat had a rifle out the window and he shot as they went by. I thought at first that they had missed but the new girl started screaming and there was blood pouring down her face from a tiny wound in the center of her forehead. There was snow on the ground and I grabbed a handful to try and stop the bleeding it held it back a second but it didn't stop. When I pulled it away there was a swollen fleshy volcano with a perfectly round BB hole in the center which was still spurting blood. We were in a real pickle here we had a girl with a air-rifle wound and we were not where we were supposed to be so we had a problem, do we get help and inadvertently reveal our naughtiness, or wait for a break and the girl could just bleed while we covered our own butts. I am ashamed to say we opted for some butt covering and waited the thirty-five minutes until the bell rang to report the assault and get the girl medical attention. In the meantime we snuck back into the building and tried to get her cleaned up a little in the most remote bathrooms in the building. They were not terribly remote or private because in an attempt to shame more kids into washing their hands and to keep water messes to a minimum the sinks were one huge semi-circular sink and it was in the hall. She was still bleeding and mopping when the bell rang and students quickly noticed that there was an abnormal amount of blood in the region of the bathroom and the principal was already on his way when we went to meet him. Right away he asked me why I was always involved when something crazy happened, I told him I was just walking to class when we were shot at. I told him who the boys were and what they were driving as they got the girl some medical attention. It turned out that the BB popped right in and hit her skull and bounced right back out. So all she had to deal with was a huge swollen red round wound on her forehead on her first week in a new school. The shooter boys were picked up by the police in about half an hour and they were genuinely sorry that they had been caught. They were also sorry that they had shot a girl who's only crime was poor taste in friends. They explained that they were trying to shoot me and hit her by accident. Fair enough, the authorities say and send the boys on their way. Just kidding they had to go to court and they had to apologize to the girl and her family and I am not sure if it was court ordered or some kind of arrangement between the parents but the boy actually came and worked for free for the girls dad for a little bit as restitution. Her forehead was only really bad for a week or so and then through the magic of ritual face paint common in the American teen she was able to conceal her war wound. I think she only lasted in our school a few months before she runaway and went on the road with a friend.  

A Girl Moves Into Our School

 I didn't loose my train of thought about the guy wanting to do me grievous bodily harm for a little light mockery and a little heavy beating this story is absolutely relevant for reasons which you will soon see. Or perhaps for reasons which you will never see because you will, by forces quite beyond your control not be able to read the next post. Or perchance you are reading on a semi-daily or longer basis and you read the effect before the cause and this disclaimer seems superfluous. You may say to yourself, 'This story must explain where that girl who got shot in the head came from.' Indeed it does, but we must keep that on the hush-hush for a moment so as not to ruin the surprise for those of us who do not know the rest of the story yet. To get back to this story and leave all other guns unjumped; for the sake of narrative clarity we need to establish that there was a girl who came from a blended family who had one branch of that family, the biological-paternal side to be exact, that lived by me. Her biological-maternal family lived in another city but she was often visiting so I knew her pretty well in fact I had once chickened out on kissing her if you need to know vaguely who she is there is that. She was a little to wild of a child and her mother sent her to come live with her dad to see if he could straiten her out. He could not but let's not ruin that surprise either. She was going to start coming to our Junior High and so I thought I should do the right thing and show her around, By show her around I mean that we went to one class and then my friends and I decided to show her how we skipped school to go hand out at their houses. We got all rounded up and headed out the un-monitored south entrance and around the south of the building to wait for all of the good boys and girls to go to class so that no one would get any ideas about ratting out the naughty kids who were making a run for it. As we were walking around the south side of the building a car full of high school kids, who looked exactly like the high school kids that had wanted to beat me up the night previous at the basketball game (because they were the boys from the game) drove by on the road that separated the junior high from the high school. I didn't realize who it was until I had made good long eye contact with them and they abruptly slowed the car drove on a little way and then turned around. Uh-oh. They didn't stop the second trip through either just drove by slowly and pointed at me from about 100 feet away. I don't usually mind pointing but this had a rather ominous feel to the point and I suggested to my friends that we go the wrong way to get to my friends house. They asked why and I said no reason just wanted to go to the West to get to a house four blocks to the East. They were not buying it and I just hoped that the pointy boys from the car had driven on and forgotten about me. They had not.  

Church Ball Fights

 On more than one occasion my non-stop onslaught of verbal abuse got me in more trouble then just a simple assault. Once I kept implying that the way that a guy, who was two years older than me and quite a bit more violent than me, was playing in a way that may indicate his preference for the company of men. I kept up that theme of abuse for the hour making note of every time he touched tried to touch my butt or anything along those lines. He had stated fouling quite hard which sent me to the free throw line and helped us pull into the lead. He was the other team's best player so when he had fouled out we really opened it up and ran away with it. He was on the sideline seething in white hot anger and plotting ways to kill me when the game ended with us in the lead. I was trying to time my exit to be nonchalantly walking with the two toughest kids I knew the two crazy brothers Ryan and Justin. My plan worked well because when I was ambushed in the parking lot I had a secret weapon, pure unfettered rage embodied in my emotionally unbalanced friends. They waded into battle not so much in my defense but for the chance that they could cause someone grievous bodily harm and possibly taste blood. I was left completely unscathed from a conflict I think most people would assume that I had, in some small way, initiated. My big concern now was that I was now not only on the run because of my smart-assery but also from the beating my lunatic friends had laid on my enemies and his buddies. I had no idea how ridiculous this story was about to get I just thought I needed to steer clear of this dude and his friends for a bit until they forgot why they wanted to maim and disfigure me. Turns out that they had a little of the crazy in them as well and an underdeveloped part of the brain that keeps things in the proper perspective.   

Church Ball Assaults

 When the older boys had moved on from youth basketball I got a more featured role and because we didn't have a very dedicated coach I also ran practice. The main problem with church ball is that it is a very casual group of basketball players and I wanted to drive them a little harder to develop then they wanted to most times. They would humor me and run a drill or two but then there would be mutiny and we would just play ball the rest of practice. They would all show up for games ready to go though and that is when we really needed them so I would just say passive-aggressive things and let them off if we won and if we didn't I would throw in some - 'we could have pulled ahead there at the end if you would have drilled that in practice' type stuff. A typical game for me was running the point-center position. I was the tallest on the team at 5'11” so naturally I played center, and I was also a ball hog so I needed to bring the ball down the floor every time. My third job was to talk a non-stop stream of trash so that the other team lost focus on basketball and just tried to assault me. The free throw was my best and most consistent offense so the more the merrier. Every time I brought the ball down the court I liked to be singing a little beat-'A' hair band rock in my head to get the mood right. I was really big into Gun's and Roses, Metallica, and AC/DC so it was not uncommon for me to be mentally humming a little Paradise City, Sad But True or Back in Black. Once the mood was right I would survey the court and make a little plan for the play and the pass or fake pass. Finally as I engaged the defender I would begin the chatter in earnest. Weather we scored or not when I went down on defense I turned up the abuse and really went to work.

