The Man Teacher

 I entered fourth grade in 1954 in The Wantagh Elementary School in Wantagh, Long Island. Along with twenty-nine other children, suitably dressed in their “first day of school” clothes, notebooks and pencil boxes at hand, we awaited the first glimpse of our brand-spanking new teacher. Rumor on the playground was that it was a male teacher! Imagine, a fourth-grade MALE teacher!! At that time, unheard of!

I had no doubt that a male teacher would be far less concerned about the cleanliness of my nails or my proficiency at writing cursive letters. A man wouldn't bug you about such things. This was going to be my best year at school, bar none. Not that I didn't love Mrs. Lamb in Third Grade. Far from it, I had a bit of a crush on her, but I spent all too many late afternoons sitting in her classroom trying to master the art of making those curly Palmer letters while my left hand smudged each effort. My handwriting is still abysmal and I'm frankly happy about that.

So we intrepid fourth-graders sat patiently, daring not to make a fuss for fear we would somehow queer the deal and this guy would hear a hullabaloo coming from his new work station and decide to go home. And we waited. Fortunately, each classroom had direct access to bathrooms and a drinking fountain so we were able to quietly trot off to relieve ourselves after the few hours elapsed.

I was just about to doze off when the classroom door opened and a very large man with a deep-set scar running along his right cheek entered the classroom. My Father was 6' 3” and this man would have had him by at least an inch. He wore a crumpled brown suit and a ribbon fedora, which most men wore at that time. I looked around and realized that I was as scared as every other kid in that room. He walked to the board and wrote in large scrawling letters “Mr. Kelly”. Okay, that was vital information. In fact, anything written quickly on a blackboard was assumed vital and we all popped open our brand new notebooks, filled with at least one ream of paper with dividers at the ready, and copied his name down on the first page. Whew. Assignment one- done.

He took off the fedora and tossed it casually on his desk and stood to address us. A few young girls and Ralph, the boy designed to be beaten up by all bullies, started to rise as well. Mr. Kelly motioned them to sit back down and made the necessary introductions.

“My name is Michael Kelly, Sergeant, United States Army, honorably discharged 1946. I served in the Third Army and saw action at the Battle of Nancy. After fighting our way across the Moselle River we cleaned out the Kraut army and liberated that lovely little city.” It may not have been those exact words, but pretty darn close. It's the sort of rude shock to your system that a nine year old kid isn't likely to forget.

I looked around nervously and noticed that a number of students were now attempting to write down everything he was saying, word for word. Two girls were crying quietly and Ralph had thrown up. On his brand-spanking new notebook.

“Take that out of here and clean it up in the bathroom, son.” Ralph stood and carted his recently festooned notebook and pencil case off to the boys' lav.

“Now take out this book right here,” We lifted the lids of our desks and noticed that all the necessary books were packed away, more than likely by our predecessors. They had also left the aromas of past lunches entombed therein. Suddenly, a sickening melange of peanut butter and tuna fish filled the air.

Mr. Kelly was holding up the notoriously boring Elson-Gray Readers. Our fourth-grade reader was “Times and Places”. “I want you to read the first full story- 'Bunny Boy Learns a Lesson' and answer all of the questions at the end of the story in your notebooks.”

This was just too much for me. To have a giant with a scarred face standing in front of a classroom instructing us to read “Bunny Boy Learns a Lesson” was more than I could handle. I laughed. I didn't mean to. I sure as hell didn't want to. It just came out. This penchant I have for seeing humor in all the wrong places always had a powerful negative effect on my educational experiences. His massive jaw jutted forward. Twenty-eight anxious faces turned from Mr. Kelly to me. Ralph was still trying to remove vomit from his brand-spanking new notebook.

“Go to the back of the room and stand facing a corner. Try to learn some self-control.” I stood looking for some way to repair the gulf that suddenly divided this man with whom I would have to co-exist six hours a day for the next 180 days. He turned and walked back to his desk, pulling a copy of Newsday out of his coat pocket and proceeded to catch up on the latest news. All avenues of reconciliation closed, I trudged back to a corner and counted dimples in a cinder-block, freshly painted in institutional green.

