Gym Class Air Tents

Everyone seems to remember that rewarding gym class experience where we all grabbed the big top tarp thing, each around the circle, and lifted it up and down until it formed some kind of dome. At this point, we were all told to run to the middle and pull it down behind us and sit on it. It made a nice CO2 gas chamber (or dutch oven, depending on what was for lunch) for 15 seconds until it deflated, but it was kind of like going into another dimension or something. I'm not sure what kind of hippy get-together wussy PE thing this was, but it sure was colorful, maybe even magical. For a dork like me, it certainly beat dodgeball, or any other sport in existence.

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

Here's how a song book from the 90s about the alphabet sent all us boys to Jupiter! If you don't know, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom was probably the first book most 90s kids learned to read. The whole thing was one big song about the alphabet letters climbing a coconut tree, falling down, and then climbing it again. Not Pulitzer material but it was catchy. What made it even more fun was that it often came with a cassette with narrations of the book by Ray Charles and the author on one side, and then a second side of all songs by the author. As much as I liked to read (I know, odd), I enjoyed reading more when it was read for me on tape in cutesy song form, complete with steel drums and goofy flutes.

"But chicka chicka boom boom, look there's a full moon..." read by Ray Charles is probably the funniest line in any audiobook ever.

Funnier was side two of the tape, where the author says that he came up with the idea based on the following children's chant, which I have memorized to this day: 

"Chigga chigga whole potatah, 

half-passed alligator, 

bim bam boligator, 

give three cheers for the dippy dappy happy sappy readers!

Are we happy? Well I guess.

Readers! Readers! Yes Yes Yes!" 

Chanting nonsense has got to be the best way to get kids to read. It taught us how rhythm can change what the story sounds like in our heads, whether we slow it down or speed it up, make it happy or sad, even if the words all stay the same. That's what makes it a great book. But then on side two of the tape came this chant that also taught me something about the sexes:

"My mother, your mother, live across the street,
18, 19 Mulberry Street.
When they get to talking, this is what they say:
Boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider!
Girls go to college to get more knowledge!"

Awesome! I thought. I get to go to Jupiter! 

Old 90s Playgrounds

It's been a while since they made playgrounds that could injure a kid. This one? "I feel I need a Tetanus shot just from looking at it!" (You know the reference).

Was it fun to climb on? Moreso than any plastic contraption with side rails a-plenty like they have these days. What didn't kill us, made us stronger!

Hop on, and hang ten. Your best bet is to sit down once it starts spinning and move to the middle. It wasn't long before someone flew off.

Oh, and never mind the rust.

School Recorders

Music class in elementary school was about keeping us as far away from actual instruments as possible. The schools were cheap and they knew we couldn't play real instruments anyways, so anything wooden or plastic was good enough. Why else did we always seem to end up with things like "maracas," "tambourines," "rain sticks" and those "cheese grater" things you had to run a stick on?

When it came to teaching us how to make a clatter similar to the sound of falling down in a janitor's closet, it was a grand ole time. We had so much fun, half the girls were almost tempted to put down their Tamagotchis! So you'd think a rambunctious runt like me should've fit in perfectly, but such was sadly untrue. Apparently I took clatter to a whole other level, and how was I punished? With a recorder.

"Recorders" is what they called them. They're some kind of flute-like instrument that makes an ear-piercing "tone" by default when blown into, and while they told me it was adjustable by placing my fingers over the holes and whatnot, I never figured that part out. The typical ones they handed out in droves came tan and pre-slobbered on by a thousand other kids over the years, but if you were lucky enough to have them run out they'd give you the black one to take home instead, and all of a sudden that shit got classy! You were sure to get laid if you got your recorder. It was a boner-fide babe magnet!

Nah. That is how they sold it, but no, it didn't get you laid. Even if you were lucky to get a black one (which may or may not have been bigger), there was no escaping the fact that it was probably the dorkiest instrument ever made. That may be why I was so crushed to be the last kid in class without one. And with my "I bet you could play that thing from yer butt!" joke firmly cemented into the minds of any and all in attendance, I had pretty much sealed my fate. I definitely wasn't getting laid any time soon.

You see, the music teacher didn't let the rambunctious "music makers" like me at the back of the class have one until we cleaned up our act and stopped playing with all the instruments, and that fact just took a few weeks too many to sink in for me. I mean come on, my "stick it in yer butt!" joke was def worth it! I mean, who doesn't love a good ole' colonic calliope? But then suddenly everyone else in the class had their own, and that was okay until it basically came down to just me, and only then did I start feeling like the odd one out. She upped the ante too when she started handing out cool blue suede slip cases for them, so I finally decided to stifle myself, and tame that wild urge to compulsively spin the rain sticks and shake the maracas.

What did I care about that those recorders anyways? I wanted a rad slip case!

Designer Trapper Keepers

It's "Back To School" season once again (and has been since mid-July in advertising world), which means, if you were an 80s or 90s kid, showing off your new "designer" Trapper Keeper (you spent an hour picking out) was part of the first day reality. Because who said school supplies can't be fashion statements? What you wrap your studies in said a lot about how cool you were to sit next to, because there was a big difference between coming in with the cutesy sunbathing penguin and coming in with the radical pinball machine-like design. As a boy, the latter made you awesome... the former made you... legendary. 

