High School Dress Code - The Redline

Introduction

I have tried to be a good parent, but it’s not always easy keeping up with the job. A recent example: my younger daughter’s college tuition bills always went to her, and she never forwarded them because who cares? So I’d suddenly have to scramble after she received her third reminder and decided to bring it to my attention. Could I have put this recurring task on my calendar? Sure. Did I? Nope.

Thus, I suppose it shouldn’t have been a surprise when I recently stumbled across a document that my kids’ high school sent home, years ago, for me to sign. I swear I’d never seen it before, though it was certainly my signature at the bottom. Probably my kid thrust it in my face when I was trying to hustle her out the door, and when I didn’t see any financial impacts I just blindly signed it. Well, now that it’s come across my desk again, and I finally have the time to look at it, I’ve decided to redline it like I should have done in the first place. Since the school is most certainly not going to review my edits, I’m posting it here as a service to those who still have kids in high school and should be campaigning to refine their schools’ regulations. Note that due to HTML complexities, I’m not going to actually use a red font or strike anything out. You get to figure out what the original text was and which verbiage comprises my amendments and embellishments.

Albany High Dress Code – suggested revisions for immediate review

1. Clothing should be neat, clean and appropriate with shoes worn at all times. Common sense and reasonable judgment should eliminate the need to correct students in the area of dress and personal appearance. In the event that common sense and reasonable judgment do not prevent the need for correction, the source of the faulty judgment or lack of common sense will need to be established. This is a two-way street, and surely students will find administrators’ judgment lacking. Since these kids are the darlings of marketers, with their clothing choices becoming the habits that will cement lifetime value for the clothing industry, consideration will be made to grant the kids some clout, versus the educators who are, let’s face it, kind of bitter and probably not contributing much to the economy, based on their famously poor wages.

2. Shorts may be worn, but shorts and skirts that are too short, frayed, torn, or too tight are not acceptable. Clothing must not have holes that would attract attention and/or cause a distraction to the educational process. The judgment of this is up to school personnel, who are actually quite reasonable. For example, after last year’s dust-up around skirt length and the impressive solidarity of boys who began wearing miniskirts to support the cause, the school is now officially allowing skirts (of appropriate length) for both boys and girls. Also, staff members generously do allow holes in garments that are essential to their function, such as arm holes, neck holes, and leg holes. The staff acknowledges that a lack of a necessary hole, such as a missing aperture at the base of a sleeve, would be distracting if it were to inhibit the student’s actual arm from being usable. Also, if a garment has fringes, which are effectively quite similar to fraying fabric other than being tidier and more obviously engineered, as opposed to suggestive of excessive wear, the garment will be tolerated. Moreover, tassels are acceptable and even encouraged. The main distraction to the educational process is any feature of a garment that would be noticed by teenage boys with their raging hormones. Since most teenage girls find boys gross, it is reasonable that boys’ attire can be shorter, more frayed, or even torn, though too tight would be distracting to anybody. A final note: it is unreasonable to expect an educator to have to explain what, specifically, is unacceptable about a garment, in the event that it is distracting on a hormonal level. This could cause blushing and the suggestion of untoward attention. Educators will simply use the term “frayed” in a very generic way and students should accept this as a catch-all term for inappropriate clothing.

3. Markings or insignia on clothing or the body must not be obscene, suggestive, show gang affiliation, feature inappropriate language, or advocate disruptive behavior. Staff acknowledges that gang activity in Albany is exceedingly rare, so the colors red and blue may be freely worn, though red is preferred as it is the school color. It is also acceptable to wear clothing bearing a Berkeley High insignia, but only ironically. Inappropriate language is to be determined by the educators. For example, “FIGHT THE POWER,” though it advocates disruptive behavior, is acceptable as a tribute to Public Enemy (a rap group many staff members enjoyed as teenagers), whereas “DIE YUPPIE SCUM” is offensive to educators who are acutely aware of their lack of yuppie status. In situations where staff members disagree, a recent example being the phrase “I POOPED TODAY” on a t-shirt, determination will be made based on any staff member being uncomfortable. In such cases it is strictly forbidden to single out the offended staff member, such as by calling her “constipated” or “bitter.”

4. Clothing must not advertise or promote alcohol, tobacco, or drugs. If, for example, a student’s parent works for Pfizer and receives a branded t-shirt as swag, and the student wears this to school, he or she may be asked to go home and change. Furthermore, if a garment advertises a product that could be mistaken for a drug, such as Pfister (a plumbing fixture company commonly confused with Pfizer), that garment cannot be worn. The rule applies even if an alcohol-related brand is not featured primarily to promote the product. For example, if a student wears a retro Coors Classic t-shirt that he nicked from his father, he or she will be sent home, even though Coors beer is practically water.

5. Underwear may not show. However, it must be worn. The school administration acknowledges that this is difficult to enforce. For the most part the “honor system” will be used, but if a student is suspected of “going commando,” he or she may be sent home to change, with zero dialogue around why the staff member is suspicious.

6. Tops worn by boys or girls must not be revealing as judged by school personnel. Exceptions may be made based on what is being revealed. For example, a tight shirt revealing belly paunch will be tolerated, to avoid fat-shaming.

7. Clothing should cover the midriff. It’s bad enough when a nice flat midriff distracts hormonal boys; when a “muffin-top” is exposed, that’s distracting to everybody. [In fact, consider changing “should” to “must.”]

8. Clothing that is disruptive or causes distraction while at school or a school function is not permitted. This includes disruption or distraction that accrues to the wearer, not just staff and fellow students. For example, if a student must hitch his or her pants up every thirty seconds to avoid violating rule #5, the pants are considered distracting. Certain exceptions may be made; for example, a student unable to concentrate due the discomfort of a hair shirt may continue wearing it if he or she is doing penance in accordance with his or her religious beliefs, which are protected under school policy.

9. Cargo pants/shorts with more than five pockets are prohibited. The “watch pocket” does count as a pocket, whether or not the student actually carries a pocket watch. An exception to this rule may be granted in the event that the student must carry more prescription medication (including inhalers, insulin pens, Narcan spray applicators, and EpiPens) than would fit in five pockets. In this event, given the weight of all these full pockets, a belt must be worn to avoid violation of rules 5 and 8 as described above.

10. Albany High School reserves the right to allow or disallow certain apparel and accessories. If a student is asked to remove a hat or other headgear by any school personnel or guest teacher, the request must be honored promptly with no discussion. In the event of conflict, such as a student wearing a Stanford cap because a parent attended school there, which annoys a teacher who went to Berkeley, the teacher will automatically prevail. Or, if a teacher thinks visors simply make no sense, the student must remove his or her visor or add a yarmulke to complete the cap.

Postscript

In case you were wondering, almost all of the above rules are from the actual Albany High dress code. The only exception is number nine, which is from Southern Nash Middle School. I find this five-pocket prohibition a bit rich, especially from a school whose logo is highly anatomically suggestive.

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From the Archives - Guitar Man

Introduction

In 1986, I took a high school creative writing class. The teacher, Mr. Kroop, wore Jams and played whale music and didn’t do a lot of lecturing; instead, he gave out gobs of assignments. We seemed to have something due almost every day. One day he assigned us a character sketch. I think my effort came to more than that, in its primitive way. (Note: by “sketch” he meant only in the literary sense. The drawing below had nothing to do with the assignment and Mr. Kroop never even saw it.)

Guitar man – February 3, 1986

Olga leaned back in her chair. It creaked, threatening to collapse. She belched loudly, and then slumped over the little built-in desk. She was in a meeting at an alcohol rehabilitation center, where she had been sent as part of her sentence for shoplifting at a Liquor Mart. Having smuggled in a flask of Jack Daniels, she was too inebriated to pay attention to the lecture that was being given. Plus, she spoke almost no English.

A bearded man came around passing out magic markers and big sheets of butcher paper. Olga assumed they were to write lists of some kind. Goals? Reasons to do better? Excuses? She wasn’t feeling inspired to write anything, and nobody would be able to decipher her Cyrillic characters anyway. So she just slumped at her desk, her cheek resting on her arm, watching the proceedings unfold sideways. The bearded man said something to her which she ignored. Then she happened to spy, on the wall, a framed picture of a man playing a guitar.