As we would come to find out, Mr. Kelly was no more inspiring through mathematics, English, Social Studies or Science. He would read articles about the latest advancements in weapons technology or bring in a schematic of a new washing machine he'd recently purchased, explaining what each part did. He corrected our weekly theme assignments by scoring them with a single grade. No suggestions, no commendations. And the mess dragged on. Then, we received a graphic lesson about concentration camps.

It seems that Mr. Kelly was an active photographer during the war, or so he said. Our history lesson on that cold, clear day in late February concerned Mr. Kelly's experience in the liberation of Buchenwald Concentration Camp. It was quite the lecture and, unfortunately, the first time we'd seen Mr. Kelly excited about teaching us anything. He stood in front us and held up enlargements of one gory scene after the other, explaining what those “filthy Krauts” did to Jews, Gypsies and just about anyone else who didn't fit their idealized vision of humanity.

It became a fiasco. Children were crying, Ralph and more than a few others had lost their recently consumed lunches and all but a few reprobates in the crowd sat watching intently as one gut-wrenching scene after the other flashed before our eyes. I looked down. It was all I could think to do.

Salvation finally arrived as the dismissal bell finally rang and we all bolted out the door, actually beating Mr. Kelly to the punch this time. We ran past the Principal, oblivious to her demand to stop running, out the door and across the street to the playground. Sanctuary. We stood as a single unit talking what had just happened before heading home in various directions.

Dutifully, I stayed back, donned my white Safety Patrol strap, with its brightly polished badge glistening in the afternoon sun and assumed my post at the corner of Beech Street and Demott Avenue. As I waited for customers to cross, Mr. Kelly came along the poorly plowed road in his pre-war Chevy Special Deluxe. As he looked to move forward from the stop sign, our eyes locked. He reached up to his fedora and tugged lightly at it. I had no response. It was the last real interaction I ever had with the man, other than a directive to stand in a corner.

Amazingly, Mr. Kelly continued his career for a few more years. My Brother Tom told me that many veterans like Kelly used the G.I Bill as a means to get a college degree. Many saw the teaching field as an easy route to a job, albeit low paying. Thousands of men flooded the profession during those years, replacing many of the women who had received their two-year diplomas from “Normal Schools”. Many were probably as ill-suited for the job as Michael Kelly.

I had heard from a younger brother of a friend that Mr. Kelly had left teaching a few years after my awful experience with him. My Father arrived home one evening and called me over to speak to him. He folded his copy of Newsday back and pointed to an article. It was a brief byline noting that one Frank Kelly was found dead in his apartment in Massapequa, the next town over from us. Cause of death- self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was thirty-one.

I felt so sorry for Michael Kelly (that's not his real name). He was just a child who went war, came home, snatched up a college education and went off to a job for which he was ill-prepared and obviously ill-suited. He shared one of his greatest, most intimate and painful experiences with an audience of little children. Why? Perhaps because we were there. Perhaps because no one else wanted to listen.

On Buying a House in Which to Place Children.


I was cleaning our humble little ranch this morning and thought back to the days long past when we were raising two children, dogs, cats etc. in this house, and it occurred to me that had anyone prepared us for what we encountered in a realistic fashion, it would really have been appreciated. So, if you are a young couple about to embark on life's journey together and are planning to buy a house in which you will be raising a family, I have some advice for you. My wife and I didn't encounter all of these issues, but they seem like common sense to me anyway.

1. Do not buy a new house. You have to realize that in the years to come, looking back at those pristine rooms you peeked into, that things haven't turned out so well. Make sure the house you buy has recently had children living in it. Lots of children.

2. Bring a block of Play-dough, a small stuffed animal and a baseball and try flushing each down all of the toilets, simultaneously if you want a really good field test. You want strong flushes. Also, look for standard toilets and not the "comfort height" taller style. You're young. Your knees can handle a little stress. They're little- it's a bad match. Consider a five-year old boy who wants to pee just like Daddy does. You want him peeing upwards?

3. Look for a house decorated in Autumnal colors, especially carpeting. These are colors that allow for stains created by spilled oatmeal, leaky diapers, dog poop, squashed frogs and vomit to sort of blend in naturally. The carpeting should also have a bit of a splotchy pattern to it for obvious reasons. And if you think you're going to get those stains off with carpet cleaner, oh you silly thing you! In fact, if you are not clinically depressed, repaint the walls in dark browns and black. Children find it hard not to walk through a room without sliding their hands along a wall. It's probably vertigo.