When you get right down to it, the Trapper Keeper (whatever that was supposed to mean), was just a binder. What made it special were those ultra-radical designs on the covers, those computer generated floating polygons with neon, purple, and turquoise sea and sky scenes like something from another planet. The girls had their Harper seals, pastel rain forests, rainbows, horses, and butterflies, and the boys had their racing Ferrari V8 designs, neon laser-lighted spaceships, and this awesome Sonic the Hedgehog merchandise. Thanks to Mead, I had one of those Wyland-esque masterpieces of leaping dolphins to drag out in my day. It didn't really matter what the design was supposed to be, so long as it was colorful, it was pretty sweet. And dolphins were rad. Like I said, I was legendary. 

Open them up and you might find compartments for your equally awesome multi-colored folders, or decked-out arty ones (always with the times tables, weight conversions, music notes, and "timezone map of the world"... none of which you ever needed for reference but at least made you feel smart). It might also come with a clipboard on the back, and my clipboard even had a built-in calculator that worked for two minutes! By the end of the year the Trapper Keeper was always jammed packed with a hundred crinkled papers in a grabasstic disorganized mess, but at least it was all sealed up in an artful package.

These were ubiquitous in my elementary school, because back in the times before smartphones and tablets took over the world and all that is cool, we actually liked "stuff." It didn't need to be touch-activated and loaded with games about sling-shotting angry pigeons or whatever, it just had to be solid, like a wall. Case in point, if we were taking a test at our tables, the teacher would have us stand our Trapper Keepers and binders up as dividers to make sure we kept our eyes on our own papers. The move never stopped us from launching pencils and erasers over the barricades at each other. "Missile launch countdown: 3, 2, 1..."! "Ready the catapult!" 

The Weekly Reader

The only "old one" I could find!

Who doesn't remember having the Weekly Reader thrown in their lap a few times a month at school in the 90s? If it wasn't the Weekly Reader, it was Scholastic (which I also remember), but one way or another, reading some kind of "kid magazine" factored somewhere into our typical school week. To me, this was like, high class journalism. Time, Newsweek, People, GQ....they're all fine, but they're no Weekly Reader. If you don't know, it's a magazine for kids. Back then it was only about 10 pages long at most, and every page had about three different 300-word articles on it with plenty of pictures and games, and other stuff to keep us interested.

The typical issue usually had a "science and nature" section (always something about whales, weather, and volcanoes for some reason)... a "news" section that usually told good news (maybe this was higher class...) unless it was telling us about kids living in poverty or that if we didn't recycle, the rain-forest would "get it"... and a "Kid Power!" section that made you want to go start your own tax-exempt non-profit 501 charity feeding and clothing the baby orca whales... you know, just like that kid on page five! There was always some kid in there who had collected a thousand pennies or made her own hot air balloon, or built his own house out of toothpicks, and it always seemed like your chance was just a week away.

Whenever they wanted to entertain us about stuff we had no idea about and had no say in, they told us fairytales about politicians running for office: "You decide! Bill Clinton or Bob Dole? Mail in your vote!" I'll trust mine was received.

These magazines at first seemed like something only the teacher was into, but the more I dug into them, the more I found myself actually...learning things! And not on purpose either! Perhaps it was because it wasn't trying to be all "hip" and "down" and "dope," but just showed stuff kids are curious about. Up until then the news was only for adults, but these zines took all that "blah blah" out there and turned it into stuff I could understand, and that was pretty cool. It was like, a kid-friendly news channel for my head as I read along, and still a whole lot better than that stuff adults read... (I'm looking at you, New Yorker)!

Update! 7/30 -  It looks like Scholastic is ENDING the Weekly Reader! Sad...

Weekly Reader - 1928-2012  (RIP)

Leap Day!

I really have no idea what to say, but how often do you get to blog on February 29th? If it was my birthday, I'd technically only be seven years old. I'd like to think I am sometimes.

I don't know what I was doing on February 29th, 1992, or 1996, but I wasn't enjoying the extra school day in 1996, that's for sure. It was a Thursday (I looked it up)... which as memory serves meant tater tots in the cafeteria... not that I ate lunch from a Styrofoam tray, but tater tots were pretty cool. I literally remember Thursday for being tater tot day at the elementary school, (Pizza was Wednesdays)...which means the cycle of lunches must've been altered in 1996 because of the extra day. Think about it. Maybe there was two tater days!

Maybe I don't know how the calendar works.

Alright Class, Form a Line...

If your elementary school was anything like mine, you probably spent a third of your day in line. There were lines to get into the building from the bus, lines to use the bathroom, lines to go to the gym, lines to leave the gym, lines to go to lunch, lines to go to recess, lines to come in from recess, lines to go wait for the bus...etc. They crisscrossed the school, went up and down stairs, stretched the length of the brick walls and carpets with no end in sight... unless you were the end (in which case, your day sucked). "Hey you in front of me, no farting!"

At least 10 minutes of every hour was spent lining up at the end of every major class before being shuffled on to the next. What were they teaching us? How to use a DMV branch? How to get a deal on black Friday? And if you cut, it was just as painful as either of those scenarios. If you so much as cut one space ahead, you were going to bare the sting of poison arrows of death, and they'd be coming at you in the words, "Hey! No Cutting! Teacher! He cut! No Cutting!!" If you cut, sometimes you had to go to the back of the line, to hang out with the other losers. Other times, you'd be sent to death row and executed (...a lineup there too).

