10 anomolous memories about school. Share yours!
1. Coach Pyle set up a car stereo in his history (?) class with speakers at the side of each wall. Every day he would play Jim Croce 8-Track tapes on a loop. I'm not sure of his motive, but the end result was Jim Croce burn-out on a scale equal to Hiroshima. I'm sure I'm not the only one who was driven up the wall by the sheer monotony. I swear I almost puked everytime "Bad Bad Leroy Brown" made it around to the front of the queue.
2. Our band director, who had been there for less than a year, entered into an extramarital relationship with the French teacher. Actually he wasn't married, she was, I don't guess that makes any difference in the moral equation. Everyone knew about it. In his defense, she was a hot number. Just joking, folks. There's no defending adultery.
3. Do you remember those Tart 'n' Tiny candys? They were like little BBs made of sugar. More or less the same thing as Nerds. One time a whole lot of us armed ourselves with handfuls of this candy. When Mrs. Searcy turned her back we threw all those Nerds at the chalkboard. You wanna talk about a rattled educator? She was a fragile sort anyway. She left the room in tears as the whole class laughed. Kids can be mean.
4. This happened in French class. The "jock corner" was in the back of the room (duh). Typical jocks who would rather have been anywhere but there, goofing on each other. Now there weren't many black people at our school in the class of 80. I can only think of two, both very popular and cool guys. KT was one of the two and he was sitting in jock corner with the others in that French class. They start looking for words in the back of the textbook and asking what they meant. The teacher gladly tells them. Then one of them, sitting next to KT, asks, "What's 'La Cochon Noir'?" The teacher says "The black pig" and they all roar with laughter at KT's expense. I know that might sound racist, but these guys were close friends, I wouldn't be surprised if KT was in on it. The idea was to shock and make the teacher uncomfortable. It worked.
5. There was this poor guy who used to get a lot of teasing, he played tuba in the band for awhile. I'll never forget the day someone stuck a tampon in the bell of his horn.
6. There was a canopy above the west door of the field house. One day Paul Allen decided to act the fool and got up on that canopy yelling and hollering at the people on the ground. David McCurley and I thought it would be funny to throw handfuls of pebbes at him. So here comes Jerry McAnally up behind us, sees what's going on, and I guess he thinks it's funny too...except that he picked up this huge rock and hurled it at Paul, striking him in the head. Paul wound up having to get stitches and Jerry suffered a smattering of punishment from administration. Oh, and we got detention, too. How unjust is that?These pebbles were so small they most likely didn't even reach him. And here we are getting the same sentence as a kid who beaned with a big rock. What's that all about, huh?
7. One time, in the seventh grade, I took two copies of National Lampoon to school with me. I was always bringing Mad magazine, Cracked and other comic books to put in the middle of my textbooks to make it look to my teacher like I was reading the book, like I was supposed to be doing. Now, National Lampoon sets itself apart from all the other magazines I would bring because it typically contains a few...uh...inappropriate photographs of half naked women. All in the name of humor, mind you. I knew I shouldn't have shown them to anyone, let alone the guys I DID show it to (one of which I think was the above mentioned Jerry McAnally. It wasn't long before offers were made and though it was not my original intent to sell them, I broke down in the face of how much they were willing to offer for them. I sold them under one condition: do not show them to anyone. I knew what a powder keg of trouble would be set off if the whole class found out there were magazines in the building with naked women pictures. Needless to say they did not honor my demand. Word got around, as it tends to do. The buyers got an hour of dentention each. I got the choice between five hours or three swats. The principle got a couple of free issues of National Lampoon. Addendum: I chose the swats. For a little guy David Cox could sure swing a mad paddle.
8. Here's a perfect example of the gulf between the way things were and the way they are. Our school used to have a smoking section for the students. Between classes and during lunch they were welcome to use this space to light up, usually with a teacher or two joining them. It was right outside the woodworking class. Kids would walk into class REEKING of tobacco. Disgusting.
9. Back in the 5th grade the Gideons used to make the rounds and give all the students those little pocket New Testaments. I remember one of those times when, walking across the playground I saw two kids teasing Paul Allen, throwing his little bible over his head, passing it back and forth like pseudo-bullies will do. The same Paul Allen who would one day take a rock to the back of his neck, I felt sorry for him. On impulse (I can only imagine) I jumped into the mix and retrieved the little book, giving it to it's rightful owner. For my troubles I got punched in the face by one of Paul's tormentors. He didn't see fit to offer thanks, either.
10. This isn't exactly a "school memory" but it happened on school time. Me and my best friends Steve Duncan & Gary "Chet" Affentranger were at Kenny's Red Devil Restaurant. I'll make this short and sweet. Steve picked a booger out of his nose and put it in the blue cheese dressing on the salad bar. There. Short and sweet.
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