4. In a word, buy a ranch. Nothing sends a shiver down your spine and your medical bills soaring more than the terrifying sound of young tumbling body which had sought to walk down a flight of stairs balancing a book on her head just like a Princess could do. Sledding on stairs is also a distinct possibility.

5. Avoid ceramic tile. It shatters. End of discussion.

After purchasing your house, put child locks on everything that can open. Remove after your children are in college, maybe. Oh, and don't buy a cat. Cats hate people to begin with, and work well as pets only when given their "alone" time during the day. You may resent being deprived of your "alone time" as well, but it is hopefully not likely that you are going to gouge out chunks of flesh from your kids' faces over it. They also destroy things almost as much as kids do.

As to furnishings, buy used and spray for bedbugs. Consider distressing all your furniture beforehand and then varnish the hell out of any wooden objects. Don't buy bunk beds. Remember the stairs? Recliners aren't going to last long because the novelty never really wears off. And they can be used as catapults. "Let's see how far the cat will go". See, it all ties together.

If you can think of other tips, let me know on Facebook.

Kiss Me Now!

She was too old to be wearing pigtails. Not that they dissuaded me from being fascinated with Hilda. Hilda had come of age early on in her life and was, to put it mildly, quite well endowed. I was thirteen and as such, terribly fascinated with the mysteries of all things feminine. So the pigtails were an accent to her endowments. One never knew quite where they would end up when Hilda shook her head. Two out or two in? Left or right orientation? I was no statistician at the time, but I kept a running tally going anyway, inveigling her to shake her head in the negative as often as I could.

You see, boys growing up in the 1950’s in this country had little to instruct them about the mystery that was womanhood. We did the best we could employing Macy’s and Sear’s catalogs to ogle at the bras, panties and garter belts. I suspect that men who like to dress up in women’s clothing (Mr. Guiliani, you look mahvelous!) spent an inordinate amount of time in the catalog development stage and became hopelessly stuck at that level.

When Hilda wandered into my life, she was far better equipped to advantage those fascinating pieces of apparel than the girls I’d had minor crushes on up to that time in my own class. I leaped forward out of the Macy’s catalog to a real life model.

Hilda was two years older than I, and was considered by the boys in her class as odd. She was rather attractive but frighteningly honest about everything. She dressed like the girl on the Swiss Miss cartons, while her female classmates were experimenting with tight sweaters and slinky skirts.

We’d met at the shooting range in the basement of the Junior-Senior High School we attended. Although I was quite the marksman by then, Hilda always outscored me. Our brief romantic fling, such as it was, lasted through the better part of June and July of that year.

Of course, being a desperate man, I quickly professed my great love for Hilda. She knew better and told me that such a pronouncement was not going to get me to the Promised Land (or words to that effect). Hilda lived some distance from my house, which provided a good buffer from my Mother, who was just returning from one of her many sojourns to the local psychiatric ward. I had to tell Hilda about my Mother to keep her from calling our house.

Hilda’s Mom and Dad were very nice people, though I think because of my age and, at that time rather jejune nature, dismissed me as nothing more than a “play friend” , calling me such each time I came to visit. At first I bristled at the comment until it occurred to me that this provided me good cover. There seemed to be no parental suspicions as to my motives. Hilda, of course, knew better. Nonetheless, all of the Macy’s catalog apparel was in place and with occasional errors in judgment, she provided me innocent glimpses at heaven and what must have been adolescent arrhythmias.

Once school was out, Hilda and I could enjoy the run of her house once her parents left for work. I got to like Hilda on many different levels. She was honest, funny and very unpredictable. On what would be our last afternoon home alone, Hilda decided to test my taste buds.

Clambering up a stepstool, she pulled tins of spices down from the top shelf. I decided to retie my shoe at that point, affording me another glimpse at heaven’s gate. Caught in the act, I froze and babbled out, “You should be more careful on that ladder! Watch where you’re stepping!”

“Watch where you’re staring!”

