“BREAK A LEG: Part Two”

(On Making Me Look Good)

My high school dramatics-coach career lasted an incredible quarter of a century+. I’ve counted and before it was over, I’d directed/co-directed fifty-two high school plays and/or musicals. But believe me, had some crystal-ball fortune teller ever prophesied such a terrifying future to me, I would have run away and joined the circus. Nobody knew more than I just how unqualified I was to fulfill such a prediction.

So what happened? A rocky start. That’s what happened. So many things would go wrong. No big surprise considering I was the guy who’d virtually wilt at the prospect of being commissioned to pilot such an above-his-pay-grade helm.

Take for instance the ordeal of my first time being tasked with three one-act plays to produce and direct on my own at Foxcroft Academy. I say on my own because it wasn’t like it had been eleven years ago at Belfast when I’d inherited an army (The Footlights Club) who could’ve/would’ve managed just fine with or without me. No, there was no army to carry me through and make me look good this time.

So what went wrong? Well, right off the bat, two of my best and brightest plays fizzled right out from under me due to critical absenteeism at scheduled practices. That was crushing. The professional embarrassment over such a failure! I couldn’t figure out how other directors somehow managed to strong-arm their players into seeing that showing-up-at-rehearsals is a very big priority. Me? No General Patton. All I was is just some passive little ‘know-little’ who happened to have accidentally parachuted into the “director’s” chair, and was just going through the motions because, honestly…? I’m ashamed to say I simply didn’t know how to do it.

So there I was, Nervous Norvous me, left only with my B-side play, the least important of the three; a silly, childish piece of fluff titled “Once Upon A Playground,” the one I’d basically inserted into the program only as a filler. Talk about feeling naked.

So despite the fact that I wanted to gather up my family and run away to Canada, we were required to do the play in front of the Academy’s student body first, once that evening, and then once more for the kids in the lower grades the next day. I was going to die!

I remember the feeling of abject shame right down to the pit of my stomach while hearing the sound of the audience, quieting right down to watch as the curtains finally swept apart for our first performance of my fiasco. It was Zero hour. D-Day. And oh how I pitied my kids for having had the bad luck to end up with… me. And now everybody would know, would see with their own eyes, just what an incompetent loser I was as the so-called “director.”

Backstage, and following along with my script, I listened to my kids out there begin delivering their memorized lines. What an empty little play, the voice in my head harangued. What was I ever THINKING?

About three minutes into the play, I was startled practically out of my shoes by a thunderous, raffish noise that sounded something like a crash! Two seconds later in, I’d identified the ‘concussion’ as… laughter. Audience laughter!

Ohmigod! Was that a contemptuous laugh???

Utterly confused I looked down upon the last delivered line. Huh! OK. Yeah, it was… kind of a funny line… but that funny? And by then of course the show was moving on at its inevitable clip, totally out of my control. But before long…

It happened again! Another volley of belly laughs. And not sounding one bit mean-spirited either! And then another one. What the heck was going on?!

What was going on was that the play was working! Somehow succeeding way beyond my mousy, second-guessing expectations. It had never occurred to me that, duh (a) the playwright knew what he was doing when he wrote the thing, that he was good at what he did for his living, and that (b) the kids I’d cast could be trusted to do their part at making the thing work. What a surprise.

But here’s the real reason this dinky little offering somehow finally got off the ground? It turned out that I had two little freshman firecrackers in that cast, two young women who had SO much Pollyanna-esque-optimism and drive to, first and foremost, just be in plays and secondly, once cast, to do everything in their power to make those plays succeed.

That’s the truth. And my God, I had no way of imagining the walloping impact this duo was destined to have on not only me over the next four years but also on Foxcroft Academy’s dramatics program overall. God bless the freshmen, Sarah Thistle and Marliese Eberbach!

So know this: the overall, underlying purpose of me writing this post is… all about me setting the record straight. Because of them, I ended up getting one hell of a great reputation over a number of years as an award-winning drama coach. But that’s not where the bulk of the credit should have gone.

So here it is: this is all about me giving credit where the credit’s due.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

OK. Let me back up a little first.

The first time I held auditions as the new director, something quickly became clear to me: on the one hand, I had a handful of underclassmen who’d come in with the greatest of hopes to be chosen. It was obvious that The Try-Out was something of great importance to them. And… not only had they come to me so admirably prepared, but also with an unbelievable ethic of teamwork and support for one another. Like, I mean they were altruistically helping each other get prepared for their readings, giving each other selfless encouragement to others in the hopes that they too might succeed, rather than approaching the whole ordeal with the hostile intent of a dog-eat-dog competition.

On the other hand was the gang of upperclassmen boys and girls who arrived all cocky, smirking, and openly sneering at their inexperienced, younger counterparts… and right in front of me. Oh yes, they knew this was an open “audition” alright, and yet their vibe was, We don’ neeed no steenkin’ try-outs. Us getting all the juiciest parts? That’s a foregone conclusion, it’s in the bag. Because we’re the varsity and that’s just the way it goes, you losers.

And although I had serious qualms about doing it (and as a result had to endure a long period of guiltily second-guessing myself thereafter)… I assigned roles not to those who seemed to have the most credentials necessarily, but to those who actually demonstrated the most skill, energy, and desire during the audition. Meaning that a lot of those juniors and seniors got dumped in favor of underclassmen who had just honestly earned their places with hard work and talent, damnit!

And oh, what a high school, drama-queen scandal that turned out to be! Upperclassmen’s parents were not happy campers. And the dumpees? Dumbfounded, yet mad as wet hens. But... in the long run, it turned out the best thing I ever could have done. For the kids, for me, and especially for the Academy’s drama program.

And so yes, my directorial career had to get shakily jump-started with the frivolous “Once Upon the Playground.” And I couldn’t believe it got such an enthusiastic reception. Because I guess me, being the dyed-in-the-wool college English major, I was feeling my job required more literarily-meaty offerings with dark and complex themes, overtones, symbolism, double-entendres, and elements of existentialism… which is pretty much why shortly after “Playground,” I opted to put on Albee’s “The Zoo Story,” the one-act featured in my last post.

How pretentious of me. I had so much to learn.

So my tenure got off to an embarrassing, molasses crawl over the first couple of seasons. Reason being, (besides not having a hint of a clue as to how to proceed) I was choosing my plays from among the same musty, curmudgeonly classic titles that F.A. had been putting on since back when I was a student. And my God, weren’t they ever talky and boring!

So one day, I pushed myself to begin to look for something new. Something unique. And I started sending away for play catalogues from all over the country. And as summer vacation loomed, I was deep into poring over the descriptions of many much-more-interesting-sounding, just-published scripts.

Script-reading turned out to be fun. To me, the script catalogs were like the old Sears and Roebuck Christmas Toy Catalogs, each play description sending visions of sugar plums of all the props and costumes we would need to get dancing in my imagination.

So I started ordering. Like a madman! Perusing scripts became my newest hobby, and I found myself rabidly getting into it. For a ‘know-little director,’ at least this was something I could do. And my burgeoning script-library began filling up mostly with some very odd titles such as “Postponing the Heat Death of the Universe,” SECOND Prize: TWO Months in Leningrad,” and “Nice People Dancing to Good Country Music.” As time went on it got so that before I felt confident about a purchasing a title for my program, I’d honestly ended up reading close to a hundred scripts. And I’m talking each year! (Did I mention that I’m a little obsessive-compulsive?)

Picking the Perfect Play developed into one of my unique Super Powers (OK, let’s just call them my stronger suits, my forte if you will). Say anything you want about me but, damn, I could pick a great play. The other super power being that I was actually very good at coaxing kids out of their little shells, and really releasing and expressing their emotions effectively. But that’s it. That’s all I had. Other than that… I was just some friggin’ moron in the field. But anyway, one day…

Ding! I’d found it! The best play out there! Something brand new and odd and unique in the catalogs, something just published too, something that no one in the entire state had probably heard of yet, let alone had seen performed. Something deliciously unusual.

(from the catalog…)

INCIDENT AT SAN BAJO by Brad Korbesmeyer Short Play, Drama / 4w, 3m

The residents of a trailer camp have quite a story to tell. A stranger tried to sell each of them a mysterious elixir which he claimed would make them live longer. Most, of course, did not buy the elixir –and they are now dead, the water supply having been poisoned by the stranger. Only seven are left to tell the tale– the seven who drank the elixir which, it turned out, was an antidote! Each of their stories is told in a series of interlocking monologues directed at an unseen interviewer. The effect is somewhat like a “60 Minutes” segment.

Yes! This was the one! And when I ordered my dozen copies of the “San Bajo” script, I actually felt excited to be committing us to a different sort of play at least. And when I began our first meeting with my, “OK kids, here’re your copies. This is the play we’re doing. First read-through is right now… I felt a curious little spike in my heart-rate, a little blip of passion that was beginning to go right to work at countering the usual dread that normally handicapped my heart in these endeavors. Because this one was unlike any play I had read before.

What I had no idea of was that this was the play that was going to change everything.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Early on, I’d decided (in order to set the dark and mysterious tone of the piece) that the first thing I wanted the audience to hear while waiting for the curtains to open would be Bob Dylan’s “The Man in the Long Black Coat.” That song is captivating, lurking, spooky, and evocative of some mysterious event so very like “The Incident at San Bajo” it was uncanny.

You don’t have to listen to the whole thing, as we were only going to use the first minute and a half. But here, take a quick listen if you will and try to imagine you’re seated in a packed auditorium waiting on the curtains to swish open, and then this mood-setter starts up. Close your eyes and see where the music takes you. Listen to the tone. Listen to… the crickets:

Most often I’d have that piece playing while the kids came in and took to setting up the rehearsal stage. And right away a positive sea-change overtook the spirit of our rehearsals, which were becoming a labor of love.

Because this little newcomer in the catalogs was a unique ensemble piece wherein each actor is given a coequal starring role, it is an actor’s dream. Each of the seven individual players is intermittently a star in his/her own right, simultaneously occupying one of the six “stations” spread left-to-right across the stage (one station being occupied by a “married couple” together). When the single spotlight is highlighting one of the stations, the other five are left frozen, out of sight in silent darkness. Each “station” is an off-and-on little “micro-world” of its own.

Sure, the entire play is set in the one-and-the-same trailer park— each character being one of the trailer park’s trailer-trash losers. But each is being interviewed in his/her own “mobile home” individually— one, a guy a who’s a conspiracy-theory-ranting gas station attendant; an octogenarian spinster; a wannabe-suave ladies’ man in a smoking jacket, sipping bourbon; a middle-aged, new-age, lady-psychic scammer; and a shallow yuppie couple hell-bent on keeping up with all the latest trends. Point being: the physical space each character occupies on stage is a disparate little time-space microcosm, replete with that character’s emotional, educational, psychological, and spiritual plane. An actor’s dream.

The audience never hears the interviewer’s voiced questions, but of course the characters’ responses make the prompts obvious.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So along with the two other one-acts, we put “The Incident at San Bajo” on in front of the school and then the community. We were a big hit. Then it was time to board the bus and head out to the Maine State Principals’ Association Regional One-Act Play Competitions.

The Regionals never know what hit’em. We took them completely by surprise and by storm. “San Bajo” steamrolled right over the other schools. Not only did we take first place, but each and every individual of the seven took home his/her own much coveted All-Cast Festival Award, a rare accomplishment. And when it was all over, everybody was talking about the play itself, and about us.

(below, an encouraging note from our supportive headmaster)

So two weeks later, we hit the States on a roll… but immediately found ourselves humbled. We were up against the much bigger schools, a lot of them, and it showed— bigger schools with fatter wallets, humongous programs, and decades of greater experience, schools who were used to winning.

We were the small school underdogs, ripe for failure…

Such an interesting thing though, these competitions. Your big yellow school bus stops at a local motel for you all to drop the bags and suitcases into your assigned rooms, and then you rush to get right back on the bus. Next, over at the host school, you unload all the props, register yourselves at the welcoming table in the school lobby, get your festival badges, get escorted to your assigned to a classroom (which will be your home base over the next two days), get handed your programs, discover what time of day (Saturday or Sunday) your play is scheduled to hit the stage, and then you just sort of dissolve into the chattering crowds for a bit.

It’s a time for all the kids to meet and befriend their competitors, while the directors do likewise. There are three sessions each day: morning, afternoon, and evening— each one followed by The Unnerving Critique where your cast and crew (with their little tails between their legs, most likely) get herded into the designated ‘Judges’ Classroom’ and face the music.

It’s kind of like a rodeo.

Over the entire weekend you’re seated with your crew in the auditorium (watching all the other schools perform their little hearts out), seated in the cafeteria for the lunches, or seated in your assigned classroom going over and over your lines.

But you know, it’s a wonderful thing, getting to watch the spunk and the amazing creativity of all those various high school students on parade. Often daunting too, because you do find yourself struggling with imagining just how well your play might get measured up against the ones you’re watching.

But somewhere during those seemingly endless two days comes That Heart Attack Moment! It’s… your turn!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Thank goodness I’d chosen the first two-minutes of Bob Dylan’s “The Man in the Long Black Coat” as our intro for “San Bajo.” Because while we were toiling at the last-minute tweaks of our props set-up back-stage, in the semi-darkness back there behind those closed curtains, the lethargic tempo of that music (which was soft and slow, and contained the sound of the night-time chirping of crickets) felt familiar and comfortable, and seemed to calm us all right down. Seemed to make the whole thing feel that this was nothing more than just another dress rehearsal back home.

My visual memory of those last moments have the actors, like busy, little, methodical shadows, silently tip-toeing about the stage, and moving things around in slow motion.

And then OMG! The curtains swept open. And there we were.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

OK, so no, we didn’t win. The competition was really stiff. Still, what we did do is knock the socks off everyone! So it was a moral victory. There is no third place trophy, at least there wasn’t at the time (1990), but according to the judges’ notes, that’s where we placed. Sure, we’d have liked to have won, but the enthusiasm that was showered upon us from all the other directors and cast members throughout the rest of the festival left us all very proud.