Something was weird about the picture. It was sideways. Of course, Olga’s head was turned on its side, so the picture ought to look sideways, she reasoned, but it just wasn’t right. It was, like, double-sideways. She sat up and looked at again, with her head straight. Now it was upside-down! She shook her head a bit as if to clear it. She looked again. Yes, she had been drinking, but not that much, and the picture was definitely upside-down. What was this, some kind of joke? Some kind of trick? Or a result of very haphazard janitorial service? Was this some visual aid, to be used in some group exercise, serving perhaps as some metaphor? Well, it didn’t matter. Not Olga’s problem. And then she remembered something she’d learned once in an art class, decades ago, back in the old country. Something about drawing upside down, and how it helped you draw what you see, not what you suppose something looks like. Olga realized that, with her butcher paper and marker, she was in a position to draw this right now. Upside-down.

She hadn’t drawn anything with a marker in ages (a spray can being her preferred medium), and she held it tightly in her fist like a toddler with a crayon. She drew rapidly, looking at the framed picture rather than her paper. Once in a while she glanced down and was thrilled to see her drawing taking shape and looking, actually, a bit like a work of art. Some of the lines kind of did their own thing, some petered out instead of joining anything up, and she noted with a frown that the guitar player’s right hand looked a little palsied, but all in all it wasn’t bad. Now if she could just not screw up the face! She focused on the lines and tried to forget what they were supposed to be leading up to. Halfway through finishing his head she couldn’t go on—there was too much goodness on the paper to risk screwing it all up. It had to be considered Done.

She turned the paper around so it was right-side-up and gazed upon her work. Had she really just drawn this? How much time had passed? She realized suddenly that the room around her was in motion, chairs scraping back as people stood up. Somebody was collecting the papers. No! Not hers! She started to roll it up but her fingers were fumbling. It was like she’d used up all her skill and had nothing else left for this task. She stood, stepped back, and tripped over her chair. Her arms flew back and she caught herself from falling, ending up in a crablike position. Her contraband whiskey bottle flew from the pocket of her baggy overcoat and spun across the floor. This caused massive commotion—with all the alcoholics in the room, that bottle was like blood in shark-infested waters. Olga lumbered off toward the exit as if in flight, embarrassed and ashamed to have her smuggling operation discovered. The door swung closed behind her, letting out a little sigh.

The bearded man shook his head and strode toward the abandoned whisky bottle, which was still half full. Nobody raced him for it, but all eyes were on it. Suddenly there was motion again at the double doors, a struggle from the other side, and they started to open together. Olga staggered through, a look of fierce determination on her face. The bearded man practically sprinted for the bottle, but to his surprise Olga marched right by him. There was a large sheet of curled paper near the chair she’d overturned, and she snatched it up, rolled it into a tight scroll, and—flashing a defiant and satisfied look—strode off, in her galumphing way, back out through the door.

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From the Archives - Thank You (Not) for the Cheesy Microscope

Vlog

If a picture is worth a thousand words, and HD video captures 30 frames per second, then a ten-minute video is worth about 18 million words. That seems more efficient than reading a 1,600-word essay. With that in mind, I've made this post available as a vlog. The traditional text version, as always, is further down the page.

Note that if you are viewing this on a mobile device and don’t see a thumbnail of my vlog above with a Play button, that’s because Google “improved” (i.e., wrecked) their Blogger interface. You can either scroll way down this page and choose “View web version,” or open this post on your PC, or click here for the video.

Introduction

Back in like 1982, my brothers chipped in and gave me a really nice birthday present: a microscope. This might have been a bit of a shock, as they were only like 17, and I could have thought it a really extravagant gift. But I knew better: I’d seen this microscope before, in the gift shop of Fiske Planetarium. It was significantly discounted, which makes sense … why would a microscope sell in this gift shop, after everyone’s just finished being transported to the celestial heavens? A microscope takes you in exactly the wrong direction! 

It was marked down a whole lot but not enough for me to consider buying it. For one thing, who uses a microscope at home? What would I peer at with it? I did use a microscope in biology class in high school, but that was an assignment, and besides, you had to do something during the time you’re sentenced to be in school. I remember we were tasked to try to grow something (mold, fungus, whatever) in a Petri dish, and I got the gnarliest result of the whole class. My secret? I swabbed the rim of the restroom urinal. My sample went fricking nuts. That really was impressive to see magnified 10x.

My older daughter also used a microscope in bio, during middle school, and was either assigned to draw the instrument or decided on a lark to do so. Of her actual viewing of the microscopic world she remembers little. “Yeah we used microscopes in class, they were pretty cool but most of what I recall was fighting over them with my group mates,” she reports. Here is her drawing.

So, getting back to the microscope my brothers gave me, the biggest impediment to my actually using it was that the thing was cheesy. It was almost all plastic, including (I think) the lens. It was evident that my brothers had hoped I wouldn’t know about, or remember, its having been on sale. The second price tag had been carefully removed—gone without a trace. The original price tag, reading $39.95, was still on there. Of course my brothers knew it was tacky to leave the tag on, but the ostensible price—and thus their supposed generosity—was the whole point. If they’d been cleverer, they’d have blacked out the price with a magic marker, but made sure to do it lightly enough that if I squinted, I could still read it.

I halfheartedly pretended to be excited about the microscope, but clearly I was being played for a sucker. My brothers probably got it for free, being close personal buds with the planetarium’s director. He was probably throwing it out.

Fast-forward about nine years, and I unexpectedly received a birthday gift in the mail. And guess what? It was the same microscope, still in its original packaging! I’d actually taken it out and dinked with it a bit all those years ago, just making sure it wasn’t actually totally awesome, which it wasn’t, and then I’d put it all back in the box and forgotten about it. The proud, dishonest price tag was still on there. I sat right down and—well, okay, it took me three weeks, but—I wrote them a nice thank you letter, which I post here because a) it’s a slow news day at albertnet, b) you might find this amusing, and c) it should serve as a useful example of an important form of correspondence: the utterly insincere thank-you.

(Via the miracle of the Internet, I’ve found a photo of the very microscope in question. I have no idea what became of mine.)

Thank you letter for cheesy microscope - July 17, 1991

Dear Geoff and Bryan:

Imagine my awe when I saw the gleaming plastic, shining brightly through the thick, industrial grade cellophane stretched tight over the box. Before I even read the label, its words boomed through my head, startling me out of my everyday daze and sending goose bumps over my entire body:

A HOBBY TODAY — A PROFESSION TOMORROW!

Fighting the impulse to tear the elegant display box to shreds like a kid on Christmas morning, I gently removed the fitted storage box, precisely cut to form in expanded polystyrene foam, from the luxurious cardboard housing, and with almost excessive eagerness, lifted out the microscope. Noticing its weight in my trembling hand, I knew quality when I felt it. We can all sense when we’re in the presence of any best-in-class creation. BMW motorcars. Ralph Lauren Polo shirts. Rollecta pasta makers. And now, the 3 Way Microscope Lab with Viewer and Projection Device.

I guess I don’t even need to explain to you how much more this is than a simple microscope. Surely you did endless painstaking research before settling on this jewel of scientific technology, with its astonishing array of features, and its flat black finish, its base and arm richly adorned with chrome-like accouterments. From the Ocular down the Body Tube to the Revolving Turret (or REVOLVER, per the alternative nomenclature in the user’s guide), all the way to the 3 Way Objective Lens, this microscope struck me as the finest of its kind. Anywhere.

Part of me wanted to stop for a moment and just pause, savoring the moment, standing as I was at the brink of limitless scientific investigation, an endless journey of the unseen world. At the same time, I was driven by an irresistible impulse to throw myself headlong into it, as a surfer is hurled toward the beach by a tremendous wave. With trembling fingers I withdrew the first of six slides from the Lab’s casing: Monocotyledonous Stem of Corn, from Japan. I was getting ready to clip this specimen to the Stage when I realized with a jolt: I hadn’t even read the Microscope Lab’s instructions!

I lifted out the brochure with a sigh of satisfaction, knowing how richly I would benefit from the Manual, drinking in every drop of wisdom it could and surely would impart. From its first heading, “INTRODUCTION TO A MICRON WORLD,” to its intriguing opening sentence, “There are innumerable living things in our world,” I poured myself into its pages—both of them. Such rich instruction! Such literary poise, unadorned by preening, erudite flourishes but rather straightforward, clear, and direct! All the literature I’d held in high esteem before—Hemingway, Nabokov, Steinbeck—suddenly seemed weak and childish compared to the confident prose of the Manual:

In the case of Zoom Microscope, turn left the nut underneath eyepiece and make it loose and dislocate the eyepiece, and insert the viewer head in the body of microscope and turn right the nut tightly.