Hilda swung around, hiding the little Durkee tins from my view and proceeded to rub the contents of one on her lips. “Kiss me now,” she commanded. Hilda then grabbed my head and applied a brief hard smooch, with no desired body contact due to her exaggerated body dip backward. “How did I taste?”

“Spaghetti-ish.” I smelled the oregano before she’d even turned around.

Hilda wrinkled up her nose and swung around, wiping her lips frantically and applying another spice to her now puffy lips. “Kiss me now.”

I complied, though less enthusiastically. “Toast.” It was all I had to associate cinnamon with. I obviously did not strike the right tone as Hilda was now furious with me. Once again the secret containers were accessed and once again I was commanded to pucker up.

“Okay, what about that time?”

“My lips are burning. Can I wash them off?”

“You are hopeless.” With that, she swung around and opened the back door. “Go home.”

I saw Hilda again at the nearby shopping center the following day. She apologized for her behavior and mumbled something incomprehensible about the time of the month. I assumed she must be a bit crazy and having dealt with a crazy mother, figured I was at my limit. We did manage to enjoy each other’s company, as much as was possible considering I was still tallying the braid thing in my mind and fantasizing about what things looked like under the Macys equipment. With all that going on in my brain, I doubt I was very good company. Then again, she would always show up smelling a bit different each time, though careful not to ask for my opinion on that subject.

By the end of July, my parents announced that we were moving. My mother wore out her welcome quickly during those terrible years. Since Hilda was afraid to call the house and the move to the new home some twenty miles further east was effected rather quickly, I simply slipped out Hilda’s life. A month after we left, the old house was torn down and three new homes built in its place. I was gone.

I don’t know if I left much of a void in Hilda’s life that summer. But, oddly enough, she did leave a small hole in mine. Through Hilda and others I slowly discovered that we all are desperately searching for the right bridges to build to cement ourselves to others. I found that articles of clothing and those body parts beneath did not assure a healthy and satisfying relationship. I am sure that she found that a loving relationship could not be based on the flavor of her lips. She was not an island in the journey that has been my life, but a stepping stone.

Dear Angels, Go Away

So I open up my email and find yet another smarmy little posting with lots of cutesy pictures of angels, and little kids praying and, of course, the standard sunset shot off the coast of California. I am instructed, as always, to read the inspiring message about all of the angels that are watching over us and, I don’t know, maybe I get to name one and take it home with me. I couldn’t tell you the content of the whole thing because I never bother to read them anyway. Nor do I forward this stuff to everyone in my address book. I like most of the people on my email list, just not the ones who send me this crap.
Now you may be saying to yourself right now, what a nasty little misanthropic human being this jerk is. Well, tell me this then. Why is it that in the richest nation on the face of this planet, regardless of the current economic woes, we can allow a 93 year old man in Wisconsin to freeze to death because he couldn’t pay his electric bill?

Now mind you, this old man, Marvin Schur, FORMERLY of Bay City, Wisconsin didn’t just freeze his ass off over the course of one night because the power company, run by Bay City put a limiter device on Schur’s home. According to Bay City Manager Robert Belleman, hereafter described as HSOB (heartless son of a bitch), he didn’t know if Schur had been personally contacted to explain how the device works. Nor, quite apparently, did HSOB or anyone in his department advise Mr. Schur that no matter what he did, he was going to die a slow and agonizing death over the course of the coming week.
The Bay City medical examiner, Kanu Varani, stated that Schur would have died a “slow and agonizing death” when hypothermia set in. His house was well below freezing inside when neighbors discovered him. Schur had no children and his wife had died several years ago.
So where was Mr. Schur’s angel? Did he pray to God to have his furnace turn back on when the mysterious black box outside blew off like a fuse? Was the money he had carefully clipped to his electric bill going to be mailed before his toes turned blue? Did anyone care? Apparently not.
He was 93 for God’s sake!
I don’t think we can wait for that cute little group of angels when it comes to the Mr. Schurs of the world. He was not a welfare cheat, he wasn’t running a crack house, he just couldn’t afford to live in his home anymore and there was nobody around to help him do otherwise. He needed our charity. He needed us to help pay his bill, or provide agencies within power companies to deal with these problems in a humane fashion.
Christ said that the poor would always be among us. Then, in the four synoptic gospels he told us 343 times that it was our responsibility to take care of those poor people. Give them the shirt off our back if need be. And where do all too many “Christians” put all of their efforts? Abortion, Gay Marriage and Stem Cell Research. The Three Horsemen of The Apocalypse by many peoples' standards.
Let me tell you something- if you abort a baby, it’s not going to take three days to perform the procedure, which is about how long Mr. Schur spent in agony (the Medical Examiner’s word, not mine).
So to all my "angel" people out there, stop sending me those pointless messages and get good and angry about all of the poor people out there who never did anything terribly wrong to anybody, but who are getting the shaft. Looking for an angel to help the down and out? Look in the mirror, sport.