Two signs indicating how well we’d done were (1) in the following year, and the years that followed, we saw many, many other schools choosing to enter their versions of “The Incident at San Bajo” into the competition, so I’d say the Samuel French Publishing Company owed our school a big debt of gratitude for the free advertising, plus (2) before heading for home, we were profusely congratulated on our performance by the judges and were informed that in the following year we’d be placed at the highest level competitively (i.e., we’d be judged specifically against only the top-tier schools). And see, I didn’t even know that then, that there were two levels of the competitions. Which shouldn’t surprise anyone, since at that time an encyclopedia could have been published containing all the directorial things I wasn’t aware of.

But… look at us: WE’D MADE IT TO STATES!! And so yes, this was the play, and the cast, that began making all the difference in the Academy’s dramatics program over the next ten years back then.

So with FA’s student body back home already awed by our stellar performance on the hometown stage, some changes were in store. For one, it immediately became a lot easier for me to get boys to try out for the plays. When I’d begun, 98% of those trying out were females, while 98% of the scripts I could get my hands on called for mostly guys. Secondly, over time our productions began drawing larger and larger audiences, not just the parents and families of our cast members anymore, but seriously interested theater-goers from the neighboring towns and general area were showing up. So we were steadily building a reputation, which meant our program was beginning to haul in more money on ticket sales for a change.

So, “Incident at San Bajo” really had put us on the map. But does that mean I finally got over my Nervous Norvousness as a director? Hah! Nope. Not at all. It just meant more ulcers for me. Don’t get me wrong. I loved seeing the plays I’d selected do so well. But there were always, every single time, those lingering terrors threatening to, you know, unexpectedly collapse everything… all those what-IFS that could end a play in disaster in the wink of a poked eye.

I just wasn’t cut out for a tension-filled career.

But my actors were. They thrived on it. Things did go wrong, of course. But my kids always took care of those things. They were amazing. So it’s embarrassing for me to have gotten the credit for the way our dramatics program took off over the next decade. Yes, I picked great plays. I can take credit for that. And yes, I was pretty good at getting kids to let their emotions loose, and to project their voices. But that was it. The only other thing that I was good at was… well, letting go of things, letting my amazing crackerjack kids loose on each play. They were wonderful.

So here I am, setting the record straight: The lion’s share of the credit for making Foxcroft Academy shine in dramatics and helping the drama program grow and improve during my tenure goes to the kids, the little actors I was so blessed to get the chance to be associated with. And this is especially true for the three above, my drama wunderkinder: the amazing Sarah Thistle, Marliese Eberbach, and Pat Myers, all members of the class of 1994. They put their magic into those “great plays” I selected. They made each one simply fly. They made me practically famous as a director.

Only it wasn’t me. It was them.

I was only picking the plays and sort of going along for the ride…

And look at what a ride it was…

**THE SECOND-BEST PLAY WE EVER DID**— **GOT US A COUPLE OF MONTY- PYTHON-ESQE LETTERS OF COMPLAINT FROM LOCAL MINISTERS, HEH HEH**

Et Cetera…

Ah, those halcyon days (with ulcer)…

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STAGE FRIGHT: Always Say ‘Break A Leg,’ Never ‘Good Luck’

When I was a high school freshman, the dramatics coach tried to recruit me to audition for a play he was doing. The very thought of that terrified the hell out of me. I’d had stage fright all my life, and I’d never even been on an actual stage. And I told him so. He said not to worry. I told him I freeze whenever I even have to do an oral book report in front of the class. He told me not to worry. I told him it wasn’t even possible for me to memorize anything. Again, not to worry. So, I flat out told him I didn’t want to be in a play.

He told me to meet him in the library right after school that afternoon. And back then, we were all pretty much duty-bound to do whatever a teacher told us to do. So… I showed up.

But in the meantime though, dumb-ass little me got to stupidly wondering, What would it be like to be… a stage star? And then I got to thinking that… maybe this coach actually could, no— that he obviously could, get me over the terror that always gripped me whenever any number of silent eyes were locked onto me. That his job, after all. So yeah, it occurred to me that just maybe my life could be about to change. BIG-time. Because I’d always been a dreamer.

I’d begun imagining the glory of the thunderous cheers and applause while I, standing alone up there on the stage, was taking my final bows. It felt… good. Exciting. Where might it l all lead? I was asking myself. Hollywood? It made sense. Because I assumed that many a Paul Newman might likely have begun their super-star careers on humble high school stages just like ours. After which… well, one thing had just naturally led to the next thing which could just as naturally lead to… well, being a heartthrob eventually. And getting to sign thousands of autographs. I was getting excited.

So right after school I strolled my way to the library with as confident a smile as I could paste onto my face.

A sign taped to the door sternly warned, AUDITIONS. NO ADMITTANCE.

I stepped inside. “Close the door,” I was told, rather curtly.

He in a bad mood or something? I wondered. I closed the door behind me, but suddenly, once inside, I was unexpectedly overtaken by a slightly creepy, ominous feeling. I’d been expecting droves of my classmates being there, all clamoring for the big part I was probably going to walk away with. But instead, no, it was only me. Only me and the director. One on one.

I would’ve preferred the door left open…

Then, checking his watch like we’d already run out of time, he slapped a dog-eared script into my hands, turned on his heel, and headed off for the opposite far end of the long library. “Page 36!” he called over his shoulder. Well, the script was already opened to page 36, so… “Read the highlighted passage!”

For some reason, my chicken-livered little heart had begun to worm its way up about three inches in my chest. I tried swallowing, but it didn’t want to go back down. Looking down at his own opened copy, he barked, “Begin reading!”

I cleared my throat a few times first, but then managed it. I read the passage. And looked up to find him contemplating me with a puzzled look on his face.

“What?” I asked.

“I couldn’t hear what you said, is what. I couldn’t hear a thing you just read. You know, if I can’t hear you… in here, with just me and you, how’s even the first row of the audience ever going to hear you? So OK. Once again, once again. From the top! Louder this time. Project your voice!”

Well, I’d thought I’d read the words exceedingly well, but…

His terse manner was crushing me like a cigarette butt under his toe. Yes, I know. I can easily see it now. I cringe to admit it, but I was one exceedingly fragile little wuss back then.

Anyway, I took a deep breath and bellowed out the lines.

“OK. I did hear you that time. But there was no emotion. None whatsoever. You’re not reading telephone book listings, you know. I mean, look at what you’re reading. Look at it. What’s the character feeling there, do you think? Happy? Sad? What??”

Jeez. I didn’t know there was gonna be a quiz. I looked down at the words. “I dunno,” I said. “Mad?”

“Bingo! Angry! But not just angry. Angry as hell! Can you show me angry as hell?”

Well, I knew he wasn’t ready for the honest answer to that. “I dunno,” I mumbled. “I’m not sure.” Inside I was dying for some reason. Fading fast. Becoming the deer in the headlights.

“OK OK OK,” he said. “Lemme show you. Watch me…. OK?”

So… yeah. I watched him. He began by looking down at his feet for a few moments. Taking a couple of deep breaths. And then… whoa! His head snapped up so suddenly, I recoiled! His face was flushed. And his eyes? They were locked on me, and he was seething! And before I knew it, he’d started pacing, back and forth, in a rage that seemed just too great to contain, and needed more damn room!

Wham! He launched into a loud, raving tirade! He started going nuts right there in the library where you were only supposed to whisper! And even though yes, I realized intellectually that this was just a demonstration… I was feeling a scold stab of guilt anyway because emotionally… I couldn’t unconvince myself that it was really me personally he was raging at because he’d simply just had it with me and my little chicken-shit hesitation! I mean, Jesus, I was watching a temper tantrum growing right before my eyes! An all-out Jeckyll and Hyde!

And when he was finished (well, whenever he was finished), the only proof that I’d ever even been there was a dog-eared script I’d left dropped on the library floor and the click of the door closing behind me!

Little Elvis had fled the building! And from now on, Little Elvis was gonna be content spending the rest of his spineless little life cowering somewhere off in the shadows where it’s gonna be safe…

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So. Guess what happens. Five-plus years later and drenched in nervous perspiration, I’m seated before a school superintendent, having just inked the very first contract of my future thirty-four-year high school English-teaching career life.

Wow. Quite daunting for little ol’ shrinking-violet me; however it’s done and dusted. I heave a big sigh of relief. I’m rich, for cryin’ out loud. I’m making $5,618 bucks a year! I’m gonna buy me a new car!

But… as the super is shaking my hand, sealing the deal as it were, he hits me with this: “So. You’ll be teaching four English classes, two speech classes, and taking over as the new dramatics coach. Again, welcome aboard!”

“Excuse me?” My blood is running cold! “What was that?”

“I said, ‘Welcome aboard…’”

“No. Not that. ‘Dramatics coach?’”

“Yes. And congratulations.”

“Oops. Uh-oh! Wait wait wait. Uhmmm, look, I’m sorry. I thought I was just signing on to teach English. Right? I mean… OK, honestly? See, I’ve never even been in a play in my life. I’ve hardly ever even been to any plays. I mean, I don’t know the first thing about dramatics. So… I guess what I’m saying is… I don’t think I can possibly…”

“And yet…” and here he’s studying me over the top of his glasses, “you just signed a contract agreeing to be doing exactly that.”

I do the old double-take here. “What? I did?”

And while my eyes crazily careen down through the words and lines and paragraphs on the top page lying before me, I hear him say, and with an ice-cold, razor-sharp edge… “I must say… this is odd, because I definitely thought you’d just told me… that you wanted to teach here this year…”

Yikes!

(If I’d had any of my wits about me, and any amount of courage at all (which I hadn’t), I suppose I could have told him, “Why no. Says here I just signed up for ‘DRAMAGICS,’ whatever the hell THAT is.” Truth is, though, I was so nervous I’d missed the misspelling and only right now just noticed it.)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Long story short? I did “become” the dramatics “director.”

I lucked out somewhat, though. I inherited a student army of thespians known as The Footlights Club.

And more fortunately, those kids, unlike moi, really knew what they were doing, thank God.

So, throughout that year I ended up surviving co-directing one syrupy, patriotic, three-act play titled This Is My Country, which gave me two or three heart attacks on a weekly basis;

“directing” one two-act comedy (ditto on the heart attacks); and then “directing” three one-act plays, one of which would be required to compete in the Maine State Principals’ Associations Area One-Act Play contest. For that one, I chose a stodgy, dry, classic British drama titled “The Rocking-Horse Winner” by D. H. Lawrence. It was a clever little thing.

But get this, and wouldn’t you just know it— somehow (much to my chagrin) the damn thing actually won!

For me, this meant two more long weeks of rehearsals, and then a bus-trip over to Bowdoin College for the State level competition where, thankfully, our play earned nothing more than an Honorable Mention.

And by the way… the administration was oddly flabbergasted by the surprise of us winning. It was like… they didn’t know how to take the news. The school had apparently never ever won at the drama competition before and, being so totally baseball, basketball, football, wrestling, and golf oriented, it had apparently never even occurred to them that such an event might conceivably be a thing. I mean… it was almost as if I’d done something wrong. You know, like… nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!

So you see, this fiasco turned out to be one of what I call the many “successful-failure stories” of my life. I’ve had a slew of them. I mean, look: without even a stinkin’ clue as to what I was doing, I came out of it a first-time winner. Not that coming out of it a winner was what I wanted, mind you. All I wanted was for it just to be over. But no. Beginner’s luck. Now I had to keep on having rehearsals every day until it was time, two weeks later, to load up the bus and take the show on the road to Bowdoin College for the States..

Why ME?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Anyway, I couldn’t wait to bail on that town after only a year (for tons of reasons). And I immediately lucked out, landing a position at a school that not only had an amazingly successful drama program already in place, but one that was manned by a simply incredible drama director. Phew! And so, for the decade I spent there, I was able to just sit back and enjoy his (not my) productions from the comfort and safety of an audience seat, right where I wanted to be. It was great. Ten years without having to “direct” a single play. I was living the dream.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

But after that, I ended up moving back to my old hometown. Took an English-teaching slot at my old alma mater, Foxcroft Academy. It felt good to be home. Yeah, I did have duties of course. I ended up being the advisor of the school newspaper for one thing. But as long as it wasn’t coaching drama, that was OK with me…

But before long, alas… the need for a high school drama coach once more raised its ugly head and began looming over me. And I was not happy about that. I sure as hell didn’t want it. That was the last thing I wanted, my mantra being, Let somebody else do it! I tried fighting off the pressures the administrative mafia was putting on me, using any and all the excuses I could come up with.

I mean sure, I get it, the headmaster didn’t realize that, deep down inside, I was that same, mousey-little, neurotic, post-traumatic-stress-disordered ‘high school freshman’ who’d once actually run for his life from the library of this very same school! I mean… I guess I looked like a normal human being and all.

Anyway, they finally got me box-canyoned-in between a rock and a hard place. I caved.

But you can’t imagine not only the cruel irony, but the stress of being the so pathologically self-conscious, stage-frightened, shrinking violet who’d never even been in (could never have been in) a frickin’ play in his whole damned lifetime! Finding myself back living in the same nightmare all over again? The nightmare of being lashed to the helm of the Good Ship Foxcroft Drama Club? The nightmare of the large crowds. Moms and dads and their families! School board members and (shudder!) administrators! Colleagues! And, I dunno, just… random people walking right in off the street. And to do what? Gawk at me and my pathetic little productions with their cold, glassy, and judgmental Medusa stares!

And me backstage, sweating it out with… What if one or more of my kids suddenly gets a lethal case of stage fright (like I would have) and just freezes right up in place? What could I do then?! How could I ever help them?! Or… What if my slapped-together little “opuses” happens to turn out really really bad?! I’m talkin’ a major flop! I’m talkin’ tanked! I’m talkin’… stink, stank, stunk here! What then?