Lost in my wonder and appreciation, I must have let my guard down, for to my utter horror I was startled out of my keen focus by movement in the room. Raising my head from the crisp pages, I observed my roommate handling the Projection Device! He’d just wandered in, and now betook my instrument as though he were qualified and welcome to do so! Granted, his care and obvious awe exemplified his respect for the integrity and opulence of the Lab, yet my immediate instinct was to grab his wrist and wrest the Device from his hand, which he obviously hadn’t even washed first. I acted upon this instinct but caught myself before going further—I’d wanted to strike him a blow across the face with the back of my hand! I did loudly admonish him for his irresponsible behavior. How could he be so impertinent? Was he even a scientist?

My roommate glowered at me sullenly, his eyes burning, red-rimmed circles of resentment and jealousy. Had this fellow always been so ugly, such a stark embodiment of envy and evil? Or was our conflict recasting him in my sight due to my heightened sensitivity? I cannot tell. Over the last three weeks I have learned far more about human greed, envy, and paranoia than I have ever wanted to know. In fact, only my newly acquired knowledge of the Micron World surpasses this perception of malevolence, the kind of bone chilling sense of wicked covetousness that haunts a man night and day.

Only in the latest hours of night can I prop a chair against the door of my chamber and, in the ominous glow of a single burning candle, remove my Lab from its secret hiding place and carefully prepare the slides and gum media for a few painfully short hours of serious learning. So great is my fascination for the Micron World, not only tiny bits of lint or nose hairs but also the old standbys provided with the Lab—Monocotyledonous Stem of Corn, Fruit Fly, and Woody Stem of Pine—that I put aside my fears and drift into total educational bliss, totally detached from the Macro World that presents such threats to me and my 3 Way Microscope Lab with Viewer & Projection Device.

But none of the threats to my Lab need concern you … rest assured I shall guard this most prized possession with my life, sending you frequent dispatches of what I learn of the teeming micron world hiding all around us, in plain sight to those equipped to see. Thank you, my brothers, thank you again and again for this masterpiece. This is a gift and a birthday I will certainly never forget.

Love,

Dana

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From the Archives - This Is a Short Story—NOT!

Introduction

When I’ve lately searched my archives for an old essay worth posting, it’s felt like I’m down to the absolute dregs. One thing I’m resolute about sparing you are the short stories I wrote during high school, which are painful to read. The following essay, which I wrote in college, examines the difficulty I had with fiction, while sharing some personal history I hope you’ll find amusing.

This Is a Short Story - October 21, 1989

This is a short story.

Actually, it’s not. It’s just another ... well, whatever you want to call it. Essay, report, letter: whatever it is, it ain’t fiction. A family member reported recently getting shivers when reading about my life, and wishing it was fiction. Hey, if my memoirs make you uneasy, you should read my short stories! Or maybe you shouldn’t.

See, I’ve always had problems with fiction. A few years back, I could write it pretty readily—but it was really, really bad. My characters were either boring, unbelievable, or undeveloped. The situations were worse. Real life provides all this for me; I just have to write it all down. The only trouble is, I have to patiently wait for characters to show up and situations to happen, which takes too long … unless I delve into my past.

I’m probably the only 20-year-old alive who’s ready to write his autobiography. I could write a new volume every twenty years until I’m dead. So instead of the story I was going to try to write this evening, here are some reminisces.

 At my high school, most students hung out in packs (I’d say “cliques” but that’s such a stupid word). Within these groups, everybody tried to look like everybody else, so most of my peers in high school could be easily categorized: jock, egghead, stoner, hic, punker, cheerleader, reject, etc. I always had a strange fascination, almost an admiration, for those who took great pains to distinguish themselves and stand aloof from everyone. Take this guy in my Russian class, Timofey. That’s not really his name, but it’s the English phonetic spelling for his Russian name. Outside of class, he probably went by “Tim” which doesn’t fit him nearly as well. Who knows, maybe he adopted “Timofey” beyond the classroom … I wouldn’t be at all surprised.

Timofey made punk rockers look like Eddie Haskell. He wore this black leather jacket with a painting on the back of a pit bull with an arm sticking out of its mouth. Big block letters spelled out, “Pit bull for sale: loves children.” As you read that, it sounds stupid. And it was. But the fact that he wore that thing, without copping any kind of rebellious attitude, was unique. Unlike punkers, he was friendly and outgoing. His hair was even wilder than his jacket: a kind of square shaped, white ‘do with little vertical curls set in epoxy. I’m not kidding, epoxy—I asked. He was really funny not just to talk to, but to look at. He might have been smart; I couldn’t tell (though it was said that he was the first Russian language student in 20 years to fail the class). 

I guess the real reason I kind of respected the guy was that he wasn’t trying to relate to the punkers—in fact, they wouldn’t go near him. Where you would expect them to look at him with awe, their expressions seemed to say something like, “Gawd, that guy’s WEIRD!” He singlehandedly made their own poses look pretty weak; after all, most of these rote punkers would have cleaned up just fine and could be installed in a church service pretty readily. But not Timofey. I mean, how do you get hardened epoxy out of a kid’s hair?

When I started high school I was as judgmental and easily shocked as the next rank-and-file member of the nerdy wannabe-elite. Having Timofey in class, and finding him harmless, helped me let my guard down. I was also led toward greater acceptance of the unusual by this punk rocker chick named (in Russian) Masha. She had this way of looking at you with a half-smile, curling her lip like Billy Idol, as though she was kind of inwardly laughing at you, except you knew she wasn’t even paying attention to you, so she must have been laughing at everyone, at this class, at this whole stupid high school scene. I had a sizeable crush on Masha, even if her bleached, gelled, and shocked-up hair wasn’t set in epoxy. My only issue with her is that she almost never came to class.

So, yeah, exchanging pleasantries with Timofey and Masha (yes, they’d actually talk to me!) really expanded my worldview, to the point that when my brothers’ friend DT began an eerie metamorphosis into an unrecognizable hybrid of comic book villain and standup comedian, I rolled with it. He stopped wearing bike race t-shirts in favor of a big long overcoat, which accentuated his 6’4” 200-pound frame (which was itself a recent thing—he seemed to suddenly grow giant overnight). DT dyed his hair red—but not a realistic redhead red, but a lustrous dark black-cherry-red right out of a color comic book. Then he wore the old-school Steve Dallas sunglasses, let a good three days of razor stubble build up on his face, and clenched a cigar in his teeth. Maybe you never saw him like that, and if not it’s probably a good thing. You would’ve hated it, probably, because this was DT, a guy we all knew, a guy we didn’t want to laugh at like a strange exhibit from the Ripley’s Believe It Or Not museum. How are you supposed to hang out with a guy who looks like that?

To engage with DT and his new look took some adjustment. After all, he didn’t create that image so he could blend into the woodwork. He wanted to be noticed, to call attention to himself, just like the young rebel teen punk who sports a foot high blue mohawk and a studded collar and says things like “I just wanna be left alone!” To give DT a hard time for his carefully arranged look would be no fun, as would pretending you didn’t notice. I think he wanted us, or at least me, to play along with his transformation. One time he dropped by my locker after school, even though he had graduated years before. This stands out in my high school memories as one of the finest, having been charged with real (well, fictitious) menace.

First of all, DT was obviously not a Fairview student—way too old. He came swaggering up the ramp towards the student center, this huge, creepy looking thug made even bigger by his massive overcoat, with that stubble and cigar, clearing a path of high schoolers as he went. They must’ve thought he was some kind of lunatic … they gave him plenty of space and then stood there gawking. About thirty feet from me, he called out, “Yo, DANA! Hold it!” I acted real nervous and looked around as if for an escape route, and when he reached me he said, “Tell your friend David if he calls me Mike again, he’ll wake up dead!” All the people around my locker sort of cleared out at this point, and gathered at a safe distance to see what was going on. DT looked around, and sort of put his arm around me like he was going to inflict some kind of pain if I acted up. He whispered, “Hey, Dana, what’s up? You wanna come look at that bike?” but we both knew people assumed he was saying, “It’s too late to back out now. I’ll go easy on you but you miss this next score and you’re dead meat.” I stammered out something like, “Hey, man, I don’t want any trouble.”