WOOF

My Mother was a Dogaholic. She belonged to a sect of people who have a serious addiction. I think these people live very different lives from those of us who may like dogs and even have them as pets, although Dogaholics are loath to refer to them as “pets”. These are people who think of them as part of the family, treat them as such, and, may in fact, in the familial order of things, place them above other human-type family members. My brother, sisters and I were way down on the ladder in our childhood household.

Anyone who might call this an exaggerative post need only Google “dog lovers” and bite their tongues. You can indulge your canine pal with doggie yoga, massages for Fido, gold crowns, baptizing kits and to my mind the ultimate stupidity in wasting your money, a doggie cell phone. Yep, as the ad reads it’s a “bone-shaped cell phone that will let dog owners talk to their best friend over a two-way speaker.” This will absolve you of all guilt when leaving Maxwell home alone each day. He’ll wait eagerly for your lunchtime call, anxious to share his morning’s adventures. And, it’s only going to set you back about four hundred dollars (service plan, taxes and local fees not included- this spoken in that very fast voice they use on radio).

In addition to all of the money flushed down the drain by investing in this crap, there exists the very real danger of a Dogaholic becoming increasingly distant from his or her human friends and relatives. Don’t laugh. Been there, done that.

My Mother cooked special meals for all of her pets. We’d smell ground round frying in a pan and dream of the dinner waiting on the table, only to be confronted by overcooked spaghetti with tomato sauce. Meanwhile, Dolly or Gigi or Foofoo would be wolfing down that ground round mixed in with fluffy white rice. We quickly became alienated from her pets and they grew distant from us, as we would often find ourselves growling at them and they at us when dinnertime approached. It’s hard to imagine now that something sitting on the dining room floor in a plastic bowl might look really appetizing.

This insult to our sensibilities was capped by the issue of physical harm. My Mother was far more concerned about the welfare of her dogs than any of us. I can remember any number of mornings walking down the stairs and through the living room to the kitchen with a Scottish Terrier firmly attached to my pants leg, growling loudly. Any attempt to dislodge the little bastard was met with a screech from the Doggie Goddess. “Don’t you hurt that dog!” I’d head for the bathroom, daub some mercurochrome on bite marks and dream of one day sinking my teeth into that terrier’s underbelly.

Now I know my Mother might seem a bit over the top on this stuff, but honestly, could these same behaviors be exhibited by someone willing to dress their Greyhound in a bunny costume for Easter, cell phone placed jauntily between the two floppy pink ears? Would someone who willingly dropped their poodle off at a two-hundred dollar a day doggie spa have a warped sense of values? It’s possible.

I will admit readily that I do not have the credentials to figure out what causes I do know that my mother was actually a pretty good mother to all of us until we hit the age of about two. Up until then, we were like dolls, which, like dogs, she also collected. After that, like any kid that age, we got a lot less compliant and at times, downright annoying. We didn’t seem to be as appreciative of things done for us. We could be messy, smelly or sick, as long as we wagged our tails at the right moment when given a cookie or a pat on the head. If not, we got knocked down the familial ladder, right under Dolly or Gigi’s ass. And I think that’s where the answer lies. Dogaholics like dogs because a dog will love you no matter what. Even dogs that are abused don’t tend to turn on their masters or mistresses.

