by Mike Morris
All eyes followed me around the playground and eventually welcomed me as I finished the lap with my two sidekicks, Kyle Plumper and George Mizori. I expected a standing ovation, but it didn’t come. There was an air of awkwardness and my fellow students stood rigidly and appeared chillingly inhibited. Wrenchall stood with his hands on his hips, his face a strange combination of yellow and red, his cheeks puffier than his puffy neck, his feet spread and planted firmly on the ground. Steam was rising from his body. The tropical heat he emanated contrasted sharply with the frozen ice sculptures I had seen my mates become so many times before. I seemed to be the only one laughing. In fact, at the same time I realized I was the only one laughing, Mr. Wrenchall bellowed at us, “You bunch of ignoramuses!”
Sensing I was the hub of the action, the only actor on stage who could save the play, a line gushed forth from the depths of my being, and I spewed my fiction in his face, “At least I’m not a fox.”
Although almost every student in the school referred to Mr. Wrenchall as “Foxy,” no one had ever called him that to his face. In retrospect, I realize now that he was very sensitive to looking like a fox. When he smiled his face scrunched up like a fox and even though he didn’t have any hair on his cheeks, they appeared to be furry.
There was a certain sense of excitement – a certain sense of freedom – in having just broken this taboo. However, as I was soaring briefly in the heavens, there began to creep into my psyche a nagging feeling that a consequence would soon be violating my golden moment. And soon enough Foxy was blistering the air and my classmates. Even Kyle and George seemed to be racing to the outer edges of the universe. I soon found myself alone, sitting in an office, facing Foxy. Well, I would have been alone except my mom was there, too.
Foxy explained to my mom that I was a piece of crap. He actually called me a piece of crap. My mom explained to Foxy that even though I might be a piece of crap, I was a good athlete and she didn’t understand how I could be failing PE. Somehow, the resolution was that I would try out for the school basketball team that Foxy coached. Not understanding this resolution, to make my mom happy I tried out for the team anyway, and made it. Foxy gave me an “A” on my next report card. All was well and he strutted around boisterous and victorious. However, right before the first game, as the other players were headed for the locker room to get dressed, I was headed home. The Fox stopped me and asked where I was going.
“Home. I quit.”
“Quit! You can’t quit! We’re getting ready to play our first game!”
Looking him in the eyes and recalling what he had said about not posting my records in his locker room, I snapped, “I’m not playing on any team you coach.”
Foxy ended up following me to high school. I guess he was so good with problem children – I say that sarcastically – that they made him a guidance counselor and moved him to a brand new high school full of problem children. There was one hopeless case he observed closely – very closely. That poor misfortunate kid couldn’t even cut school without “The Fox” knowing and somehow acting as an unwelcome chaperone at every illegal event the kid wasn’t supposed to be attending. You can easily guess who that kid was.
35
It Gets Nasty
A recent study had reported that Hellincrest led the nation in juvenile delinquency. My heart filled with pride because I knew I had played a role in that statistic. When we were warned that Ms. Fountainbleau was strict and in her music class we would never get away with the things we were used to getting away with, we took that as a challenge. It was war; an unfair war – about 25 to one – but it was war!
I can remember a few incidents that contributed to Ms. Fountainbleau’s defeat and her eventually walking out on us and never coming back. Surely, she was distraught at the ever-increasing number of hand-tossed pencils that hung from her soft tile, drop ceiling. After instructing Jackie Latchfoot to sit in his seat, she must have been frightened and frustrated when he suddenly sprang into the air, screaming like a wounded animal. He refused to explain to her that he had just sat on the metal compass held point up over his chair seat by yours truly. We had a code; one didn’t rat on a fellow student even if he had just punctured your butt with a compass point.
It wasn’t safe for me to possess any kind of object that could be dangerous. After discovering a lighter in my pocket, I felt obligated to find some meaningful use for it. While my hands held the lighter in front of me, very close to the back of Carl Wooten’s wiry-haired head, I had an inspiration. How long would it take Carl to feel the heat from a lit lighter a half inch from his head? I moved the lighter within the appropriate distance and lit it. Poof! In an instant the back of his hair sizzled, smoked, and turned into white ash.
