Love: May Cause Bruises

I was reminded yesterday of what a silly boy I once was, particularly if there was a beautiful girl anywhere nearby. When I was nine there was a girl in my class named Kim Bruce. She was so pretty, I remember, that when she looked in my direction, it would steal my breath away. I had enough sense to know that there was not even a wisp of hope in my earning her affection and I was reconciled with that fact. That however did not stop me from attempting to get her attention. I figured that even a split second was worth whatever pains it took me to get it.

In school one day I concocted my strategy for getting her to acknowledge my existence. My plan was simple: I would wreck my bike on the curb outside her house; when she witnessed my crash she would come outside to see if the curb were OK and in that moment I might be vaguely noticed. To say that I was not the most sophisticated nine-year-old would be putting it in the most generous of terms.

After crafting my brilliant plan, the next day after school, I put it into action. I hopped on my bike and headed down the street. As I rounded the corner, her house came into view. I picked up speed and crashed into the curb in front of her home. After laying there for fifteen minutes or so, it began to dawn on me that my plan may not have worked.

I was not the type to give up easily, however. So every day after school I would hop on my bike and ride over to Kim Bruce’s house and wreck my bike on the curb in her front yard. I will admit that it was not the most effective plan. After several months of wrecking my bike and not the slightest stir from within the Bruce household, I was beginning to wonder if my plan might in some way be defective. However, by then it had reached the point where I had been doing it for so long it did not seem to matter what the outcome was, it was just now a pleasant part of my daily routine to crash my bike there. Looking back, I can imagine the dialogue between the Kim’s parents:

Mrs. Bruce: “What time is it dear?”
Mr. Bruce: “Let me check. Let see…that Stephens kid just wrecked his bike in the yard again, so that would make it 3:15PM, on the money.”

So one day I was riding over to wreck my bike, and as I approached, there was Kim sitting on her porch. She saw me and waived for me to come over. Once I was able to breathe again, I laid my bike down and walked over. I had no idea what to do. At that point I could not have dreamed that this could actually happen. I drew near and Kim asked if I wanted to play. I said, “Ok.” I do not recall what game we played, but I was used to playing with boys, and Kim was an only child, so this was not going to go well. We ended up rough housing a little bit and Kim’s fell down and got hurt. I felt horrible. Her dad saw his daughter sitting there crying and then he saw me and I was informed that if he ever saw me around his daughter again he’d snap my neck.

By the time it was all said and done I wore the bruises of more than 100 bike wrecks and a threat to end my life. Who knew that trying to get a pretty girl’s attention could be so hazardous to one’s health?

Gonna Blow My Lid

This blog was written back in April of 2010.   My wife is doing well now, but there are a couple of tips that I thought might be instructive, so I am reposting it here

              For those of you who are unaware, my wife was recently diagnosed with cancer.  She is also pregnant with our 4th child. I want to begin by  sincerely thanking those people who have shown their love, prayers, and encouragement during this challenging time.  It has meant a lot to both my wife and me and such support is always welcome.

However, I do need to get something off my chest.   Some people, when they hear about someone elses trials,  believe that this is their cue to rush to your aid with helpful advice.  In my grievances with life in this world, I have never once thought,  “you know what this world needs a little more of is unsolicited advice.”

I am not saying that all advice is unwelcome, however, there can be a significant difference between wanting to be helpful and actually being helpful.  In large part, the difference is in how you go about it.  So, let’s pretend that you have a recommendation that you believe will really be helpful.  How do you broach the topic appropriately?

1.  Timing is important. Just because it is a good time for you share your thoughts, doesn’t mean that it is a good time for the person you are trying to help.  Test the waters before you dive in.  For example, a woman recently contacted me, it was clear that she wanted share some information that was important to her.  However, she first checked to see if I was receptive.  I politely indicated that it was a bad moment and she gracefully backed away from the discussion.  I really appreciated that courtesy.

2.  Just because you have information does not mean that more information is what they need.  Often when someone is facing adversity, their mind is preoccupied with thoughts about their struggle.  This can intensify the suffering that they are already going through.  The last thing they need is to think MORE  about.  However, it is perfectly appropriate to ask what you might help with and what would be considered unhelpful.

