or best fit.
Rowe (first name, unimportant) met a sad end after high school, around 6 months after graduation. Ohio has different rules for alcohol and establishments than Indiana. For this reason a dive touts enterance to 18+ persons, being given a paper writstband indicating legal and non-legal drinkers. This is interesting in theory, might even be good, if the people were faithful to that policy. The place had no quams about underage drinking, since those checking ID, saw that it was roughly rectangular and had a picture and letters on it. Honestly there had to be 14 year olds there too. Worse still, 30-year olds. Drunk 30 year olds and yonung teens -- so gross, it should have been nuked. Anyway,
Rowe apparently was driving back, with other underage drunks in the car. He failed to make a turn and flipped the car. It was my understanding that he bled to death, pinned under the car, his "friends" fled possible arrest for 'minor in posession'.
This was an anti-climatic end to someone who made a mortar for a class project to fire a tennis ball. He enlisted my help to put things together. He had to make due with what he had -- and he was alive because of that.
He read a munitions manual for a book report (sound crazy yet? Other stories will confirm it)
He made a mortar from cardboard tubes and socks for stuffing and wadding.
He used an electric start to fire it.
He carried the weapon just outside the school. I plugged it in.
[Foom!] Words don't describe the volume of the blast. People exited rooms. I ran around the corner to see his vanishing act. In seconds, like Copperfield, he was gone in a large cloud of smoke. There was an odd print on the window of the door. We later found out that it was melted sock that didn't come off the window.
I opened the door and still no Rowe. Finally, coughing hacking, he was there. What no one had scene is him rapidly dropping the large shattered firework and putting out the fire on his arm. He suffered second degree burns. No one remembered that he wasn't trying suicide, specifically, but rather "launching" and tennis ball.
He generally brought some weapon to school, showing to a select few -- no one really wanted to know. As far as I know, no one picked on him, he was just bizarre and a loner. Had he lived, he would have made news for crime no doubt.
He also palled around with RC (not likely to be mentioned in any later post) who openly made anti-Semetic comments and once nearly blew up himself and Rowe by playing with a live grenade.
I guess I posted this because this was a route I could have taken -- the road less travelled, for a reason, leading ultimately to destruction of others and self.
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Survial of the best suited
Middle School Madness (series)
a kid who had bangs longer than the fullness of my scalp hair, I imagined him thinking: "I like hair in my face." (song-like)
"Swats", corporal punishment for wrong-doings. I never got one, but that was employed on several kids while I attended.
Art teacher; nice but wacky, suffered a debilitating fall on steps leaving him mentally incapable of teaching. His nickname for me: Howdy Doody, because I have freckles.
M D (probably never to mentioned in any other post) had a preference for silver and gold paint markers -- nasty and messy. I remember he always had some mess on his desk somewhere and on his arms. Later, this kid couldn't come to school because of a bad acid trip.
At least six different incidents of me getting hit in the groin, usually during P.E. One such adventure was attempting to block a soccer shot. I jumped up and it was only chest high. Well, with the jump, it hit me square in the nads. I fell onto the ground, was pulled off the field and asked the stupid question, "Are you alright?" No! I wasn't alright. MR was there and was heartily laughing.
MR invariably would fall asleep during any movie or slide show during science.
The same "I like hair in my face" kid would sometimes turn around and look at either MR or me or both and mumble, "I kick you [sic] butt"
I remember being pretty much Beavis or Butthead throughout, well before that series was on TV -- "stoner", "rocks", "hard" -- all with stupid laughter.
I also remember the report on 60 minutes referred to masturbation as arousal from "touching oneself", which I didn't quite comprehend being genitalia, but rather anywhere. I thought it odd that someone would moan at the touch of an elbow.
There was a foul-tempered math teacher who made grass-growth fascintating, but not math.
MR had a notebook with the collection of his, not-truly Schultz Peanuts, in say ... XXX form.
There was a teacher there who wore short skirts and was very curvy. What? What do you mean I'm teasing the hormone-strong animals? I'm not doing anything but getting their attention. "Uh, Mr. Murphy? Would you come to the front and give your report." "No thanks. I'll take the F."
I remember the underpowered computers they brought into the school and that people had to learn to use the "Card Catalog".
The P.E.T. Computer. Tape storage driven, with a Mac-like fused body and screen. The keys were as solid and stiff as an electric typewriter's, the screen a little larger than a wallet.
I first met MR in middle school. I also met TS there too. His wonderful opening statement to MR and I was, "Hey, Frog and Toad." Charming!
MR was the first person I ever met that actually took the bus -- as I walked to school Elementary and Middle.
This was also the period of the great egg toss.
There was Reynolds and Reynolds teachers -- not related. The woman Reynolds was young and, well ... quirky. Public knowledge of her biker (or cyclist) boyfriend lent us to make speculations.
Whunh was there. She sat in a group with MR and myself. Another tidbit of middle school humor:
Fjord: a body of land mostly surrounded by water (I defined it as me, a guy, in the bathtub)
This also spawned "Fwank!" c/o MR -- the sound reverbarated when farting in the tub; to which most people can truly attest.
Speaking Old Entish
I took the folks out today for lunch. They ran into an old neighbor from when they first moved here. She can talk exponentially. My father stated, "I thought that we'd be here all afternoon."
It reminded me of Lord of the Rings, "It takes a long time to say something in Old Entish, so anything worth saying takes a long time."