“That was a great pass, there was no one where you threw it but it was a good pass.”

“Shoot! You're good from there, oh dang you missed, you were not good from there, crap!”

“(I would pretend to say this to my team) Don't worry about the his left, he can't go left, his left hand might as well be painted on.” - This most often resulted in the poor guy being baited into switching to his left hand which really was not a good move for most casual basketball players and I would be there to steal it. Once I used this technique on a boy who was a little more violent them the average hard foul retaliator and when I had stolen the ball and was driving for a lay-up he just tackled me from behind so I fell strait back onto my head and was knocked out. He was kicked out of the game and while he was leaving he was yelling that I had brought it on myself with my non-stop smack talk. I got up and shot my two and because they were without their best,and most violent, player we had no trouble putting them away. If I know anything it is that a win in a youth church basketball game is worth a little coup and heck, it is even worth some contra-coup.     

Crashing the Boards

There were basketball courts in all of our church houses and that is where we would go to practice and play every week. One week one of our big 6'8” monsters was showing how he could dunk and it was pretty cool to see him bring the power. He decided on one of his dunks to give it little extra sauce and really rip down on the rim. He ripped it and the rim shattered out of the backboard in a magnificent shower of glass. The poor slam-dunker fell flat onto his but and the crystal rain fell all around him while he laid there trying to catching his breath. He stood up, rim still in hand, his face white with terror. I have seen guys dealing with pregnant girlfriend news with more equanimity. His family was not well off and the cost of a glass backboard was all that was on his mind. In a quavering voice he asked no one in particular how much a basketball backboard costs. Someone offered the number 200 and it looked like that poor guy was going to vomit. He sat back down, cross-legged, in the glass and contemplated his fate with a depth of sadness I had only seen when someone had lost a beloved pet. As spectators we went from amazed to confused in just a few seconds we wanted to talk about the awesome destruction but our friend was clearly not feeling the joy so we were not sure what to do. We settled on cleaning up the glass and telling him it would be fine and then talking about it while we walked home and all the next day at school. It turned out it was only about eighty dollars and someone better off paid for the replacement but there was a new strict no dunking rule in place which gave me a good excuse never to learn how.

Church Balling

Are you telling me that you are honestly saying that there is really a more beautiful vehicular manifestation of art in the history of the whole world? Ha. Ha. 

When the Junior Jazz season was not in swing I played a lot of church ball. Church ball is like basketball except it is more violent and more vicious. The teams were organized by the congregation, or ward, you were in so depending on who your neighbors were you could have a really good or bad season. My neighbors happened to be pretty good at basketball so it was a good season. We had two really tall guys for church ball and a good shooting guard that were on the older team. They needed a few more guys so my job was to bring the ball down and give it to one of those good guys. That plan worked really well because the two tall guys were much bigger then almost anyone else we played and If I didn't shoot it worked out fine. We got to go to the regional tournament which I was not allowed to play in and we lost in the first game. We were all ready to ride home with the youth leader who brought us and in those days there were a lot of faux-wood-sided Oldsmobile station wagons in the big family region of Utah where we lived and we had trouble finding the right one. As it happened our leader's key didn't work very well in his door so he had trouble opening the locks. I knew a thing or two about B and E and offered to open the car for him if someone would be so kind as to lend me a knife. Weapon in hand I proceeded to jimmy open the triangular vent window that many cars had before the ubiquity of air conditioning. I slipped my small arm into the vent and unlocked the door and we were all loaded in when it was discovered that the reason why his key didn't work too well in the door was because this was, in actual fact, not his car at all. We all scrambled out and re-locked the doors and found the right car a few stalls down and behind one of those huge 15 passenger vans. The key worked quite a bit better in the right car and we headed home for real.  

State Playoffs

 We did fine in the first game of the State playoff with 32 teams in sixteen games because our strategy still worked. They had a roast-'em-toast-'em-coast-to-coast-'em ball hog as well and we had no trouble trapping him and stealing the ball for easy points. We went into the eight team round with a lot of confidence in our system because we had not yet lost a game but then we hit a major snag. This team passed the ball and we were confused about who we should trap and steal the ball from. My fellow guard and I would run up for the trap and zoop the ball was gone from his hands to another player on his team so we had to run over to him and zoop gone again like some kind of magic. They would throw the ball to each other until there was someone who was not defended well could take the shot. What was this new devilry? Can they do that? Is passing even legal? This was a new wrinkle that had to be ironed out fast or we were going home for the season. We were running ragged trying to catch up with these guys so our coach switched us up moving me to center which was a strange move because I was the second shortest kid on the team at 5'8”. I did have a quick and high jump though and was a tireless defender. The two tall guys (tall for our team at 5' 11”ish) got moved to forwards and the guards were on full press on a short substitution schedule to hopefully just outrun the other team. It started to work and we pulled back even and in the last few minutes they were gassed and we were able to pull ahead just in the close of regulation and win by one when the kid from the other team missed an open layup as time expired. After the game the referee came up to me and told me he had never seen someone play harder than I had and that I was the only reason our team won. It was the first time in my life that anyone had ever complemented me for an athletic performance. I had almost always been picked last and got cut from the real basketball team so when I got some praise in recognition of my hard work and determination I almost started crying and took a few minutes to go thoroughly look for something or other that I suddenly remembered in the stands while I tried to reign in my emotions. We were onto the final four and that meant we got to play our last two games in the Delta center where the real Jazz played. We were even going to get to meet a jazz player. We were hoping for John Stockton or Karl Malone but we got some deep bench dude that I cannot even remember clearly. I remember the stadium being huge and cold and dim because they didn't turn on the full game lights. For some reason I don't remember much about our semi final game . We were out paced, out shot, out manned and out-talled, We got so far behind so fast that there was no chance of a come back. We lost by something like 20 points and I was actually relived to not play again for the final I was just to anxious about loosing and really loosing for the first time in the season was actually cathartic and I went home fine with the fact that we were tied for the third best team of non school team eighth and ninth graders in the state.