During all that useless tedium in the lines, we usually tried to find ways to entertain ourselves. One game I remember was the staring contest. You look the kid in front of you in the eyes, and they look back, and the first one to crack up loses. Now I can't stress enough how much I sucked at this game. A tomboyish girl and I once engaged in a staring contest while in line, and she was going cross-eyed, sticking out her tongue, pulling her lips open.. and I was busting! She wasn't cracking up, per se... just visibly in hysterics behind buttoned lips. As far as I know, that's cheating, but then again, I didn't know too far.

Less of a game and more of an annoyance was the classic flat tire. This was usually only doable if the line was in motion. You simply step on the back of the kid's shoe in front of you as they are walking, causing it to come off their heel, and thus causing temporary hilarity. This worked best with girls who usually wore less rugged shoes, but man did they go off every time I tried it! Let me take this opportunity to apologize to any girl out there whose expensive shoes may have had a buckle snap thanks to my ingenious attempts at momentary comic relief...

Probably the grossest game you could play in line was the spit swap, where you spit in your hand and then shake the hand of the person behind you. Depending on how coordinated the line was, this might set off a chain reaction whereby the shaker becomes the spitter for the kid behind him...etc. It's kind of like the grade school version of passing around STDs, and I don't think I could recommend doing it, although it probably accounted for some of the chronic strep throat that gained me many a day off from school in my time.

The funniest game though (besides farting on the kid in back of you) was undoubtedly the good old nut kick. This was only achieved if the victim was a boy, and only excusable when the perpetrator was a girl (and yet still somehow seemed less cruel if they were another boy). This one's pretty self explanatory, but usually involved either back kicking a boy behind you in the groin (the preferred method if you were a girl), or kicking up through his legs when behind him (if you were a girl and really good at it). This might be done for any number of warranted reasons (like it being funny), or (if you were a girl) just because he was in your way.

But while that may have been the funniest, by far the funnest game was without a doubt the domino effect. This should be self explanatory. One kid (usually at the back of the line) pushes another, and that kid knocks into another kid, and before you know it, the whole line is going down... and by the time it gets to front, bodies are hitting the floor! It could be revenge on the kids in the front of the line, or just random idiocy, but when it happened, it was the highlight of any day for sure. The teachers may have cancelled our recess once or twice over it, but it was worth it.

At the end of the day, I remember the minutes ticking down as we all stood in line, waiting for the buses to show up, minute after minute, inching further and further up... I remember standing there with all these fantasies snowballing in my head about laying down and falling asleep right there, and what would probably happen. If I did, nobody would be allowed to "cut" me, so they'd all have to wait for me to move. Then they'd all miss their bus and they'd have to all cram into the office and place about 30 different calls to come get picked up. Damn the bureaucracy! 

But at least then no one would be a filthy cutter. 

The Treasure Shell!

Here's a story I wrote for school in the 3rd grade, for which I received a well-deserved check+ and a star sticker. Because no one but me can read my chickenscratch, I'll reproduce it here for you in all its awesomeness. And just in case there's any question, please note that I copyrighted it. ;p

The Treasure Shell!
By mark  (c) October 23, 1995

Once there was a Boy, who went to the ocean. While there he explored the shore, looking for shells. He found rocks, shells, seaweed, broken glass and pennies! The pennies were old looking and leading some where. He followed the path. The pennies ended at a cave. It was very dark inside the cave. He entered slowly. It was creepy, damp, cold, and smelly. In the distance was a flicker of light!

The Boy went closer to the light. Once there, he, saw that it was from a crack in a Box. The Box was old and dusty. It had letters on the cover. Spelling "T.S." He opened the cover nervously. A blue light spurted out! So bright that it lit up the cave.

The light went down into a shape of a shell. It was standing Backwards. He picked it up. All at once he actually felt a power in the shell. The shell was the size of his hand, it had ridges on one side and smooth on the other. The color was tan and pink. It had electric power. A note said "If the magic shell did not like who touched it, the shell would zzzZAP the person". It also said "The light can blind a person." It seemed to like the Boy. So As Time whent on, he keped the shell to show others. A week later he went to the ocean. again he explored the cave.

"What a nice shell."

"I wonder what the T.S stands for in this Box?" He thought? 

School Floor-Time Farts

Me, probably mid-fart.

I tell you, all that time on the classroom floor is a killer on your body, and boy did we ever spend a long time on the floor at school. From K to 4, we'd be down there for small group instruction time, reading time, easel time, project time, movie time, auditorium time, song time... any time they needed to call a "time." All that time, I'd just be looking up from under the tables and chairs and wondering how that vantage could've come to dominate my day, and, who stuck that gum up there? Seriously, what were they thinking by subjecting kids to this?

Anyways, you read the title right, so here it goes. Aside from the sheer uncomfortable yoga positioning they were forcing us to do on those rock hard carpets, spending so much time on the floor has its other follies such yoga stuff is known for. It also turns out that when you spend a lot of time hunched over sitting Indian-style, sprawled out, or bent over on a hard rug...etc., any disturbance or show of force when coming to a stand can cause unintentional and unexpected internal "shifts" (especially true after eating anything they served in the cafeteria). This knowledge comes from personal experience.