People on the other hand, even little people aren’t quite so predictable or compliant. For instance when I was four, at the height of my child modeling career (I was a cute kid), my mother, at the behest of a photographer, tried to stick a dress on me for a photo shoot. I rebelled, causing quite a ruckus and bringing my modeling career to a sudden end. I also finally got a haircut, as my Mother had kept my blonde hair quite long, no doubt for just such an occasion. This act of defiance came back to haunt me until the day my Mother died. Consider that she routinely dressed that nasty male Scottie  of hers in a bright plaid coat and tied bows in his hair before trotting him around the neighborhood. He was quite happy with this arrangement. I was such a disappointment.

By the way, when my Mother died in 2001 at the ripe old age of 93, she left specific instructions that most of her current and recent dogs' ashes (all eight of them) be sent to the hereafter right alongside of her. Prior to her death, they had sat on a high shelf in the kitchen. Yeah, the kitchen. The early models are buried at Bide-a-Wee pet cemetery in Long Island, with the eternal care option added to each, of course.

My Sister, Brother and I spent a good deal of time during the calling hours surreptitiously stuffing the little tin containers into the coffin next to Mother (though admittedly, not all of them) after which we bid farewell to her as her remains and their cremains were wheeled off. I do believe I heard a rattling sound as the coffin passed by.

Hi, I'm Gary and I'm a PW

I have a terrible addiction. I am a chronic people-watcher. Oh sure, you have no sympathy whatsoever, because, you too, like to occasionally take some time to watch people. I’m not talking about your random acts of behavior observation. I am talking obsession. If I were to come across a flyer on a community bulletin board detailing a meeting of “People Watchers Anonymous” I would sign up immediately. “Hi, I’m Gary and I’m watching you.”

 When I am out working, I will schedule my day to include a break for lunch. Food courts are a people-watchers paradise. I have a feeling the fellow who invented them, Edmond Foodcourt, was a PW. I also love Japanese food and my reasoning is that it is good for you, since Japanese people seem to age slowly and make good cars and were pretty darn good soldiers in World War II. I also love chopsticks and have mastered the art of using them on those slippery bits of chicken, but I do digress.

So, picking out my food is quick and easy which leaves time to position myself strategically for my PW session. I like to place my potential subjects at my ten o’clock and two o’clock positions, table-wise. I then assign my targets names, because when you are covertly analyzing someone’s behavior, it is much easier to call them Peter or Mary than subject A or the guy with stupid looking fishing hat. I have a box of names I use with subcategories based on their condition in life. Folks in my generation or older are provided names that have generally gone out of style like Oscar or Myrtle. Teenagers become Thad or Katey and so on. If close enough, I might catch their real name, though I find that a bit distracting.

This all may sound innocent enough, or possibly a bit demented, but sometimes things can go awry. A few weeks ago, I sat so that my ten o’clock was a young male homosexual couple. My two o’clock was empty. I am not one of those heterosexual males who is put off by male homosexuals. For that reason, I found their behavior charming. I think they were discussing kitchen appliance purchases at the nearby Sears. and I’m pretty sure the debate was over on-counter versus under the counter microwaves. Anyway, they (now Peter and Lawrence) were off in their own little world, occasionally touching each other’s hands in a very loving way. Along life’s lonely pathway, they had found each other, I waxed poetically in my mind.

Shortly after digging into my chicken, my two o’clock view became occupied by Bernie and Bessie (I like alliterative older couples for some reason). Bernie was not at all pleased by the service he’d just gotten and Bessie was upset with herself for having ordered the food that she did, because she was quite sure that it would keep her up all night and didn’t look anywhere near as appetizing as it had in the picture. This was quite audible as they had passed by me to get to my two o’clock table.

To my way of thinking, you really have to accept what you get at a food court. Most of the food has been under a red light for an hour or two, was prepared by someone who never, ever envisioned him/herself ending up doing that for a living and the meal costs you about one half of what a diner would charge. Don’t look for a Brooks Brothers label in Walmart.

It took them a good ten minutes to get settled, which is by no means a criticism on my part, as I spent that same good ten minutes twiddling one piece of teriyaki on my chopsticks while watching them get settled. We all like our stuff well arranged. Coats, pocketbooks, napkins, trays, cell phones- all must be carefully positioned or our pepperoni pizza or burger just won’t be palatable. We’d be too distracted worrying about the whereabouts of our stuff. After creating a temporary nest for themselves, Bernie and Bessie caught sight of my ten o’clock. They looked as if they were witnessing a Roman orgy.