Talk about feeling naked! You know, if anyone ever decided to make a biographical movie of my early drama-director life, they’d hafta steal Don frickin’ Knotts out from under The Andy Griffith Show to play me.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

OK, so obviously one of my standard drama duties was again going to include co-directing the annual musical, like before. I had no idea then it then, but we were destined to eventually pull off Fiddler on the Roof, The Music Man, Oklahoma, Carousel, and Guys and Dolls, before I was through. And again, my task would only be to handle all the speaking parts (as opposed to the choral). But I was fortunate there, as the musical director was more way than competent as the real guy at the helm, so each one of those plays were going to come off a success with, or without, me.

And on top of that, I was also expected to choose and direct either a two- or 3-act drama, plus the usual two or three one-act plays, one of which would again be expected to compete in the Maine State Principal’s One-Act Play competition.

So there I was once, a decade later and once again, wallowing in the same utter dysfunction again as did Catch-22’s lost soul, Major Major Major Major…

Long story short, I just had to make myself put my big-boy pants on, bite the bullet, and man-up. Just get on with it. Despite the fact that things would, and did, go wrong sometimes, of course. Well… actually, practically all the time.

Oh, I’ve got lots of war stories. Stories that’d make you cringe. But, we’ve only got time for one here. Maybe if I can pull off a Part II, I can torture you with two or three more. But anyway, here goes:

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

One of the one-act plays I selected very early on was “The Zoo Story” by Edward Albee.

I chose that one because (A) lazy me back then, there are only two characters in it (easier to get two kids to show up for practices at the same time), (B) it required only a minimal set, simply a single park bench (easy peasey), and (C) I wanted to do something a little avant-garde and “relevant” (I mean jeez, Albee wrote the shocker-classic Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, didn’t he. So by going with this one, I suppose I was sorta praying that this particular play might just make me look… (alright, dream on) somewhat cool, probably.

The play is a little existential slice of the Theater of the Absurd… and dark. Right up my alley.

So this very odd duck of a play was to be performed for two nights (thank God, not three!). It ends with the two characters getting into a nasty argument wherein one of them whips out a switchblade knife. And during the ensuing tussle, one of the guys gets stabbed in the abdomen and dies. (See? Dark. I know.)

So the thing obviously was… I needed to procure a switchblade. But from where? They were illegal.

Well as fate would have it, I’d been to Boston a couple of times as a kid. And each time I’d gone, I’d made sure to visit the rare and wondrous, Ray Bradburian emporium, Jack’s Joke Shop. Which is where I ended up blowing most of my vacation money, both times.

That store was a mid-1960s preadolescent boy’s dream! It stocked every thinkable novelty imaginable! You know, the realistic looking fake ice-cube (with the housefly frozen in the center) to casually drop into somebody’s ice tea glass! The fake boutonniere with the flower designed to ‘squirt-gun’ water right into the faces of anyone you could con into trying to give it a sniff! Professionally marked cards to cheat your friends with!! Electric joy-buzzers! Those very realistic-looking ‘puke pads’ to drop on somebody’s clean carpet! Itch powder! And something else. Some very realistic looking “switchblades,” only instead of an actual blade, it was a little steel, fine-toothed comb that would pop out of them when you pushed the button on the handle. That seemed to be just the ticket! I’m tellin’ ya, that place was a play-props heaven.

And luckily, I discovered they still had those switchblade-combs for sale. Two types, actually: the chintzy inexpensive ones, where the comb would ‘jack-knife ‘out from the side,

and the much more expensive model where the comb would telescope forward right out of the handle. And OK, the latter seemed just the ticket. I was craving realism. For with that one, you could (1) after menacingly brandishing the knife under the stage lights, keeping it deceptively moving so that the lights flashing off the steel would not allow the audience to focus on it sufficiently to see that it was actually just a comb), (2) craftily push and hold the release button which acted like a clutch, and then (3) ram your guy right in the guts with it, thereby ‘sending’ the “lethal blade” right back up inside the hollow handle (presto change-o!) instead of burying it deep into the ‘victim’s’ dramatic intestines! At which point the ‘victim,’ feigning obvious ‘pain,’ would conveniently grab and hold the handle in place there (to make it appear embedded, but more honestly to keep the little contraption from [boing!] accidentally launching itself (on its tightly-coiled spring) right off his belly and flying right into the first row of the audience, possibly poking someone’s eye out!

So anyway, we had our little “switch-comb” to practice with for two whole weeks, my two of actors going through the numbers (1,2, and 3) over and over, in slow-motion at first, and then speeding up the action. Simple choreography.

(And by the way, let me just say that that was one of the few things that was actually turning out to be fun about play preparation: playing with fun props. Even for me. Oh, the little boy in me…).

Consequently, the switchblade scene, then, was becoming the least of my worries. What was keeping me up nights was the nightmare what-if-specter of one or both of my actors forgetting his lines on stage! I mean, I’d have nineteen nervous breakdowns if I were an actor and that happened to me! But jeez, just what the hell does one do if and when that horror ever goes down? Other than simply throwing in the towel, looking out at your audience, and saying, “Hey, we’re sorry, but at this point, the show will not go on. You may all collect your money back over at the ticket table at this time. Thank you. Thank you all for coming…”?

No. Somehow I had to come up with a way to insure that I could bail my kids out and not leave them (and me) in the lurch if they did forget their lines. And the best thing I could come up with was… just lying on my belly on the stage floor, stage-left, just barely out of sight of the audience behind the edge of the curtain with script in hand, and me on hair-trigger-tenterhooks staying at-the-ready to hiss their forgotten lines out to them.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“The Zoo Story,” Opening Night…

Here’s a little basic, bare-bones synopsis of “The Zoo Story”:

PETER, a publishing executive in tweeds, wearing horn-rimmed glasses, smoking a pipe, and reading a book, is seated on the park bench near the zoo. Then, JERRY enters stage-right, charging right up to the bench and insinuating himself into Peter’s serenity by first beginning to tell Peter a story about his visit to the zoo, and eventually starting to ask Peter some unwanted personal questions about his life. Before long, things between them go downhill. Jerry wants Peter to move over and give him room to sit, which Peter prefers not to do. Jerry, just the kind of stranger you don’t want to meet alone, by yourself, begins poking Peter, demanding he move over. When that gets no results, Jerry begins punching Peter harder, telling him he now wants the entire bench for himself. And finally, Jerry just outright challenges Peter to a fight. Peter finally agrees to fight Jerry. Jerry pulls out a switchblade, and throws it at Peter’s feet, to give Peter a fighting chance. When Peter picks up the knife in a defensive position, Jerry rushes him— thereby impaling himself on his own knife. Jerry staggers, the knife embedded in him, and falls onto the bench. After a brief exchange of bizarre words from Jerry, Peter grabs his book and runs off screaming “OH MY GOD!” as Jerry dies on the bench.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So OK, it’s a thirty-minute play approximately, but it’s rapidly drawing down to the climax now. Thankfully, not a single line has been forgotten. Plus the play has gone very well so far. You can’t imagine the relief I’m feeling.

And as the end draws near, I begin doing a little play-by-play, in my head:

OK. Here it comes! The fight scene.

Good! They’re tussling!

And voila! Jerry pulls Jack’s-Joke-Shop knife-comb out of his pocket! Snick! Out flicks the blade! Perfect!

He drops it intentionally at Peter’s feet as the initiative for Peter to grab it up.

Now, with Peter holding the blade defensively, Jerry charges him, and impales himself on it!

…WHOA there!

They freeze! And remain frozen, as in a dramatic tableau, for six, maybe seven, long and silent seconds!! Longer than in our rehearsals!

And you can hear a pin drop in the gym!

It’s genius! So… why didn’t I think of this?

And then they fall apart, with Peter fleeing off-stage bellowing his final line, “Oh… my… God!“

And Jerry, now bleeding to death on the bench, delivers his last:

“Could I have planned all this?

“No… no, I couldn’t have.

“But… I think I did.”

Long silence…

He slumps.

(dies)

La Fin.

Curtains starting to close!

THUNDEROUS APPLAUSE FROM THE AUDIENCE!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Wow. While I, so deliriously relieved and crazy with emotion now that everything’s gone off without a hitch, have struggled myself dizzily up onto my feet, I see Peter marching toward me across the stage.

“My GOD! Wonderful job!” I exclaim. “You nailed it! Flawless, you guys! I don’t think I’ve ever seen a better death scene. You… outdid yourselves! Congratulations!”

But something’s off. Standing before me now, in place, Peter isn’t smiling. No, that’s an understatement. His face is a mask of horror…

And Jerry, still collapsed over on the bench, is positively glaring up at me. But… why? What is it I’m missing here? “What?!”

Looking down at Jerry, I see that he’s slowly beginning to hike up the front of his shirt.

“Well… I’m confused. I mean, what the hell, guys…? You’re scaring me here!”

But then I see it!

Oh my God!

Jerry has two navels!

No, of course he doesn’t have two navels. The “navel”-navel, the one a little higher up and off to the right of his real one, is not a navel at all. It’s… a dent! A deep… dent in his belly! A hot, reddening, sore-looking, deep, little dent!

“Oh my!” I say.

The stage crew is shouting, “Curtain call, you two! C’mon! Let’s go!”

Peter leans in closer to the both of us, and moans, “Jeez! I’m SO, SO sorry!! My God, I just… I panicked! My thumb just… slipped right over the button, Mr. Lyford!! It slipped! And I didn’t manage to get it pushed down in… the button… so…”

“Curtain call! Come on!”

I’m thinking, Omigod, as the two back away, turn, and head over to center stage. The curtain fully opened now, they take their bows, soaking up the applause and whistles. Stupidly, I even get called out to join in.

But after the curtain closes, I see Peter picking up the switchblade from the floor. “You got a replacement for tomorrow night?” he asks, handing it over to me. Jerry joins us from behind.

“Whatta you mean?”

“I mean this,” Jerry whispers, nodding down at it.

Oh jeez, the blade is still locked in the ‘out’ position. And the once proud and straight little comb is now bent, snaked into what I can only describe as three wide little S-curves!

Peter’s face is a mask of horror. “I’m sorry,” he whines. “So sorry. I panicked and froze! My thumb slipped off the damn button! It… It never collapsed back in! It stayed locked in place! I pretty much stabbed him, Mr. L…”

“Pretty much?” Jerry growls. “I mean… look at my stomach!”

“You can’t believe how sorry I am!”

I’m studying Jerry’s wound. “God, that looks painful!”

“Ya think?!“

And here I’d thought all along that the thing was made of steel. Thank God it wasn’t!

“Wow. Well, at least there’s no blood. But damn, no wonder it looked so real out there! You think you’re gonna be OK?”

“I guess. It stings like hell though.”

“Look, I mean it! I’m so sorry!“

“Yeah, I heard you the first time.”

I shake my head, looking at my crumpled prop. “And that’s a big No on a back-up knife,” I say. “I wish to hell I’d bought two, but…”

“So… what’ll we do about tomorrow night’s production,” Jerry asks. “How’s that gonna work?”

“I have no idea, guys. I have no idea whatsoever.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Next morning what I did do was rush the “knife” over to the shop, looking for any help I could get. “Can you put this in a vise or something,” I asked the shop teacher. “You know… straighten it out? Flatten it out somehow?”

The shop teacher scratched his chin, tsk-tsked over it, hmmm’d and hawed over it a bit and finally said, “I dunno. I guess we’ll find out.”

Well, they did manage to straighten the comb out… somewhat. But not nearly enough to get it to slide back and forth in and out of the handle. It was still too bent for that, alas. But you know what they say… “The show must go on.”

Next night, as I’d instructed, Jerry pulled the pathetic, no-longer-a-switchblade “knife” out of his back pocket and kept it in motion all the time under the lights, us hoping nobody would notice what it was really looking like. I really missed that dramatic, switchblade SNICK! from the night before though.

But we got through the play. And from all the accolades, we were pretty much a success. There was a larger teenage crowd on the second night. I guess that’s because the word got out in school that there was a pretty realistic, friggin’ knife fight in it. Something probably never seen in an Academy play before.

I believe we even broke even, or better, on admission fees. That, in itself, was seen as remarkable…

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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ON THE LIFE-AND-DEATH IMPORTANCE OF ONE-INCH MARGINS…

A DAY IN THE LIFE

My free period unexpectedly got blown out of the water this morning. Thanks to me having to round up three senior girls, escort them to the Guidance Office to meet with their parents and counselor, and deal with the ugly allegations that this trio’s bullying has been seriously making some freshman girl’s life not worth living. And without said free period, I’ve been running behind six ways from Sunday all day

The copier in the teachers’ lounge’s gone belly-up again. Murphy’s Law. Par for the course, what with all thirty-four of us desperately champing at the bit for the printer, semester exams needing to be ready to go by Monday morning.

I’m on the second day of an at-least-two-day headache, and this one a real doozy. The ringing of the bells the bells the bells out in the hall keep setting my teeth on edge. Can you say “frayed nerves”?

And the icing on the cake? It’s my week for manning after-school detention-hall duty. Yeah. So here I sit, once again, locked in the cage with a tiny tribe of Welcome-Back-Kotter’s sweat hog and yahoos.

And wouldn’t you just know it, here he is, God’s little freshman gift to teachers, loitering before my desk with some wrinkled notebook page in hand that might’ve just been fished out of my wastebasket.

And he’s smiling. Smiling like a car salesman.

Someone should clue him in: Warning, Will Robinson! This teacher is a powder-keg with a short fuse this morning...

Ah. I don’t really mean that. That’s just the headache and the stress talking. I’m especially fond of the freshmen. Even Wes, here. I like to think of myself as the freshman welcome committee here at the Academy. Because, I mean they need some teachers who aren’t nazis too, right? And besides, Freshmen are new here, meaning they haven’t already heard my dad jokes, bad puns, and stories. My kind of audience.