Jr. Jazz

 I couldn't make the school team so I went out and joined the city leagues who, by law, can turn no one away. The main problem with that was that the games and practices were four miles away and my dad hated that my mom had to take me to go play sports and he thought that if I wanted to go play sports I should make my own way to the next town over at night in the dark to practice and then come back all on my own and not inconvenience my mom and by extension him. He had a strict no organized sports mandate until my brothers wanted to play sorts and then he loosened the restrictions and let them both play foot ball and even went to their games. I don't think my dad has ever seen me compete in basketball, rock climbing, debate or wrestling. Just not his scene. So without the support of my mom and dad I got to go to practice when it struck her fancy and games when it was convenient. So I would miss a practice or two during the week because my parents were at church or busy and then on Saturday I would show up to games and want to play but the coach would want me to not play because I was not a dedicated practitioner. I told him the situation and told him I was practicing on my own and because I was about to cry he told me I could play. Play I did. I was pretty short and not a very good shooter but I had the unbounded energy of a spastic nerd who could foul up there with the all time greats. I was in Junior High in the early 90's and if you know your early to mid-nineties basketball you know it was Michael Jordan time all the time. What that meant was that every kid on the team who had missed the subtleties of Micheal’s greatness as a defender and rebounder and thought the best way to emulate him was to take the ball coast to coast and make an acrobatic shot. What happened is that on every team there was a dude or two who would use this strategy thirty times a game while his teammates jogged up and down the court out of the loop. The only time there was any real conflict was when the other ball hog on the team would get mad at the ball hog and yell at him for never passing it to him so he could go coast to coast and make an acrobatic layup. Selfish. Our whole strategy was to identify the coast to coast man and the other guard and I would full-court press and trap him. This coupled with his constitutional inability to pass the ball lead to lots of turnovers. In conjunction with our secret weapon – the other guy that stayed down at the other end for the long-pass easy layup, sometimes derogatorily called the 'cheery picker' – we won every single game in our season and went on to the regional and state playoff.  

Basketball Tryouts

 I always wanted to play basketball for the school and I was not aware that other kids had been receiving intensive personal instruction for years while I was playing playground ball around town. I had never played organized basketball as a youngster I had only participated in disorganized basketball games. This lack of formal team mechanics and my overall lack of skill in basketball were definitely my downsides but I did play really hard which turned out to be a bigger downside. We had been running and doing drills in tryouts and then we were teamed up for some live action 5 on 5. I had been hustling up and down the court defending with tenacity and crashing the boards for rebounds which I thought was making me look like a valuable addition to the basketball team. The coaches evidently thought it made me look like a spaz. I had made the first cut from the field to twenty and thought I was on my way. I sealed my fate, in my opinion, when I was defending a kid who ended up making the team as the power forward and when he drove on me for a shot I went to block him did that and more when I slapped the ball out I followed through with an elbow to the nose. It was a instant and plentiful gusher and the coaches told me to leave tryouts while they tried to get the kids nose under control. I, in my naivete thought that I was just going out for the day and that there was still a chance that I would make the team. I showed up the next afternoon to hopefully read my name on the list that would guarantee me Junior High glory. The list cutting the team down to eleven was up on the coaches window and I walked over and saw lots of guys high fiving and a few sulking off. I was conflicted in wanting to know what was on the list but not wanting to be cut. I compromised by asking a boy on the back row of the small crowd around the paper. He let me down hard with a dismissive snort and a quick 'no'. I believed him but I still wanted to see my name not on the list. Choking back my emotion I wedged to the front and read the names twice to make sure and then headed off somewhere private to have a little cry. Unfortunately for every boy cut from a basketball team from then and forever Michael Jordan was becoming the best player of all time and he had been famously cut from his high school basketball team. This was supposed to give us hope that if we tried hard we could try out the next year and maybe make the team. What the coaches never told us was that he was not cut from the team outright he was a sophomore who didn't make the varsity team he did make the J.V. squad. We were freshmen who didn't make the freshman squad and in the next years we would be more and more years of experience and familiarity behind and to my knowledge none of us also-rans ever made the team in subsequent tryouts.   

A Girl Runs For Something

 Even though I didn't have many friends in Santaquin when we all got transplanted to another town a little bit of shared experience camaraderie sprang up and if we were all not bosom buddies we were all more or less on the same team. When one of the cute girls from Santaquin decided to run for some sort of student government position many of us were on board with helping her. I, like most of the boys our age from Santaquin had always had a semi to full blown crush on this girl so I thought helping her might just get me in the door. It didn't. I worked really hard on making and putting up posters. As was my nature I made posters with my other naughty friend from Santaquin that were copied from the Simpsons that said 'SEX!' in large font and underneath that it said, 'Now that we have your attention vote for Amy.' We put them up and lots of people thought that they were really funny. Unfortunately for us most of those people were fellow students and not the teachers and administration. They called in our friend and told her to take down all of the offending posters. I felt sick with anxiety when she tearfully told me what had happened. I was trying to help and I had got her in trouble. So after that I just laid low and thought that I would be forgotten. The last thing the campaign had to do was to make a video to play over the closed circuit television system. In the video she went over the regular why you should vote for her stuff and then in the end she thanked the four or five friends that helped her on the campaign. I hadn't helped out after the 'SEX!' poster but She unexpectedly thanked me publicly over the TV which meant she was thinking of me and was publicly willing to admit I was her friend which would not have been the case a few years before. I made me want to cry for some reason and I sat there in class trying to keep it together while everyone turned in their desks to find me after my name was mentioned. Someone asked me a question that required some answer and I just inappropriately nodded because that is all I could do without crying. The girl lost the election but from then on we were pretty good friends until she broke up with me for someone else and then we were better friends.  

This Gang Thing Does Not Get Out of Hand

Look upon our sugar-straw goodness ye mighty and tremble.

The kid who shared the table with me and the gansta girl's rival gang went by the more whimsical and less tough sounding then Wicked Crosses – Pixie Stix. He stole that name from the tube of sugar candy and it did not sit well with the local self proclaimed gang member/ gang expert. She said there was no such gang as the Pixie sticks and she complained that there were no members. At that the other boy at the table and I joined up and promised to recruit for the Pixie Stix gang. She was agitated and said that this meant a gang turf war that required, as is the precedent set in gang code laid forth in the chronicle of all things gangster- The Outsiders, a rumble. She threw down the proverbial gauntlet and told us that we should bring our gang and our weapons, excluding guns of course, to the ball fields across town at ten of the clock Friday night. We accepted her challenge but as is the failing of many fledgling gang members forgot to save the date and time. Rookies, amaright? So when we came back to school on Monday she was outraged that we had not shown up for our beat-down her and her whole alleged crew were there probably swinging chains and practicing their dance fighting ala the epic battles of the Jets vs. Sharks. It was strange that she claimed that her and the whole crew were there because in our school at least she had only been able to attract a single pariah who was well known to use the fist forward charge as his main fighting move. A move that I had seen him use in a fight where he made his hand into a lance and then charged like a gallant knight at tournament. The only problem with that move is that it will never hurt anyone and have the weakness of being easily sidestepped. We rescheduled the rumble and once again let it slip our mind which made Ganster-girl conclude that we were not even real gangsters. Guilty as charged. She left off with the rumbling after that and just roamed the halls with a BA swagger with her stinky knight in tow. She moved out of our school a few months later but left us wiser about the ways of the world and inner city life or at least what she claimed it was. After my brief gang affiliation with the Pixie Stix I never again dabbled in the world of organized crime.  

