Me & Steve, in 4th grade, waiting for the school bus at the bus stop.
Steve: Are you wearing an undershirt?
Me: Yeah.
Steve: You'll outgrow that.
What the hell?
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27 comments:
The scars of the school bus stop never seem to heal, do they?
Yeah, I noticed a certain aversion to undershirts as well. It wasn't "cool". Well if having a protective underlayer to absorb sweat isn't "cool" well, heh, I guess I'm just not cool then. But really, I am. I swear. Let's not forget Fonzie wore one. Don't forget that, Okay?
another one from highschool.
me, 9th grade, getting changed in the locker room after gym, pulling my tube socks way up...
kid: Yo Holmes. You're gonna push those socks down, right? Right?
me: Uh... yeah...
(pushes socks down)
Wow, Dave, we shared the same torture. I, too, know the pain of pulled up tube socks. Actually, I still on occasion have this problem while everyone else laughs at me with their fancy ankle socks.
Me, 3rd Grade, not getting the memo that lunchboxes were "out"--
Kid: "that's a nice lunch box ya got there. What's that Star Wars ?" (laughs and nudges other kid who also laughs)
Me (smiles and then stare down and my desk sadly)
Little did they know that in just 20 years that lunchbox would be considered ironically cool. You should track those bastards down and make them eat their words.
Exactly! Eat the words I carry in that very same lunchbox!...... Thank you, goodnight!
Lunch box? Tube socks? Didn't you guys have formation drills that taught what was and wasn't cool?
Push those tube socks way down low
Give that lunch box to little bro
Sound off! One, two
Sound off! Three, four
Ain't gonna cover up these here shins
Gonna brown bag lunch, it's better than tin
Sound off! One, two
Sound off! Three, four
Sound off! One, two, three, four, one two.....three, four!
Guess it paid to go to military school...
It was pretty complicated.
Now that we've opened the floodgates, here's a great moment from my musical past:
Sister Miriam Grace, head of the music department, calls me over to offer me a slot in the Parish recital. She asks me to play something. I had not been practicing the ridiculous songs my guitar teacher had been wanting me to play (Jingle Bells, When The Saints Come Marching In...) so I just sit and stare at the music sheets hoping for some horrible event to happen that makes us evacuate the building, getting me out of that situation. But alas, I sat there for what felt like 4 hours but was actually 5 minutes. She eventually says "YOU CAN'T PLAY ANYTHING!". Then asks me to leave.
Pat: You see, Sister Miriam, I have to study the written music, absorb, if you will, the emotional intention of the composer, before I will even attempt to think about playing a piece.
here's another one:
Must've been 2nd grade. School. Christmas polyanna. I bought this girl Jessica a barbie doll and wrapped it up. My mom mislabelled the to/from label. So the teacher is distributing the gifts and is holding what I know to be a Barbie doll that I bought for Jessica but she's reading "From Jessica, to David."
So I say, "No, it's from me to Jessica."
She looks at the label and says "From Jessica To David".
I say, "No, it's from me to Jessica."
She looks at the label and says "From Jessica To David".
I'm starting to sweat, thinking about the fact that I'll be forced to open a Barbie doll in front of all of my friends.
So again I speak up. By now everyone is quiet and looking at me wondering what all the fuss is about because I'm feeling pretty damned frantic and it probably shows. I explain to my teacher that that present she is holding is very definitely from ME to JESSICA.
SHE LOOKS AT THE FRIGGIN LABEL AGAIN! But then hands it over to Jessica who is very pleased with her doll. Disaster averted.
I can't even remember what the hell I got that day.
Still, that wasn't nearly as bad a parish recital as Lance Parrish's recital of the two miserable years he spent here as a Phillie.
Signed with the Phils for a million bucks
Took 'em from 2nd to 5th 'cause I really sucked
Hit .245 and then .215
Worst damn free agent Philly's ever seen
A boil on those team, I'm known as Lance
It didn't pay to pay me a cash advance
Then Sister Mary Catherine yelled, "YOU CAN'T PLAY ANYTHING! and asked Lee Thomas to trade him.
And now every time you hear the Allman Brothers' "Jessica," you grow wistful and miss those days of feeling sweaty and frantic in class, don't you, Dave?
This one I like to call "Night of 1,000 Faintings".
So we're rehearsing hymns for some godawful pageant. The day before we were punished for not singing, so we had to memorize the whole song that night. The next day we are in a sweaty Parish Hall with no air conditioning. It must be over 100 degrees in there, early June. Midway through the second song, someone faints and falls off the stage. We all scatter. Another kid faints and falls right on his face. Blood is everywhere. A kid right next to me faints, falling back into a teachers arms. I think by this point kids are running out of the building. It was like the beginning of Stephen King's The Stand miniseries where the virus takes everyone down. Good times.
