It’s Tuesday, March 30, 2010 so pour yourself something and enjoy another:
But first, here’s the final design for the shirts:
I’m thinking they’ll go on sale about the middle of May. The question now is the price.
Now on to today’s tale…
Back in high school, I had a peripheral friend by the name of Larry. Not a lot of people hung out with Larry. He seemed to drift from group to group, never really taking root in any particular clique. Larry was the High School Head.
No, strike that. Being the Head implies smoking weed. Larry viewed marijuana as feeble at best and trended more toward the chemical side of getting (and staying) stoned out of his mind. Larry was also something of a genius in that he could tell you (complete with diagrams) the chemical composition of every illegal drug known to man. He tended to eschew stimulants and depressants in that they “gummed up” his head, choosing instead to work mostly in hallucinogens. Apparently, these allowed him to remain clear-headed and logical.
When he wasn’t whacked-out, he was a fairly normal chap. He was a pretty good shortstop and enjoyed fishing. When he was under the influence, he could either be a riot or a royal pain in the ass. While he was hallucinating, he always seemed more concerned that someone would be annoyed or inconvenienced over whatever it was he was seeing. I remember finding him in the back of the library one morning, on his hands and knees, killing “micro-bats” with a ruler. He looked up at me and said “Ms Newland (our librarian) is gonna be pissed if she finds all these micro-bats back here.”
My dad could not abide Larry, even though Larry thought my dad was wonderful in every way. Larry would often call my dad at work to report on the strange things he was observing. This would always result in a rather lengthy diatribe from my dad that evening about how kids were all retarded and humanity had pretty much peaked with his generation. He was particularly annoyed when Larry called him to report metal, robot grasshoppers in dad’s garden and that he should come home right away to help him finish them off. Apparently, these could only be killed by stomping my mom’s tomato plants. Fortunately, dad got home before Larry had stomped them all.
Larry was responsible for my being suspended from school for the one time when I was completely innocent. Of all the other times I was suspended, it was always due to some action on my part. Sometimes my involvement was peripheral at best, but I was at least somehow involved every time but one.
Mister Bach was our civics teacher. He had a peculiar style of teaching that involved scribbling on the chalkboard with one hand, talking over his shoulder at us and erasing it with the other. At random intervals, he would wheel around, point to someone and demand an explanation of whatever it was he had just held forth on. You had to pay attention in his class. This was back in the day when it was okay to ridicule a student in front of other students and this was something he excelled at. If your reasoning was in any way faulty or your facts wrong, you could look forward to several minutes of derision, disparagement and sarcasm. It was actually better to admit that you weren’t paying attention and endure a brief, canned lecture about your future than to give a wrong answer and be ground into the dirt.
Larry sat next to me in this class. During today’s class, Larry seemed unusually anxious and was fidgeting in his chair and twitching. When I asked if he was okay, he responded with “He better knock that shit off!”
According to Larry, Mr Bach had been clandestinely observing Larry for reasons that would soon become quite clear. As luck would have it, Mr Bach took that moment to wheel around point to Larry and ask for the rationale behind US isolationist policy prior to world war 1. Larry jumped up, pointed at Mr Bach and announced:
LARRY: I knew it! I KNEW IT!
MR BACH: What?!
LARRY: Now I understand what you’re up to!
MR BACH: (Genuinely puzzled in that Larry was not given to such outburst) What are you talking about?
LARRY: I know who you are!
MR BACH: Oh? Who am I?
LARRY: I call you by name, so there’s nothing you can do to me! You’re Satan! You’re the Devil, Beelzebub!
MR BACH: What the hell is wrong with you?
LARRY: You got everybody fooled with that disguise, but I see through it! You can’t do shit to me though?
MR BACH: Are you high? What the hell…
LARRY: No, no, no, no, no, NO! You can’t put a spell on me!
MR BACH: Sit down!
LARRY: Not a chance, Lucifer boy! You’re revealed!
MR BACH: Fine, get the hell out of my class! You go see Mr Godfrey right now!
LARRY: Oh, I’ll go see him. Don’t you worry about that! I’ll tell him who you are and what you’re up to with this fake “civics” class crap!
MR BACH: Go!
This is where I laughed.
MR BACH: (Pointing at me) You think this is funny? You can just go with him!
ME: What for? I didn’t do anything!
MR BACH: You can tell Mr Godfrey how this is so damned funny!
LARRY: Come on Rich! You can be my witness!
MR BACH: GET!
So it was that I found myself again in Mr Godfrey’s office, listening for the hundredth time to his lecture about disrupting the educational process. Basically, if you could not participate in the educational process, you should drop out, go to Vo-Tech and save resources for students who were actually interested in participating in the process. About 4 minutes in to the lecture, Larry starts picking at his jeans and shirt. Eventually, Mr Godfrey notices and stops, mid-word.
MR GODFREY: Is there some problem?
LARRY: Damn worms.
MR GODFREY: Pardon?
LARRY: Got these damned worms all over me. Mom’s gonna be pissed when I come home covered in worms.
MR GODFREY: Mister Frimday, are you high on something?
LARRY: We’ll, I mixed some orange sunshine with some purple moon at lunch time, but I’m fine now.
MR GODFREY: Lunch time? It’s 1:15 now.
LARRY: Really? That’s not what the clock in Mr Bach’s room says.
MR GODFREY: What does his clock say?
LARRY: (Still picking worms) It’s weird. Instead of numbers, there’s just the sign for infinity. So it’s like half an infinity past infinity.
MR GODFREY: (Coming to grips with the fact that Larry is not entirely with us just now) Oh, well that would make things difficult.
LARRY: That’s how the Devil tells time.
MR GODFREY: The Devil?
LARRY: Yeah. Mr Bach is the Devil. You should get rid of him.
MR GODFREY: I see.
LARRY: Don’t worry though, I’ll call my preacher and have him come down to cast him out if you can’t.
MR GODFREY: I think it’s best if your mom or dad came and got you.
LARRY: Lemme get rid of these worms first. Got any Lysol?
MR GODFREY: I’m sorry, no. You two wait outside for your parents.
LARRY: Cool
ME: Now wait a minute! I don’t do anything! I’m not high and all I did was laugh!
MR GODFREY: Were you not paying attention while we talked about the educational process?
ME: Yeah, but all I did…
MR GODFREY: Outside. You can tell it to your dad.
My dad got there before Larry’s did and stood there, arms akimbo while Larry explained Mr Bach’s spying on him, his being the devil, the clock in his classroom and finally, the worms.
Larry and I were more or less friends for a couple more years. My dad never could get used to him. The last time they spoke, Larry had called to warn my dad about a bus full of hippies that he met on his way to Seattle and how they all had pictures of him and our house and said they were coming to live there.
That’s actually it for the day. Chris’s internet connection went Bartle Doo for most of the day, so I’ve been manning the fort all by myself.
Alice Cooper will be in town May 4th! Feed my Frankenstein!