Then DT escorted me down the ramp towards the exit, his arm around my shoulders like we were friends but with the suggestion that this could become a headlock very suddenly. Once we were out of sight, we broke out laughing. To my delight, the next day I got some nervous questions from the guys in my honors classes, and I replied in a suitably evasive fashion. I felt like I’d made some important transition from standard nerd to somebody slightly more complicated. (Yes, it has dawned on me that my pose was about as ridiculous as DT’s, but no matter.)

So, I think I’ve known some pretty interesting people, who could be given code names and assigned roles in some totally fictitious story. Like, maybe Timofey and DT meet at a U2 concert and decide to sneak backstage or something. Except that’s dumb, they wouldn’t hit it off at all. Timofey probably wouldn’t be caught dead at U2, he’d be at a Fear concert or something, and DT would be too busy hitting on some girl in the t-shirt line to even think of sneaking backstage. And even if they did, they’d just get chucked out by security, and where’s the story in that? It’d be a really amazing memory if it actually happened to you, but stories have to be way more exciting than that, at least if they’re the type that could make me famous so I could go on “Donahue.”

So, I guess what I’m saying is, though I’d love to be a famous fiction writer, I really don’t know how, and to try to fake it makes about as much sense as changing my hair and outfit and hoping that’ll make me into an exciting, unique person. But faking it at fiction would actually be worse, because you’d read my stories and think, “This just sucks,” whereas Timofey’s hair, Masha’s tongue-in-cheek sneer, and DT’s costume were at least entertaining. So I’ll just keep reporting on that sort of thing, and hope you like it.

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My Humiliating Senior Prom!

NOTE: This post is rated PG-13 for mild strong language and alcohol references.

Introduction

The official story I tell my kids is that I never went to the senior prom. Allegedly I couldn’t, because I had either the ACT exam the next day, or the State Road Championships. (My story varies.) “I knew I had a better shot at the [exam] [race] than the prom,” I explain dryly.

This year, on a lark, I decided to share the real story with my older daughter, shortly before her first prom. In doing so I realized it’s not a bad tale, so I’ll share it with you too, recreated from memory with maximum verisimilitude.

My senior prom – spring 1987

To start off, I hadn’t planned on attending at all. The whole idea seemed completely outlandish to me. My high school was an “open campus,” meaning I was almost never there and barely knew anybody. Meanwhile, I was not exactly a ladies’ man. I wasn’t good looking or confident. I wasn’t up on popular music or sports. I had no concept of fashion except Levi’s 501s and bike race t-shirts. I was only slightly less socially retarded than my brothers, who were so shy they were actually mistaken for foreign exchange students.

There was one girl, Michelle, whom I could have asked to prom, but the problem was, I kind of liked her so it wasn’t worth the risk of rejection. But there was this other girl, in my French class, whom I didn’t like at all. Actually, to be clear, I liked her as a pal, but didn’t want to go out with her whatsoever. The sad truth is, she was as homely as I was, or as I felt, anyway (which was either more or less homely than I actually was, because what teenager ever had an accurate self-image?). This girl was fun to talk to, particularly in class, but that was about it. If you’re wondering whether or not I’m going to tell you her name, I’m not—for the simple reason that I cannot remember it. This just shows you how small I am, or at least how small I was. If she had been pretty, of course I’d remember her name.

I can’t remember exactly why I asked this girl to prom. It was for one of two reasons, maybe both. One, she was really bummed out because her horse had died. Yes, you read that right: in Colorado it was actually possible to own a horse. Hers had been killed in a highway accident (trailer rollover). I never knew if the horse died instantly or had to be put down (I wasn’t about to ask). So I may have actually invited her out of pity. The other possible reason is that I happened to know the obscure fact that “prom” is short for “promenade dance,” and I really wanted to showcase this knowledge by asking, “Would you care to accompany me to the promenade dance?” This is exactly how I asked, and the girl immediately said yes, with a big smile. Inwardly, this shocked and dismayed me, which made me feel like the complete dick that I knew I was.

Well, for the next week she chattered all through French class about her quest for the perfect prom dress. This made me feel worse than ever. It was obviously far too late to cancel the whole thing—every moment she spent savoring her anticipation dug us both in deeper. I knew I should try to match her enthusiasm but I just couldn’t. For one thing, I couldn’t dance—I was far too inhibited. Second, I didn’t own a suit and wasn’t about to throw good money after a bad idea by renting a tux. Finally, I had no car and didn’t want to ask my parents to borrow theirs, because that would mean admitting I was going to prom, which for some reason I was just not prepared to do. I feared—or perhaps hoped—this lack of wheels would be a show-stopper.

When I came clean about the car, my date (gasp!) didn’t even care. She’d just gotten her first car, and was a modern girl. This was gonna be great, etc. Daaaaamn! This obstacle having vanished, I decided I better bite the bullet and rent a tux. I went down to the strip mall with my friend John. He was attending the prom non-ironically and wanted to look sharp. I wish I remembered the name of that cheesy tux place. Their entire clientele seemed to be high school kids. It was obvious that these tuxes were pure shit—and yet, every dude who put one on managed to look really good. I couldn’t understand it. (I do now … it’s called youth.)

Well, there was actually one kid who didn’t look good in the rental tux: me. Part of it was my fault; I was about six-foot-one, 140 pounds. Great physique for bike racing, in the purely utilitarian way that webbed fingers and toes would be good for competitive swimming. The other problem was that I was a cheap bastard and was looking for that one-in-a-thousand suit that fit me right off the rack and wouldn’t require alterations, which were $10 extra. I found that one suit, but it was—I kid you not—pink. Not some marginally acceptable salmon or coral (which might have gone over okay, this being the era of “Miami Vice.”) It was pure, awful pink. Pepto-Bismol pink. Crayola carnation pink.

Because of its color, this tux was actually a cheaper rental than the black ones. Admitting I was a nerd to begin with, and vainly attempting the apotheosis from nerd to smartass, I decided to do it. For my boutonniere I chose, of course, a pink carnation. I thought it very clever to point out that, against my tux, it was “boutonniere camo,” and I tried this line on pretty much everybody I encountered the entire night, without eliciting so much as a smirk. But I see I’m getting ahead of myself.

Before the promenade dance proper, of course, there was the requisite fancy dinner. I agonized over where to eat, which might suggest that I was developing some kind of gusto for the whole affair, but the dinner was merely the only aspect of prom I could manage to develop an opinion about. Among prospective restaurants the front-runner was JJ McCabe’s, which was known for being lax about liquor laws. (This was valuable only in that it leant a mystique; I was too risk-averse, and too cheap, to actually contemplate buying booze.) But I’d eaten at JJ McCabe’s once with my parents, and the service was unbelievably slow … we sat for almost an hour waiting for our food. My dad surmised that every member of the staff was drunk off his loins. I couldn’t take that risk on prom night.

Pelican Pete’s was also kind of flashy, because seafood was still a rare thing in Boulder in 1987. But their food kind of sucked. Tico’s had great food and unlimited chips, but I didn’t want to actually insult my date. The Good Earth was trendy but a little too granola for me. So I finally settled on Sebastians, which had a salad bar that was so fancy you could get caviar. Not that I liked caviar—it was like eating salted ball bearings—but it just screamed “deluxe.” On top of that, the salad bar format was perfect from the budgeting standpoint. After all, nobody orders an appetizer before a salad bar, and nobody gets dessert afterward. I could confidently bring exactly the right amount of money. Sebastians was a no-brainer.

The night started off badly, and not because of my pink suit as you might have speculated. In fact, my date was wearing an orange dress. Not a subtle, marginally acceptable peach or pumpkin color, but a purely awful tint of orange, the color of a Creamsicle.  I’m tempted to say it was even worse than my pink tux, since she’d actually selected it in pursuit of aesthetic élan rather than in defiance of it, but then nothing could have looked worse than that pink tux. Anyway, it wasn’t like she forgave my suit because her dress was awful; she forgave my suit because she was a totally laid-back, cool chick—at least, when it came to me.