It was the 4th grade. I was ten. Probably around the same time as my other, far more impressive physical feat (man I was on a roll that year). The floor group thing was over and we were all to go back to sitting in our chairs like people. I forced myself up, and from out of you-know-where (and without even checking with me first), as if just to say "hi!"... out blurped this low and sputter-y "bluRRRp!" Yes. It was a real tumbler rumbler, a real beefer, a real bullfrog croaker, a real butt blunderbuss, a real... you know what? It was just a fart... not very loud, but just loud enough. I just froze. It was a pure "whoa!" kind of moment, and I didn't even know it was me for a half second. I did a mental damage report. All systems were go. Butt was a go. Jeans were a go. Awesomeness was... definitely a go! At least I could be thankful it was deployed from a half stand position because if I had been still firmly planted it probably would've launched me at least an inch into the air. "Houston, we have liftoff." But let's not exaggerate. I'm not taking Apollo 13-style liftoff, I'm talking more like Apollo 13-style explosion. "Houston, we have a problem..."

I wouldn't have thought much about it from there (well, I probably still would have...), but these two girls (who didn't like me much already) were sitting just a few feet behind me on the floor, and I tell you they had front row seats to that performance, both forced to weather the storm. One quickly remarked to the other, "ugh, Mark just farted." Now I didn't know if I should've been ashamed or extremely pleased, but I got to admit that one minute of embarrassment for 16 years of "ah! gotcha!" pride is pretty good in my book, even though it's always more of a deal breaker than an ice breaker. At least it's never a mystery why chicks break up with me. 

School's In Session

Whenever the school year starts up, I'm reminded of why it's good to be 24 (...because I have to be reminded). School really is "out forever," and the kid-in-me's dream is realized. However, I wouldn't have been a true dork as a kid if I wasn't also slightly excited about going back. Granted, I wouldn't have complained if summer went on forever, of course, but if I had to leave it anyways, I used to figure I might as well embrace the change. And admit it, sometimes getting back to the grind, showing off your new jeans and pencil sharpener, and flopping down on a plastic seat before a chalkboard to "learn" (rather than a couch before a TV to "veg"), has its own charms too. Learning is vital to..... Oh? What's that? The teachers are gone? ...

The coast is clear! ... School can kiss my Pog-pocketed BUTT! Woo-hoo!

I liked school, because I was a dork and I enjoyed getting teased, but back in the 90s every kids commercial made school out to be "capital-L-amo bro" and "totally not radical brah" where every male teacher was half asleep like Ben Stein, every female teacher was a decrepit relic crow of the 19th century, every bus driver was out to kill you for "the things he did in Nam" and every lunch lady was out to poison you for her own sick pleasure. NOT cool! Those adults? They just don't GET it man! "WORD!" Every kids movie made it out to be Auschwitz ("Be quiet or I'll lock you in the CHOKEY!"). It's a place where all you boys get to be "ex-cel-lennnt!" and "bad!" and "on a mission... without permission!" ...only to end up living in the principal's office (me) ...and all the girls get to be chatty, ditzy, frizzy-haired, elitist, snotty "Mean Girls"... only to end up crying in the bathrooms. Listen to Sonic: "School is LAME-O... bro!" So eat Bubble Tape!

 

WTF? Anwyays... it was inevitable, but it certainly wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Every year you just had to get back into it... back to TI-108 calculators and Weekly Readers, to colored notebooks and Trapper Keepers... back to cafeteria followed by recess, plastic trays and tater tots followed by short rope swings and blazing metal slides... back to girls with their Lisa Frank backpacks and boys with their Sketchers Hot Lights... back to classroom fish and "Great Job!" stickers, to strange clapping games and sitting on the carpet, to Crayola 45-packs, scented markers, and Sharpies you can get high from smelling... back to dorky, colorful cutouts of happy ethnically and capably diverse kids gracing the covers of everything like no other reality is allowed...

Get back to music class "recorders" and maracas, art class scrubs and sponges, gym class bean bags and "stretching stations"... back to having a desk with your name on it and a tiny shelf space underneath where you can store your notebooks, glasses case, retainer, and used gum (for later)... back to "show and tell" where the only act you really care about is your own... back to a place where the bathroom is officially called "the boys'/girls' room" and you have to sign a piece of paper just to go to it, or "bring along a friend"... 

So get back to the pecker-order, to butthead boys and know-it-all girls, to jocks who were untouchable and nerds who probably should've worn a cup that day (...ouch...) ...back to class clowns and the girls who tell on them for drawing penises on worksheets (true story), to popular girls who inevitably wanted you dead and popular boys who inevitably stole your erasers... back to front row teacher's pets and back row Kurt Cobains-in-training, to dorks who picked their nose and ATE IT and preps who sanitized their own desk every day and refused to ever step foot in the bathroom... back to quiet kids you have to keep an eye on, shy girls with no name who sit in the corner, and true aces who raise their hands in class only to burp... LOUDLY.

Yep, that's school, and you had to go back there... back to learning stuff you'd be forgetting in time for next summer.