“Ow!” Carl yelped and grabbed the back of his smoking, singed head. He spun around and the fear in his eyes was intense. His friend had just set him on fire. “What did you do? Did you burn my hair? You did. You burned my hair!”
I was speechless; Carl appeared insane. I don’t know if I was smiling, laughing, or just staring.
Carl threatened, “I’m gonna getchu back, sucker!”
Ms. Fountainbleau interrupted, “Carl, is there a problem? What’s going on back there? What’s that smell? Is something burning?”
Carl turned to the front and reassured her, “Oh, nothing. I was just daydreaming and had a nightmare.”
The class laughed and Ms. Fountainbleau looked like she was going to cry. I wondered what Carl was going to do to me. All year I worried, but he never got me back. He probably questioned the wisdom of having any contact with a person who sets his friends ablaze.
Ms. Fountainbleau often had us climb onto the risers to sing. She made the innocent mistake of having us file behind her desk while she remained in her seat, marking something in her grade book. Beautiful, long, auburn hair, piled in a foot high, beehive hair-do offered a target we couldn’t refuse. A cruel routine was developed. As we passed behind her, our middle finger scooped a wad of spit from our mouth and flicked it into her hair. As the weeks went on the wads got bigger and nastier. After one of our attacks, she would go through the rest of her day with these blobs of hock dripping from her hair. I imagine that one day a fellow teacher must have pointed them out. Ms. Fountainbleau departed our school for a better life.
Had we won? It was sort of like shooting yourself in the foot and considering it a victory over your bloody, blasted paw. We had just driven away one of the few adults who cared about helping a bunch of adolescent morons like us and we considered it an achievement.
36
Tears
There were two strange substitutes working at our school. I say strange for a couple of reasons. One was that they had to be strange to want to substitute at our school. The other was that they never got angry. They always seemed happy. They were a retired married couple. Mr. Garmette looked and talked just like Bugs Bunny’s Elmer Fudd. Mrs. Garmette was a classic. Her normal speaking voice was a soft, high-pitched shriek. When she became excited the shriek became slightly louder and a full step higher. With bright red hair, she mixed and matched the three outfits that made up her wardrobe. To highlight these combinations she rotated a dozen different colored eyeglass frames. She chose not to shave her legs. I realize now that there are many reasons why women choose not to shave their legs, but to a bunch of insane 8th graders it was justification for her degradation.
Mrs. Garmette replaced Ms. Fountainbleau and became our long-term substitute music teacher. We gave her our own kind of welcome. Before she came into class someone locked the piano. Mrs. Garmette entered and told us to get out our books, open them, and get ready to sing. She sat down and realized the piano was locked.
“Oh!” Mrs. Garmette squealed as she leaped up. “The piano is locked! I just came back from returning the key to Mr. Horton and now I have to go back upstairs and get it again.”
“Oh, wow.” “Gee, Mrs. Garmette.” “Darn.” Our disappointment droned artificially.
“If
this kind of thing continues, we just won’t sing,” Mrs. Garmette threatened.
“Oh no, not that, Mrs. Garmette – anything but that, Mrs. Garmette...” Our various pleas were saturated with insincerity.
As she walked from the room, a vile brainstorm thundered through the class. We ran to the windows, leaned out, and began gathering snow for snowballs.
Mrs. Garmette returned to an apparently repentant and silent class. She unlocked the piano and warned us if it happened again, we just would not sing.
Again we moaned.
She left to return the key and of course I locked the piano and we all gathered more, white, icy ammunition.