3.  There are certain people who, through a lack of maturity, wish to make your crisis all about them.  These people often have strong beliefs that they feel is their moral obligation to pass on to you.  They will become deeply offended when you don’t bow down at the same altar as they do.  Perhaps the worst example of this that I have heard of was a situation where a man’s wife had a terminal illness.  Another man, who had gotten involved with a mlm that sold a “miracle” juice,  attempted to sell his miracle juice to the man whose wife was dieing.  The juice man even went so far as to suggest that his juice might be the last hope of the dieing woman, and that if the husband wanted to save her then “buying this juice was the right thing to do.”  I was told this story by the juice man who wanted me to agree with him on how narrow-minded the husband was being.

4.  Perhaps you have been through a similar trial and you learned an important lesson, because of that experience, that meant a lot to you.  Do not assume that because a lesson meant something to you that it will have the same meaning to someone else.  Also, consider the fact that, if it is something they will need to learn, they may need to learn it on their own for it to have any meaning to them.  Your intervention could delay an opportunity for their growth.  I recently got a lecture on child rearing and on the resilience of children from a well-meaning person who must have misinterpreted something I said.  At the end of his sanctimonious speech I was standing there thinking, “WTF???”  If you want to share your wisdom, be humble about it.  You could say something like, “This may mean nothing to you, but when I went through ___________, one of the important lessons I learned was ___________.”  Let them determine if they wish to hear more.

The best thing you can do is to let them know that you love them and express a desire to help.  You could mention the ways in which you think you might be able to help but then let them decided if that help is needed.

My rant has ended, go in peace.

All: “Thanks be to God.”

Beaner

This is one of my favorite stories to tell, and it is a glaring oversight that I have not thought of doing so until now.   These events took place nearly twenty-four years ago. I was 19 and two significant events had recently happened in my life.  The first was that spring I had graduated from high school.  For many, that milestone is a minor one, but in my case it bordered on the miraculous.  On the day of my graduation I learned that my uncle and my grandfather had made a bet several years before that by the age of 18 I would either be in prison or dead.  Given my trajectory to up to that point, it was a safe bet.  That uncle was present on the day of my graduation and when he laid eyes upon me, with a look of shock on his face, he said, “Jesus Christ!”  I am pretty sure that it was not a pious exclamation; however, I smiled politely, nodded my head, and quietly said, “yep.”  This brings me to the second major event that had happened that year; a few months prior to my graduation I had become a convert to the Catholic Church.  While the events that led to that change are for another day and other story, suffice it to say that it was the result of coming face to face with the person my uncle had mentioned above.

That summer I had decided to stay with my mom in Columbus for a few months.  On my off days I would walk 4 miles to attend daily Mass at St. Michael’s Church in Worthington.  The rest of the time I worked at a little convenience store just down the road from my mom’s house.  It was a busy little store, owned by a guy named Chuck, who had worked hard to make it more than just a typical convenience store.  It had a nice deli and out front he sold fresh fruits and vegetables (which factors into the story later).   Working there at that time was a guy who Chuck had nicknamed “Critter”.  He was in his mid-20s, he was tall and thin with a beard that seemed to always be stuck at that 2-days-worth-of-growth phase, which was perhaps the origin of his nickname.

What I remember most about Critter was that, first of all, he was an ardent bow hunter.  He would often head out West to hunt for elk.  He would return a few weeks later with his face covered with scabs where he had waited in a tree for an unsuspecting elk to pass by, only to fall asleep and then fall out of the tree.  The second thing I remember about Critter was that he was a regular at the “nudie bars.”  I think that Critter believed there was something wrong with a 19 year old like me being so religious.  He must have felt that all that was needed to cure me was the sight of a naked woman.   To that end, he would often ask me if I wanted to go to a nudie bar and was always surprised when I told him, “no thanks.”

After a few weeks of failing to get me to go to a strip club, the closest thing that to a plan that Critter could form began to appear in his mind; one that he felt would surely make me forget all of this churchy hokum.  One afternoon when we both were working the same shift, I was in the stock room getting out some items to restock the shelves.  As I was walking out of the back and into the store, Critter said to me, “Stop.”  Surprised, I stopped.  He then said, “Look down.”  I looked down to my left.  “No,” he said emphatically, “the other side.”  I looked down on the other side and there on some boxes was a centerfold from one of Critters porn magazines.  I glanced at it, shrugged my shoulders, and said, “So what?”  I then continued into the retail part of the store and began to stock the shelves.  Critter just stood there with his jaw hanging open.  He could not believe it.  “That did not give you a boner?!”  Critter asked with disbelief.  “It did not do a thing to me,” I replied.  He was utterly dejected.  The rest of the afternoon Critter did not say much as he spent equal time sulking and working.  I almost felt sorry for him.