Grand Theft Lunchbox

I was not one of those kids who did the school lunch deal, which is probably why I've lasted this long. Thinking back, my heart goes out to all those kids forced to eat that stale cheese (with pizza built somewhere into it), meat nuggets of mystery, and the ever-nefarious "brownie" that all seemed to invariably land wrapped in Styrofoam. In many ways though, being a lunchbox kid was worse socially than it was gastro-intestinally. On the mean streets of the lunch room, a war was brewing between the trayers and the baggers, and you did not want to be on the wrong side of that table.

In my day, we didn't have no fancy Vitamin Water to take to school, we had a juice box, and if we didn't have a box, we had a a device known as a thermos that took up all the room in your bag and crushed your sandwich. Opening this juice box was a piece of work, and involved a process similar to poking a baseball bat through a sheet of Saran Wrap. If you poked too soft, it'd never go through. If you poked too hard, you'd have a geyser of punch in your face. With a Thermos though, once you dropped the straw inside, that was it for your ability to extract liquid unless you took the top off and guzzled it like a loser... (guilty as charged). I had a traumatic experience asking a teacher to get my straw out of a thermos... I don't want to talk about it.

I also don't want to talk about the traumatic time I learned what a boy is not allowed to bring to school plastered all over his lunchbox and thermos. See, I was not all that bright, and my mom used to send me to school with this... I don't know... Snoopy or Sesame Street thermos or whatnot... (I know right?). Well I wasn't really aware that such a thing was frowned upon in them thar parts... by the other boys. (I know... I'm sorry, ignorance is no excuse, I should've known better...). Well, you can be sure they LET ME KNOW... and it was... well, let's just say, therapy has been good for me. I BEGGED my mom for something... ANYTHING "cooler" than Big Bird... and holy shit! She got me this red plastic lunchbox that came with F'KIN AWESOME futuristic car stickers you could plaster all over it! It even had a helicopter for good measure! I was set for life. 

Well almost, because you see, you pull up with your new, shiny, badass, cool kid lunchbox and rev its engine in the wrong parts of the cafeteria, and you find out you suddenly have all new problems on your hands. Suddenly they're all asking about it. And then the only thing you got to worry about is, the thing getting STOLEN. (Which luckily never happened to me, but I swear... they asked... and they tried... but I was vigilant.) I had to watch it like a hawk! But that didn't mean I still didn't get jacked. 

Food was another story, because if you came in with something good, all the trayers wanted a piece of it. I swear, opening that lunchbox on any given day was like driving a Viper through a real seedy part of town. If you got up to get a napkin, you could only expect that someone has jacked your chunky peanut butter sandwich. And you know that if they went for the sandwich, it was only because someone else had already taken the DUNKAROOS! I'm telling ya, it was a tough boy-eat-banana-world, devoid of mercy or respect, but to us elementary schoolers, it was a place we called the cafeteria.

Of all the years I spent fighting in the war, only one battle turned out me: 1, bully: 0. Every day I came in, this other kid would take my lunch. If I came in with any sort of candy, it was his. If I came in with a granola bar, it was his. If I came in with nothing but a sandwich, he'd take it and pull out the meat. Every day I had to surrender something. So one day, I decided to get even. My mom (bless her heart) gave me confectioner's chocolate to bring in... the real nasty 90% pure ground cocoa kind. Sure enough, the moment he saw chocolate he snatched it up and took a bite. This kid practically puked! His face went sour and he spit it out in a napkin. "Sick! What kind of chocolate you eating man?" I don't ever remember him stealing my lunch again.

I love you mom. 

You Got a Butt For a Face!

The second grade was full of confused anatomical insults and other factually inaccurate taunts. It's the best you can do when you're eight. But the best thing about being a boy is that if the other guys are putting you down one year, they're probably going to be your friends sooner or later, especially if you can too can dish out whatever they're serving. The fact is, we boys just don't take things all that seriously because with insults like "Oh yeah? Well you got a BUTT for a FACE!" how can you take that seriously? At least when girls insulted you, they'd just say things like "you're ugly" or "you smell" or "boys are dumb." You know, things that are true. We say things like "hey buttface!" And it's seriously a case of, yeah, that's the best we've got. Psh! No big deal. "You're a buttface times infinity!" And there you go, friends for life. I rest my case.

I knew me my share of buttfaces in my day, because most kids in the 90s were butts... hot shot little shits always trying to prove something. That's all we were. Advertising was very good at turning us against each other in the competition of coolness, but there really wasn't any difference between any of us back then. In any case, if you were cool, then anyone else who wasn't you was a dork, a little above the worm in the hierarchy of life. If you were a dork though, like me, then all those "cool kids" were nothing but buttfaces. I don't know why "butts" were our metaphor of choice to describe "the other," but maybe because it was more ad-friendly than calling each other assholes.

In any case, the buttfaces I knew in the 2nd grade happened to consist of that same "flannel gang" of "cool kids" that I described in detail earlier on, and before I made my epic journey to become cool in their eyes, I was assuredly a dork. Once in gym class, we were doing one of those 90's New Age type "exercises" (they just couldn't let us play something that involved winning and losing or else we'd cry) when this battle of wits played out almost poetically. We were split into groups of three, and one had to be the leader and the other two had to mimic his every move. I happened to be the leader that time, and I thought it was kind of cool, being paired with two of the flannel jerks and being "in charge" of them. It was a pure "mwahaha!" moment.