Although as I focus on the paper in his hand, I realize I need to put on my Tough Man Persona, at least for a while.

“It’s late, Wes,” I point out. “Due yesterday.”

“Here now, though.”

“Ah. Yes. Now.”

“A day late and a dollar short,” he adds, smiling winningly. “But. See, I did do the assignment.”

“And… I’m guessing that’s it?” Me, nodding toward the fist holding the paper.

“Yep. And I think you’re gonna like this one.”

“You… think. Hmmm. OK. Lay it on me then, I guess.”

Dutifully he does. Lays the “essay” before me on my desk, face-up.

I eyeball it for all of four seconds, return my gaze to him and, then with the eraser tip of my pencil, push the page three or four inches back across the desktop toward him. The same way murder squad detectives on TV always ‘suggest’ that their prime suspects take a hard second look at the photo of some victim’s corpse.

“Do it over,” I say simply, knowing it sounds harsh but you know what? I’m just not in the mood today.

His face, gone from smiling now to… kind of beaming for some reason (which is a little maddening) asks, “OK, but…why’s that? I mean, you didn’t even read it.”

“Nor will I… until it’s rewritten.” Doing good here as Bad Cop…

“But … it’s good. I even used irony in it.”

“Which you’ll have to wait for me to… ‘appreciate’ it, once it gets rewritten.”

We look at each other for a few moments. The hairy-eyeball I’m trying to give him ought to be making him turn tail and scamper away. God, why does he all the time hafta keep that smile on high-beams like that? Why can’t he just be pissed off like any normal kid would, for crying out loud? I mean, that Howdy Doody mug of his!

Since he’s not saying anything, I do. “Oh come on, Wes. Do I really have to spell it out for you?”

No answer.

“Oh. Sure. Right, of course I do. OK. I’ll tell you why. The assignment sheet (hey, you remember the assignment sheet, don’t you?) lists four specific criteria you had to follow on this one. And, as I told you yesterday, no more getting away with your lazy sloppiness.”

“Yeah but the irony...”

“Stop!” (I mean, listen to this guy, right?)“Don’t you be yeah-butting me, Wes, OK?Man, you’d think I would’ve tape-recorded this speech years ago. That way every time you guys claim to have lost the assignment sheet, I could just send you back to your seat with a cassette player and say, ‘Sit down. Press Play!’”

“Hah. and ‘Be kind. Re-wind.’ Yeah.”

“1: Final draft of essay to be written on white composition paper.”

“Check,” he says.

“Right. You did do that. Moving right along.”

“2: Essay to be written in ink. Not in pencil.”

“Check again. Oh-oh-oh... but not in crayon, either. Hah. See? I remember you saying that in class.”

“Bully for you.” Gawd, he’s so good-natured?

“3: Essay will be neatly written in cursive.”

“Check, check, and… TRIPLE- CHECK! Hey, see? I’m acing it. Well, I mean I will be, especially when you read my irony.”

“4: Final draft will employ ONE–INCH MARGINS.”

“That one sound a little familiar?”

“Oops.”

“Yeah. Oops. I’m not seeing any margins here.”

“I guess you got me, boss,” he says.

“Right. I got you. Now… there’s your paper. Take it. Go and do it over. With… the one-inch margins this time. Then, and only then, will I read… will I enjoy… your captivating irony. Capiche? Now— go, and sin no more.”

“You got it,” he says. With a nod and a wink, he picks up his paper, turns, and shuffles off toward back his desk (thank God), leaving me pitying his parents.

Phew! That’s over. Oh, my head!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

But… as little as five minutes later, here he is again. Back. And with what looks to be that very same damn shabby page still in hand.

“Done,” he says with obvious pride.

“Wait just a darn minute,” I say. There is no way, absolutely NO way you’ve re-done that essay this quickly!”

“Hey I really did. Check it out.” And with that, he once again graces my desk with his allegedly ironic opus. So what else can I do? I look down at the thing. And man, I can’t believe it! Because yeah… it is the exact same damn shabby piece of writing that it was five minutes ago!

“LOOK at this! I told you I re-did it!”

“You did. And hey! I fixed the margins. See?”

“NO! What you did w…”

But then, what I’m actually looking at fully registers. Jesus. On each the left-and-right-hand sides of the page, this wise-ass little weasel has Scotch-taped a long, one-inch-wide, ten-inches-long strip of paper! I mean… he taped-on frickin’ margins!!! So immediately, I start trying to pump myself up to properly muster all the deadly venom of my… chagrin… in order to lay him out good in lavender!

(See, I had to say ‘trying’ there because… well, something’s wrong. Blowing my stack just isn’t coming as easily as I want it to! I mean, I dunno, it’s kind of like my wannabe-aggressiveness is… stuttering or something! Even though I’m surprisingly impressed with this kid’s surprising brass, what I want to do is let this kid have it with both barrels, but… what’s going on with me? I mean, something’s bubbling up inside me that’s… well, something that’s bubbling up autonomically… like what happens when you’re seconds away from vomiting and you just KNOW there’s not a damn thing you can do to stop it, nothing you can do to keep it down!

I try to muscle this down anyway, but it’s like I just felt my frickin’ diaphragm burst like Mount Vesuvius! And God help me…up the autonomic belly laugh COMES!)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“Uhmmm…? Mister L? …Mister L??? Are you…alright? You’re not… cryin’, are you?”

My face, hidden beneath convulsing shoulders (down upon the hide-away pillow of my crossed arms) comes jack-in-the-boxing straight up from my desk so suddenly he recoils! “Of course not! I’m laughing my butt off here is what I’m doing!” And I tack on a quiet little “…damn you!” just for him.

But God, it’s frustrating when you’re mad as a wet hen and… and laughter just comes barreling right out of you without your permission. Your self-control just gets kicked to the curb and runs rampant for just about however long it wants. You can want to will yourself to be steamingly pissed-off but, no, your body’s in control, isn’t it— not you! So you just have to ride it out.

But oddly, after you have been so out of control like that, for some reason when it’s over you just end up feeling so free and fresh and good. I mean, it feels like this outburst just breached some flood-stage gate inside of me or something, punched a hole in it, and released an out-gushing of all my silly, uptight, Ichabod Crane hang-ups of the day in a wonderful, though violent-as-a-sneeze, catharsis.

Human behavior. Go figure, right?

And even though I have finally ridden it out, my mouth is still stretched in its autonomic, idiotic grin— I can feel it. Apparently, I’m having a good time

But something’s happened here. And I’m left pondering what the hell’s this kid just done to me, the little jerk! Up-ended me, that’s what. Caught me right off guard, big-time! Because… well, that whole thing was just so unexpected… and so damn funny! I mean, it hit me right between the eyes when I wasn’t even looking….

“So… you OK now?”

“What, me?” I’ve gotten myself pretty much under control now. Enough so I can communicate again, at least. “Not entirely,” I tell him. “Because something really weird and back-assward just went down here.”

“Man, I’d say so!”

“Because me and you? We just had us a moment, didn’t we. I mean, there I was, going to war with you practically! About to wrestle you down, pin you to the mat, and shove the importance of margins down your throat. Even if it killed us both to do it.”

“Jeez. OK…???”

“And then you went and yanked the mat right out from under me! Had me body-slammed and pinned before I knew what hit me! And I mean, look at how you did that! You didn’t even use force! You just did it with… nothing but your unusual off-the-wall humor! Oh! yeah! And with irony.“

“Really?”

“Really. And hey, how ironic is that, huh?” But no, what you just did? It really got my attention there. Big time. I’m serious. I mean, in the blink of an eye, you… my outwardly mediocre student… just taught your high school English teacher, me, something I’ve really needed to take a serious look at. My priorities.”

“If you say so, man. But…. hey. You’re not… like, off your meds or something are you?”

“No! I’m on my stupid meds. But you know, it’s like you just gave me a refresher course… well, refresher lesson… on Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.

**MARGINS ARE BOTH RELATIVE AND CONTROVERSIAL**

See, that’s what I can’t get over. Because… well, after all, everything is relative, isn’t it. And I mean, margins? Hell yeah! They’re relative. Of course they are. And so over-rated. And you just practically toilet-plunger-ed the honest absurdity (the sheer and utter ridiculousness of margins being thought of as so all-that-important) down my throat! Well done.”

“Er… so, what, does that mean... margins are out? From now on? No more one-inch-margins?”

“No, of course not. But it does mean I have to go back and recalibrate how much weight I put on them when it comes to grading.”

“But… why keep them at all? If they’re so relative and all. Why not do the class a favor and just dump’em altogether…?”

(click!) (that’s me, doing the classic double-take right here) “Whoa whoa whoa!” And then, looking him straight in the eye until I know I’ve got his full attention focused squarely and seriously on me. “Just a darn minute here, kiddo. No.” And I say that with a weak laugh. (heh heh)

“Yeah. That’s what I figured. Sure. But why not, though?”

“But anyway… just NO! OK…?”

“ That’s what I figured. Sure. Surprise surprise. So much for the Theory of Relativity.”

“Well Wes, there’s also something called Chaos Theory, you know? (You should know. I mean, from what I’ve observed, in some ways chaos seems to be part of your lifestyle.) Now, we don’t want the world to descend into the Dark Ages Void of Chaos, do we.”

“What, I’m getting a vote then?”

“Which is pretty much what might happen if we start whittling away, one at a time, all these little rules that keep us in check as a civilized society. You need to look at The Big Picture: Get rid of margins today. Then complete sentences tomorrow. Next thing you know, we’ll be back to living in caves and painting the stories of our lives in pictograms on the walls.”

“Can you also say windbag?”

“Yeah. I can. I majored in Windbagology in college.”

“I can believe it. How about hypocrisy? Can you say that?”

“Me? Hypocrisy? What’s that? Never heard of it.”

“Well you should’ve, Mister Relativity. Mister margins-are-no-longer-important-but-we’ll-keep’em-anyway.”

“Hey. Don’t forget. This English teacher who needs to keep his job.”

“Oh yeah. Mister sell-out.”

“Or Mr. Lyford who… oh gimme a break, Mister Lazy, Mister I-Don’t-Care-About-My-Future.”

“Well, I don’t.“

“Well, I do. I really do! So. Let me tell you what I am willing to do. I’m going to cut you a deal.”

“Big deal, yeah? OK, let’s hear it.”

“Yes, but first of all, tomorrow… when I wake up, shower, get dressed… this conversation never happened, OK? One-inch margins will still go on ruling the world as they always have. And one-inch margins will, as always, be regarded as crucial absolutes, not the secretly-acknowledged relative entities we’ve acknowledged and agreed on this afternoon, you dig?”

“Ooh. An offer I can’t refuse! Right. What I figured.”

“Hey. There’s a Part 2 in this deal, which I’ll get to in a minute. OK?

“But… let’s be clear. You and I? As people? Not as teacher and student? Sure, yes, we both know that what’s written in between those margins is the main thing. But as teacher and student, we both have to realize that how you learn to present yourself in the future job market is going to become very important. And that presenting yourself with a wrinkled, messy, sprawling jumble of unreadable writing spilled all over the page is something you need to practice NOT doing. Bad habits tend to stick.”

“Blah blah blah. Save it.”

“Alright. I’ll save it. But OK. Here’s the deal. Guess what: you just scored yourself an A on this paper. Sight unseen. (Although I will read it and get back to you.) You also get (…wait for it) my respect today, having shown yourself to be a lot brighter than you’ve previously been letting on. I hope that means something to you.”

“Well, I won’t be saying no to the A at least…”

“Whereas… on the other side of the coin, when the next assigned essay comes around, you not only will have those absolute one-inch margins in place, but the paper? The physical paper it’s written on…? It will not be some wrinkled or food-stained scrap you stole from my waste basket, you dig? It’ll be pristine. You dig? The paper will come in on time, or suffer the consequences. You dig? And as far as your grade on the next essay is concerned? I honestly can’t imagine it’ll end up being an A; however I can easily imagine it being a big fat zero. So, you’re on notice.

“And by the way, the worst thing you’ve done today is let it slip that the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz actually has had a brain all along. And that, dear friend, is something that can, and will, be used against you in a court of… I dunno… of English Grammar and Composition.”

“Well… that’s harsh,” he says with a sarcastic grin.

“And in the meantime, gimme your essay back. I do intend to read what you’ve written. And I’m curious about your use of irony as well. But whatever I find in it, the A is written in stone. We’ve just jump-started a winning streak where your grade in English is concerned. Don’t. Blow. That. Off. OK?”

A few moments go by in silence.

“Hey Wes. I’m waiting for my thank-you over here. Once given and received, and what with your detention sentence just now officially adjudicated as ‘time-served,’ you will hereby be ordered to take ownership of your sleazily-weaseled A and vacate the premises. Any questions? No? OK then. Go. And sin no more?”

“Uhmmm… well, thanks.”

At the door, he turns and says, “Next essay? I’m writing it in crayon on a brown paper bag!”

“Beat it, Freshman!”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~

Man, how do these damn kids keep getting me to like them so much???

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A CRAZY LITTLE THING CALLED LOVE, 1963

(A Little Out of-Season “Valentine’s Day Card” to… Ourselves, After Passing the 58th-Year-Anniversary Mark on July 31st, 2024)

What you’re looking at here is a clipping from our local weekly newspaper, The Piscataquis Observer (‘Piscataquis’ being the county of which my hometown of Dover-Foxcroft is the County Seat). The photograph here appeared either in early December, 1963 or December of the following year. It doesn’t matter which. The picture is of one big, fat snowman.

It had snowed throughout that day and evening, necessitating Foxcroft Academy to declare a snow day (which had pumped up the entire student body into an electrified state of positive energy). It had been a day of shoveling out walks and driveways, shouldering errant cars back onto roadways, sledding and tobogganing, building snow forts, and battling snowball-fight battles.