The Wicked Crosses and Other Bad-A Stuff

 A little later that ninth grade year we had another move in a hardcore little girl who was in a gang. Well, at least she said she was in a gang. She was a tiny little vicious thing that walked around the halls all elbows and bluster with the strut of a douche-bag twice, maybe three times, her size. She wore the thrashed out clothes of a hard rock aficionado and was quick to draw an anarchy symbol or a 666 on whatever thing she could. Her favorite thing to draw though was a gang symbol from her old 'hood which she would tell anyone, who would not actively flee, about. The gang was the Wicked Crosses and the insignia was a jaggedey Metallica-esque 'W' with a Gothic looking cross over the top. This whole concoction was drawn as bad-A looking as possible and as often as possible it seemed. It was a poor choice graffiti-wise because there was only one known member of the Wicked Crosses and that made plausible deniability implausible. She sat at the same table with me and two other boys in foods class and it was honestly the highlight of my day to go and listen to her tales of street corner skullduggery. She would always start one of her lectures with a feigned start where she would realize suddenly and audibly that she had left something very expensive and very cool running at home.

'Ohmahgawd, I just remembered I left my Laser Disc playing when I left the house. Crap, my mom is going to kill me.' She would then ask if any of us had a Laser Disc player. Couldn't say that I did, neither did the other boys. On the fifth or sixth day of her realizing in a fluster that her consumer good was in a precarious way back at the homestead the other boys and I started also remembering that we to had left some consumer good in possible jeopardy. I would startle and slap my head in feigned despair and say something like, 'Oh dang it guys I think I left my refrigerator running when I left my house.' They would be appropriately interested and sad and say that they too may have left an appliance plugged in and functioning and were just now recalling it out loud for people to hear. She didn't seem to notice or care what we were doing and would keep up the same pattern for several more weeks. After her daily material panic she would ask us what we knew about some gang related type thing and then magically segue into a class periods worth of stories with that thing as a lynchpin. Did we know about drugs? She did. Did we know about killing a man? She did. Did we know about weapons? She did. She was telling us about gang culture and her gang every day in what I now know was grooming because not long after we we regaled she invited us to join. We were of course curious what kind of curriculum vitæ would qualify us for membership and what requirements of time and resources might be expected of fledglings like ourselves. She did not disappoint in her flamboyant descriptions of the checklist for membership consideration. We had to know how to use ten weapons, know how to kill a man with our bare hands, know how to make and sell drugs, and we had to have had sex. Crap, dang, and double crap. I told her I only knew how to use seven weapons, I knew how to incapacitate a man with my bare hands and I had never made or sold drugs but I could make some awesome caramel from scratch and y biscuits were not bad either. Not bad at all, light and fluffy with the right about of crispness on the crust. Sadly I was even less qualified sexually in that I had kissed one girl on the mouth and I was not really happy with the process there either. The other two boys at the table lamented there slight under-qualification for inclusion in the prestigious Wicked Crosses. She considered our failings, oblivious to our joke, with some real teeth sucking and head shaking gravity. With magnanimity we didn't deserve she decided there on the spot at our shared table in foods class that she was going to allow us all to join even with our flawed resumes. That was huge relief to be needed and wanted. Unfortunately none of us were able to take her up on the offer but one of the boys at the table did her one better and formed a rival gang.  

Poop Demonstration

 I feel sorry for parents now that I am one. It seems like no matter our intention and our purpose we just ruin our children's lives. In that same gym class that had all of the other excitement was a kid who pretty regularly pooped his pants. Because we all realized that he was having a problem we were all kind and considerate and didn't make a big deal about his problem. Just kidding, kids are bastards. Once someone started in most people would mention something about how bad he smelled or something else mean. The only limitation seemed to be that no one said anything while the teacher was around. The kid was naturally not really having a really positive experience in school and his mom, well meaning as she could be, came to school and made it worse. She asked our gym teacher if she could come and talk to our class. He gave her some time in the assembly room where she was able to use the white board. We were told to come sit down before we dressed for class and the teacher threatened us with death and destruction if we were not respectful during the mom's talk. She came in and was quite nervous and emotional as she started explaining her son's medical condition. She drew a rudimentary colon of two parallel lines on the board with a blue marker and then indicated nerves along each side with circles. She then explained that her son had an operation on his colon and it had damaged the nerves that can feel when he needs to poop. She demonstrated this by crossing out each nerve circle with a red marker. She was emotional about the abuse her son had been taking and begged all of us to please leave him alone. I think for most of us, especially in that moment, felt pretty bad a bout making fun of the poor guy. When she was gone things started to seem funny again but most of us did leave him alone after that. Except for one kid I remember who turned up the abuse and now had specific information for abuse. Many other people were making a joke which included drawing two parallel lines on something, drawing nerve circles to either side and then crossing them out. It was a horrible joke but to our little minds it was killing. As I think about it this morning I am still ashamed of all of us. The kid eventually just stopped coming to school and I don't know if he moved or dropped out or what but I hope he found a place with nicer people.  

Old Man Power

 Our gym teacher was an old man and was actually the grandfather of one of the cool kids in our class. About a month into school we had a kid from California move in. The main problem with someone from a state with a reputation for coolness is that every idiot from there thinks that they are also cool by marinating in it. He was acting like he was too cool for everything right off the bat and was trying to pick fights with all kinds of kids and just generally trying to be a tough guy. That would have been fine if he would have kept it low key and fought his fights on the hush-hush but the point of being cool and tough is making sure that other people know that you are cool and tough. We were in gym class jogging around the gym when he started trying to pick fights with lots of different kids. He was pushing and shoving and calling names when the teacher came over to break it up. That is when California made a critical error he decided to take a shot at taking a swing at our old man teacher. Whoops. California put all of his force into a punch that missed because it was dodged. The old gym teacher then, and I want to make perfectly clear that this was a one second exchange, grabbed the kids outstretched arm and spun him into a hard choke-slam. He picked California off the ground and slammed him to the ground. The fight went out of him with his breath and he writhed a little and then crawled to the wall to sit up and have a nice quiet cry. Everyone who saw what happened walked away with a new respect for an old man and a new disrespect for California and his toughness. California never picked another fight and I think he had moved again but after his taming he was not that noticeable so I am not sure for sure.  

Gym Class Peek-A-Boo

 When I was in ninth grade we were required to wear gym clothes in gym class and if you did not have gym clothes God help you. We were required to either sit out and take the zero for the day or wear some school issue shiny polyester shorts that were more like green hot pants. I didn't have my clothes a few days and I took the zero and sat out but one day when we were frozen into the gym which we shared with a girl's gym class another boy didn't take my conservative route and opted for the shorts. He was an awkward dude who was so far from cool that he might have aspired to being a pariah if he knew what that meant. He was not going to get a bad grade so he opted for the tiny shorts and joined the rest of the class jogging around the gym. It was not instantly, but close to it, when one observant youth noticed that this poor dude had coupled the school's micro-shorts with a generous manly endowment to the point of peeking out the bottom of the leg hole of the shorts. Unfortunately, for this boy he didn't notice and he ran around and around playing a little unintentional pudenda-peek-a-boo. Those who noticed told others until most of the boys and girls we watching him run around until the teacher finally noticed the wardrobe malfunction and stopped the boy and got him to straighten out the problem. It became a pretty funny joke to put some sort of pseudo penis out the bottom of your shorts and run around in feigned obliviousness. It went on for a couple of weeks and then because the boy who originated the fad was so unresponsive to teasing that it just fizzled out except for when you did some remember-that-timing with friends who had been there on that fateful day.    