Mrs. Garmette’s pointless orbit brought her back to face a hushed and well-armed mob. Completely unaware of what was in store for her, she once again instructed us to open our books and to prepare to sing. Without looking, she began to play. When her fingers hit the locked cover she squawked her loud, high shriek, “Oh, you locked the piano! Oh, I can’t believe it! You locked the piano!” She stood up and began lecturing us. We let fly with the snowballs. Between dodging, darting, and not forgetting to smile, she continued her lecture explaining why bad children were not allowed to sing.
Christmas arrived – a time for giving. Would a rotten group of kids like us give Mrs. Garmette a gift? Of course we would. In fact, we decided upon three: mouthwash, deodorant, and a leg razor. Kim Hamnet used possibly her only – other than looking good – talent and wrapped the gifts beautifully. Who would be the class representative to actually give these three carefully selected gifts to Mrs. Garmette? I could not pass up such an opportunity to further impress my classmates. I volunteered.
When we told Mrs. Garmette we had gotten gifts for her, she was obviously very moved. An uneasy feeling started to fill my stomach, but I continued on in my quest. I stood up and brought the gifts up to her desk. With tears of joy in her eyes, she exclaimed, “Oh, thank you, Mo!”
Now I was definitely feeling funny. As she opened each gift and heard the teeters of the class, her tears changed from joy to something else. Since I was closest I could see her face and especially her eyes more clearly. There was embarrassment – humiliation. I began to realize for the first time that I was off – out of control – trying to impress my friends at the expense of someone else. Wiping her tears, Mrs. Garmette choked, “Thank you, class. Thank you very much.”
37
The Petition
The first half of the year I had metal shop with Mr. Wotts. Mr. Wotts was tall and wiry with wild hair. A large portion of his greasy, black, curly locks nestled above his lip and coiled at the ends. He had an evil eye. In fact, he had two of them, one on each side. We imagined that he had a secret life as a killer or something. It was best not to cross him. If you did there was a great chance you would have to look him in the eyes and nobody wanted to go there.
Looking into his eyes was like being sucked into a stone cold institution with sterile walls. Within those sterile walls people were wearing bloody white coats, dashing about, waving hypodermic needles over their heads, and looking for a place to stick them. The unaware victims of those needles were shuffling aimlessly across the floor, scratching their stomachs, tugging on their disheveled hair, and timorously peering through their own dazed eyes from some fearful place. As you can tell, I looked into Mr. Wotts’ eyes and still can’t shake the experience. I don’t remember what I did to cause that barren adventure, but I never did that or anything like it again. Yell at me, but don’t slurp me into some hellish nightmare. By the time I reached the 8th grade, I had already had enough nightmares.
I have always preferred wood to metal and in wood shop lived a sort of a savior for bad boys. I am not sure why I respected Mr. Meyers. Maybe it was because he seemed to respect me. Maybe it was because in wood shop we got to be active and make things with our hands, and he protected us from dangerous machines and showed us how to keep our fingers. Maybe it was because he was clearly stronger than we were and was a no-nonsense kind of a guy. For whatever reason, I didn’t mess with Mr. Meyers.
One day my sensors were engaged and strenuously toiling. Something had been hovering for a while, but this day a motion was detected that endured direly dark and dismal. For the past week teachers could be spotted, banded together, passing secrets. It was one thing to see students behaving that way, but adults weren’t supposed to be having that kind of fun – and it appeared to be serious fun. The kind of fun where grim expressions etched on faces didn’t hide the fact that their adrenaline was deliriously raging, their unity was securely forged against some common foe, and no cautiously guarded adult artillery was held in reserve; it was already loaded, on the firing line, bullet in the chamber, finger on the trigger, ready to detonate.
As we sat in shop class at the end of the period that day, waiting for the bell to ring, my instinct, my sense of being a target laying in the site of an angry weapon, induced me to recruit two of my friends, Kyle Plumper and George Mizori. I invited them to grab a broom and to start sweeping the shop. Kyle and George were clueless enough to follow me in an assortment of escapades without questioning why. The other boys sat or stood leaning, captivated, wondering, “Why are Mickus, Plumper, and Mizori sweeping the shop?”