With herself, she was much less forgiving (which I suppose isn’t rare). She was upset because, when doing a last-minute check of her beloved new (to her) Toyota Corolla, making sure it was still lookin’ real good, she discovered that the kickass narrow-stripe whitewall tires on the driver’s side were not matched by kickass narrow-stripe whitewall tires on the passenger side. The starboard tires were simply black. Her sweet ride was asymmetrical!

Poor thing. She hadn’t looked this miserable since her horse died. The only sympathetic sentiment I could come up with was “Honestly, your car looks terrible regardless,” but of course I couldn’t say that. She was so agitated and stressed out she was sweating profusely. Actually, the sweating probably had something to do with the fur coat she was wearing, which she’d borrowed from her aunt. May was a bit late in the season for a fur, and it was an unseasonably warm evening.

At Sebastians, things continued going downhill. Turns out the legendary salad bar wasn’t every night. Maybe it wasn’t on weekends, or maybe they decided to screw the prom crowd. Ordering off the menu meant I wouldn’t have enough money. At least, not for two. So I lied and told my date I’d already eaten. For the first time that evening, she seemed miffed. But the waiter was solicitous and the place was swanky, and her spirits improved. As we waited for our—well, her—food to come out, she said, in a conspiratorial whisper, “Look: I come prepared. I’ve been to the Liquor Mart.” She held out her purse. It was stocked with airline-sized bottles of Goldschlager cinnamon schnapps. I raised an eyebrow. “I’ll drink one if I wanna have fun,” she said, “a second if I wanna get crazy, and a third if things get good.”

I was shocked. This girl was cool, I realized. Far, far too cool for me. I was in way over my head. I didn’t have the nerve to drink alcohol. I was just a stupid, ignorant, shy, untutored nerd, and here I was, out with a girl who possessed shades of Woman. That she assumed I was game was both flattering and terrifying. I tried to shrug, to show how cool and unflustered I was, but it came out more like a muscle spasm.

She excused herself to freshen up, and I sat at the table feeling utterly unmoored. What if this girl knew how to dance, too? What if her sang-froid made her popular at the prom? What if she were actually far less of a pariah at the high school than I was? What would I do, in this terrible pink suit? Fortunately, not long after she returned the bread arrived, so I had something to do with my hands. And my mouth. I stuffed my face nervously, and actually my dark mood lifted a bit via the thrill of eating real butter, almost for the first time in my life.

Halfway through my date’s entrée, things were looking up. She kind of chewed with her mouth open, which helped put me at ease. I made a lot of wisecracks about the people around us (mostly old grey-hairs, I realized with a pang), and she giggled a lot. However sophisticated and daring she might be, I reflected, she did seem to dig me. So I’d almost recovered my composure when, casting about for another old person to bag on, I spied my own father dining across the restaurant from us, seated with a woman who was obviously not my mom.

I say “obviously” because my parents had been divorced for almost three years. I still wasn’t used to the idea, and it stung to see my dad out with another woman. He’d never taken my mom out on a date, not during my lifetime. Her birthday, Mother’s Day, their anniversary … nothing would justify, for him, a splurge like this. The other problem was that the woman he was dining with was Horseface, whom I couldn’t stand.

I should probably explain here that this really wasn’t Horseface’s fault. She wasn’t a mean person or anything. In fact, she wasn’t even ugly. Her face wasn’t so much horsey as, well, equine. Yes, kind of a long face, but not painful to look at or anything. The real reason for the nickname is that my dad was dating, concurrently, another woman with the same name and we had to keep them straight. My dad seemed to be dating half the women in Boulder. (The less attractive half, it must be said.) My dislike for Horseface was grounded plainly in the fact of her—in the fact of my dad dating.

So yeah, I was a bit pissed off. Perhaps the whole heady atmosphere of the evening was affecting me, because I brashly strode over to my dad’s table. I didn’t have a plan or anything; I just wanted to make him uncomfortable.

This failed utterly, which I should have seen coming. For me to also be dining at this posh restaurant only helped my dad show off—like, look at my son, he’s only 17 but he’s  already living the good life! My dad beamed and said, “Hello Dana.” I greeted Horseface politely, and she beamed too, like we were all just great friends. I suddenly felt like I might be sick to my stomach. It dawned on me that my blood sugar was low, and I noticed that my dad not only had some giant entrée, but a side of fettuccine Alfredo. I was overcome with bitterness.

Whenever we went out to eat—which was mighty rare, by the way—my dad would say at the beginning, “Boys, you may have anything on the menu under $3.50.” This usually limited our choices to the cheapest and second-cheapest items. And here he was living large with a side of pasta! Impulsively, perhaps thinking that this might somehow impress my date, I said casually, “I’ll be taking this,” and with a nod to Horseface, I walked off, bringing the plate of pasta with me to my table.

My date looked shocked. Two things dawned on me. For one, since I’d rudely neglected to introduce her to my dad and his date, she had no idea who these people were. Second, after bizarrely not ordering any food, I’d now stolen some. Suddenly this pasta was even more embarrassing than wearing  a pink suit. My response to this horrifying epiphany was to start eating the pasta as fast as possible, just to make it go away. I doubled down on this activity when I saw my dad, a terrifying tall man with hawk-like features and a big red beard, storming over to our table. He didn’t even ask who my date was (which was actually a relief) and tried to take his pasta back. We got in a little tug-of-war over it while I hissed at him about putting on the dog with this other woman when he’d never given his own family a nice night on the town, etc.

Amazingly, things proceeded to get even worse. My dad’s date strutted her shameless way over to us and cried out, “What on Earth!?” I glared at her and said, “You stay out of this, Horseface!” Only after her moniker slipped past my lips did I realize what I’d just said. Of course she was unaware of this unfortunate nickname, or had been until now. She gasped, started to cry, and stormed off. I felt terrible. So, evidently, did my date, who abruptly snatched up her purse and stood. My dad took off after Horseface—on a trajectory that, alas, matched my date’s sudden restroom-bound vector. The two collided, and whether it was the impact or just coincidence, my date erupted in a big, throaty, cinnamon-schnapps-scented belch. The dinner was officially a total disaster.

The waiter, professional to the core, discreetly flitted by to deposit our check, which I paid in cash, rounding up so we could bail immediately. We got out to the parking lot where my date, fuming, fumbled endlessly with her car keys. Remembering what I’d had rammed down my throat repeatedly in Health class, I asked, “Um … how much have you had to drink?” She held up three fingers, took the hint, and tossed me her car keys. As I fetched them from the asphalt she made her way around to the non-whitewall-tired side of her car.

Now, you’ll think me terribly petty for saying so, but here was an unexpected silver lining: I got to drive! It’s not just that my masculine dignity was assuaged (though that was, I’ll admit, part of it). The thing was, I loved to drive and almost never got to. I started up the Corolla and looked over at my date. “Just take me home,” she said. She was on the verge of tears. “Right,” I replied.

I drove, she directed, and as we neared her house she said, “Wait. Just stop the car for a minute. I have to think.” A probable truth dawned on me: she was embarrassed to get home early and have to tell her parents that her big night had crashed and burned. “We could just drive around,” I offered. To my surprise, she agreed. As we drove, I attempted some damage control.

“Look,” I said, “in case you’re feeling bad about burping in my dad’s face, don’t. Your burp … it was just awesome. The best. I’ve been practicing my belching skills for years and I’ve never managed anything that rich and full. Your belch had authority. You clearly don’t fuck around when it comes to oral eructation. And another thing: my dad totally had that coming. In fact that was long overdue. I only regret that I didn’t get to do it myself.”

My date was laughing now. She seemed relieved by my utter lack of reproach, and clearly appreciated the levity. It certainly didn’t hurt that she was drunk. Emboldened by how my opening salvo went over, and by the simple act of driving a car, I talked some more, describing my parents’ divorce, trying to hit the right balance of humility, swagger, flippancy, and vulnerability. Eventually—boosted by perhaps her fourth fun-sized schnapps of the evening—my date agreed to return to plan, and we headed to the prom.