As it approached closing time, I had begun to weary of his pouting.  As I was bringing in the crates of vegetables from outside, I decided that Critter could use a little mocking.  I went over to the crate containing the green beans and removed one of them from it.  I then unzipped my fly a little and inserted the green bean.  Walking back into the store, I said, “Hey Critter.” He turned around and pointing to the bean I said, “Look!  I’ve got a beaner!”

We both had a good laugh, and Critter never bothered to ask me to go to the nudie bars again, probably thinking that I was a lost cause.

What brought this story to mind was something I recently witnessed.  A friend had come under criticism for making a general announcement to avoid doing particular key word search because of the risqué content that would come up on that search.  The main point of disapproval was that even by mentioning it would compel others to search the term out of curiosity.  Those who viewed it would somehow then be lead into immoral thoughts or behavior.   This denunciation struck me as odd.  I cannot dismiss the notion that we are each responsible for what goes on in one’s own head.  If an image makes someone have prurient notions come to mind, it seems a greater indication of what is going on in that person than any problem with the image itself.   For example, the centerfold had influenced Critter because of the meaning he had decided to give it and what was already present in the life of his mind.  The image stuck me as meaningless and stupid because it’s not my habit to sexualize people.   This is one of the problems I have with censorship.  To remove from view what some consider an offensive image seems like a lazy solution.   It, in no way, removes ugly or dehumanizing thoughts from a person’s mind.   For that to change requires an act of will on the part of that individual.  But this is what I suppose we have become, a society that prefers the appearance of “good behavior” over the actual exercise of it;  to let others decide for us how we should behave rather than take personal responsibility.

God Made Man……Different.

Today I would like to clear up a common misconception:

For men, looking at boobs is often not an act of lust. Rather, we do it for the same reason we stand in front of the refrigerator with the door open: We are not really hungry, but we are comforted in the knowledge that it is nice and full.

A Little Help

After graduating from College I had worked as a  Director of Religious Education (DRE) in Indianapolis for two years. I had a falling out with the pastor and I ended up involuntarily tendering my resignation. I was the sole income provider for the household, which was made up of: me, my wife, my 2-year-old daughter, and 1-year-old son. So, I needed a job and quick.

I heard about an opening for another DRE job about 50 miles north of Indianapolis, in the town of Kokomo, IN. The drive from Indianapolis to Kokomo is boring, just flat farmland. The highway between the two cities has only two traffic lights and there are only two gas stations about 30 miles apart.

The trip turned out to be a total waste for me; in my interview, I was honest, and I could see that the pastor did not appreciate my candor. I was frustrated and disappointed that I had made the trip for nothing. I hopped in the car and headed back to Indianapolis.  Along the way, I was doing my best to keep despair, over the desperateness of my situation, from nipping at my heels. Though I did not feel like it, I decided to pray a rosary on the way home.

As I drove home, I came to one of the two traffic lights, which was red when I pulled up to it. I happened to notice, on the other side of the road, facing the opposite direction, a car that was broken down in the left hand turn lane. The car had its hazards on, and I could see the driver in the car futilely turning the ignition key.
My light turned green and I started driving (I have never been in the habit of helping stranded motorists, and I wasn’t about to start then). As I passed the broken down vehicle, which was about 15 miles from the nearest gas station, I saw the driver put his head down on the steering wheel, in what I interpreted to be frustration.

I continued driving and after a few minutes I suddenly became conscious of the fact that I had turned around and was now headed back toward the broken down car.  I remember saying out loud, “Oh, I guess I am going to help him.”

I pulled up behind his car, rolled down the window, and said, “Would you like a ride? I would be glad to drive you to the nearest gas station.” He said that would be great. He went around to the passenger side of my van and climbed in.  As we headed down the road, he explained what was going on with his car. He told me that once we got to the gas station he would call his sister to come pick him up. We killed the next ten minutes with chit-chat.