Kid Tries Corporal Punishment and Loses

Not as fun as it looks. I can tell that by looking at it because I am not an idiot.

My crazy history teacher was from the old school. That oldest of schools - the deep south. He had relics from his less civilized past and one of his prized possessions was a punishment paddle, complete with nickname and speed holes. He would regale us with tales of laying the wood to some southern trouble maker kid and we would absorb the majesty of it with awe. Most of us would. There was one kid in our class who was a little on the tougher  side of tough guy. He was unimpressed by the paddle, its nickname and its speed holes. The teacher was, in turn, unimpressed with the bravado of a kid who had no idea what he was talking about.  The boy claimed he could take a whack or two from the dread paddle, no problem. The rest of the class got really quite as the teacher and this student escalated the war of words. Then the teacher offered to let the kid try his hand, rather bottom, at corporal punishment. The kid strutted up with a confidence further illustrating his lack of experience with paddling.  The wager was set that if he could voluntarily take three whacks he would get and 'A' for the midterm test. 'The Position' was explained and demonstrated and the cocksure youngster took a nonchalant legs spread, bent at waist, hands on table stance. He smirked and joked as the lunatic teacher took a few practice whacks at the air, warming up the speed holes and his wrist. The teacher told us all to count out the smacks and to judge if Monsieur Badass won or lost his wager. With everything ready and in place he stood one good step away from the naive boy and stepped into a massive swing that hit with so much force that it lifted the previously smug teenager off his feet just a little. The sound was awesome and terrible. The class didn't know weather to cringe, or laugh or what while the boy hopped around rubbing the sting out of his bottom while the teacher stood calmly considering the paddle he was spinning in his hand while he waited for the kid to calm down. 

When the boy had stopped jumping and rubbing the teacher just said, "Two more, are you ready?" 

The boy lined up for the encore and as he put his hands down on the table, reconsidered and called off the demonstration.

“Just one, tough guy?”, The maniac teacher asked.

The boy didn't answer he just walked back to his desk a little more experienced and a little more respectful of the power of a paddle with speed holes in the hands of a professional. As were we all. . .as were we all. The most amazing thing about this to me in retrospect was not that this happened or that the gun shooting incident happened but that this teacher was not fired for several years.  

Gun Blasts in Class

I had a lunatic Civil War buff history teacher who was maybe on the downward slope of sanity when he was teaching us. He was able to cover pre-Civil War US history in about two weeks and then jumped into the causes battles and implications of the Civil War for the rest of the semester forgetting to leave time for anything in the twentieth century. I didn't really care what he taught about he was funny and had mostly interesting anecdotes and stories and was real light on the dates and facts part of history. He told us one time about going to a Civil War symposium in Georgia and registering as Mr. Sherman (after the famous scorched-earth northern general William Tecumseh Sherman) so that he could make jokes all weekend about Sherman's march and Sherman's neckties. Esoteric Civil War humor that was lost on the hotel staff but tickled this teacher to no end. In his civil war memorabilia he had a replica Civil War rifle that he kept in his office with gun powder and balls and everything it needed to be shot. Seems reasonable to have on hand just in case you needed it. One time when he had set us to our quite work, which most of us where doing, but there were two girls in the back chatting away disrupting the mood. The teacher snuck back to his office loaded the gun with everything but the ball, affixed the cap and came out and without warning, shot the gun off into the mostly silent room right behind the chatty young ladies. I was most of the room away and it was deafening so I cannot imagine what kind of ear ringing must have been going on there in the back. The smoke filled the whole room and most people were in shock holding there ears and ducking close to their desks because they were not sure what had happened and if it might happen again. The teacher opened the door to let out the smoke and told every one not to talk during quite work time and went to put his rifle away. When he was back in his office people started looking around to see what everyone else was thinking but we kept the talking for later because we were not sure if his instability would include a projectile in the next shot. I was thinking just now how bizarre it was that there was a time when a teacher could shoot off a rifle in class without warning. It would be cable news staple for two weeks nowadays and there would be legal action from half the students. The lesson worked though and the class quite time was quiet, quiet and watchful after that.

My Mom Makes Me Miss a Makeout Party

When I had gotten over the initial revulsion of kissing I started looking for ways to try my hand at a little more. By hand I mean lips, I had, of course, simulated lips with my hand to kiss, you know? For research. One weekend night I was at home with my family and the girl I wanted more then anything in all the world called. Whoa. Awesome. She small talked me for a bit and then dropped the bomb on me, did i want to come over and watch some movies? I poop dang did. I was assuming that this girl was expressing interest in some alone, possibly kissy, time with me. It was actually not the case, she was inviting me for a shy friend who had a crush on me. This was not the last time this girl asked me out for someone else but that is a story for another day. I, thinking I was signing up for a little kissy face with the girl I was delusionally in love with, I started formulating a story to tell my mom that would get me permission and a ride to the girl's house. I told my mom that my friend, I left it gender neutral for the time being not seeing the benefit of clouding the issue, was having a family birthday party and I was invited. Nothing could be more innocent in the world it was the perfect cover I thought. Too innocent for me to be begging on a Friday night. Also the time frame for rides was a little off for a family party. My mom's suspicion was aroused and I was in too deep to change tack now so I decided to modify the story and make her concerns evaporate. It was going badly though and my mom had scented the business and my nightmare was closing in on me, she had put her foot down. I panicked into making a tactical error of expressing my deep desire to go. Parents know nothing innocent is passionately sought after and the game was up the 'no' went from firm to final. In my misinformed mind I missed out on some sweat making out with the girl of my dreams. I was enraged and consumed with anger in the way teenagers are prone to be. I was only slight less sad when I learned later that I would not have made out with the girl I hoped if i had gone but out was still missed some kissing and at fourteen a kiss, is a kiss, is a kiss.