But I quickly undid whatever was cool about it.  In my quest to make them look like idiots, I way overshot the runway. I started out doing these Russian-type kicks on the gym floor, and then got the wise idea to go down flat and do a "snake-like" slither. It was in the middle of my slither that I realized both my little minions were following my lead exactly, hurling light Russian-style kicks at my face! It was a reminder of just what I was up against.

The teasing became more verbal after that, with both of them finding ways to poke fun at my so-called puke-pooling ugliness. It was a time in life where one could get away hurling insults like the old "stare and avert your eyes" jab. One of them, who I naturally ended up becoming friends with a year later, even said after looking at my face for a second, and I quote, "Ah! I'm being blinded by the evil thing!" This happened quite a few times, but I was quite sharp, and retorted the same jab back. It wasn't so much an insult to me as it was just a funny thing to hear and say--that and the old, "Oh my God!" (mouth-dropped, eyes bugged)... which might have prompted me to go "what?" in all seriousness, and to which the reply invariably was, "You got a butt for a face!" How do you respond to a claim like that? You can't. Even if you say "no I don't!" you still look like a real "heinous anus" for even just debating the subject of your butt face.
 
I could be the acid tongue myself though. A kid came to class with a prescription bottle once and had it propped on the desk in front of him. Someone else asked, "what are those pills for?"  It was the age of Ritalin back then, so just picture three different prescription bottles instead of one for the modern equivalent. He got angry at this and huffed, "They're pills you put in your head to make you stupid!" Now I have to admit, he walked himself right into this one, and I couldn't resist taking him the rest of the way: "Oh? Then you must take a lot of those!"

So I did my share of serving and being served. For example, who could forget the classic bus-ride questionnaires.. "So, have you been PT?" "What's PT?" "Yes or no, have you ever been it?" You'd be tempted to say no, as I was, because it didn't sound good if you were to say yes, but then you'd be mistaken. "No," I said. To which he shot back, "Ew! You've never been potty trained?" You just never knew whether to say yes or no to those things. And who could forget the grand old "open your mouth and close your eyes and I'll give you a big surprise!" Or the "do you know what I think about that?" Prompting a "what?" followed by a rectal explosion of some kind and a smell so bad it could peal the paint off the walls! "Ah... that's what!" he'd say.

Surprisingly enough, afterwards this kid became my best friend in the 3rd grade, and I guess you could say we both became "puke-pooling butt-faced booger-brained fart smellers with flies on the side" for a while. It tends to rub off on others.

Paranormal Alien Junkies

By the time third grade rolled around, my friend Nick and I were a couple of paranormal junkies. I suppose "junkies" is the right term, as it's fitting of what that stuff really is (plus we definitely were paranormal). But don't tell me that aliens were junk back then. Those were the days when we didn't have the History Channel to give us our UFO fix. We had to rely on the infrequent sightings on the Discovery Channel (back then it was the "smart people" channel). I was hooked on all those weekend paranormal Lifetime Channel Unsolved Mysteries marathons. "Television for women" my ass! More like "television for 9-year-olds who love freaky alien paranormal shit"!

My friend Nick was pretty smart. In fact, we used to call him "smarter than the average kid" (in the Yogi Bear sense), or at least, that's what he called himself. He knew all the times tables. Quick... what's 5x7?? Too late! Nick's already answered. Oh yeah. He could tell you all about military missions, airplanes, explosives, and brain eating amoebas in your favorite waterparks. He also could burp on command like a champ, really loud and beastly, and even taught me some of his burping wisdom. So as far as I was concerned, he really was smarter than the average kid. He did sneak nunchucks into school on many occasions, so yeah, of course we were friends. Checks out. And so... anything he said was pretty much gospel. Nick was convinced they were holding aliens in Area 51 and doing autopsies, and I agreed, adding, "who do you think works there?" He suggested that people don't work there like a normal job, they are born, raised, work, and die there and never see the outside world. Yes, for us, Independence Day was a documentary. That's an 'unsolved mystery' our old Lifetime channel friend Robert Stack took to his grave.

Was Independence Day not a documentary? Wasn't that really area 51? I don't know. Nick did. His parents let him watch ALL the Alien movies, and he said they were all pretty badass, so ... he knows what he's talking about. And you know what else? He had some pretty sweet nunchucks.

This is all heavily ironic, for nothing terrified me more as a kid (and even now as I think about it), than being abducted by aliens... that and ghosts... and girls. I knew there was no monster under the bed, but aliens? I wasn't so sure. You could say this fear was also ironic because if you talked to my brother, he would've told you nothing would've pleased him more than seeing me get "taken." He would have held the door for them. Indeed, it might have explained a few things. The feeling was mutual. It didn't help that a new "aliens destroy humanity" movie came out every year in the 90's, and of course, my parents kept renting them... even the horribly terrifying Mars Attacks, which haunted my dreams for weeks. Those eyes, those brains, those ray guns turning people into skeletons, the totally wasted all-star cast, the death of Danny Devito! ("Look, don't shoot me, I'm a lawyer. If you wanna take over the world... you're gonna need a lawyer!") It was a horrible movie (and that's coming from a guy who likes Tim Burton).

Robert Stack probably was an alien, but I had my doubts about some kids at school. Humans? Or aliens wearing human skin? How could you tell? Well, it turned out that Nick seemed to know exactly how to spot an alien (because yeah, the kid knew everything). He told me, and this is 100% true, that if they tell you they're a pack of aliens living out behind the school eating "shiny paper foods" (the place was littered with potato chip bags)... it probably makes sense to play it safe and take their word for it. "Your brain could be next." But then I started having my suspicions about Nick... he seemed to know too much...