I was still bewildered at how I found myself helping this guy out, so as I pulled into the gas station, I said to him, “You know, God must have really wanted me to help you. I never do this sort of thing and I fully intended to just keep going. I did feel a little bad when I saw you put your head down on the steering wheel in defeat.” He looked at me and said, “I did not put my head on the steering wheel in defeat. I put my head down and prayed that God would send someone to help me.” At that point you could have knocked me over with a feather.

He got out of the car, I wished him well, and we went our separate ways. Though he was the one that received help that day, in my own way I benefitted from that experience. Returning home to my family, no closer to having a job than when I left, a calm came over me as I realized that help was already on the way.

Perspective:

On my first date with the woman who would one day become my wife, if I had observed her publicly sniffing the butts of others, there would not have been a second date.

Today, when she walks into the room and begins grabbing those household members under the age of five, sniffing their butts, and saying, “Who Pooped?”  all I can think is, “Wow, she is HOT!”

I got here HOW?!

(Note to the reader:  I feel a sense of inadequacy in telling this story. The events themselves are, at least to me, so amazing that I do not believe I am doing them justice.  I apologize if I get a few of the details wrong, or if I present it in a way that is only a mere caricature of how it really happened.  After hearing the tale many times, this is how I understand it)

From the time I was a child, I have always been fascinated with cause and effect.  From bristling with excitement at putting pennies on rail road tracks waiting for a train to come along and make them paper thin, to striking matches on my jeans, I marveled at how the slightest action could produce such unexpected results.  Growing up, I could not escape the sense that the world itself was ablaze with these miraculous interactions.  Moreover, I realized that with each of these explosive reactions that I had my hand in, while intelligence may not have factored into the equation, at the very least intent was required.

This preoccupation has landed me in my fair share of trouble over the years, and on occasion has very nearly led to my untimely demise.  In fact, there is a good chance that when I pass from this life, my death announcement will be not found in an obituary column but instead listed as an entry for the Darwin Awards.

To illustrate, I think back to the time when the battery to my first wrist-watch died.  I did not have another battery to replace it, and so I wanted to see if I could use another source to power it.  I chose the most readily available power source in our home, an electrical outlet.  I found some wire cutters, cut the cord off the fan in my bedroom, stripped the wires, and plugged the plug into the outlet.  I then touched the exposed wire to the back of my watch, where I had removed the battery. POW! There was a bright flash just before the breaker tripped sending the house into darkness.  My mom called out, “what happened to the power?”  I yelled back, “I don’t know.”  When the power was restored I found my watch and discovered that the components had been melted.  “Wow, Cool!” I thought.

If I do leave this world in some ludicrous fashion, it would only be fitting given the bizarre sequence of events that led to my existing in the first place.  For some people, when they see a string of unexpected events, they feel a sense of randomness to the universe.  For me, especially when I think about how I came to be, I do not see randomness, but rather a conspiracy.  The wild twists of events speak to me of something as more like a plan than just mere happenstance.  It is one of the reasons that I cannot help but believe in God.  Furthermore, in telling the tale, it may also become clear to you why I am such an insufferable narcissist, secretly thinking such things as:  that the Divine Hand had arranged for a meeting between the Pope and bishops from around the world, called the Second Vatican Council, for the purpose of bringing me into being.   But I am getting ahead of myself.

In order for a cause to produce an effect, it is often necessary that disparate things must coincide. In my story the disparate things that were brought together to result in the bizarre outcome that is me, were my dad and my mom.

My Dad

My dad was raised in a blue-collar, culturally protestant, household.  After my dad graduated from high school he entered the army.  Because of his strong aptitude with languages, he was accepted into the army language school where he learned Russian.  After his training, my dad was sent to Turkey, near the Russian border.  He was part of military intelligence and his job was to listen to Russian short wave radio broadcasts, translate them, and send up the chain of command.  While he was in Turkey, he visited some of the ancient Catholic churches that the Muslims now used as barns for their livestock. He was fascinated by the people who built these magnificent structures and it evoked in him a curiosity about Catholicism.  When he returned stateside, he decided to become a Catholic.  After a short while, my dad felt that he was called to the monastic life, and so he entered the Trappist monastery at Gethsemane in Kentucky.

It was the 1960’s, and my dad was quite happy at Gethsemane, and would have been content to live out his days as a monk.  However, when the Second Vatican Council happened, it ignited a ripple of changes throughout the Church.  One effect of was that the Trappists decided to drastically alter their way of life.  These modifications were significant enough that my dad felt that this was no longer the life that he had signed up for.  In his words, he did not leave the monastery, it left him.  My dad and the Trappists parted ways and he moved to Columbus, Ohio where he enrolled in some classes at The Ohio State University.