The prom was at a hotel we always thought was pretty swank; only now do I realize its cheesiness. But even then I thought the decorations were pretty twee. The planning committee had somehow settled on a barn-raising, pioneer-spirit, good-old-fashioned hoe-down theme, totally at odds with the music (Madonna, the Fixx, the Bangles, U2, Berlin, Cindi Lauper, Van Halen, etc.). As soon as we got there, my date hit the dance floor hard, trying to drag me along. Terrified, feeling like a mouse who finds himself in the middle of the floor, I bobbed up and down, trying to move my chin with the music. My date, lost in the music, seemed to forget about me, so I gradually made my way to the edge of the room.

Encountering various classmates who looked vaguely familiar, I tried my line about the camo boutonniere a number of times and got nowhere. Eventually I found my friend Sean, with whom I engaged in bagging on lame people. I didn’t really know Sean very well—just from a few classes—but he seemed oddly non-nerdy for a guy willing to hang out with me. I pondered, not for the first time, that this might be exactly how he felt about me.

The yearbook staffers were relentless, so my date and I caved and headed to the photo station where we were supposed to pose on a couple of hay bales. My date, off-balance and staggering, leaned on me for support. My rented tux shoes—made entirely of smooth plastic, it seemed, even the soles—slipped, and I leaned back on her, and her feet—shod in ridiculous high heels—slid right out from under her and I ended up sitting on her lap. The yearbook photo captured us in this ridiculous configuration, and to make matters worse I appear, in the photo, to be looking down the front of her dress. Actually, I totally was. I couldn’t help it. The dress gaped open and it was just a reflex. Fortunately, in those days you didn’t see the photo right away, so my date wasn’t (yet) livid. In fact, she asked me to slow-dance.

The slow-dance was very easy. Nobody was really paying attention to anybody but their date. They just shuffled around, leaning on each other, probably most of the girls preoccupied with worry that their date would do something untoward, and certainly most of the boys hoping to cop a feel (or “grab handfuls of ass,” in the parlance of that time). I behaved myself. In fact, it was all I could do to keep my date on her feet. I tried to recall how many airline bottles of schnapps had been in that purse … surely she’d drunk all of them. She reeked of cinnamon—it must have been coming out her pores. Still, when she relaxed and leaned her head on my shoulder, that was kind of nice. At least, it was nice for a while, until suddenly—“Oh, shit!” my date cried. She recoiled from me as if from an electric shock. What had I done?

Turns out it wasn’t what I’d done … it was what she’d done, which was to have a nosebleed all over my tux. “I am so sorry!” she said over and over, lugubriously. I didn’t know what to say. Of course I was livid about the tux—imagine forking over good money to replace a pink tux!—but she looked so miserable I couldn’t worry too much about myself. The poor girl. First her horse dies, then her car has only two narrow-stripe whitewall tires, then her date is a cad in a pink suit, which she bleeds on. She just can’t get a break! I decided to act like a good guy. “Are you okay?” I asked. “Do you need help? Has this happened before?” She flapped her hands around. “It’s just when I’m stressed out,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

My mind raced. “No need to apologize,” I said. “I’m just glad it’s nothing serious. I saw this movie where a guy gets nosebleeds and it’s from a brain aneurysm!” Now she looked a bit freaked out. “It’s okay, I’m sure you’re not having an aneurysm,” I said, realizing how absurd it was to say such a thing, and yet how unconvincing I sounded. “I’ll get you a damp towel,” I continued.

I set off toward the restroom like a man on a mission. Unfortunately, the shortest route was straight across the dance floor, which—by this point—was back to normal (non-slow) dancing. I weaved and bobbed and suddenly my sunglasses flew off. (Yes, it’s stupid to wear shades indoors, especially at a dance, but I was desperately trying to look cool.) They were stupid sunglasses, fake Ray-Ban Wayfarers that were way too dark, but still I was hell-bent on finding them. Pacing around bent over, I got kneed in the face (either accidently or on purpose, I never learned) and now, unbelievably, I too had a nosebleed.

I got to the restroom where a formally attired valet was handing out warm cotton towels. No, of course that’s not true—I grabbed a couple fistfuls of paper towels, wetted them at the sink, and made my way back to my date (the long way around, this time, trying to disappear). I held the towels to the back of my neck in accordance with the old wives’ tale that it would stop the nosebleed, which it didn’t. The towels began to shred and form little pills, like toe-jam footballs, on the collar of my tux. My date was not impressed. What’s more, everybody began loudly mocking us. “Look, it’s the nosebleed twins!” someone taunted. We beat it out of there, dripping blood as we went.

“Oh my god, drive slower,” my date pleaded. “Everything is spinning. Oh god oh god oh god.” Halfway to her house, she puked all over her aunt’s fur and the upholstery of her car. The stench was a horrible congress of bile and cinnamon. I cranked my window down and hung my head out, like a dog. When we got to her house and I swung the car into the driveway, I didn’t see the empty garbage can there—an old-school steel one—and rammed it, causing a massive racket. My date’s dad burst out of the house, taking the porch steps two at a time. He was already furious, as though he’d just known the night would be a disaster. “What in the hell?!” he fumed. I handed my date her keys, spun on my heel, and without a word strode off, beginning the long journey home on foot. The night had been an unmitigated disaster. I didn’t even find my sunglasses.

In French class the next week, my (ex-)date and I didn’t say a word to each other. Fortunately, the end of the school year was not far off. We managed to literally never speak again, and then we graduated, moved off to college, and were thus spared any future awkwardness. And did I learn my lesson? Definitely. I never attended another school dance.

Epilogue

What you have just read is a work of pure fiction. The official story—that I never went to prom—is the true one. When I wrote that I decided “to share the real story” with my daughter, I was equivocating: it’s a real story in the sense that it’s really a story—i.e., really a work of fiction. When I promised maximum verisimilitude, I meant to the story I’d told my daughter … not to any real events. And although I can’t claim that none of the characters bear any resemblance to any actual human, living or dead, I assure you the self-portrait is a caricature.

This tale was born on the night of my daughter’s prom, when my wife and I were chatting. “No, you did go to prom,” my wife said. “How could you forget? You rented that awful pink tux!” Thus began a dialogue of improv. “Oh, yeah!” I replied. “And my date’s dress was orange!” Etc.

The version of this story I told my daughter ended with a character inexplicably grabbing my leg and pulling on it—“just the way, in fact, that I’m pulling on yours,” I quipped. My daughter, crestfallen, said, “Oh, Dad, I so wanted that all to be true!”

My younger daughter overheard me reading this to my wife, and though she ran from the room, and called out to me to speak more quietly because she couldn’t handle hearing it, she ended up listening to the whole thing. She was hugely relieved to discover it was fiction. Are you?

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From the Archives - The Paperboy

Introduction

I’m running out of archival stuff to recycle on slow news days.  So today I’m going way, way back and posting something I have only in hardcopy, from 1986.  Since I don’t feel like retyping a lot of text, or messing with a scanner and OCR software, I’m posting an old poem.

As a bonus, I’m going to provide all-new end notes on this poem.  Pretend you found this in your Norton Anthology of American Teen Poetry.

The Paperboy – April 28, 1986

Is it worthwhile to get up every morn
And lug myself so slowly out of bed, ooooooooooooooooo2
To go and work in any kind of storm,
To earn myself a little bit of bread?

I have to fold so many newspapers,
And put a rubber band of red on each. ooooooooooooooio6
And plastic bag ‘em when a rainstorm stirs,
And throw them on those porches I can’t reach.

I tell ya, though, it really ain’t that bad
To watch the morning sun come rising up;oooooooooooo10
To know how many people will be glad
To have their paper with their coffee cup.

oooThough other jobs may get me better pay,
oooI like my paper route more every day. oooooooooooo14

Footnotes & Commentary

Line 1:  get up every morn’

This line is pretty absurd.  I mean, everybody gets up every morn.  The point I was trying to make is how fricking early I had to get up.  But the poem doesn’t say anything about that.  The reader has no idea.  It’s a good thing I went easy on myself as a teenager, or I wouldn’t have written anything.

For the record, I had to get up at 5:50.  The route had to be done by 6:30.  This was not a crunch.  Folding the papers—there were about 30 of them on weekdays, 45 on Sundays—generally only took a few minutes.  My record was well under 3 minutes.  As far as the delivery, it was also really fast because this was a condominium complex so all the porches were really close together.  I figured out the optimum path through them, which in some cases meant throwing the newspaper onto a subscriber’s back deck (which confused people at first, but they caught on).  I did the route on my bike and could hit every porch without even putting my foot down.  My record for the whole route was around five minutes.