Sometime though, very late at night or in the early morning however, this snowman appeared— standing like some spooky traffic-cop-god manning the empty center of Monument Square. The snowing had stopped falling around 9:00 pm. The temperature had risen to about 40 comfortable Fahrenheit degrees, and the clouds above had swept themselves aside to reveal the black velvet, diamond-studded firmament overhead. The air that night was refreshing and sweet to the lungs. The world was a winter wonderland cliché. The town, silenced down and virtually emptied out by midnight, had become our personal playground. The snow which crunched under the soles of our boots was perfect snowman-snow.

Alone together in that perfect night, Phyllis and I began rolling our first snowball into the huge, legless hips of our Frosty the Snowman. And boy, it proved nearly impossible to upheave that second, even larger torso into place, but… love conquers all, doesn’t it.

Words can’t do justice to how happy we were, how amazingly content I was for a change. We were head-over-heels in love with love and with each other. Everything was perfect in my life! I mean, I actually had a girlfriend! A going-steady girlfriend! A high school sweetheart, and man oh man, was she ever sweet! We were going to movies. We were dancing at the Saturday night Rec Center. We were building snowmen.

I had a girlfriend who was a soda-jerk (I still hate that term) at Lanpher’s Rexall lunch counter who would personally wait on me (and maybe give me an extra ice cream scoop in my ice cream soda once in a while, if and when nobody was looking). And hell, I actually even liked school those days (mostly of course because she was always there). I mean, I had no idea what I ‘wanted to be when I grew up,’ but hey, I had blind faith that all would work out just great. And that Phyllis would be my future.

I was, and still am, a hopeless romantic.

So anyway— the snowman.

Building that snowman is a cherished memory for Phyllis and I. Despite the fact that when the photo was featured that Thursday in The Piscataquis Observer, the caption below it insultingly read, “Four students constructed this huge snowman in Monument Square.” I mean, come on! What four students!? There were no four students! What kind of low-lifes will just come along and, being total losers, find a museum-worthy work of art, and claim, “Yeah. We did that! That’s our snowman”? Damn. If they’d listed the names of those scumbag art thieves, I would have placed a big burning paper bag of dog-poop on their doorsteps at night, rung their doorbells, and run off to hide and watch those losers dirty their soles trying to stomp the fire out, heh heh!

But anyway… we know the truth.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Ours was an odd relationship though, for the first year or so.

For one thing, Phyllis was extremely shy and demure. A really old-fashion girl that way. (Oh yeah, we laugh about this today. Those who know her now would have a hard time picturing her as some 1860’s cotton-plantation-type Southern belle.)

During our hour-long phone calls, I’d end up doing all the talking and she’d be doing the ‘very-interested’-listening-thing, basically. Oh, I’d get the occasional little titter and monosyllable back… even a complete sentence now and then. But I’d know she was there, because I could hear her shy and demure breathing on the other end. And even though I‘d pretty much become the Penn to her Teller, that was good enough for me. Great even (because hey, I had a real girlfriend at last, you know?)

Another odd thing is that she would never let me take her picture with my little Kodak Brownie^©. In fact she didn’t want anyone taking her photo. Whenever I or anyone else pointed a camera in her direction, she’d either turn totally around or cover her face with her hands. Scoring a good snapshot of Phyllis became a challenging sport. You’d think she was in the Witness Protection Program. Either that or the movie star being hounded by the paparazzi (which in her life was all of us toting our cameras).

“**Do NOT click the shutter on that camera!**“

I remember her stepdad Elden, a wonderful man, giving her some sensible advice on my behalf. Something like, “Phyllis. Wouldn’t it be better for you if you did let him take your picture? After you’d had the opportunity to prepare yourself and look your best, rather than leaving him to run around showing all his friends and family the somewhat odd pictures he’s getting now?”

But no… she wasn’t ready to heed that that advice. Thank goodness for school yearbook photos.

“What did I just TELL you about *NOT* clicking that *SHUTTER!!!*“

She apparently had no idea how beautiful everybody else saw her as. I mean, I had this moment in the hallways of the Academy where a barely-known-to-me-farm boy came up to me between classes and demanded, “You the guy going steady with Phyllis Raymond?”

Not knowing if I was about to get into a fight or something, I said, “Yeah. Why?”

And he looked at me with the most hangdog look you could imagine and said, “Do you know how goddamn LUCKY you are?!” He said it like an accusation. But no, more an unhappy surrender. “’Cause I sure hope the hell you do!”

Apparently, he’d had his hopeful sites on my new steady for some time.

“Yeah,” I told him, “I do know. And no, I can’t believe how lucky I am.”

And honestly, with my track record and loose-cannon self-esteem, I was still bewildered about how the hell I’d ended up with one of the elite majorettes.

Well, other than my sparkling personality and my extremely handsome looks, I guess the fact that I was always hanging around with the popular Mallett Brothers and had taken her out on that Johnny Cash concert date hadn’t hurt matters any.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The Things We Do for Love

So after we’d got a few weeks of dating under our belts, I started hanging around out by the track after school, reason being: I loved watching Phyllis during her majorette practices. She was amazing. All of the majorettes were.

They actually did this one routine where they honestly tossed twirling, flaming batons way up over their heads and then caught them, all in sync, on their way back down. That blew my mind. I don’t know what they had on either end of their batons, but the flames sure looked dangerous. I really worried about Phyllis getting herseld a bad burn.

So anyway there I was, out there one afternoon watching them practice, when I was approached by John Glover, the Track coach whose team was also working out on the track and field. “You can’t be hanging around out here,” he told me.

“Why not?” I asked. “I don’t see I’m getting in anybody’s way or anything.”

“Because this is practice time. Only practitioners are welcomed. And since you’re neither a majorette nor a track star…”

“OH, come on. Really?”

“Really. Now on the other hand, I’m in need of a runner for the mile. If you care to apply, you can live out here and watch the girls over your shoulder all the time.”

Huh!

And so that was the year I went out for track.

I “ran” the mile. No runner, me– thus, the quotation marks. I was a jogger at best. And lazy, but I’ve already owned up to that in more than one of my previous blog posts. Plus, I found running really painful. And rather pointless, since the majorettes didn’t practice every afternoon like the track team did.

Now, obviously the difference between me and the other, much-more-motivated milers was how I “practiced.” Real milers would ready themselves for the next track meet by what seemed like running all the time. Three miles at a pop. But me? Hey, if I were readying myself for the mile run, I’d jog a mile. Maybe once, but certainly no more than twice a day. So…

When the starting gun fired on the day of my first track meet, we were off! It was a sweltering, hot day. Immediately I noticed one runner after another pulling past me like I was my old grandfather tooling down I-95 in his rattletrap pick-up at 40 miles per hour. And despite my better judgement, I (idiot me) began to succumb to the peer pressure. Stupidly, I accelerated. I passed someone. And then somebody else! And you know what? It was easy. Easy-peasey. I finished lap-one looking good!

At the end of lap-two, however, I wasn’t so pretty, quite honestly. But the track fans on the sidelines were cheering, goading me on. So I persevered.

But as I galumphed past them at the end of my third lap, my lungs were engulfed in flames!

Since there was no actual photograph of this event, I’ve stolen *this* appropriate one from the movie, *Platoon…*

And when I crossed the finish line, dead last… I simply collapsed down onto my rubbery knees, and puked my guts out.

Yeah. The things we do for love.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Going steady with Phyllis was a little tricky…

Like, one day after the final bell had rung at school, Phyl and I and the throng of all the happy-to-be-outta-there kids were marching en masse down the Academy driveway, headed for Lanpher’s Drug to hang out. I, the perfect gentleman, was of course carrying her textbooks (easy for me since I seldom brought any of my own home). (And backpacks hadn’t caught on back then.)

Now, whenever we were together, I had learned to make it a point to try to appear way more mature than my actual sixth-grade-level, Mad magazine mentality. Because I didn’t want to lose this one. So I always strove to never to let her catch me doing or saying things that would disappoint, or offend. Not an easy life for a guy like me.

So… while we were walking and talking quietly on our way down toward West Main Street’s sidewalk, way back behind us I overheard something that makes my teeth clench. Jim Harvey’s loud voice. “Boy, you guys shoulda heard what Tommy Lyford said to Ol’ Ma Gerrish in study hall this afternoon! That got a rise out of her!”

Damn it, Jim, I was thinking. Keep your mouth shut, why don’t ya! But of course he didn’t, wouldn’t, couldn’t. And I’ve long forgotten whatever it was I’d said earlier that day to win the chorus of cheap laughs I’d got from my equally immature study hall audience, but whatever it was, Phyllis went cold. She asked me politely for her books back, and we made the rest of the trip to her house in dead silence.

Me, the scolded dog.

And for some reason Phyllis also did not approve at all of gambling… back then (which is a laugh and a half now, when you consider all the casino man-hours she’s since put in, altruistically helping out struggling casinos wherever she finds them). But even though I was aware of her sentiments, personally I thought gambling was a way to look pretty cooland manly back in those high school days. So any so-called “gambling” I did, I always tried to keep on the down-low.

(Did I happen to mention I had a reputation for being *****-whipped back then?)

So anyway, I was working at the Esso Station one Saturday afternoon, along with the boss’s son Jerry, a wise-ass little punk three or so years younger than me.

Business had slowed down for a while, so he and I were just leaning our backs up against the tool bench in the back of the grease-monkey-area and shooting the bull. We’d opened up the bay doors for the fresher air and just to watch the ol’ traffic slide on by. Eventually another car pulled in for a fill-up. It was Jerry’s turn to get it. He was outside there for a couple, three minutes, and then he came hustling back in with an idea.

“Hey, let’s pitch some pennies. Whattaya say?”

I said sure. I always kept a modest cache of pennies in my pants pocket, since we partook of penny-pitching often, to kill time. Penny-pitching was like a game of micro-horseshoes. You’d each toss your penny up against a nearby wall, and the one whose penny landed the closest to the wall won that toss and got to keep both coins. I know it sounds brainless today because they were, after all, only pennies. However, pennies were worth a little more sixty years ago than they are today, right? I mean, for ten pennies you could buy a cup of coffee anywhere.

But my point with all this is… penny-pitching is a form of gambling. And guess what! While I was bending over, picking my two pennies up off the floor, I heard Jerry suddenly yell out, “Hey Phyllis! Look what Tommy’s doing! Pitching pennies with me!”

Immediately I realized what had just happened. The little bum had set me up (again). See, (A) while he was out there pumping gas, he’s spied Phyllis down the sidewalk, walking our way; (B) Jerry knew how Phyl felt about gambling; (C) Jerry also knew that I was one hopelessly *****-whipped little puppy; and (D) he’d set the whole damn thing up, the bum, just to watch me getting put back into the doghouse.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

But hey, in spite of all my little “transgressions,” we remained passionately in love and getting more serious about staying with each other for all time, in spite of her being Catholic and me, Methodist. That was only a problem for my mom however, not us. Secretly we were living on the energy of the dream-promise of… marrying, despite how young and star-crossed we were.

For Christmas for instance, I ‘d got Phyllis a gift that was actually a ‘secret code’ hiding in plain sight: Namely, a cute little charm bracelet. I allowed Ma to check it out– especially emphasizing the cute little miniature majorette charm.

However, just before I got that bracelet wrapped up, I nefariously slipped in the contraband. I quickly attached it to the bracelet, and then took off, spiriting my special gift across town where I delightedly placed it under Phyllis’ Christmas tree.

(ta-dah!) The $2.99 “engagement-ring” charm, oh my!

Ma would be so pissed…

I’d also bought her one of those little pink and white music boxes with the tiny pirouetting ballet dancer positioned in front of its little mirror.

All well and good.

But gawd, even with that done Ma, with her Pentacostal upbringing, still managed to be a problem. When she asked me what else I was getting Phyl for Christmas, I told her, “A sweater.” But before I could get the next sentence out of my mouth, wherein I would have described the sweater I’d ordered, she threw a fit.

“A sweater?! Oh no, you’re not!”

“What? What’re you talking about? Why NOT?!”

“Because it’s not appropriate to be buying a young woman clothing, that’s why! Not at your age!”

“What the heck are you…? WHY can’t I buy Phyllis a…”

“You know very well why!”

“Excuse me!? No! I don’t think so! So… tell me, why don’tcha! Why?”

“Because men buy sweaters for women because… well for one reason: sweaters accentuate their breasts! That’s why!”

“Oh! My! God!”

But believe me, I got it then. Ma was still living in 1940’s World. I could just imagine the image that was going round and round in her brain. Phyllis as some steamy Mae West, and me as some sleazo!

“Ma! You’re… nuts! The sweater’s not going to accentuate… ANYTHING! It’s the same sweater I’m getting for mySELF! For cryin’ out loud! It’s not lingerie! It’s a cardigan! Come on! Gimme a break!” This was so embarrassing for me.

And by the way, even though we’d been going together for months, Phyllis and I hadn’t yet arrived at that level yet. I’d say we were both on “second base,” no further.

And hey, I loved it, being right where we were. Just being with her was all I cared about. It was like she was an angel. And quite honestly, I would have blushed if someone had spoken the word “breasts” aloud in our company.

Consider for example, one Saturday afternoon I walked Phyllis over to the Center Theatre to watch the movie West Side Story. I was loving it at first. It was so Romeo and Juliet. But then, in my opinion, something occurred near the end of the show that shocked, especially considering I was sitting right there shoulder-to-shoulder next to my angelic girlfriend.

When Anita (Rita Moreno) goes to Doc’s place to deliver a message to Tony (Richard Beymer), the Jets pretty much maul her, with the dance choreography depicting this as a very graphically simulated gang rape!