Asleep in Class - No Warning

 I like Geography it was Geography class that bored me to sleep. It was right after lunch and The teacher had such a pleasant monotone voice that he would lull me to sleep with nap-time stories about Glasnost and whatnot. Every day for weeks even as we plunged over the precipice of history with the end of the Cold War, the dissolution of the USSR, and the destruction of the Berlin wall I slept soundly in post lunch stupor. I had set a foolproof plan in motion that had me in a secluded corner by the quiet kids where I could put my head down and rest and I had made an agreement with the girl who sat in front of me to rouse me 5 minutes before the end of class. I was ready to wake-up and roll out, raring to disrupt the next class fully refilled with the chemicals that make me want attention and disregard consequences. This plan was clicking away beautifully but then I was found out and embarrassed. The teacher had finally noticed that I was exceptionally quite and still for a junior high student and one of my sleeping days he pointed out to the rest of the class that I was asleep which they all thought was funny because I was snoring softly. Ha ha, the sleep deprived kid is sleeping, ha ha. He told my waker-upper to shirk her duties and to let me sleep on into the next class which was he prep period. I slept on through the bell and the exodus of dismissal, right on through to the middle of the next class when I woke up tip to top all of a spasm. I was disoriented, panicked and not a little confused. My teacher, the jerk, caller-outer of class sleepers said a little sassy, 'Well, good morning Mr. Gause, did you have sweet dreams?' No, I did not, as a matter of none-of-your-business. I was not sure what to say as this was one of those circumstance where excuses or rationalizing just insults both parties. I just told him sorry for sleeping in his class and he told me that he thought it was disrespectful to the time and effort he put into the lesson for me to pass the time in Nod and not the Balkans. I agreed and gathered my stuff and headed out to my next class which I was more then half late to so I decided just to wait and miss it all. When the bell rang I found my deserter and chastised her for the dereliction of duty and relived her of further waking responsibilities while informing her of my deep displeasure with being hung out to dry sleep wise. She said she was sorry and plead for forgiveness and because she was cute and really flirty I forgave. I didn't sleep in that class ever again and didn't fall asleep in a class again until astronomy which has reclining chairs in the pitch black.  

You Call My Girlfr'en Whore?

As I write about the third fight I got in in junior high I am realizing that all three of my fights had been with Hispanic kids. I don't believe this is because I was racist. This is going to sound like cliché special pleading but my best friend was Mexican. Admittedly he was a little on the white side culturally but he was indeed brown and from Mexico. He had been adopted at a very young age by a white family and didn't even know how to speak Spanish but was for all technical purposes a Hispanic and thereby proves that even though I got in three fights in Junior High all with Hispanics I was not racist per se. Q.E.D. I called lots of people lots of things so it was never surprising to hear that I had called someone something and that they were mad. It was usually true and I would just avoid the person or try and soften them up and apologize so when I was falsely accused I was indeed shocked. I was in the lunchroom eating and joking with some friends when I was quite rudely folded down into my food quite rudely by what felt like a strong and firm gripping hand on the back of my neck. I was not currently fearing for my life for any known acts of smartassery so I was genuinely surprised to be attacked all unawares. While I was being pinned quite roughly into a pile of shoestring fries and trying to roll my head to see my attacker a deeper then average and accented voice asked me, 'You call my girlfr'en whore?'

Still trying to salvage some dignity I answered that I called many girls whores but I was not sure whom his girlfriend was so I couldn't say for sure. He pushed my head down harder and told me his girlfriend's name. She was actually a really nice girl that I thought was pretty cute and I wouldn't mind getting to know better but definitely not a girl that I would have called a whore. I told him that she and I were actually on good terms and I had never said anything like that. She I realized was there with him and telling him to stop and that I wouldn't have said something like that. He pushed my head down one more time and said I was lying and that he was going to kick my ass. He suggested we reconvene out on the back of the school so he could make good on his offer, an idea I was not very enthusiastic about, honestly. About this time my Much bigger and stronger than me Hispanic friend who actually had a crush on my assailants girlfriend offered to champion my cause himself. The attacker more had his heart set on beating up the frail looking 80 pounder and made clear that he had no beef with my bigger and presumably more pain inflicting friend. It was too late and my friend went out and didn't fight for me because they just got into a shoving and yelling match until it was broken up. My friend benefited because his crush was disgusted by her boyfriend's behavior and she actually dated my friend for a bit. I benefited by not getting beat. The jerk boyfriend benefited by being rid of that whore (his word this time after she broke up with him and he was apologizing for accosting me) girlfriend. Win-win-win is what they call that in the business. 

Bluffing Works by Accident

 I was always on the edge of getting a beating by reason of my smart mouth, I was constantly pushing the buttons of whomever I was around but more especially I loved going after athletes and bullies, which more often than not were the same kids. I was a couple of weeks into ninth grade when I was in gym class and I offended what was probably the toughest kid in the class, maybe the grade, by implying he may be less then manly in his tastes. I thought it had been some good-natured ribbing and as far as I knew was water under the bridge. I found out later that after I left the locker room this kid had started saying that he was going to kill me and murder me and other mean things of meanness. I was waiting out in the gym for the bell to ring to send us to other classes when he came boiling out of the locker room doors looking for to do me some physical discomfort. I, still thinking we were basically buddies if not friends misread the situation to a terrible degree and thought he was just having a fun little threatening joke with me. I decided to play along with his little joke when he said he was going to beat my bottom. I stood up and closed the distance so we were nearly chest to chest and looked him right in the eye and said something I think I may have heard in a movie, or at least the gist was the same as what I had seen in a movie once. I told him that if he felt like he was man enough then he should swing and see what happened. I think his plan had been to humiliate me into grovelling and begging for my life which I normally would have done but somehow I missed all the signs and was only being a tough guy by accident. His demeanor changed and he looked like he was having second thoughts, the bell rang and we walked away staring each other down. One of my friends from the class caught me up in the hall in awe of my bravado. I told him the tough guy was just joking around and that it was no big deal. He told me that it had not been a joke and that in the locker room he had sworn out oaths of maiming and was planning on a fight. For some reason when I heard it had been a earnest confrontation and even though I was no longer in immediate danger I was terrified. That kid was sixty pound or more heavier then me a foot taller and made of only muscle and hate. He would kill me. I spent the rest of the day laying low and ran around the outside of the building to the buss to avoid a possible rematch. Now that I didn't have the convenience of ignorance, who knew how it would go? I did I would be beat, probably start crying and most likely not maintain my glorious reputation for bravery in the face of insurmountable odds. I skipped the next gym class with that kid and avaoided halls I knew he would be in for a week just to let him cool down and hopefully allow his primitive brain to loose the impulse for rage when he was confronted with my image. It worked, we never fought and were actually okay all the way until graduation.  

Sex-Ed Misunderstanding

 There was a class about life, drugs and sex as a teenager called Teen Living which was fun because we were already talking about naughty stuff so it wasn't as hard to work in ribald jokes. I would always pretend that I was not quite sure what the teacher meant and then ask follow ups that would be phrased in such a way as to have the appearance of honest inquiry but just be funny. She was ot overly happy about it but was not really that bad at handling my sas. One time however when she had been talking about pregnancy for a bit she mentioned that after nine months that it felt like you couldn't keep you legs together. The pitch was so slow and right over the comedic plate that I had to try to knock it out of the classroom.