If I had unfinished homework, I’d do that as soon as I got back home.  If I didn’t, I often went back to bed.  During the summer, I always went back to bed.  Sometimes I’d wake up around 9 and panic, having no memory of delivering the papers.  I’d run out on the back deck and check the patio of the downstairs neighbor, which was always my last delivery.  The paper would be there and I’d breathe a sigh of relief.

Line 4:  any kind of storm

Considering that all paperboys, back in the day, were children, it’s amazing how stringent subscribers’ standards were.  It could be pouring rain, or gusting at 50 mph, or there could be two feet of snow, and if I was five minutes late finishing my route, at least one customer would call and complain.  Imagine, grown adults sitting there impatiently, staring at the clock, phone in hand, waiting for 6:30 to come and go so they could dial up the Daily Camera circulation desk and rat me out.

The complaints were taken very seriously and reported back to me on the computer printout at the top of the stack of the next day’s papers.  Complaints were called “kicks” and if you got more than like one a month, you’d get docked.  Paperboys prided themselves on going months and months without a kick.

Once, before I had my own paper route, I was subbing for my brother and hadn’t gotten the hang of throwing the papers yet.  I missed a porch by a mile and broke a garage door window.  This caused a big scandal, with my dad getting an angry phone call, and he had to go replace the window himself.  All the adults involved seemed not only disgusted but outraged, as though I’d cut the subscriber’s dog’s head off and stuffed it in the mailbox.

Line 5:  so many newspapers

I shudder to read this line.  The meter is all screwed up.  The word “newspaper” is dactylic—that is, it has one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed.  For that reason, it cannot be used (no dactyl can) in a line of iambic pentameter.  Obviously as a lad of 16 I didn’t grasp this.  In my defense, I didn’t have access to a handy blog post explaining how to write a sonnet (the World Wide Web didn’t even exist), and I didn’t get to take a private sonnet class.  I just had to wing it.

Line 6:  rubber band of red

Geez, this is embarrassing.  “Rubber band of red” ... how poetic, in the worst possible way.  If I were to yield to temptation and fix this sonnet up, I’d change the line to, “And put a fricking rubber band on each.”

Line 8:  those porches I can’t reach

Man, kids are so stupid, even the ones who write sonnets!  Well, at least I was.  In truth there were only a couple of porches (those in my condo quadrangle) I could drop the paper on.  The vast majority I had to throw.  Everybody knows that.  Well, everybody except modern people who may not even know what a paperboy is, or was.  I think it’s silly for adults to deliver newspapers using their cars.  I see them out when I do really early bike rides.  But then, I guess it’s a sign of the times ... there are so few subscribers, the routes have to be really long, etc.  I had no idea, when I was a paperboy, that I was an endangered breed.

Line 10:  to watch the morning sun come rising up

First of all, “morning” is needless here, since the evening sun doesn’t come rising up.  I should have put “watch the egg-yolk sun come rising up.”  But the line would still be flawed, as the whole idea is fanciful, if not downright sentimental.  Think about it:  I’d do the whole route in 5 or 6 minutes, so what are the odds I’d catch a sunrise?  I guess I could have seen them for brief periods during the spring and fall, but I doubt I paid much attention.  There’s something almost cynical about how I trotted out this old cliché about enjoying a sunrise.

I suppose I should mention that I really didn’t try very hard, or take much time, on these sonnets.  This was one of four sonnets I wrote on 4/28/86.  (I may have written all four in class.)  The fact that there’s no grade on this one suggests I didn’t even bother to turn it in.  These were for  Mr. Kroop’s 10th grade creative writing class at Fairview High.  He was a groovy guy who wore Jams and tie-dye shirts, and played weird music (perhaps involving whales?) in the classroom.

Line 12:  have their paper with their coffee cup

Considering how important the morning paper is to people’s daily rituals, it’s kind of surprising to look back and consider how ungrateful my subscribers were.  How do I know they were ungrateful?  Well, I already mentioned how often they’d complain.  On top of that, they never tipped.  There was a holiday tradition of paperboys putting handwritten cards in each subscriber’s newspaper, as kind of a hint-hint gesture.  I can’t remember what the tipping mechanism was, but there was one, and I always enclosed the cards, but I almost never got tips.

The better way to get tips was to deliver the Denver Post instead of the Daily Camera.  With the Post, you had to go door-to-door collecting the subscribers’ payments.  (This ritual is parodied in “Better Off Dead,” with the paperboy hounding the hero throughout the movie for his “two dollars!”)

The downside of “collecting,” as it was known in the trade, was that there were a whole lot of deadbeat grownups out there who were either never home, always pretending not to be home, or not able to cobble together the cash to pay the paperboy.  The paperboy, meanwhile, had to pay his employer (i.e., the newspaper), regardless.  This is how two of my older brothers managed to lose money on their paper routes.  Imagine doing all that work, and ending up in the red!  Those poor bastards.

On the flip side, my best friend delivered the Post, and took the liberty of jacking up the subscription rates when he collected.  He was practically printing his own money!  I challenged him on this, and he said, “The way I see it, I’m buying the papers from the Post.  I should be able to sell them for whatever the market will bear.”

The Camera didn’t require paperboys to collect.  My boss told me, rather bitterly, that I was the highest-paid paperboy they had.  I made six cents a paper—about $1.80 a day, and $2.70 on Sundays, for a total of about $55 a month.  The going rate was about five cents a paper.  And the guys who delivered to single-family dwellings needed more like 15 minutes to do the whole route.  Suckers!

Line 14:  like my paper route more every day

My mom loved this sonnet.  I was working at the same hospital she worked at, typing lab manuals into the computer.  That paid like $8/hour, which was a fortune to any teenager in the mid-‘80s.  We both reported to the same manager, who was a real jerk.  My mom actually showed him this sonnet, to try to scare him when he balked at giving me a raise.  I’m sure I took that threat even less seriously than he did.  (As I recounted at the end of another post, I made a serious career-limiting move with that boss, so it’s a good thing I had my paper route to fall back on.)

It strikes me that there was something noble about the paperboy.  Today, it’s hard even to find an adult with such an unfailing work ethic.  We were responsible for our route 365 days a year.  If we went on vacation, that was never the newspaper’s problem—we were required to get a substitute.  In my case this meant having somebody all trained up on how to do my route, which was difficult because the condominium complex’s address scheme was truly byzantine.  (There’s a reason I was the highest paid paperboy at the Camera.)  Imagine trying to motivate somebody to learn your route just so he’d have the opportunity to earn $1.80 a day while you were on vacation.  Honestly, I don’t know how I did it.

So, are modern teens willing to do this kind of work, for similar wages?  Don’t make me laugh.  These days there are probably more teenagers writing sonnets than delivering the paper.

Middle School “Graduation” Speech ... From a Dad

Introduction

I am vaguely aware that there is, coming up, some kind of “graduation” ceremony for my older daughter’s middle school.  I’m still waiting to hear the details, such as when and what this actually is.  One thing I know for certain:  nobody has asked me to give a speech at the event.

The nice thing about being a blogger is that nobody has to ask.  Here is my unsolicited commencement speech for all eighth-graders—and their parents—everywhere.  I encourage you to give this speech at the dinner table tonight, like I’m going to do.

(By the way, this speech is not based on the performance and behaviors of my own eighth-grader, who is perfect.  Everything in here is completely hypothetical and/or archetypal.)

Middle school “graduation” speech ... from a dad

Of course I’ve never given a speech like this before.  I’m not even sure why middle schools have such ceremonies, since middle school is just a stepping-stone anyway.  But I could say the same thing about high school, which has itself become a mere waypoint on the way to college.

As I hope you’ve already heard, middle school (or junior high, as I knew it) is actually the hard part.  If you’ve done a halfway decent job of making the transition from largely irresponsible, clueless child to basically self-sufficient (albeit exasperated) teenager, high school shouldn’t be a difficult transition.  Moreover, kids seem to mellow out in high school, as their brains catch up to their hormone-ravaged bodies.  So, since you matriculating middle-schoolers are all going to be just fine, I’m going to focus this speech on what you can do for your poor parents over the next four years. 