Abruptly, our busy insincere sweeping was cut short with brutal brusqueness, and imaginations scurried. Promising victims scattered. It was a raid!
Within the vile invasion group resided some of the most tragic and moving individuals ever spotted. They were moving in the sense that they snaked sinuously into the classroom and slinked up to Mr. Meyers’ desk setting some papers down in front of him. Foxy, Ms. Grates, and Mrs. Swine began whispering and pointing at my crew and me. It occurred to me that they were grinding themselves into a grand frenzy. Mr. Meyers appeared to be tensing up. We didn’t know exactly what was going on, but we knew it was menacingly grave. Suddenly, Mr. Meyers raised his fist into the air and slammed it on the desk, causing all the students’ heads to snap toward the parley of teachers. Mr. Wrenchall was looking more like a fox than I had ever seen him, Ms. Grates was beet red and her mouth turned inside out, and Mrs. Swine was sniveling and stuttering, and blubbering, “...but...but...but...”
“I won’t sign this! Do you want to ruin a kid’s life? Look around the room and see who is working and cleaning up. I absolutely refuse to sign this!” With that outraged tirade, Mr. Meyers swept the papers they had placed in front of him off his desk and onto the floor. “Leave my classroom, now!”
The three villains squatted down awkwardly and began scooping up the papers – a petition to have me removed from all county schools – a petition filled with signatures. It turned out that the petition had to be signed by all the teachers in the school, and since Mr. Meyers refused to sign, the petition was rendered fruitless.
Wow! Someone actually believed I wasn’t hopeless. That was the way I looked at it. Mr. Meyers could see something in me worth saving. I wondered what it could possibly be.
38
Divide and Conquer
The strategy the administrators used to replace the “Mo Mickus exclusion from school” rule was replaced with the “Mo’s isolation from Mo’s pals” penalty. I spent most of the end of 8th grade in a conference room in the back of a classroom – Mr. Penyfouview’s – away from my mates. Mr. Penyfouview appeared to prey on stupid, innocent, troublemakers like me, spending a lot of time back in that conference room talking and listening to me and being very sympathetic, determined to corner the meanness in me. I don’t know what his class was doing. But, I think he recommended that I be placed with the smart kids. So, in the 9th grade, I got stuck with the smart kids. They didn’t laugh at my antics; they had other things on their minds – like grades and success in life.
Actually, they weren’t all bad. My friends Yakov and Kempe Foams were in those classes, and two beautiful smart girls named Janice Posing and Jeanne Hummingbird were also in there. They liked bad boys, so sure enough, they liked me.
Janice inv
ited me over to her house, and I brought Yakov to meet her ... except, he must have already been acquainted with her, so maybe I just brought him for moral support or to show her off. I really liked her. We sat on her swing set and Yakov started doing tricks for her. I had seen him act goofy, but never that goofy. Something called an “L” seemed to really impress Janice. It was a bit of hanging from the bar and sticking your legs out at a 90 degree angle. I couldn’t do an “L.” Janice liked the “L.” Janice started liking Yakov. That was a bummer. A thing like that, a girl who I liked, liking someone else, had not happened before. It didn’t feel good. I didn’t like it. But, her best friend Jeanne settled for me, so we hooked up. Besides being dazzlingly magnificent and fine-looking, Jeanne was way nicer than I could handle, so one day on a double date to the movies with Yakov and Janice, and still suffering from a sense of being the dumped one, I walked out on Jeanne. I mean, I actually stood up during the movie and walked out, and that – another “Little Boy Stupid” act on my part – was the end of that.
39
Purpy
Across the street and on the opposite corner from the Bubba Aroararoar confrontation stood the Boulevard Fire Department where our drum and majorette group practiced every Tuesday night. Some other characters in the Barbie Riskey factor – the Purpy brothers – lived close by. They had suffered some kind of family tragedy – probably their births. I was sure there must have been a tragedy because they looked tragic and elicited sympathy from everyone. The group sort of adopted them. At fundraisers, they always got to eat free.