How else could you explain his advanced mathematics computer brain unless it wasn't some kind of... advanced alien brain or techno-implant? Wait... wasn't that him eating potato chips at lunch? Look at the inside of his chip bag! "Shiny paper food!" Wasn't that him wiping his boogers on the window? Hmmm... that specimen seemed a bit too green if you asked me. And all the ear-spliting burping on command? Sorry but I know the sound of a Xenomorph when I hear one! And the smell of his breath... whoo! Like sauerkraut and crusty gym sock! Yeah... definitely not human.

That did it. The kid was definitely an alien.

But I could never be sure, and I didn't want him knowing I might've been on to him. He never invited me over, despite telling me he wanted to many times. Seems suspicious, right? At some point in the 4th grade I remember we had some kind of falling out... probably because I was too close to uncovering the SECRET. I remember he threatened to use his nunchucks on me once, and I told the teacher he had brought them to school. After that, I was sure he was gonna come to school and pound me, or do worse, and I actually remember dreading going to school for a few days. But weirdly enough, he didn't show up. Day by day went by, and he was absent. And then for some reason I never fully knew, I never saw him again. Well, it was close to the end of the school year anyway... or maybe he just jumped back in his craft and went back to his planet. Either way, I want to believe.

Or as Home Improvement once put it, parodying the X-Files:

"The truth is out there..." -- Tim Taylor
"No Taylor, you're the one who's out there." --Jill Taylor

All About Reptiles

This is but a mere re-creation.

In selecting the new font for the glorious header of this blog, I came across this oldish Fraktur Nazi-esque one that reminded me of how much I appreciated the Old English font as a kid. I don't know why, perhaps it connected me with my humdrum "I say good sirs!" roots, but something about it could always class up any run of the mill school assignment. All those unnecessary lines, serif hooks, and random hairs, really made me think I was submitting something of quality when I handed in the 4th grade hyper-pixelated masterpiece "ALL ABOUT REPTILES" (in full caps, no less). Now that was fancy!

This was of course back in the day when computers were interesting. The one in the classroom had a really kiddied-up word processor that came with three fonts, and for whatever reason, Old English was one of them. It also had three sizes for header type: large, huge, and "make that, two pages." It allowed you to sort through what kind of image you wanted to adorn the header of your document from a list of severely pixelated and random clipart. Back then it was cool if you had a picture on your reports, whether related or not... so I went with the giant Indian with full feathery headdress.

Between these stylistic choices, "ALL ABOUT REPTILES" was complete at maybe 100 words, and it was pretty badass.

Girls are Smarter

You try being cool in that room!

Girls are not always obviously smarter than boys... just most of the time. The rest of the time they are still smarter than us, but it just isn't as obvious. I can say this because, firstly, I have extensive experience with being a boy, and secondly, I was a "smart" one at that, and thirdly, I liked girls. And trust me, all the good being "smart" ever did me (when it came to girls) was alert me to the fact that they are definitely smarter than us... or at least, that we are dumber than them... and that the sooner we all just accept it, the better off everyone will be, amiright fellas?

Don't get me wrong, brain power has nothing to do with it. We could be genius level but still forget our own names when in the presence of a girl we like. We can get all A's but still put our shirts on inside out. It's one thing or the other. Regardless, girls always have a way of deflating a boy's head, no matter what could allegedly be in there. Besides, if you asked the 8yo me, he'd agree.  So let me speak from personal experience and the hope I'll get on the smarter half's good side by telling them what they want to hear... (hey ladies!).

See, my elementary school triad (all boys) was absolutely convinced that the girls were plotting to get us (and who do you think gave us that inkling?), so we'd huddle around our lunch table dispensing plans to counteract their sneak attacks. Theys be up to sumptin! Being boys, we foolishly believed that if we put our heads together, we could outsmart them (I know, our first mistake). So we'd sidle up on their conversations. We'd torment them on the playground with our inane questions to confuse them. We'd act dumb just to annoy them. We'd even bug their lunch table if we had to! But one thing was certain, we'd stick together. We couldn't let even the nice ones lead us astray and thinking they were nice because that was their trickery at work for sure. After a few weeks flaunting our paranoia, we'd successfully given them all the more reason to contend, indeed, that "boys... are... stupid..." which was exactly what we wanted them to think. Duh!

It was a living, breathing, He-Man Woman-Haters club, I kid you not, and with all the same problems the Little Rascals had. Firstly, I knew a few very nice girls who didn't seem to be such a threat, and it made me second guess the whole scheme. Secondly, the plans would always backfire anyways. I know, right? How could that happen? Well, here's how it started. When it came time to form groups, I was always the one boy who ended up with a girl group (I was a dork and rarely got picked by my fellow kind), so I know firsthand what that group dynamic is like. When it was an all-boy group with the one girl, and the project was to paint a picture of a certain weather pattern, her "bright and sunny day" was no match for our impending hurricane. The boys called the shots and the girl just had to sit and soak. She'd insist: "But...but... I wanted the bright and sunny day!" To which my friend would rebut: "Oh don't soak about it!" Girls 0, Boys 1.