“Can you believe that two men could act that way in public? Look at them, all over each other, in a public eating area! If there were a manager here, I’d ask him to speak to those two.” Now I can’t vouch for the accuracy of this observation as I am no lip-reading wizard, but Bessie’s sentiments were pretty obvious.

Bernie turned and stared at the young lovers. “Jesus Christ, I can’t eat my lunch now!” I think I nailed that lip-read.

They carried on a heated conversation for quite some time, lamenting the moral decline of our society and I do believe I heard some references to France and Belgium, but I’m not sure. As they finally began the straw unwrapping process I glanced over at ten o’clock and froze in horror. Lawrence, seated facing me, had apparently apprised Peter of my interest in Bernie and Bessie’s reaction to them, and Peter was attempting a furtive glance in my direction, while Lawrence looked over resentfully at Bernie and Bessie. Peter was no PW, and his efforts to spy on my spying were painfully obvious. Worse, he swung back around when our eyes met, giggling hysterically.

It’s bad enough when your subject stares back at you, but now we had a PW triangle going. Bernie caught sight of Lawrence, and then stared in my direction, curious as to what had caught Peter’s interest. No doubt Bernie now assumed me to be one of “those people” as well. Were he a veteran PW, I might have been named Percy. Notwithstanding my acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle, I did have an urge to run over to Bernie and flip open my wallet to my collection of grandkid pictures. Oh, and this is my lovely wife of forty-seven years, buddy boy. I have to work on that.

I had only one alternative. It was up to me, obviously, the senior PW in this circumstance, to remove myself. Perhaps things would settle down a bit. Sacrificing some perfectly good, though admittedly cold chicken and that wonderfully lumpy white rice I enjoy so much, I stood up, staring down intently at the table, seemingly intrigued by the advertising flyer from Sears left nearby, and put my coat on.

Isn’t it amazing that when you don’t want to look at someone or something, that it is all but impossible not to? I never want to rubberneck at the terrible roadside collision scenes, but always do. At this moment I wanted to look at one of the twenty cell phone stores, or Sears, or even the bathroom area, but my eyes just went and dragged my head back around to the shadowy theatre from which I was escaping. I was satisfied to note that Peter and Lawrence were deep in another discussion, legs intertwined under the table. Bernie had pulled apart his hamburger and was analyzing the contents. Bessie was dragging a large chunk of mozzarella off of the top of her slice. The world had regained a bit of balance. My work here was done.

Someday, We'll Laugh...

Back when I was teaching, I had a parent I will call Sylvia, just in case she wanders onto this site. Sylvia was one of those people who was always there for me. I’m not exactly sure why she always there for me, but if I needed to get a committee organized or kids needed help with an after-school event, there was Sylvia. Field trips were her particular specialty.

I grew suspicious of her feelings towards me when her son graduated from our school, and Sylvia kept volunteering to go on all the field trips. And sit next to me on the bus. And carry my belongings. It may have been her fake fur coat, but I began developing rashes on my body when she got onto a bus with me.

Now Sylvia might seem a good resource to have around, but unfortunately, there were more than a few occasions when I wanted to beat Sylvia over the head with something. I felt bad about this after the fact, as she was just trying to help, but it was her unbridled enthusiasm and altruism that all too often nauseated me. Fortunately, I found out that others shared my sentiments.

On one of our class trips to Washington, D.C., a little girl sitting in the seat in front of me was busily wolfing down a large bag of Doritos aboard the crowded, overheated, noisy, smelly bus. As she turned toward me, I sensed the impending doom based on the yellowish pallor of her face, the slight heave to her chest and her seatmate’s cautionary tale, “Mr. Grenfell, I think Ann is going to…” And she did. It was projectile vomiting of an heroic nature. I fully expected her to follow up with a loud, screechy “Marinnnn”. I was, for lack of a better word, inundated with Ann’s bilish Dorito wash. And I hated her for it. Without a morsel of guilt. It always amazed me that when kids get sick, particularly when nauseous, they want to tell an adult about it. The bus bathroom was in the opposite direction, but Annie needed to share first. Thank you, Annie.