My dad had begun life as a monk in the early 1960’s, and he left in 1968.  Just to paint a clear picture, the world that he was entering into in 1968 was:  commonly thought of as the year of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, the year Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated, the year of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, and the year that race riots and antiwar protests peaked in this country. This strange world that he was entering into was quite different, disorientingly so, from the one he had departed less than ten years prior.

My dad moved into a boarding house.  Shortly thereafter, he made friends with a guy named Rolland, which, by the way, is never a smart idea.  One night, Rolland took my dad out drinking and they ended up at a bar in an all-black neighborhood.  Rolland decided to take my dad’s car somewhere, without my dad in it (today we would call this “grand theft auto”, but back then it was just called “borrowing”).  So, there was my dad, the only white guy on the street, at the height of racial tensions in Columbus, Ohio, having had too much to drink. So, he did exactly what one would expect a former monk do in such a situation: he started asking people where he could buy some marijuana.  The residents of the neighborhood were not sure whether he was crazy or a narc, so they called the cops on him.  The Columbus police arrived, took one look at my dad, and hauled him off to the drunk-tank.

My Mom

My mom was raised in an upper middle class WASP family, which had been transplanted from the east coast to Columbus, Ohio.  When my mom was in her late teens she decided to become an Episcopalian. When she told her parents, their reply was, “Episcopalian, good God, they are almost Catholic.” Upon hearing that, rebel that she was, my mom could think of nothing she would rather do than become a Catholic, and so she did.

A couple of years later she met a young man that she convinced herself that she was in love with. Using her considerable feminine wiles she convinced him to buy a Ford Mustang convertible.  From that day on, without realizing it, she became more in love with the car than she was with him. As a matter of fact, she was often behind the wheel more than he was.  One day while she was out driving the Mustang, with its top down, through the countryside.  As she approached a crossroad, she blacked out.  At that same moment another car was barreling down the intersecting road.  It plowed into the driver’s side door of the Mustang, totaling it and nearly her as well.

Her dad received the call from the hospital that she had been in an accident.  He rushed to the hospital.  When she emerged from surgery, they put her in recovery and her he was finally permitted to see her.  Her injuries were so severe; he did not recognize his own daughter.   Recovering from her injuries took quite some time.  During her recovery she received a letter from her boyfriend.  In it he talked about her pretty blue eyes.  My mom’s eyes are brown.   Realizing that the best part of her relationship with this rube was his car, she ended the relationship.

A couple of years later my mom began dating a guy named Lloyd who was the love of her life.  His mother owned a rooming house and he and my mom would hang out together there regularly. Lloyd was in the reserves and he was called up to active duty.  She then found out that Lloyd had rekindled a romance with an old flame, which ended her relationship with him.   Over the next few weeks, because my mom remained friends with several of the guys who lived at the boarding house, she would hang out there regularly.  This was the same boarding house my dad had just moved into.

So there was my dad, sitting in jail for public intoxication, allowed only one phone call. He called the only number he knew, the one to the boarding house.  One of the guys answered,who a friend of my mom’s, and he talked with my dad for a minute. The conversation sounded interesting, and when my mom’s friend hung up the phone, my mom asked him, “What was that about?”  He replied that one of the residents was in jail and was calling to get bailed out.   He asked my mom if she wanted to come.  It sounded like an adventure, so she said she was in.  So, that is how my parents met: my mom bailed my dad out of jail.

Getting Them Together

I doubt there are two people more ill-suited to be a married couple than my mom and dad.  So, they’re getting together was anything but certain.  In fact, if they had met at any other point in their lives, that incompatibility would have been obvious to them and they would not have ever gotten married.  It was their common pain was what brought them together: my dad was hurting over the loss of his life as a monk, my mom was hurting over the end of her relationship with Lloyd. However, even then they needed an extra push in deciding to get married.

