Mar

That time I crowd surfed

Back in the 90’s there was a phenomenon of dancing called “Moshing”. This is where you get with a group of people who would randomly bump into each other for no other reason than releasing pent up aggression and hormones. This was predominantly done in the teenage and young adult circuits.

One day at the beginning of senior year my friend had just announced that there would be a group performing at her church across the street. We were all excited and loved live music. There couldn’t have been a more fitting beginning to last year of high school. The night of the concert, we assembled with many local teenagers in the church parking lot to hear some grunge music. Well; Christian grunge music.

When I told my boyfriend at the time about the concert, he agreed he was going as well with his group of friends. In conversation with him leading up to the concert he had joked that I could go in the “baby” mosh pit which “is next to the actual, much larger mosh pit.” He made the comment away from me, chuckling with his friends. Unbeknownst to him this irritated me to my very core. There is nothing more I don’t like than being told I can’t do something.

When I arrived at the concert with my friends, it was hot, the sun was about to set and we were waiting for the band to come out on the stage. We began to cheer when four young men clad in orange shirts with the word “Juda” on them appeared. By the time they were in their second song, a small crowd of moshers began stomping, ramming into each other with their shoulders.

I had just been told I couldn’t do something because I’m a girl and I wanted in.

I didn’t blink when I fled from my boyfriend’s side. I ran into the sweaty cesspool of teenagers and began ramming myself against strangers. It was a strange freeing experience feeling like a pinball being struck against others who were going through their own angsty rebellion. In that brief moment running from being a spectator in my life I became a mover and shaker. We did what we did because we could. Nobody could stop us and it was incredible.

The crowd then started to give way from moshing to surfing people through the crowd on a sea of teenaged phalanges. It was very much like the scenes you see in movies where hippies, metal heads, or hair band fans are frenetically dancing and begin passing people over their heads while the person being surfed has an epiphany. In the movies the scene plays out over some poignant music of that decade in an arena or an open farm field like Woodstock. This scene played out in four to ten parking spaces.

When I looked to my left, the people launching others into the crowd were my boyfriend’s friends. He was standing in front of me to the left of them, just watching me. Not looking at him, I sensed his disapproval at what I was about to accomplish. I smiled at his friends as they put their hands down and we gave each other the signal. I ran full force, stepping into their grasp in my beloved brown Doc Martens as they launched me into the air.

I flew. In that moment I had no fear and was full of trust. I landed on a bed of fingers, with nails of metallic blue, gently rolling me through the crowd as I screamed all the air out of my lungs.

Photo courtesy of Mindy C.

The crowd gently set me back down on the ground as the music began to pick up. When I was placed on the ground, I hadn’t quite found my footing yet. The rush from being carried by a crowd full of adrenaline quickly stopped when two moshers accidentally knocked me to the ground. When I tried to get up their buttocks hit my head on the left and right side knocking me down again. I crouched in a Spider-man stance getting a whiff of something rancid. One of the gluteus maximuses had passed gas. I got up again only to be struck repeatedly by the pair of posteriors. I was able to perfunctorily wiggle my way out of the permeated labyrinth of derrieres when one of the owners of said derrieres lended a hand pulling me up. A few moments later a church official called out saying there would be no more crowd surfing.

They should have been more specific. We still moshed.

What is something you were discouraged from doing but did anyway? What did/do you do as an act of rebellion?

Jun

15 minutes

When I was younger I wanted to be famous. Let’s just put that out there. When you were a kid, you wanted to be famous too, you might as well admit it. Any kid worth their salt wants to be famous. Even if you wanted to be something with relative anonymity like an inventor, scientist, teacher, you could still be famous for it somehow.

There was also something else I wanted when I was younger. At the beginning of the school year there’s nothing sweeter than the smell of a fresh notebook before the school season starts. For me, going down the aisles of our local store shopping for school supplies was always one of my favorite parts of the year. Everything was new, everything was still fresh, untouched and more importantly, it was the time of year where we were excited because everyone had the same grades.

One afternoon, I was perusing the blank pages of my new 5 subject notebook while sitting on my bedroom floor. The Mead company had really outdone themselves that year. Back in the early 90’s we didn’t have the internet, cell phones or access to call a company ran by several ladies and Katharine Hepburn who knew the answers to everything.

“Desk Set cinema poster” by Source (WP:NFCC#4). Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia –

Instead, Mead came up with the great idea of putting times tables in the back, along with a few other helpful goodies.

One of the helpful things listed on the final page of the notebook; quotes from famous people. You had the likes of Winston Churchill mingling with Thomas Edison. You might have had a quote from George Washington Carver or Marie Curry. As my eyes read the quotes one by one, an alarming one seized my brain.

Who was this Andy? Why did he think this? I knew several “Andys” and none of them had ever thought this or said anything of this nature to me. They were usually too busy telling jokes or singing songs to other girls on the school bus. Why was this guy so special he had a quote? Surely he was a scientist or something and knew something we all didn’t. I imagined a man sitting there with a giant calculator and a notebook trying to exact the least amount of minutes one would have for fame.

Next thing, my mind flitted to the amount of times I had been mentioned in the local newspaper. There was that time my third grade class was featured because we all dressed up funny for school spirit week. That was probably about 6 seconds for every person who decided to read the paper that day and glazed over my name. I knew everyone in class bought a copy so that was exactly 6 seconds times 30 kids and one teacher. That is 3 minutes and 10 seconds off my fifteen minutes this Andy had guaranteed me. Then there was the time I won an award in the science fair.

CRAP.

Sure it was great winning an award, but then there goes about another 3 minutes and 10 seconds of my fame, plus the time it took distant relatives to read the article which my family made sure to send them.