Little did we know that that little event would spark a little war, an event so insignificant that we'd long forgotten about it, but enough evidence to prove... once and for all that... girls can't help but make us look like dumbasses. Soon the tables were turned, and now I was the only boy in an all-girl project group, and the girls realized their chance to get even. The project was to go out and find all the kinds of life you could drag out of the woods, and I knew I'd be lucky if they even let me hold the bag. That's just the way it goes. Suck it up, get over it, play fetch, and be the one called on to do the digging and touch anything slimy or covered in dirt. Whatever you do, don't say anything. You're on thin ice just being the smelly boy. And that's usually fine with me because I'm generally okay with being pussy-whipped, but then they just gave me a marker and blank paper and told me to draw. They weren't even going to cut me in on the cool part and take me along out in the woods with them, but just make me sit back and draw whatever they got to find. Ouch. That was just cruel. The emasculation made my genitals implode into my body.

Normally you'd think this would've been any boy's paradise. Sit back, put your feet up, and let girls do the work for you, because you're literally the third wheel in this assignment, and just hope that they do a good job on it because your grades are now in their competent female hands. But no. I had to work too because despite having no say and no role in the project, they threatened to go tell the teacher that I was not "doing my part" just because I decided to scribble random lines all over the page when they told me to draw their leaves and sticks. I remember I scribbled a big bunch of lines and they got so mad they ran over to the teacher to tell on me, so I quickly turned those scribbled lines into something that looked like a "tree" ... like "here you go teech, no, I wasn't scribbling, I was drawing a tree." My genitals popped back out after that.

So you see, them girls were out to get us after all, no question about it. And what was a boy to do in that situation? Obviously, sit there like a bump on a log and answer a "whatever" to any show of niceness or peace offering. I told on them to the teacher, said they were treating me like I didn't have any part in their project, but what did I possibly have to show for it? Sure, they'd been a little funny by making me the useless appendage to their little team, but everything else I'd done on my own... the rudeness, the obnoxiousness, the wasting time, the furious scribbling all over my project sheet ...etc. The teacher asked them to apologize and they did.

Then what? I was asked to stop whining and participate. It seemed the only one really out to get me was me... (which is exactly what they wanted me to think, of course!), so I went from being the "stupid boy" of the group to being the best artist in the group, and drew a few scenes from the woods to compliment our project, and the girls even started treating me a bit better. All I know is, the moment I decided to do my part, let the girls lead, and play along, we all started to get along. And what can I say? I'm a guy. Our brains take time to compute the obvious.

Sometimes I wonder if the other boys ever smartened up too. 

"Ink, Stink, Purple Dink, Poop, Fart, Out!"

If you asked me what my favorite music was when I was 8 years old, I probably would have said "Jurassic Park music" (because that was my answer once). But if you had sung the first line of any naughty, dirty, schoolyard song, I would have been able to sing the rest right back to you. I memorized this stuff on the long bus rides home from school, as the girls clapped hands and rhymed them off one after another. Everything from the bizarre "Miss Mary Mack" to the barely-acceptable "Mary Had a Steamboat"  got drilled into my not-so-innocent head.

How this stuff spread all over the country in the decades prior to the internet just goes to show the incredible persistance of kids' appreciation for all that is mucky, yucky, perverse, and anything else they can get away with.

Mary had a steamboat, the steamboat had a bell;
Mary went to Heaven, the steamboat went to…
HELLo operator, just give me number nine;
And if you disconnect me, I’ll chop off your…
BEHIND the ‘frigerator, there was a pice of glass.
Mary sat upon it and cut her little… 
ASSK me no more questions, I’ll tell you no more lies:
The boys are in the bathroom, pulling down their…
FLIES are in the kitchen, bees are in the park,
Mary and the principal are [kissing]* in the dark!

*(the word wasn't always "kissing"...)

Of course the girls were smart enough to not sing the really dirty ones full of sex and bodily functions in the proximity of adults...and of course we boys weren't. It was no surprise then why the teacher suggested "one potato, two potato" instead when my friends mentioned to her that "Ink, Stink, Purple dink, Poop, Fart, Out!" was our way of calling each other "out" for a game at recess. And you can imagine that "Man from Nantucket," "Magical Fruit," and whatever incarnation of the "Diarrhea Song" you prefer also factored in, along with my specialty--the ones full of gore and violence: ("Burning of the School" sung to the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," or anything involving peer torture or the death of Barney.

Glory, glory hallelujah
Teacher hit me with a ruler
I hid behind the door with a loaded .44
And my teacher don't teach no more.

Joy to the World, Josh is dead.
We bar-be-cued his head!
What happened to the body?
We flushed it down the potty!
And round and round it goes!

(^That one went out to a kid my friend and I particularly didn't like... named Josh!)

And just to rub in the fact that girls were more subtle with these songs, I distinctly remember a girl who teased us with "My My Mother, Your Mother", which includes the famous line, "Boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider, girls go to college to get more knowledge." Not one to be put down by a girl, my friend chimed in, "Boys go to Mars to get more candy bars!" It was an ingenious comeback, but it was short lived, and she quickly shot back something about how "boys go to Venus to get a bigger..." [ahem!]. That's when we knew we were outwitted (in more ways than one). Only then did we know shame.

(For more fun songs, visit Milkmilklemonade.com)