The two of them had formed a friendship and were hanging out quite a bit.   On one occasion, about three weeks after they had met, they ended up staying up all night, at the boarding house, talking.  That morning, my mom’s parents showed up at the boarding house, demanding to know what my dad’s intentions were.  Her parents were terrified their reputation would be tarnished.  Put on the spot, my dad did what comes natural to us Stephens’s, he started bullshitting.   He told them that he wanted to marry my mom and that he would support her by getting a job as a Russian translator for the United Nations.  They bought it, hook, line, and sinker.  Whether he wanted to marry my mom or not, I do not know, but once my dad said it, he was not going to back down.  That is not his style.  So he asked my mom to marry him, and she accepted.   My mom’s parents then set about planning the wedding.

My parents agreed that they wanted to be married in the Catholic Church.  So, they arranged for a meeting with a priest.  Upon listening to their story, the priest advised them that they should wait to get married.  If my parents had been receptive to clear-headed rational thought, then I would not have existed.  Fortunately for my sake, the wheels of this grand conspiracy were already in motion.  My  dad pointedly told the priest, “If you do not marry us, I will find someone who will.”  Surprisingly, the priest caved, and the date was set; it was roughly one month and three weeks after they had met.

So, what should not have happened, did happen; these two people, who had no business being wed to one another, got married.   It turns out that I was conceived on their honeymoon, which is a piece of information I could have gone my whole life without knowing.

A New Low For Junior High Part 2

Excellence in Underachievement

Growing up, I was not known for my academic abilities.  I remember as a second grader, while sitting in a meeting between my teacher and my mom, hearing my teacher say, “He is a really bright kid, but he does not apply himself.”  This was a mantra repeated by my teachers throughout elementary school.  At one point, I remember thinking to myself, “If they already know that I smart, why should I need to prove it further?”

As time progressed, with as little effort as possible, I had honed my mastery of the mediocre to razor-sharp perfection. Taking the path of least resistance, I effortlessly cut through my scholastic tasks.  As a matter of fact, when it came to doing the bare minimum of what was expected of me, I was a shining example of excellence.  Sadly, my talents were not appreciated.  Teachers sighed and shook their heads while reviewing my work.  Little did they know that it took an endless amount of creativity to maintain the high level of inactivity that I strove for daily.  For example, when I was in fifth grade, I had an oral book report due on a book that I had never read.  Actually, I had never even bothered to select a book, just to keep things challenging.  When it was my turn, I stood up and made up an entirely new tale by Edgar Allen Poe.  I do not recall the special flourish that I had put on the tale, but I remember that it was about some guy killing another guy with an axe.  Ok, so it was not Poe’s best work, but cut the guy a little slack.  After all, he had been dead more than 130 years since the composition of his last work.  Who can blame him for being a little rusty?  Upon finishing my report, my teacher stared blankly at me for a minute, shook her head, and wrote something in her notebook.

I had always felt that what I really needed was a new environment where my unique talents could shine.  While being enrolled at Linmoor Middle School may have put my life in danger on a daily basis, it was also a place where my minimalist efforts made me look like an overachiever.

Recently, I did a search online to see if I could find some objective data to support my impression of just how poorly Linmoor’s students performed, and while I could find nothing from my time there, I did find test scores from 2005-2007.  If you would like to view them, here they are: http://www.globalscholar.com/schoolfinder/98202-linmoor-middle-school/test-scores.aspx

I suppose that the best that I can do is paint a little portrait of what my academic rivals were like at Linmoor.  There was one person in particular who I believe exemplified the group, his name was Ivan.  If you want to know what Ivan was like in appearance and demeanor, this should give you a pretty good idea:

One evening, Ivan decided that it would be a good idea to break into a model train expo on the Ohio State Fairgrounds.  He managed to do more than $10,000 in damage to the exhibit.  Ivan’s act of vandalism
even made the local news.  However, it was the way that Ivan got caught that made him exceptional.  While vandalizing the exhibit, Ivan spray-painted on the wall, “Ivan (last name omitted) was here.” Because the authorities were more than a little acquainted with him, they arrested him at his home a short while later.  You might think that he was stupid for writing his name on the wall.  However, I cannot blame him for being overcome with pride:  that he could write not only his name but a complete sentence made him one of Linmoor’s academic elites.