There’s solid precedent for thinking of your parents on this momentous occasion, even when all the fuss seems to be about you.  I suppose at my high school graduation somebody must have given a speech, but I don’t remember it.  What I do remember is what my physics teacher said during the last week of school.  He gave what struck me as kind of the antithesis of a commencement speech.  Here is my best recollection of what he said: 

Look, a lot of fuss is about to be made over all of you. You’ll wear this fancy cap and gown and attend this big ceremony with all these people watching. But don’t get too excited. In the big scheme of things, graduating from high school isn’t that big an achievement. It basically means you showed up for four years. And if you really think about it, most of you could figure out a more fun way to spend your afternoon than dressing up and standing around through a bunch of speeches. Try to appreciate that this ceremony isn’t actually for you. It’s for your parents, and your grandparents, so please honor their ceremony by not decorating your mortarboard with stickers and whatnot, and justifying this misbehavior by saying it’s your ceremony. Instead, behave respectfully, go where you’re told, and try not to do anything to disturb the event. You have the rest of the summer to screw around and do as you please.

Of course, there aren’t any caps or gowns at today’s ceremony, and since kids your age aren’t organized or devious enough to smuggle in beer or inflatable dolls, like the students at my high school graduation did [wait for laughter], I’m going to give you some guidelines on how to advance your development as thinking, considerate, and mature beings in your day-to-day life.  If you follow this advice you might start to feel a bit less anxious about grades, popularity, life changes, and the ten other things that I, as a parent, could never understand.

Guideline #1:  Honor your commitments!  No excuses!

This does not mean “Prioritize your commitments and honor the most important ones.”  It means you should not commit to doing something unless you know you will have the time, resources, ability, discipline, and commitment to do it, as promised and on time.  You must honor every commitment you make, no matter whom you made it to.

When you’re in high school, you will have all kinds of distractions—some of them of the “hanging out” variety, but also a great number of worthy extracurricular activities.  That’s great—but you shouldn’t, say, skip practicing the piano because you have to write a student election speech.  If you cannot honor all your obligations, you are overscheduled and need to scale back.  Commitments come first; leisure comes second.  That said, before committing to something, ensure you will still have time to set aside for leisure.  It’s important, too.

Remember that extracurricular activities shouldn’t be sacrificed at the altar of good grades.  If you’re on a sports team, your teammates rightfully expect a certain level of participation, even if you have a big test coming up (and after all, who doesn’t?).  It is more important to learn to be reliable, balanced, and responsible than to get straight As.  Many great scholars totally wash out in real life, and not all successful people were top students.

There is almost never a good excuse for failing to honor a commitment.  For example, to say “I ran out of time” means a) “I did not manage my time well,” b) “I did not prioritize this commitment to you,” and c) “By making this excuse I am demonstrating a willingness to let this happen again.”  Remember, nobody wants to hear an excuse.  Often, an excuse functions as the opposite of an apology.  It suggests that you’re not holding yourself responsible for your failure.

Guideline #2:  “Own” your problems

You must recognize when something is your problem, and don’t try to make it into your parents’ problem.  Say, for example, you forgot to get up extra early for a student council meeting, and now you’re about to be late for it.  Don’t yell at your mom or dad, “You gotta drive me!  You gotta!”  After all, you made the commitment to attend that early meeting, not your parents.  It is unpleasant and offensive for them to be shrieked at by somebody who has made a mistake and behaves as though it’s his or her parent’s job to fix it.

Sometimes you will fail.  Everybody does.  Fail gracefully, without dragging down the people around you, particularly your parents who suffer (if only silently) whenever you do.  Yes, of course you can always go to your parents to be consoled, but resist the impulse to implicate them in your mistake.  Learn how to accept a setback as stoically as you can; try to learn from it; then move on.

Guideline #3:  Understand the role of your parents

Most of you kids probably dream of having the cool kind of parents, who are a combination of personal assistant, chauffeur, purveyor of booze, and ATM.  Well, I hate to break it to you, but that’s not what your parents signed up for.  And all those hundreds of loaded diapers you stuck them with have probably exhausted your parents’ patience.

There are all kinds of ways your parents can support your efforts, but not all of them are actually helpful.  Should they be available to help with homework?  Of course (unless it’s something like calculus that your parents put behind them decades ago).  Is it right for your mom or dad to bend over backwards to get you out of a tough spot, when you’re behind on an assignment due to procrastination and/or disorganization?

Perhaps not.  If they help you out of such a bind, perhaps they’re sending the wrong message, such as “It’s okay to fly by the seat of your pants, since you’ll always have a parent to pick up the slack.”  (You won’t.)  As important as that school assignment seems now, the bigger education is in managing your time.  This never seems obvious in the moment, but it’s better for your mom or dad to let you fail now—and thus learn self-sufficiency the hard way—than for them to leave you stranded later, when you’re truly on your own.

There is more to parenting than helping a child succeed.  A good parent strives to teach his or her child to be helpful to others.  Many of us parents are trying to instill character, which is rarer and more valuable than the ability to succeed. 

Of course this development takes time.  Infants are practically useless; grade-school kids are often clueless; teenagers often feel overwhelmed.  Self-sufficiency is an evolution.  You are now at an age where you can and should be taking on as much as you can:  setting and adhering to your routines, cleaning up after yourself, getting yourself where you need to go, and knowing what to do and when to do it without being reminded.

I hope that most of you have already managed to climb well into the purple tier of the developmental triangle I’ve presented here.  This is a simplistic schematic; the colors should blend m ore, to convey that even before being totally self-sufficient, a person can still be helpful to others. 

Remember that you are not yet an independent adult, free to pursue only what is important to you.  So long as you are dependent on your parents, you should expect them to be involved in setting your priorities.  When you set goals for yourself, work to keep them aligned with the goals your parents have for you.  And when you ask your mom or dad for support, remember that you do not have the big picture; gracefully accept it when the answer is no.

Not all the help your parents give you is solicited; for example, they are justified in giving you unsolicited advice.  That’s part of their job.  And even though you didn’t ask for advice, you’re expected to follow it.  It’s exasperating to your parents when you don’t, and then they have to deal with the consequences ... which brings me to my next guideline, which is a sore point with so many parents.

Guideline #4:  GET ORGANIZED!  STAY ORGANIZED!

Why don’t the greatest mathematicians do everything in their heads?  It’s because they need pencil and paper to organize their thoughts.  Why was written language invented?  It’s because oral communication is too imprecise, unreliable, and ungainly.  Writing something down frees your brain up for bigger, better thoughts, while keeping tasks from being forgotten.  As your life continues to get more complicated it will be impossible for you to honor all your commitments without systematically recording what is due and when.  So get a pocket calendar you can bring to school with you.  Record your commitments in it.  Keep it handy.  Look it over frequently.  Document deadlines well in advance.  Check things off as you complete them.

This calendar is only one of your tools.  Figure out everything you’ll need and keep it handy.  I’m talking about your wristwatch, your textbook, your homework, that permission slip, your house key, your gym shorts, your glasses, and the ten other things that I as a parent hope to be blissfully unaware of because they’re your problem, not mine.

Imagine if David had shown up to duel Goliath and forgot his sling:  “Dude, I couldn’t find my weapon, we’ll have to reschedule.”  That’s not gonna happen.  Goliath’s gonna kick your ass.  So, select a single best place in your home to store each of your life tools, and store them only in this place!  If you leave these tools lying around, they will be in people’s way, and they’ll get squirreled away and/or buried, and you won’t have them when you need them ... and then, if you complain to your parents about this, well, you’re in clear violation of Guideline #2 above.  (Don’t tell me you forgot Guideline #2!  Pay attention, there’ll be a test later!)

Guideline #5:  Figure out guidelines of your own

I don’t claim to be some world authority on all this.  Perhaps the most important skill for you to develop is a sense of being in charge of your own life, becoming self-sufficient, and figuring out—usually when something doesn’t work—what you need to do to become more effective.  Periodically step back, look at your life, and ask the question, “How can I make this work better?  What is falling through the cracks?  How can I keep that from happening?”  If you create the right habits and systems, you will get more done and avoid all kinds of strife as you go along.

I’ll leave you with this refreshingly non-didactic thought:  as systematic and prescriptive as all this seems, everybody is just winging it, and that’s okay.  You’re all amateurs.  There’s no such thing as a professional high-schooler, and if there were, we’d see all kinds of malpractice suits.