“Not being able to keep your legs together is why you are in this mess in the first place.” Bu-dumb-chaa. Low hanging fruit? More like low hanging fruitlessly – no one laughed and as I had said it when the teacher was behind me I didn't notice that she had closed in behind me and was whacking me in the back of the head with the spine of the book she was holding. It really hurt. What I didn't know was that our sex-ed teacher was a director at the school for pregnant girls and she was not really excited about jokes that blamed the girls for getting pregnant. She was under the impression that the naughty boys were the problem and I was one of those dirty vermin myself. For the rest of class we got to hear about how men ruin everything and they trick and manipulate women. I was sorry I had ever made a lame joke both for the physical abuse and for the rant it triggered. When I suggested that she just had a negative view of men she denied it by saying she had sons and a husband that she loved. To me that sounded like she didn't actually say she didn't but I could see this was her do-not-go area and stayed quite.  

Science Teacher Who is Stupid

 I have mentioned that I really liked science and I did a lot of science reading on my own I didn't read the Scientific American but I did give it a real thorough perusal and picture look every month when my uncle sent it to me. I had that great seventh grade science teacher and I had also read several science books and a whole set of World Book Encyclopedias so I always wanted science to be my favorite class and it never was. My teachers were either incompetent, unstable or both and I don't think anything I hadn't already learned on my own was covered in a science class until I was in college. In 9^th grade they had a three hour science class which was the holy grail of science nerd ambition but unfortunately the teacher was a moron and I had called him on it too many times. He would say something in an authoritative voice and the other kids would write it down or otherwise validate his authority and I would raise my hand to clarify the position. I would whip out the nerd's sharpest blade, the 'actually'. At the first of the year he would call on me pretty regularly and I would start in, 'Actually, Devils tower is a volcanic formation not an erosive one like plateaus in Southern Utah.' I knew this because it said it in the book that we were supposed to read for the class. In fact it was in the caption of the picture we were looking at on the page he told us to turn to. Even though I pointed out my source and read it after he argued with me he wouldn't admit he was wrong and claimed the book was mistaken. I offered, in a sassy tone, to correct the book for him. He told me we were moving on and that was that. I jumped in several more times in the first couple of weeks in class and he started just telling me he was not interested in my opinion. It was not my opinion it was my well documented fact that I wanted to 'actually' into the discussion. The final straw was when I brought in a box of fossils that my family had found scuba diving and I was showing a knee cap from a mammoth which I described as a patella. My teacher jumped in to add some information and called the bone a PUTT-UH-LA. I had to call him on that so I asked him what he had called it, he repeated and I gave a smart-ass correction and I was invited to take my presentation and leave the class room. I didn't talk to much in class after that but I also didn't bother signing up for three hour science because I figured there was little chance he would select me and be 'actually'd' for three hours a day.     

My First Kiss. Disgusting.

 I did a lot of talking to girls, and chatting to girls, and flirting with girls, heck's sake - I even had a girlfriend and I had never kissed a girl. Well, I did have that one time I kissed those two girls on the cheek but that is not the kiss of the counting type. Then a girl who used to live by me in Santaquin and was still a friend of a friend invited me to her house for a party I was thinking that sounded okay but I suspected nothing. My mom agreed, after I promised it was a legit chaperoned party (which it was not), to drive me over with my Payson friend to Springville a town a couple of clicks down the road but not to far. When we rolled up the house was all but dark and not looking too party-ish. My mom was skeptical, as she should have been, but I assured her that we must just be early and everyone else would be coming soon. We walked up to the door and the girl and her friend were actually the only party there was. That, I knew, meant kissing party and I started to get really nervous. I waved to my mom and sent her on her way and she would be back at midnight. We went in and started a little small talk and then the girl invited us back into room. Uh oh, uh oh. We all four went in and looked through her stuff and at her posters and when I sat down on her bed she sat on my lap which I tried to be cool about but I knew I was in too deep. My friend and her friend were talking and her friend asked my friend to go out to the living room to watch a movie. Uh no. My mouth had dried all the way up and I guess all of the moisture was now in my hands and armpits which were sweating so hard they were not moist but wet enough to drip. Oh man. I was looking for a graceful exit but it appeared that my first kiss was about to happen one way or another because this girl was shepherding the other couple out the door and at the same time blocking my escape. When she turned around she turned off the light and closed the door. Oh no. I sat on a chair by her bed and she came and sat on the edge of the bed and I knew I was supposed to make a move but my idea of a move and hers were in different leagues. I decided on the subtle footsie/hand hold and she was ready for the full make out. As I tried to reach over and hold her hand she pulled me onto the bed and mostly on top of her. Oh no, oh no, oh no. oh no, oh no. She told me she had wanted to do this for a long time and she pulled my head down and raised her head up and went right to work on the kissing. It was not a cute soft work-me-into-it kind of deal she was going strait squid attack on my mouth. It felt like something out of a Manga with her tentacle of saliva and flesh raping my mouth. In all honesty my fear switch from not knowing how to kiss to being afraid I might puke. It was the most horrible sensation I had ever felt in my life and in that moment of trying to restrain my gag reflex I thought, 'this is never going to catch on.' She was not letting up and my face was getting covered in slobber and my tongue and lips were getting sore and there was nothing I was enjoying. Luckily, my friend feeling like I might be having some fun that he was not came into the room and turned on the light. I feigned outrage but was more relived then I could say. He said that he was bored and that he and the other girl were going for a walk and they wanted to know if we wanted to go. Yes, yes, yes. My molester declined however and I was honor bound to stay and play. Oh man. I at least got out to the living room but we were still alone and I was trying to avoid wading back into the saliva river but I had run out of excuses and we were back at it. She started moving my hands towards her breasts and that is when I pulled the plug. I pretended to be really interested in finding out where my friend and his date had got to. We wandered outside her on my arm and still trying to cuddle and kiss and I was giving my best oh man where is my friend look up and down the street. They came back and we stayed on the porch talking because that meant no more kissing until my mom came and rescued me. I was glad to have gotten the kissing ice broken but I was not sure if I ever wanted to do that again. Ever.       

Skipping School to Make Caramel

 When I was in eighth grade I had a pretty nondescript English class. It was not too fun or boring and the teacher was okay but not great and there I was passing time when I got sat next to the most perfect woman I had ever met. She was cute, and sassy, and funny and I was instantly and deeply in love. The only real problem was that she was co cute and cool that I was not the only one who was in love so I had lots of competition. Well, competition may be a strong word to use here because I, in retrospect, had no chance. I would try and make sure we worked on projects together and that we were conveniently at the same places and she was great always really nice and fun but always just about shop-girl friendly and no more. I called her to talk a couple of times over the summer and she was always willing to have a chat and she would laugh at all the right spots but then she would say something horrible like, 'I have to go and get ready, my boyfriend is coming over soon.'

'Damn your boyfriend, damn him to hell, you know you love me and not him.' I would say in a defiant manly voice in my head after she hung up the phone and I was going to be all alone and she was going to be with her much cooler, older and better looking boyfriend.