There was one other student I should mention, Shawn.  Shawn was the other 13-year-old eighth grader at Linmoor.  Like me, he was small and nerdy.  He was a better student than I was and that made us rivals.  At Linmoor, the rules of the asphalt jungle dictated that rivals must fight to establish their place in the pecking order.  I was determined to not have this pudgy little “know-it-all” continue showing me up in class.  Interestingly, Shawn must have been thinking the same thing about me, because he was the one who asked me to fight on the playground at lunch.  I was happy to oblige.  We squared off on the side of the building with several of the older/bigger guys playing look out.  Shawn put up his fists and came toward me.  Once he was close, I hit him in the mouth just as hard as I could.  It is important to mention at this point that Shawn had braces on his teeth.  Pain surged through my right hand; I could not move it.  Lucky for me, Shawn was worried that I might do real damage to his braces, so he forfeited.  What I did not realize was that winning fight was not the best outcome for me.  Now I had moved up in the pecking order, which meant that there were several people who now wanted the opportunity to fight me.

The first was a 250 Lb sixteen year old named Charles.  A moment after Shawn quit the fight, Charles turned to me and said, “Nice punch, let’s see if you can do that against me.”  He put up his fists, and I froze for a moment, desperately trying to soil myself in the hopes that he would not want to fight someone who had just pooped his own pants.  Suddenly from behind me I felt a pair of hands push down on my shoulders, as I watched someone leap over my head.  It was a guy named David.   David was a tall athletic guy who was rumored to have a black belt in martial arts.  David launched a kick that stopped inches from Charles’s head.  Charles told David that he was just kidding about fighting me and that ended it.

With my place in the pecking order now firmly established as second from the bottom, I continued with what I did best, underachieve in school.  As the school year dragged on to a close, something happened to me that took me quite by surprise.  I was notified that I was being honored, with several other students, for academic excellence.  “Wow, that was easy,” I thought.  Those being honored were invited to spend a day at the home of our math teacher.  If I had known that being awarded for academic excellence would lead to the single most embarrassing moment of my life to that point, I would have declined.

The trip to our math teacher’s home went well enough.  I believe that Shawn and I were the only two boys of the twelve of us who made the trip.  When we got there we had a cookout and I remember climbing a tree in her back yard.  After going for a walk in her neighborhood, it was time to return to school.  The van that they sent to pick us up was smaller than the one that had dropped us off.  This meant that at least two students would have to sit on someone’s lap for the ride home.  A pretty black girl asked if it was ok to sit on my lap.  I said that would be fine.  We drove along for a while, when the girl quietly mumbled something to me that sounded like, “Do you have a hard on?”   I had not been paying attention, but I was a thirteen year old boy, so the odds were in favor of it. The girl sitting next to us said in an obnoxiously loud voice, “Did you just ask him if he has a hard on?!”  Everyone in the van turned and looked at me, I could have died.  “No!” the girl on my lap said, “I asked him if my sitting on his lap was hard on him.”  Quietly, I thanked God, and resolved that there would be no further lap sitting until I was married.

In retrospect, I think that the lesson that I learned from going to school at Linmoor did not serve me well:  that if I remained in the company of imbeciles that I would stand out as exemplary.  I found that the more time I spent with them, the less outstanding I became, until finally I was indistinguishable from an imbecile myself.  It does, however, strike me as funny that being stupid is a “learned” trait.

Recently, I learned that Columbus Public Schools had closed Linmoor Middle School in 2007.  Apparently, it has been repurposed as a school for children whe have recenly immegrated to the US from foreign non-english-speaking countries.  I think that it is more than a little ironic that all they have done is successfully exchange one group of children who are not literate in the English language for another.

A New Low For Junior High Part 1

A New Low for Junior High Part 1

Maybe it is because I feel like a relatively normal person that I forget that vast chunks of my life were spent in a world gone mad.  It is not until I begin comparing notes with someone who grew up in more normal chaos that I realize just how wacky my life has been.  This happened again when recently a good friend of mine, Molly, and I were exchanging stories of life in junior high school.

My experience of middle school started off fairly normal; in seventh grade I attended Worthingway Middle school.  It was located in a wealthy suburb of Columbus, OH.  At the end of that year a series of drastic changes happened.  My mom,who was a single parent, began her first serious relationship with a man since the time that she and my dad parted ways when I was three. Her boyfriend was a stupid hillbilly named Gary; I hated his guts.  I hope that you don’t think that I am bigoted against stupid hillbillies; I have known more than a few who were decent folk.  Gary was a stupid hillbilly who thought he was a genius and that made him intolerable.    He claimed to be a member of Mensa, and although I did not know anything about the organization, I could muster no respect for a group that would accept him into their ranks.