Sylvia, who of course was sitting next to me, sprang to my rescue, grabbing a plastic bag and a roll of paper towels. She started to clean me, employing the towels and her fake-fur coat. I moved away from her, sensing that such a scene enacted in front of forty-nine adolescents could ultimately cost me my job. Unfortunately, in my current condition, no one else wanted me anywhere near them. I grabbed the towels and made a futile attempt to remove Annie’s gift from my person. Truly a wasted effort - I was going to smell like a Dorito from Hell for the next ninety miles until we got to Washington.

Annie arrived back from her little sojourn to the bathroom and told me, in all too perky a voice, “I feel much better now Mr. Grenfell.”

My hands twitched slightly, as I envisioned throttling the child. At this point, Sylvia chirped one of my least favorite expressions in the whole world. “Someday, we’re going to laugh about this.”

No, we are not, Sylvia. I say that now, I said that then. Retelling the event fills the room with the imagined sicky Dorito smell that followed me those three days. At that moment, I wanted to pick Annie up and beat Sylvia over the head with her. What marks civility in a person, what distinguishes you from apes, cretins or cavemen, is not the absence of such thoughts, but the restraint shown in not actually committing the crime.

I guess the moral to the story is that there are lots of things that aren’t going to get laughed off in life, nor should they be. There are times in our lives when we want to feel miserable and we deserve to feel miserable. It’s a grand emotional cathartic. Don’t try to push up the corners of my mouth and call me Mr. Frowny, Little Mary Sunshines of the world! As someone far wiser than I once observed “It’s my party, and I’ll cry if I want to, cry if I want to…you would cry too if it happened to you.” Yeah, Sylvia, try them Doritos on for size.

Explaining Adolescence

Most of my teaching career dealt with the age group known as early adolescents. There are any number of less flattering terms to describe this rather awful stage of life, but for those young parents out there who have yet to encounter the phenomenon, I would like to educate you as to what happens, and more importantly, why. I know, there will be those with fancy-smancy degrees who will say that this is speculative and others who will label it pure stercus (check Latin dictionary if needed). But this is what I have theorized over the years and I'm sticking with it.
You see, at or around the age of 12, a young child's head suddenly grows very rapidly and some of those long stringy pieces of neuron that developed so neatly for the previous twelve years are stretched to their limit and snap. Picture if you would, doing this to, say, the Bronx. Suddenly the Bruckner Boulevard would have a 500 ft. wide canyon in the middle of it. People living on East Tremont couldn't make their way west for love nor money. Millions trapped in homes, babies howling, dogs and cats gone rabid. Get the idea? Now the highway department would be tasked with fixing this mess, but with bond issues etc. and finger-pointing galore, it will take years. Such is the case with your adolescent.
And lest you think, dear parent, that all of that love and attention will get you through these dark ages unscathed, think again. Because added to the sounds of spaghetti-like strands of nerve cells snapping apart, is the dark rumbling from the world down lower, signalling that hormones are flooding every single available cavity in the body, and awakening terrible, giggly beast.

You may believe dear reader, that your adolescence was nothing like the train wreck herein described, but honestly, how reliable is the memory of a brain-damaged child? It is the process of historical revisionism that allows us to utter phrases like "Well, when I was your age...". Yeah right, pal.

After a few years in hormone hell, we teachers began to recognize the uninitiated parents who scheduled the parent conferences intent on finding answers to this new problem with which they were burdened. They would wander into a classroom in one of two conditions- shellshocked or mad as hell.
The shellshocked parents asked what could be done and if the school psychologist could intervene, as they were sure their little Elroy was on his way to a stint in the slammer if intervention wasn't arranged.
The mad as hell folks always cracked me up, because the first question out of mom and/or dad's mouth was "What have you people done to my son/daughter?" They were convinced, often by other parents who had gone before them, that we were training there little angels to combative, and nothing would convince them otherwise. Any response to this question would be followed by "And you think WE are responsible for this situation?" Nope. Spaghetti brains. But in all of my years in public education, I never screwed up my courage enough to say that. Regrets, I have a few as Sinatra might sing.