When we went back to ninth grade she was in two of my classes and came and sat by me on purpose and was always really nice which made it even worse. One day she came up to me in the hall before class and asked if I wanted to sluff (Payson slang for skipping school that is not in wide usage elsewhere) class and go to her house to hang out. I tried to play it cool but accepting an invitation to what very well be my chance to make out with the girl of my dreams I may have been over eager and it made her giggle a little and she said 'okay then' in a take-it-easy-buddy kind of tone. I was expecting to just leave with her and walk the mile or so to her house but then something catastrophic happened, other people were coming. Rule number 1 of making out is: no other people. What is worse is one of those other people, a sweet girl but not my type, was into me and was maybe thinking that she and I were going to get together. My euphoria melted into a thick surely glob in my stomach and I was considerably less cheerful. After we left the school and started goofing off and walking I was cheerful again and ready to have fun when we got to my friends house no one knew what to do to pass the time so I offered to cook up a batch of my homemade caramel that I could make from scratch. A trick my brother and I had perfected by necessity because we often lacked the funds for huge gobs of commercially produced fat and sugar. I boiled up the caramel while everyone talked around the kitchen bar and we all joked and had lots of fun. I poured out the sugar goop onto a cookie sheet and everyone got spoonfuls and ate it still warm. There have been many good days in my life but there are many many worse then skipping school to eat caramel with my crush and our friends when we should have been learning about U.S. History. We goofed off too long and I had to run as fast as I could back to the school to make it to the bus home in time and I just made it.  

Too Much Dignity For a Nickname

The other thing a summer of latch-key MTV scholarship taught my friend was that every cool group of friends went by nicknames. This would help to reinforce the idea of insiders and outsiders and show a deep level of shared experience. There were only the two of us that usually hung out and we had not really generate the desire in others to penetrate our inner circle so using nicknames to exclude them made no sense. We also had very little shared experience which would have lead organically to a descriptive and evocative nickname. He had already chosen the names we were going to have without my input, he was going to be 'Styles' and I was going to be 'Roach'. I think it is pretty easy to tell from these names who was supposed to be the cool one and who was the wacky/dirty one. He told me we would be calling me 'Roach' because I was crazy. What neither of us knew was that 'Roach' was marijuana slang, I just knew it was a dirty bug. I was immediately uncomfortable with my bestowed nickname and its implication. My friend started telling people around us in the hall that we were going by nicknames now and I almost immediately denying that. I generally sold out my dignity quite freely but this was different because it was not to make people laugh or to talk to girls this was just stupid and it made me nervous at a fundamental level. I stopped him and made sure I made eye contact and told him in no uncertain terms that I would not be going by any nick name and I would not call him by one. I must have had that end-of-story look because he just said 'okay' in a sheepish way. He never mentioned a nickname again and I never really got one except for the 'PumpkinHead' one, and being called 'Professor' as an insult. 

First Day of Kris Kross Dressing

When I went back to school for the ninth-grade the first day in school had me at odds with my cool Payson friend. He was a cool kid who knew about cool stuff but I was not really buying what Ihe was selling in this situation. I had only played with him a couple of times over the summer and he had not seemed so drastically different but that was because I didn't know about a hot new influence in fashion and culture. That summer a young, very young, rap duo by the name of Kriss Kross shook up the hip-hop scene with edgy streetwise rap about missing the bus and jumping. The way they were influencing fashion was that they were wearing their expensive clothes three sizes too big, backwards, and with the tags still on. Seriously. Wearing your clothes backwards was not cool even if you had very expensive and cool clothes you just looked like you were not quite sure how the clothes you bought were supposed to go. My friend had a two fold plan to blow everyone’s fashion mind on the first day of school we would wear our clothes backwards and we would wear these peace sign necklaces he had made for both of us. I don't know why he wanted to dress like we were in a boy band, or going to Sadie Hawkins together, but he was fixated on it and insisted when I got to school that I should go to the bathroom and change all of my clothes front to back. To my everlasting shame I did but quickly found the problems with his plan. First, we looked like idiots. Second, my clothes were the size that I needed them to be to wear them front-wise and they did not have the room for a reversal which caused them to pinch and bind at all of the joints. Third the necklace that he had constructed for me was way too big. The necklace was made out of really heavy chain and was about four feet in diameter so it weighed about ten pounds. The part he was most proud of though was a peace sign that he had made from an old coat hangers and it was about the size of a dinner plate. On my small neck and body I looked more like the ghost of a skinny white wannabe hip-hop Jocob Marley come back from the dead to warn kids to not give into peer pressure. The peace sign landed about mid thigh against my backwards pants and I looked in the mirror and realized I looked like I had brain damage and turned all of my clothes back to the front and took off my comically huge neck-a-chain and went out to face my friend's disappointment. He told me to go back and get changed around because class was about to start I told him that I would not be wearing my clothes in a front to back manner on this day or any and he told me, “fine be a fag, I don't care.' He asked for his neck-a-chain back as he intended to give it to a friend who would appreciate it. I don't know if he was cursed with dramatically unappreciative friends or what but I never saw it worn in school or out of school ever again. After the first day of having his Kriss-Kross dressing fantasy dashed he forgave me and we were friends again and that fad, which never really started died with a whimper.

Matt and I Fight to the Burger

My brother Matt and I engaged in glorious combat all the time growing up. Sometimes it was because we antagonized each other, sometimes for fun, sometimes we were just bored. I think it was so we got in less trouble that punches to the face were generally considered taboo but we did a lot of body punching, choking, wrestling and kicking. Somewhere between eighth and ninth grade we started in with just a regular fight, about what I cannot remember, and it quickly spun out of control into a full-blown fight. I know I had tried choking him into unconsciousness at some point and that Matt punched me in the face and then we were into the no man's land of the punishment heavy no-holds-barred fighting. We were both pretty roughed up and bleeding when my mom got upset at the level of violence she was seeing and she tried to break us up. She had just been yelling and then tried to get in between us the whole time calling us savages and barbarians. She got us separated in the hallway of our mobile home and was telling us both to knock it off while holing us at arms length. I said something about Matt and he reached around my mom and punched me square in the nose and bloodies it and made my eyes water and we were back in the thick of it as we pushed my mom out of the way. Matt was bleeding from his face holes quite a bit and at one point he gathered a mouthful of blood and saliva and spit right in my face while I was trying to hold him down. I don't exactly remember why or how we stopped but we were both pretty battered and my mom was furious at us and wanted my dad to lower the boom on us. The boom was surely lowered but I don't remember exactly it landed on but I am sure it was unpleasant. The real fallout of our first really real fight was that we both lost the taste for it and since then I don't think we have fought either physically or even yelling one more time. I think by the time we were both big and strong enough to cause some real damage and pain we didn't need anymore of that and we hung up the gloves, or I guess the bare knuckles in this case, for good.