I was beside-myself-horrified! It was way too realistic for my tastes let alone, I believed, Phyl’s. I was silently haranguing myself with, Omigod! What kind of a movie have I brought my sweet, little girlfriend to?! What must Phyllis be thinking about this?! Or about ME… for bringing her to this… violent, sexual thing? Sinking down in my seat, I hardly had the guts to even look over at her. And after the movie, I walked her silently home, barely daring to speak. I pretty much figured I’d blown it.

Yes. I know. It seems silly today, doesn’t it. But that’s just how respectful, how virginal and sheltered some of us were back in the early 60’s. No, not everybody of course. But… me, for one. Today it seems ridiculous, but back then I was sweating bullets.

Turned out it hadn’t bothered her much at all. It was a non-issue. No biggie. Phew! But I was such a silly worry-wart. With so much growing up to do…

Yeah, the “crazy little thing called love” was so awkward for me, but upon looking back it was unbelievably wonderful and magic too. So yes, I love harkening back to my courtship days with my sweet girlfriend, Phyllis. So idyllic. So many great dates, beginning with that big one, our first real date: The Johnny Cash concert in Bangor, Maine.

You know, a lot of the time I couldn’t get to borrow my Uncle Archie’s car and had to use my dad’s bulky new Ford Econoline van with the Lyford’s TV Repair logo on the back, along with its large inventory of vacuum tubes, soldering irons, toolboxes, and the oscilloscope rattling around in the back. Not the most romantic ride.

But those were the wheels that charioted us to The Mallett Brothers and Johhny Cash.

Funny thing about the van. Dad once joked that he couldn’t drive up West Main Street without feeling the steering wheel suddenly lurch a little in his hands, tugging the van in the direction of Winter Street, the street on which Phyllis lived. It was like a horse that “knew the way” he told me, and was challenging his decision to go “off-trail.”

Oh, there are so many sweet memories I choose to wallow in every so often.

Like the day Phyl and I, with our picnic lunch, bicycled the whole five miles out to Sebec Lake’s Municipal Beach for a day in the sun, with swimming to cool off. Jeez, talk about being head over heels in love! That was such a magic day.

And then, when I graduated from the Academy in ’64, Ma wouldn’t let me go to the graduation parties everyone else was enjoying, lest I get drunk or something. Who knows. Instead (and this was such a dumb-dumb, embarrassing idea) she made me “celebrate” at home, setting up what she called a “party” for Phyllis and I and another couple. I was as mad as a wet hen, as they say, but it was hard to stay mad with pretty Phyllis right by my side, as this photo shows. I was happy that Ma was slowly coming around and accepting the inevitability of… Phyllis and me.

**The wild graduation “party.” And look how slim we both were!**

It wasn’t such a bad evening after all.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So… summing this all up, I guess I’m trying to say that our “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” goes down in the scrapbook of our minds as that heavenly, magic period of our early innocent courtship. A period of incredible happiness and hopefulness and truly halcyon days and nights. I was so blessed to have that, just as I am blessed today (us having made a good dent in our 59th year of marriage and our at least 61 years of being a couple) to live my life with the most incredible woman I can imagine. She still drives me crazy every day– Still Crazy After All These Years…

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

And now, to end on a lighter note: alas: here is/are a look at those lascivious, immodestly infamous sweater(s) during our courtship (And please, for decency’s sake, do not scroll down farther if you’re under 21 years of age):

The garment as imagined by my mom:

**Mae West wearing Ma’s imagined Christmas gift sweater…**

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

And then, the reality…

**The actual shockingly UGLY Christmas sweaters**…

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THIS OLD GUITAR Part II: Hello. I’m Johnny Cash

The subject of my most recent post was my mother’s old acoustic, six-string, arch-top guitar that had been lying around and gathering dust in our house since Ma’s 1940s country and western band heydays. That, and even more so, the almost fairy tale effect it ended up having on a couple of young boys during the early ’60s. Because that’s when I toted it all the way out to the Mallett homestead in Sebec, where it fell into the hands and creative imaginations of high school sophomore Neil and his sixth-grade brother, David Mallett. And then…

Ta-DAH! The Mallett Brothers duo was born!

And over the next few years, I was so very fortunate to be in a position to witness, and often even accompany, those troubadours as they entertained their growing fans with their many live performances; not to mention often catching their records playing on the radio or watching their television broadcasts. It was amazing. And I don’t care who, or how many others, would claim the same thing, I knew that I was their greatest, and longest lasting, fan.

By that time, I’d started flirting with freshman Phyllis Raymond. And the heavens knew that I was wishing for something extra to boost my image in her eyes. And then (abra cadabra!) an unexpected divine gift just seemed to fall right into my lap!

I’d met Neil in the school lobby one morning as usual just before school started.

“You’re not gonna believe this!” he told me with an excited grin.

“What?“

“Johnny Cash is coming to the Bangor Auditorium!“

“Whoa! No shit!?” That was news! “I mean, Wow!”

“Not only that! Red and I are gonna be opening for him!” (‘Red’ being the family nickname for David. They all had nicknames, all the brothers. Bub, Mose, and believe it or not, Neil’s was ‘Ike.’)

“What!? You are not! NO WAY!” That was the most unbelievable thing I’d ever heard.

“We really are!”

“That’s just crazy! But… how!?“

“Well, it’s not gonna be just us. A bunch of local musicians have been invited to play too.”

“Wow!“

And sure enough, there it was. That very day, right there in the Bangor Daily News that morning!

At that time, I had no idea then who George Jones, June Carter, or the others were, nor did I care. All I could think of was… this was a potential Date Made in Heaven! I couldn’t wait to pass Phyllis my note reading, “How would you like me to take you to see Johnny Cash in person??? I can make that happen!”

Can you imagine how cocky I felt, writing that? How manful I was feeling? How… lucky? Me thinking the only dates Phyllis had ever been on were (A) meeting up with somebody at the Rec Center or (B) being walked to some crummy high school play with me. Because like me, she was living in Nowheres-ville. But… come on! I mean, Johnny Cash! She’d have to be looking at me now as somebody interesting, you know? Somebody with connections. Somebody so… upperclassman. Like, maybe she was thinking, Who knows? Maybe Tommy will be getting us tickets to see… ELVIS next??? You never knew.

It was cold and raining hammers and nails on the night of the concert (I just stole a Tom Waits’ phrase there– I didn’t make that up). I’d only had my license for a couple of weeks, and I’d logged practically zero hours of night-time driving, so my driving was a little iffy, but still I was pushing it as fast as the speed limit allowed because we’d gotten off to a late start. We rolled into the auditorium parking lot, threw open the car doors, and ran (holding hands) through the rain to the main entrance!

Inside, I quickly pushed my three hard-earned dollar bills in through the ticket-lady’s window (and I mean, can you believe only a buck-fifty for a major concert???!!!). Already we were catching the faraway-upstairs-strains of David and Neil belting out “Tear After Tear,” so we flew up three flights like a couple of Hollywood lovers while the final movie credits were rolling through the happy ending of some big romantic movie!

We popped out into a gigantic balcony packed with Johnny Cash fans and, sure enough, way down there on the main floor, far away and looking tiny, were David and Neil harmonizing, picking, strumming, and just sounding so damn good.

They got to perform more numbers than I ever would have expected they’d be allowed, considering the size of the line-up slated to play after them. Probably it was because the audience was so into them, judging by the wild applause and whistling. They had fans from all over the state of Maine by that time. I felt so proud of them. And so blessed to have them as my friends.

It was a night to remember for them of course, but also for me. A handful of incidents, some of which I saw for myself and some which I learned from the Malletts who witnessed them first-hand backstage, remain logged in the memory-album of my brain.

A cute, though insignificant, one occurred while Neil and David were performing on stage. I was keeping my eyes glued right on them, so I didn’t miss it. I think it was David, but it could have just as well been Neil (David, I think). (Whichever.) Both of them were down there singing, picking, and strumming their hearts out when (bink!) like a glitch in the matrix, someone’s guitar pick launched from the strings like a tiddlywink. Sparkling in the spotlight’s beam over the heads of the audience, it arced out and way like an indoor micro-meteor! It was cool to see the performers do their double double-take the instant that happened, but then soldier right on like the troopers they were.

But there were things that weren’t so cool that evening, too.

There were a lot of other locals lined up to play before The Man in Black. They started off with a yokel named (wait for it) Yodeling Slim Clark (A.K.A., “Maine’s Great Yodeler”). Three guesses as to what he mostly did. And there were other locals too. Hal Lone Pine. (Sure. Somehow I too tend to doubt that that was Hal’s actual last name.) Big Slim? What? Two Slims on the same card? Terri Lynn? Jeanne Ward? I didn’t know them, nor do I remember their performances at all. It was getting to be a long night.

It was Yodeling Slim Clark who led off after The Mallett Brothers. And in between the numbers, some emcee from somewhere out of sight down on that stage babbled on at us from time to time like some carnival barker: “Hey folks. It won’t be long now for the main event!” Or “You just wait! Johnny’s champin’ on the bit to get on out here on stage with his Ring of Fire!” But George Jones was up and the audience went wild. I didn’t know who the hell he was at the time, but it was easy to gather from all the roars and the applause that he was of The Grand Ol’ Oprey Big Time. As was June Carter. I’d never heard of her either.

They night was growing long, everybody waiting and longing for The Man in Black. And then something ominous happened. “You know what, Ladies and Gentlemen? We’ve had lots of requests to hear old Yodeling Slim Clark one more time! Come on out, Slim!” And you could feel it rippling through the audience. What? Yodeling Slim, again? Why?! Good Lord, wasn’t once enough?! And then, “Don’t you worry, folks! Johnny’s here! And he’s gettin’ ready to come out here in just a few, and give you the show of a life time! He’s here!“

I immediately looked around at the fans seated around me, who were also immediately looking around at all the fans seated around them. Puzzled frowns all around! I heard a whisper behind me that took the whisper right out of my mouth. “Damn! I don’t think Johnny’s HERE!” And suddenly that was the writing on the wall. For all of us. There was a bad taste in everyone’s mouth. The emcee didn’t say he wasn’t here, but something about the way he insisted that he was here knocked the wind right out of your sails, I can tell you that. And then… damned if we weren’t listening to old Yodeling Slim all over again. Talk about adding insult to injury…

And guess what. Johnny really wasn’t there!

According to Neil, later on, the people responsible for the show were going nuts backstage. Pulling their hair out! Where the hell was he!? Nobody knew!

They’d been stalling for too long, which helps to explain the long night. I mean, can you imagine the bedlam there would be with everybody angry as hell… and demanding their money back?! After stringing us along seemigly forever, and then torturing us with Yodeling Slim a second time.

A coupla days later, Neil described Johnny’s actual arrival this way: All of a sudden a backstage double door was kicked open, letting the wind and rain gust in. And there he was! In a long, black coat, possibly a rain coat, and a cigarette poking out of the corner of his mouth. Behind him stood the band with their guitar cases and amps. Dripping wet, he stepped inside and flicked his cigarette butt across the floor! And Neil? He chased that butt down and scooped it up! And yes. He had himself a genuine, bona-fide Johnny Cash souvenir!

I know that he kept this memento for a long time in his billfold because he showed it to me. More than once.

However, once when I related this story to some people over at David’s home a few years ago, Neil pooh-poohed my account by saying, “I think you’re using quite a bit of poetic license there, Tommy,” to which David spoke up in my defense, “The hell he is.”

(Sorry, Neil)

Anyway, it turned out that Johnny and his good ol’ boys in the band were quite inebriated. That much was obvious by the way we watched Johnny swagger up to June Carter out there on the stage, toss his guitar over his back to hang off his shoulder by the guitar strap, grab June around the waist, tip her over a few degrees below the horizontal, and plant the longest kiss I’d ever seen planted on anybody’s lips. And the crowd erupted with whistles and catcalls! I was shocked!

I didn’t know it then because I knew nothing about June and very little about Johnny except his wonderful music, but both of them were married. And not to each other.

But not for long, after that.

A few days after the concert, word got around that Johnny and the band had demolished a couple of motel rooms where they’d spent their night. Probably in a drunken blackout. I don’t know.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

But what I do know is… hell, that was one unforgettable date! Very heady stuff. Especially for a couple of small-town, never-been-anywheres like Phyllis and I. But as far as I was concerned, I’d totally done it. Because after a date like that, what girl was ever gonna drop me? I drove her home thinking, Oh yeah, chick’s gonna stick with me. (OK, I admit it. Actually I was thinking that with a big ‘I hope‘ tacked on.) But it was pretty good plus yardage for me.

I mean, hey, I was in with the Mallet Brothers, right? So, like, from her point of view, maybe anything was possible. Maybe I really would end up taking her to see Elvis next, for all she knew. Or… Ricky Nelson. Or…

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

But you know what blows my mind? That none of this might have (wouldn’t have), happened had it not been for one musical instrument that my Aunt Elva had purchased for my mom, Violet Lyford back in the early 1940’s.

Because in 1963, it just so happens that one antique guitar was shown to two young boys, along with a tiny bit of brainless instruction about how to play four simple guitar chords. And a duo who called themselves The Mallett Brothers hit the stage shortly after.

Later the youngest one, David, went off to college with his guitar, and over time blossomed into this amazing national and international singer-songwriter who to this day has seventeen albums to his credit. And today, two of his sons are setting the world, or at least America for now, on fire as The Mallett Brothers 2.0.

You want some irony though? Some twenty-five years later, after the original Mallett Brothers began, I’m still fooling around with those same stinkin’ four chords. Yeah. How do you like them apples?

But whatta say… LET’S HEAR IT FOR MA’S GUITAR…!!!

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THE BIOLOGY OF GOING STEADY II: She Blinded Me With Science !!

From the conclusion of THE BIOLOGY OF GOING STEADY…

“Ah hah. She was there. Fate? And Serendipity?”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

She spotted me first.