Okay, as long as we're trading war stories:
All of the 3rd-grade classes are putting on plays for the upcoming Bicentennial. In mine, I'm General Washington, come to Betsy Ross's house to receive the first American flag. Allison B. played Betsy Ross. (All the boys called her "Allison Big Nose"...mainly because it vaguely rhymed with her last name -- she actually didn't have a big nose and was, in fact, one of the prettiest girls in class.) Anyway, we're on stage, me in my tricorn hat and colonial outfit, Allison sitting in a chair, wearing the clothing of an 18th-century woman. The parents of all the 3rd-graders are the audience.
At the climax of our play, I boldly request of Betsy, "May I see it?!"
Nothing happens.
Allison starts muttering, "Where's the flag?!"
We're frantically whispering to each other, "Where is it?" "I don't know where it is!"
The curtain comes down...neither General Washington nor the audience having seen the newly sewn emblem of our fledgling nation.
Sparse applause.
Turns out Allison left the flag in her desk while getting into costume.
She ruined my acting career before I reached 9.
If she was a true actress she would have improvised and said "The flag is a part of all of us" or some sentimental crap like that. Shame on you, Allison.
She moved away after 4th grade. I was left to pick up the pieces.
Every Flag Day since, I go down to the Betsy Ross House in a tricorn hat, repeat that gut-wrenching line, "Well Betsy, may I see it?" and then go get drunk.
You should've pointed at her and started yelling "TRAITOR! VILE TRAITOR!!"
In 1st grade I was picked to play Saint Joseph in the School Christmas Pageant. This was during a regular Mass that the entire school and Parish was attending. I almost lost control of my bodily functions. So at one point I am forced to "hug" Mary. This was the breaking point for me. Hugging a girl at age 5 when it was common knowledge they had cooties, was not going to happen. But the evil Nuns coerced, and I relented.
Yeah, maybe Allison was a tory. She always seemed to have conservative leanings. Belonged to the Council of Conservative Third Graders.
Wasn't St. Joseph the guy who went around curing people of headache? Sure, it's not as dramatic as restoring sight to the blind or healing the lame, but a headache can really put a crimp in your day.
He did good work.
Actually, now that I think about it, the Allison B. fiasco wasn't 3rd grade -- it was 2nd grade.
See? I can never tell a lie.
I HAD GEORGE WASHINGTON DOWN PAT!
Saint Joseph was the guy whose wife said she never slept with anyone yet she was pregnant and he asked no questions. Now THAT is a Saint. And it paid off because his son was not only a kickass carpenter, but a famous magician! David Copperfield can make The Statue of Liberty disappear, but can he build you a stool?
David Copperfield.
I hate that guy. I'll bet he never even read that book.
Or if he did, he probably speed-read just to get the gist of it.
"You're telling me, it's not about MAGIC?!" (slaps himself on forehead)
The Statue of Liberty is operated by the National Park Service, which is a bureau of the Department of the Interior, so you'd figure that making it disappear violates federal law.
But skimming through the regulations, I can't find anything that specifically prohibits using magic to make a national monument vanish.
The nearest the language comes is a clause stating that "No individual, through the use of sorcery, wizardry, or necromancy, shall cause a landmark, monument, other public structure protected under [the Act] to become half-price on its admission fee."
So I guess David Copperfield is in the clear.
The fainting episode from 7th grade, I remember well. During a similar rehearsal, in the same "Parish Hall," but in 4th grade, I fainted. I was wearing sweatpants and a t shirt (our gym uniform) under my school uniform with sweater. As we were practicing some stupid song I passed out from the heat. We had been standing up for so long, the heat was on, the stage was crowded, and the layers of clothing didn't help matters. When I woke up I thought I was dreaming. Our teacher, the meanest teacher I ever had, was hovering over me asking if I was ok. I yelled out "NO GET AWAY FROM ME!!!!" In my dream state I thought I had fallen on the steps of a SEPTA bus and my teacher was now trying to help me.
Fast forward to 6th grade. It was cool to wear your jacket while in church. During the First Friday mass I was in full uniform with sweater, AND wearing a warm winter jacket. Once again we were packed like sardines in the church. I passed out sometime during communion and I believe Pat said "Get up you're going to get in trouble!!" because he thought I was goofing off. There was another kid there, Jimmy, who was asking if I was ok. My eventual 8th grade teacher rushed over and helped me out of the church. For alsmost the remainder of that school year I would leave mass or rehearsal early for fear of fainting. In retrospect I was a total pussy but oh well.
The following year the fainting episode occured which Pat has written about here. At one point I asked one of my classmates if he was ok, and in response to my Christian compassion which we were supposedly taught, my teacher proceeded to scream at me for showing concern. That day, many people wondered why I didn't pass out as well. I said "that was so 6th grade, I've moved on to huffing."
They did some interesting things to us kids....one time at another one of these rehearsals the heat/incense caused one student to go into convulsions which sounded much like a barking dog had entered the church. Catholicism: No pain, No gain.
This emphasizes the beauty of Unitarian Universalism. They worship only when the temperature is 60 to 65 degrees so that there's little chance of sweating.
Personal dryness is crucial to religion.
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