NewMexiKen was awake much too early this morning. As I lay there watching the ambient light from the moon give way to the ambient light of dawn I started thinking. And for some reason I started thinking about when I was in school.
In the sixth grade, I was in the school choir for Christmas midnight mass. It was a parochial school, St. John’s in Fenton, Michigan. I can remember being taken into the hall for an audition, certain I couldn’t sing. Surprise, I made the team. I sang in the seventh and eighth and ninth grades, too. In junior high I was not only in the chorus, but sang in a double-quartet and a quartet. I remember the four of us — Bill Smith, Jerry Hart, Joe Mosier and I — singing “Night and Day” and “My Buddy,” the latter surely more mournfully than even the writer of that World War I song would have liked. In the ninth grade, in Tucson, I was again in the chorus. Then, for some reason — my voice changing? — I stopped. And I haven’t sung in public again since.
Singing wasn’t my only artistic endeavor, though. I liked telling jokes, a skill I learned from my mother and her step-father (grandpa to me). Even as a kid Mom would tell me “dirty” jokes and I’d re-tell them, sometimes at school. I was paddled by the principal in the eighth grade for telling dirty jokes in class. I learned from the paddling never again to tell dirty jokes where they could be overheard by someone who might tattle.
That same principal — her name was Bertha Neal — has a school in that town, Durand, Michigan, named after her now. Lord knows, she earned it. When I was there they had all 12 grades and kindergarten in one building. And she was the principal of it all. My joke-telling was probably the least of her worries.
I remember an awards ceremony at the end of that same school year. Some graduating senior boy won the attendance award. He’d been there every day of high school. In fact, this kid had only missed one day in all 12 years of school. I remember thinking that was impressive — and pathetic.
I missed a lot of school as a kid. I had appendicitis, and pneumonia, and strep more often than I can remember. And Mom let us take the occasional mental health day, too. But when I got to senior year in high school for some reason I modeled myself after that award winner back in Durand. First eight months of the school year I didn’t miss a class.
We had an English term paper due May 1, and a friend and I pulled an all-nighter to get ours done. This meant we went to the library late on the afternoon of April 30 and started writing later that evening. Sometime around dawn I finished and was ready to get to school on time. Bill was still finishing up though and, as he was my ride that day, I waited. We got there about 11.
It seemed that every kid and every teacher in the school knew why we were late. We were guilty of what had to be the most heinous crime committed since the Lindbergh baby was snatched. Bill and I got detention for being late without an excusable excuse and — even though we weren’t late to her class — the nun in English refused to accept our term papers for credit. She took them and read them, but didn’t grade them. After all that work they would have no affect on our course grade. A bitter incident and one I still think was unfair. (She later told the class mine was the best of all the papers — a rare moment for me.)
I took several mental health days in the three weeks remaining before graduation. So much for perfect attendance. Ferris Bueller was right.
The year before in high school we’d gotten a new gymnasium — a million dollar gift from a benefactor. It was confusing those first few weeks what with boys locker rooms and girls locker rooms and all. I was drying after a shower one day — Ted Barrasso was next to me. We were, obviously, naked. The door opens and Mary Anne comes in, looks around, shrieks and barrels out. Poor Mary Anne. Within an hour the entire school had heard of her mistake and every girl was giving her sympathy and comfort, in person or to anyone else who would listen. Poor Mary Anne. I don’t remember anyone ever asking Ted or me if we were embarrassed or if we were OK. I came to understand then that in stripper-bars and topless joints the patrons who “barge in” are always more uncomfortable than the naked people who belong there.