I saw this little, nonchalant wave from way up there at the uppermost level of the bleacher seats. Along with the hint of a wry smile? I waved back and smiled back, and then began threading my way up between the seated fans to join her.

But man, I was feeling a queasy apprehensiveness (otherwise known as cowardly cold feet.) Because I honestly didn’t know exactly what I was doing. I had no idea what to say when I got up there. There was no plan. No script. No brain functioning at the moment. So unlike me. Winging it. Onward and upward though!

But God! What were we ever gonna talk about…? Biology?

I eased myself down beside her. We had the gym’s cinder block wall behind us to lean our backs against. I took a deep breath and let out a long sigh. And then… we eyeballed each other for a moment. Me, daring myself not to avert my eyes in this uncomfortable, eye-to-eye-contact contest. My brain-dead shyness was breathing its bad breath down my neck, just waiting for the cue. And me, pretty sure I’d just put my foot in it once again.

“You came,” she said. That was like moving a pawn forward a couple of spaces to start the game.

My move.

“Yeah.”

My intimidated pawn cautiously crawling only a single space out onto the board.

Her move. (please say something please say something please…)

“I wasn’t sure you would.”

OK, my move, my move, my move! What to say? God, this was like my first time swimming all the way out over my head at the beach, hoping like hell I was gonna make it out to The Float without drowning, or at least getting any bloodsuckers stuck on me!

“Yeah. Me either. Same here. I mean. I wasn’t sure you’d… you know…”

Pure eloquence!

“So…” she said.

“So…” That was me. (obviously.)

“Guess it’s time.”

“Yeah.”

Wait. What?

“Uhm, time for… what? What for exactly?”

She held up her index finger. “You said you wanted to see it.”

“Oh, God, yes! Yeah.”

You know what? Somehow she didn’t seem a thing like the same girl I’d been assigned as a lab partner that morning. That girl with the sullen, angry, Jimmy Dean vibe. (And yes, I know I should’ve come up with some female movie star’s name other than Jimmy Dean’s, who was, yes, a guy, but…

She proffered me her hand. I took it. Once again. I took a breath. Then pretended, with a put-on, officious frown, to administer a professional medical examination of the finger. “Yes,” I said presumptuously. “Hmmm. I see, I see.”

“SO… is it… OK?”

“Well, yes. It is.” Were we really playing ‘Doctor‘ here? “I see you’re down to a single, standard Band-aid. That’s a good sign.”

“Oh yes. Johnson & Johnson.”

“Of course. The very best.”

“So…?”

“Uhmmm… so… lemme think… Well, I guess take two aspirin, stop being a bleeder, and call me in the morning.”

My God, we were talking. I was talking.

“Technically, I’m not a bleeder though.”

OK. That earned a frown from me. “No? Oh, that’s right. Because… technically you didn’t bleed out and drop dead on the biology classroom floo…”

I didn’t get to finish that sentence. And the reason is…

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

OK. What I’m about to relate IS, I swear, a true story. If you find it unbelievable, just know this: looking back on it, so do I. And so did my brother. Not to mention my mother, after she found out about it. But this really did happen. Only the dialogue here is generally and creatively extrapolated from the known bits and pieces of this distant recollection. The actions herein are not. They are 100% real.

The memory of this… let’s call it the ‘in-the-bleachers moment’ (along with the many like-minutes that followed on its heels) I’ve kept stored away in the private little “steamer trunk” in my head for all these decades, along with all my other bizarre, embarrassing, or in some cases seriously unfortunate real secrets.

So, why now? Age, I guess. From the perspective of this, my 78^th year on the planet, things that once made me blush, or made my heart practically beat itself right out of the ribs of my rib cage, seem silly and trivial now. And so many, I’ve discovered, can make for some pretty entertaining stories, just begging to be let out of the box and be told.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So. Sue had just claimed, “Technically, I’m not a bleeder though.”

And my snarky comeback began, “No? Oh that’s right. Because technically you didn’t bleed out and drop dead on the biology classroom floo…”

And the reason I didn’t get to finish that sentence is…

She kissed me! And Wow! I really hadn’t seen that coming! And it happened so fast, I didn’t have time to duck. But when I say she kissed me, I mean she KISSED me! This was no peck on the cheek! No smack on the lips! She planted one on my mouth that kept it shut for 30 seconds! She’d wrapped her left arm around my neck and then pressed her right hand on the back of my head while she did it!

Now, did I stop her and try to push her away? Did I say, “Hold on, there. Don’t you think that was a little inappropriate? I mean, considering we’re seated right out here in public at a basketball game, in plain sight of a couple hundred fans?”

Nope. The answer is no. N-O, NO. I did not.

I mean, c’mon guys, I was fifteen, right? Juliet’s age in Romeo and Juliet (and me not due to turn sixteen until July, seven months away.) And whoa, I was just getting really kissed for the very first time in my life, wasn’t I! And it had happened so fast, any pros and cons I might have had would’ve just been swept away right out on the tide like so much flotsam and jetsam anyway. Yeah, this being my first “real” kiss and all, what happened to me during that thirty-seconds was something the likes of which I’d never could’ve imagined.

First of all, I was stunned. Stunned emotionally, but also physically, like I’d just been stung all over in a somewhat pleasant jellyfish attack.

Secondly the world all around me had just shrunk right down to a Sue-and-I-sized bubble. I mean, where’d that basketball game go? I didn’t know. I didn’t question it. I didn’t care. Out of sight, out of mind.

I could only concentrate on the face looking back at me, close as a mirror image.

Thirdly, the only thing going on around that bubble for all I knew was those Fourth of July fireworks. Because from my preadolescent viewpoint, that was a Hollywood kiss! Just like in the movies, where I’d been primed to expect a crescendo of orchestra music and fireworks.

And finally, something “magical” was going on; something was happening all over me, inside and out, from head to toe, and I had no idea how to take it. It was like a buzz. Best comparison I can come up with is a massive infusion of adrenaline. Close, I guess, but no cigar. No, it was something else. (And no, I’m not talking about something of a prurient or sexual nature, so get your mind out of the gutter, if that’s where it is. It was nothing like that.)

OK, now today I know exactly what was going on, whereas way back there in those Dark Ages of the early 1960’s, it was something none of my generation could ever possibly have had even an inkling of. So…

I’ll lay it all out for you so that, in my defense, you will completely understand why I was in no position, in no state of mind whatsoever, to have had the wherewithal to say, “Hold on, there. Don’t you think that was a little inappropriate? I mean, considering we’re seated right out here in public at a basketball game in plain sight of a couple hundred fans?”

And yes, I have every confidence you will find me innocent of all charges.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

But first… It’s time for a little TED TALK here. So get out your pens and notebooks, boys and girls. I’m going to teach you something about the Science of Kissing. I’m going to explain three Facts of Life that I’m betting you are unaware of or, if you have stumbled upon this information in the past, you’ve likely forgotten all about it.

The following is an article I discovered on Google. The author is one Emer Maguire, winner of the Northern Irish Installment of the International Science Communication Competition, FameLab.

READ IT. THERE COULD BE A QUIZ AFTERWARD…

“WHAT HAPPENS IN OUR BRAIN WHEN WE KISS?

“The brain goes into overdrive during the all-important kiss. It dedicates a disproportionate amount of space to the sensation of the lips in comparison to much larger body parts. During a kiss, this lip sensitivity causes our brain to create a chemical cocktail that can give us a natural high. This cocktail is made up of three chemicals, all designed to make us feel good and crave more: dopamine, oxytocin, and serotonin.

“Like any cocktail, this one has an array of side-effects. The combination of these three chemicals work by lighting up the ‘pleasure centres’ in our brain. The dopamine released during a kiss can stimulate the same area of the brain activated by heroin and cocaine. As a result, we experience feelings of euphoria and addictive behaviour. Oxytocin, otherwise known as the ‘love hormone’, fosters feelings of affection and attachment. This is the same hormone that is released during childbirth and breastfeeding. Finally, the levels of serotonin present in the brain whilst kissing look a lot like those of someone with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

“No wonder the memory of a good kiss can stay with us for years.”

And so, worthy Members of the Jury, I ask you to now consider the evidence that undeniably finds my client, little Tommy Lyford here, INNOCENT of any and all charges. Because, as the facts have clearly shown, at the much too innocent age of only fifteen (and also unbeknownst to him), he was unwittingly administered a powerful Dopamine-Oxytocin-Serotonin Cocktail that had rendered him not only unable to lucidly make sound and healthy decisions, but also left him in an induced state of helpless euphoria.

And… ahem, in the very words of the defendant himself, in his closing statement delivered earlier after taking the stand and testifying in his own defense…

“For cryin’ out loud! SHE BLINDED ME WITH SCIENCE!“

(The defense rests.)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Alright. Now that I’ve been exonerated in the courtroom of my own mind at least, the story continues…

Maybe twelve seconds after the kiss ended, I found myself reeling. And gazing into an impish twinkle in her pale blue eyes. And what devilish message was that flirtatious grin taunting me with? How’d you like them apples, homeboy? Or, Boy, you oughtta see your face right now?

I had no idea. I was just… happily flustered, to say the least. The Hollywood movie I’d been longing for in my daydreams had just come right down off the silver screen and right into the movie seats to audition me.

And… when I noticed her face starting to float back over toward mine once again for a close-up re-take of my screen-test, my face ended up meeting hers half-way! Coked to the gills on the Dopamine-Oxytocin-Serotonin-Cocktail, I threw myself into the role!

Knowing practically nothing about real “love scenes,” it turned out I must have been somewhat of an idiot-savant. A star was born!

We kissed each other’s brains out!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Later that evening I was home, and situated at the kitchen table having a snack from the fridge. Just Ma and I were there. Everything was fine. In fact everything was really far better than fine. I was glowing inside. And why not? Glinda the Good Witch had (apparently) floated down from The Emerald City and tapped me with her magic wand.

It was just like Pinocchio becoming a real boy. One minute I was Barney Fife…

and Hey Presto! the next minute I was a certified make-out-artist-Lothario!

Life was good. Going over and over the evening in my mind, I was still rocked by it all. I mean, Einstein was right: Time actually can stand still! Did you know that? I mean, first there was that amazing, steamroller kiss. Then… we’d leaned into each other and, wow, the real kissing began. And even though it seemed like we’d just begun… suddenly, like Cinderella’s twin-alarm-clock fairy godmothers, Sue’s actual twin sisters (I didn’t even know she had twin sisters) were urgently tapping on both of our shoulders, telling us it was time for Sue to go home, that their ride was here. Wow. It was like… waking up.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

But yeah. Back to the present: There I was sitting at the kitchen table, when suddenly the kitchen door burst open! It was my older brother, Denny. He came barging in to the kitchen like Paul Revere sounding the alarm!

Denny: Ma! Tommy was making-out with a girl tonight! Practically all night, too!

Ma (from the pantry): WHAT!

Me: (cringing silently)

Denny: Right there in the bleachers, Ma! During the game and everything!

Ma (bustling into the kitchen): “NO!”

Denny: Yes! And he wouldn’t stop! He just kept… jeez, doing it!

Me (privately under his breath): Why oh WHY, just once can’t you do something bad so I can rat you out?!

Ma (incensed): TOMMY???

Denny: Right in front of everybody! Right there in the bleachers where everybody…

Ma: I said, TOMMY???

Me (in desperation): That’s not true! We were seated way up top in the bleachers. There was nobody behind us to see, Ma! And everybody in front of us…well, they was watching the GAME! I SWEAR!

Denny: How the heck would YOU ever know?

Ma (fit to be tied): We didn’t bring you up like… ! We didn’t bring you up to make a SPECTACLE of yourself, and our family, like that! You should be ASHAMED of yourself!

Me (biting my tongue, wanting to say: But you know what, Ma? I’m NOT!)

Ma: Just you wait till your father gets home!

Denny: Oh yeah. And there’s one more thing!

Ma: Oh Lord, no! What?

Me (cringing even worse):

Denny: (plunging the dagger deep in my back) She’s (drum roll, please)… Catholic! And she’s a (blanked-out-family-name for anonymity)! You know, the ones from Atkinson!

Me (whispering under his breath): “Et tu, Bruté?”

Ma: OK, mister, You are so grounded!!!!!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

But… TO END ON A LIGHT NOTE…

I need to say this. I’m a big Seinfeld fan. And whenever I re-visit the above confrontation in my head, all I can think of is that hilarious episode of Seinfeld where Newman (Hello… NEWMAN) barges into Jerry’s apartment and lets it be known that he witnessed Jerry shamefully making out in a movie theater during the screening of Schindler’s List.

Go ahead. Play the clip…

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THE BIOLOGY OF GOING STEADY

I still didn’t really have a lot going for me as a high school freshman.

Well, I had escaped my K-through-8 World. And that was pretty big. I mean, leaving all my embarrassing ‘dirty laundry’ behind me back in grade school:

Getting sucker-punched right off a playground swing seat by… a girl;

Nearly losing my manhood wrapped around a maple tree trunk with a bicycle crossbar between my Buster Browns;

Surviving the shame and trauma of “The First Kiss Gone BAD” Milestone”;

And of course, having barely escaped THE TENDER TRAP set by the two feral little vixens, Sandra (Dee) and Wendy (with my virginity still intact).

But at least on day-one at Foxcroft Academy, I was starting off all over again with a clean slate, playfully toying with the thought of becoming a monk in a monastery. Well no, not really, not seriously. That was just me being a drama queen. But hey, at least I wouldn’t exactly have to take a vow of chastity, would I. The universe seemed to have already conferred that vow on me arbitrarily.

But unfortunately being a high school freshman came with a curse: Health Class had clued me in to the sad truth of the matter that girls mature both physically and mentally two or three years earlier than boys. (And of course I was, like, Gosh, you don’t say! Oh wait… that’s right! Now you mention it, I do seem to recall two chicks named Sandra (Dee) and Wendy who’d definitely surpassed me in maturity.)