Around the same time we moved from the cozy suburb of Worthington to a very urban part of Columbus. It was just my luck that Gary moved in with us, so that I could  bask in the glow of his insufferable brand of brilliance on a daily basis.  Little did I know, as the new school year approached, that the worst of it was yet to come.

To put things into their proper context, I think about how, today, society is quite focused on children. Parents run frantically shuttling their youngsters from one activity to the next. Some have even taken on the full-time responsibility of providing for their children’s education.  Businesses cater to the offspring of their clientele, from McDonald’s Play Places to museums for children.  Our elected leaders make much noise about giving our children every opportunity to succeed, sponsoring bills such as The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

I mention this not to take issue with the emphasis we put on our kids, but to contrast it with what things were like when I was a youth.  When I was in school, it was not yet fashionable for people to pretend that they gave a shit about children.  No place was this more apparent than the Junior High School I was newly enrolled in: Linmoor Middle School.

My first day of school, for the first time in my life, I found I was not the member of just one minority group, but two.  While I was a little nervous about it at first, finding that out that Caucasians made up only 7% of the student body turned out to be not that big of a deal. The second minority group that I belonged to was far scarier to me; this was especially true as I walked into class on my first day.  At the tender age of thirteen, I was one of only two students who were not 16 years old and in the eighth grade; many of my classmates even drove themselves to school.  I know it sounds bizarre, but Columbus Public Schools had a policy that if a child failed a grade enough times, they would be automatically passed on to the next grade.  Most of the students would flunk until they reached the age of 16, at which point they would be advanced on to high school.  Looking back on it, it strikes me as tragic that the only lesson those kids ever received in school was that they could do nothing, fail, and if that happened enough times they would eventually be advanced forward.  I wonder how many of them got advanced forward to a correctional facility or worse, a cemetery.  So there I was, walking into class on my first day of school, a boy among men.

Violence was a serious problem at Linmoor.  It frequently happened that, while walking down the hall, one student would be punched in the face by another, for no reason at all.  The school administration’s policy was to punish both students, irrespective of who started it.  There were two possible punishments for fighting at Linmoor.  The first was to be suspended from school for one week. Since most parents did not want these delinquents at home with them for an entire week, the second punishment was what was typically selected: a paddling by Mr. Scott, the school principal.  Mr.Scott was a former defensive lineman for The Ohio State University.  A paddling from him, as I would later learn, was something not soon forgotten.

The first day of school began in home room, with the science teacher; she weighed well over 300 Lbs.  It was then, during roll call, that I learned of the school’s rodent problem.  The teacher was calling out our names when one of the kids yelled, “Rat!”  There was a ripple of screams as the girls (and I) jumped up on their desks.  I was most impressed to see how quickly our home room teacher leaped up on her desk. This was a ritual that was repeated at least once a week for the rest of the school year, whether an actual rodent was present or not.

During the next period one of the guys decided to welcome me as a new student to the school.  He was muscular young man named Craig.  With a wicked grin on his face, Craig leaned toward me and asked in a voice that would not accept “no” for an answer, “You want to Chinese arm wrestle?”  “Um, sure. How do you Chinese arm wrestle?” I asked.  He positioned my arm in front of me on the table so that my palm faced me and the back of my hand faced him.  He told me to make a fist.  Putting his hand over my fist he explained that I was to pull my fist toward me while he tried to pull it away.  The contest began.  I pulled my fist as hard as I could toward me while he applied resistance.  After a moment, he suddenly released my hand causing me to punch myself in the mouth, bloodying my lip.  The entire class burst out in laughter.

Later that day, I learned that the school had a serious problem with students bringing weapons to school.  I was in math class, seated across the table from a guy named Gary Woody.  We were all given a worksheet with simple arithmetic problems on it.  Gary turned over the worksheet and began to draw on the back of it.  It turned out that he was an amazing artist.  I complimented him on his artwork, and we struck up a friendly conversation.  As we were talking I couldn’t help but notice a bulge under his shirt in the middle of his chest.  I asked him, “What’s that?”  Nonchalantly, he lifted his shirt.  Underneath was a huge hunting knife that could have easily qualified as a small sword.

Boarding the bus for home, I was overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude for having survived  my first day.  That feeling ended when I remembered that I would be back tomorrow.

To be Continued….

Snarky comment of the week

U-Scan:  Proof that there are a lot of people too stupid to work as a cashier.