But here’s the thing:

(A) First of all, that implied that most girls my own age were only likely to find boys who were older than me (1) more attractive, (2) generally more interesting, and therefore (3) more compatible for dating (damnit!).

(B) I was now, a lowly ninth grader trapped in a grades-nine-through-twelve school building with not one, single, solitary female younger than me in a radius of two miles around in any direction. Meaning, that I was gonna hafta wait two frickin’ years before any female (who might [or even might not] find me (1) attractive, (2) interesting, and therefore (3) compatible for dating) would ever show up!

And (C) damnit all again, when you’ve got at least the beginnings of your hormones sputtering to life inside you, as I had, you just can’t seem to ever throw in the towel and give up trying in spite of yourself. No matter how hard you try.

So there it was, the writing on the wall: my chances for any ninth- or tenth-grade love life loomed before me like some pot-holed, dead-end street.

Yeah, and it wasn’t helping that I wasn’t popular. Plus, no successful athlete either. Me, still short for my age. And all in all… I’m talkin’ basically just some silly, frivolous little class-clown learning vicariously all about life through the likes of Mad Magazine and …

that quirky and very dated 1950’s sit-com, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. (About this: please understand that the irony of that show’s title was the fact that Dobie Gillis could never end up getting himself a girlfriend if his life depended on it.) (And if that scenario should sound somehow familiar, you’re probably thinking of my life up to this point in my story. In fact, I seriously considered titling this post “I, Dobie Gillis“).

All the beautiful babes on the show (like Thalia Menninger below, played by teen, Tuesday Weld) always ended up going for the filthy rich guys (like Milton Armitage, played by Warren Beatty [also below], or the popular captains of the sports teams).

See, like Dobie, I too was stuck obsessing over the bevy of out-of-reach, more-mature-than-me, high school dreamboats that were always whispering and giggling together in the cafeteria.

Well. OK. I did have that one and only thing going for me. The Charles Simic thing. Poetry. I’d been dabbling in doggerel (poetry written by dogs) ever since fourth grade. My rhyming-dictionary-brain could put just about any thoughts or sentiments into rhyme. In fact, by the time I’d got to high school, I’d already built myself quite a little reputation as the ‘Class Poet.’ (Also the ‘Class Clown,’ but that’s neither here nor there.)

So anyway, there I was, languishing in the leaky rowboat of my potential ‘love-life,’ adrift on a sea of study halls, and praying to Neptune that by casting my poetry nets and shiny little poem-lures, I just might beat the odds, just might luck out and reel in one of the more (alright, perhaps more desperate) physically and mentally developed trophies lurking out there in those shallows of academia…

Me, The Young Man and the Sea.

But it’s funny, isn’t it. How sometimes “The best-laid plans of mice and men go oft awry”? How Fate and Serendipity can conspire by rolling the dice of your destiny behind your back?

What I’m hinting at is…

SOMETHING ACTUALLY HAPPENED!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In Lap Lary‘s biology class (familiarly called “Lap” because as the high school track coach, I guess he was known for making slackers run extra laps), I sat in a front seat. Sitting in the front seat wasn’t my idea. Lap [Fate] put me there to help me ‘pay attention.’ Yeah, he was very helpful that way.

I wasn’t at all thrilled with biology, but occasionally we had a lab that was actually interesting. Case in point, one day as part of a unit on the circulatory system, we were learning about the different blood types. The lab required us to pair up with the student seated next to us [Serendipity] and (and here was the scary part) draw a few drops of blood from each other. Those drops would then be mounted on slides to be examined under a microscope, and then ‘typed’ by us.

So the student seated next to me happened to be a girl. A girl I didn’t know. And I knew everybody else in that class because we sophomores had all been freshmen together. But this girl hadn’t been. I knew absolutely nothing about her. And of course, it felt a little awkward, being assigned some unknown girl as an instant lab partner, especially when I was expecting to pair up with one of my buddies.

But, whatever— I dragged my desk around so the fronts of mine and hers were touching and she and I were facing each other.

“Tom,” I said, by way of introduction.

Looking a lot bored, she responded, “Sue.”

She was very skinny, kind of plain, and seemingly freckled all over. I mean, if the school were to put on a play version of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, she’d be a shoo-in for Tom’s girlfriend, Becky Thatcher. No Natalie Wood there. But of course, I was more a lot more Mickey Rooney than a Paul Newman, so…

“Can I ask how where you’re from?”

“Can you? You just did,” she said sourly.

“Yeah. OK. I’m sorry. None of my busin…”

“This class stinks.”

“Oh.” So. Neither a Natalie nor an academic, then. “OK.” I tried for a little chit-chat. “Yeah. And me? I’m not doing too hot at it right now. I”ll probably end up right back here in this same seat, same time next year.”

“Doubt it,” she said, rolling he eyes like she found my attempt at chit-chat boring. But of course she would, wouldn’t she, what with girls maturing a couple of years earlier than guys. Whatever.

Lap was distributing the lab kits: alcohol swabs, Band-aids, cotton-batting balls, the little silver cylinder that housed its tiny, spring-operated fingertip-nicker, and our microscopes. “Whattaya say?” I asked. “Wanna do me first, or should I do…”

“I’ll do you.”

“Oh. OK. Hey, You sound a little nervous.”

“You’re the nervous one here.”

She was right. So I decided to zip it. And we began. with her swabbing the tip of my index finger.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Minutes later, I was winding a Band-aid around it, not that I was really bleeding or anything. Just a couple drips. Turned out my blood is O-positive. Good to know. Then it was my turn.

So she laid her small, surprisingly cold hand, knuckles-down, in my open palm. I swabbed her fingertip, cocked the little silver doo-hickey, and asked, “You ready?”

“Whatta you think?”

Hmmm. I said, “O-kay.” Man, so far I barely knew what her voice even sounded like, she was so talkative.

Not that I cared. (snick!)

I already had the glass slide lying at the ready on a paper towel. So, like a cop inking a felon’s fingerprint, I turned her hand over and gently dabbed her finger (which was bleeding rather noticeably, by the way) on the slide, immediately thinking, Whoa, that’s a little more blood than I was expecting! Actually, blood was dribbling off over all four sides of the little slide. And when I tried to cap that slide with the upper slide in preparation for the microscope, Jesus, blood squished right out from between them! By that time, it was more than a little obvious that her bleeding was getting more than just a little out of control. My fingers were all bloodied.

“Oh my God!” I said, which is most always what I say just before a panic attack kicks in. “Are you OK?”

“Yeah.”

Oh? ‘Yeah?‘ I thought. You are? I snatched up the dinky little Band-aid and, in trying to tear it out of its paper wrapper, nearly tore it in half! And Jesus, now the blood was getting all over both my hands and hers, not to mention the entire Band-aid while I struggled trying to remove its two little plastic tabs! Meanwhile, there was red Rorschach blot growing on the paper towel, just like my panic! Jesus! The Band-aid just wasn’t going to cut it!

I dropped it and pinched the tip of her finger tight to stanch the bleeding, leaned my big-bulging-eyed, panicked-face right up eye-to-eye with her calm face (jeez, how could she be calm?!), and whispered, “I don’t know what’s going on here!”

“I’m… Well, I’m kind of a bleeder,” she confessed.

A bleeder! Kind of?! Oh yeah, that’ was all’s all I needed to hear right then! (And she’d said it so calmly! As if she were just telling me her shoe size or something. JESUS! SHOULDN’T SHE BE PANICKING TOO?!)

“Mr. Lary!” I yelled over my shoulder. No answer. “MISTER LARY! We need HELP OVER HERE!” A second or two passed. Then from somewhere seemingly way too far off in the classroom behind me, I heard his bemused voice. “Be with you in a minute.”

In a MINUTE??? No! “NOWWWWWWW! RIGHT NOWWWW! HELP! WE GOT BLOOD HERE!” And then there he was! Standing over our double-desks and looking down upon the mess! “Oh wow! That’s… That’s a lotta blood!”

“I know I know I KNOW! She’s a BLEEDER, damnit!”

“Ooh! OK. Keep pressure on that finger. Be right back. Going for the first-aid kit!” And off he went. Leaving me holding hands with a dying sophomore! And by now, most of the kids were gathering around us, ooh-ing and ahh-ing and packing us in close, finding the two of us deliciously fascinating!

But… blood is a funny thing, isn’t it. For some, it just is what it is. For others, it’s just not so wise to let them catch sight of it. Take Ronnie, for instance.

Ronnie the big, brave football player. While peering down upon my partner’s little bloodbath of a desktop, his face drained of all color, leaving his complexion ashy, with an almost greenish tint. Then, like an oak… TIMBER! Down he went! Fortunately for him, someone caught and cradled his head before it would otherwise have bounced off the floor.

Lap had reappeared but, jeez, now he was on his knees tending to Ronnie! Me thinking, Let the lunk tend to his OWN self, why don’tcha?!

I found Sue looking at me, still all cucumber-calm. Which irked me, in my panic. “ Now look what you’ve gone and done.”

“Me?! You’re the one that stabbed me, remember?!” Wow. I hadn’t seen that coming!

“Well,, when you were stabbing me, mighn’t you have just given me a little heads up at least that you were a bleeder!”

“I’m not a bleeder. I just…”

“And you stabbed me first!

“I only…” And then this Sue that I’d only just met suddenly burst out laughing! I hadn’t seen that coming either.

Then, I don’t know why, but I started to laugh. And let me tell you, I really wasn’t in the mood for laughing, either. But too bad for me, right?.

And then her laughing ratcheted itself up a couple, three, notches. She was laughing hard now. Which was crazy, right? And next thing you knew, (I couldn’t help it) I was laughing my head off too! The two of us totally out of control. And what a sight that must’ve been. Two blood-blotched little mental patients strapped to the mad scientist’s blood besotted operating table and cackling it up hysterically! For a full minute.

We laughed our asses off.

She was lucky she didn’t bleed out…

After Lap had got Ronnie taken care of and back up on his feet, and Sue’s finger bandaged up tight and properly, the class was pretty much over.

While we were waiting for the bell (our desks now back in their rows, side-by-side again) I asked her if I could check out her finger once more. “Just to make sure there’s no blood seeping through that big fat bandage.” That almost started us up again.

But once again she laid her hand in mine. We were once again holding hands.

“Looking good now,” I reported officiously.

“So are you,” she said. “Well… I mean, honestly, you were looking pretty green there. I kept thinking, Oh, that’s all I need right now. To have, you know, this guy pass out on top of that guy, and then maybe the whole class going down like a bunch of dominoes.”

My God, she had such a very warm smile. And I was thinking, So that’s what her voice sounds like.

And then I realized that I was grinning like an idiot.

After a long awkward silence, I thought of something to say. “So, where is it you live, anyway.”

“Atkinson.”

“Ah.” Atkinson being a little village maybe eight to ten miles west from town. “So, I guess you’ll be… grabbing the bus home right after school this afternoon then.”

“Nope. You couldn’t pay me to ride that bus.”

“So how do you get home then?”

“Either one of my brothers or my dad. They’ll pick me and my sisters up tonight.”

“Tonight? Well, what’ll you do in the meantime?”

“Oh, just hang out. Like we always do. And whoever does pick us up, it’ll be after the game tonight.”

“The basketball game? Oh, you’re going to that?”

“Yup.”

“Huh! Yeah. Me too.” What was I saying? I wasn’t planning on going to any basketball game. “So… maybe I’ll see you there.”

“Yeah.” Still smiling. “Maybe you will.”

“Yeah. And I probably should, you know, check that finger again.” Oh my God. Had I actually said that? “I mean, ahem, you know. Make sure the bleeding has completely stopped.”

“OK. Provided I haven’t bled to death in the meantime.”

The end-of-class bell was ringing. “Oh please. Don’t do that.”

Out in the hall I watched her disappear in the hallway crush.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Feeling somewhat nervous, I stepped in from the December cold, paid my admission fee in the gym lobby, and walked into the clamor of refs’ whistles, the dribbling ball, squeaks of sneakers on the polished floor, and the occasional GHAAAKK! of the buzzer. The hometown-side’s bleachers were packed.

I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what was feeding my angst. Just the uncertainty about whatever lay in store for me that evening, if anything at all.

I began scanning the crowd. I doubted she’d be there. Either way, what did I even care? I didn’t know her. She didn’t know me. She was just somebody I’d… well, somebody I’d held hands with that morning. For a few minutes. That’s all.

But for some reason though, something had felt oddly intimate that morning. Hah. Two complete strangers with apparently nothing in common (one who would barely deign to speak to the other at first) being thrown together by fate (fate being in this case Old Lap Lary), and then… and then, unexpectedly, by some somewhat extreme circumstances…

Whoa, right there Trigger! What I just said there? Did sound just a tad bit similar to the opening line of Romeo and Juliet???

Nah. What was I, crazy? No. But damn! I was such a little romantic back then. I mean, did the expression ‘damsel in distress’ perhaps occur to me too? Oh, probably it did. Of course it did. And did my dumbass brain actually toy with the notion that… well, because our hands had spent a few moments clasped, and in blood, too… that we’d undergone some kind of ancient blood ritual? Like, we’d come out the other end as something like…?

OK, I’m not answering that.

Jesus H! That’s just laughable. Pure and simple.

But things like this sometimes make me wonder what my life would look like today if I hadn’t spent my entire childhood practically sneaking into Center Theatre and watching all those movies! I mean… I could’ve been an engineer instead of the bleeding-heart romantic English major I still am today! I could’ve had a simple, black and white life, a life where everything would be explainable by the precise arrangements of ones and zeros, instead of suffering all this messy angst of the heart.

Wait a minute. No. That’s unimaginable. Forget that.

Face it. Like Popeye the Sailor man, I yam what I yam what I yam.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Ah hah. She was there.

Fate? And Serendipity?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Hey, stay tuned for the ballgame and the rest of the story in the next installment.

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