Within 5 minutes I had looked at my life like it was a cell phone plan, before there were cellphones. I wasn’t worried that I wasn’t living, I wasn’t worried about finishing school, falling in love, making the coolest art, or writing the best paper. As far as my 12 year old self was concerned I didn’t even have time for a bucket list.

I was too scared I had used up my minutes.

Lucky for me, there is more to life than fame.

What as something silly that you were afraid you had limited time on?

Feb

Pigpen

There is always that one quintessential smelly kid in class. As a substitute teacher, you don’t figure out who these kids are until you’ve visited their classroom on numerous occasions.

There is always the accidental case where a kid has been raising his hand while you have a million other kids needing your attention; because they’ve accidentally glued their hands together, have a shoelace undone or something else. By the time you’ve managed to get the kid with glue hands to tie the shoes of the other and you’ve made it around to the well mannered child with his hand up, you realize you’ve accidentally miscalculated his need when you enter the musty cloud of, “I gotta go, I gotta go!”

However in an older classroom it’s different. I’ve forgotten how smelly young boys typically are and how they just let it loose. In my household growing up I didn’t have siblings, so if I did something I had to fess up to it. Sometimes I did so proudly. In school however, it was always a different story. In school it had to be kept secret.

This year is the year I said I would own up to things and be honest. Here it is readers, I am confessing something to you that happened in 4th grade. This will help explain why I have such an affinity for this smelly child I encountered recently.

In 4th grade as in most small burgeoning schools, we were escorted to Physical Education class in an empty tiny gym. It was so new that there was not enough equipment to absorb sound. On this unfortunate day, after we had done our beginning calisthenics, we were instructed to do timed sit-ups with a partner holding our feet. My partner was a boy. You can already imagine why this was awkward for me. When the teacher officially started her stop-watch, I decided to do as many sit-ups as fast as I could. For whatever reason, back in the day, I felt I always had something to prove. Then, I was treated to a humbling. After about 5 to 10 sit-ups something had wrangled loose from deep inside my stomach and came out between my feet…with the boy holding them. The sad thing is, it didn’t happen just once. No matter how hard I tried, every sit up resulted in a resounding fog horn sound which then echoed off the floor and bounced off the walls.

As we all know, flatulence in awkward situations is funny. In this particular instance, the entire class was cracking up making it hard for them to accomplish their timed sit-ups. I had never been so embarrassed. (Until that point at least.) To this day, I don’t know if any of my classmates were sure it was me.

Now that you know this about me, it will be easy to understand why as a teacher I felt so badly for this kid in my class but proud of him at the same time.

I was busy working with another student when I saw this young boy whiz by the desks trying to get to the front of the room to work on math. Next thing I knew, one boy walked by in the same spot. “AaaAgGgH!” he screamed.

Then another boy walked by, “OH GOD!”
Then another, “Oh MAN!”

The first boy is trying to stifle his laughter, and the other three boys held their arms up to their noses, laughing, trying to block what was in the air. Raising the teacher’s suspicion, she looked over trying to hide her smile. “What is going on over there?”

The first boy replied, “Well, I farted and then the others walked into it one after the other. You might want to get the Lysol out.” I was proud because instead of trying to hide it, or act like it didn’t happen, he owned up to it. Granted, it’s gross, but at least he didn’t let the ire stack up between all the boys in class leaving them to wonder who really dealt it.

Have you ever been a Pigpen?

Sep

An abundance of leggings

Today on campus as I made my way toward the parking garage there were droves of young women grouping together wearing black leggings, as pants. I was on the fence about Yoga pants being worn in public as official lazy day attire, but to wear leggings you can’t be lazy. Leggings require too much effort to stretch over the legs and derriere to be considered in the same category as effortless sweat pants and Yoga pants.

Even though all of these women had lovely shapes and sizes, I felt like I was back in the high school locker room only now it is public and everyone is letting it ALL hang out.

Women should be free to wear what they want, when they want. However, if you are going to wear leggings, call them for what they are, footless tights, not pants. Maybe I’m jealous. Maybe I’m old school. Yes, lets go with that shall we? I’m old school. So old, that I tried to go with this trend twenty four to twenty five years ago, in fifth grade. Fifth grade is an appropriate age to experiment with wearing things of this nature, but for me it went horribly wrong.

My parents and I were shopping at K-mart. That is when I saw the most beautiful color of blue in the world. The blue was brighter than azure, it was as if someone had hooked up tiny neon lights to these new lycra stretchy pants and turned them up full volume. I finally convinced my parents to purchase a pair for me.

As the night came to a close I went to bed knowing in the morning I would get to wear the coolest “pants” in school. When I woke up I wore them with the appropriate sweatshirt and headed to the bus stop in a cheery mood. By the time I had officially arrived at school, been in the “pants” for a solid 5 hours I was fed up with being lady-like. Instead I forgot I was wearing what felt like tights but could be considered trousers.

I made the mistake of turning to the side, leaning back in my chair and talking to a boy. It was at that moment, said boy, pointed to my mid section saying, “You have a hole in your pants.” Thats right, I had a hole. A hole in the crotch.

Ladies, it’s not necessarily that leggings aren’t pants. It’s not you, it’s me. It’s one of my worst fears to put on a pair of leggings, walk around campus or work the whole day without realizing I had been flashing everyone my “Fruit of the looms”.

What fashion statements have you had a hard time dealing with? Which fashion statements do you wish would go away?

10 years ago Short URL 7 Comments

Fun/Funny/Humor/Life/Quirky/worst fear

Campus/childhood/childhood memories/leggings/pants/worst fear/yoga pants

Sep

10 Books

Recently I was challenged by a friend to list the top 10 books that have had a major impact on my life. Because I’m a verbose person and take challenges seriously, I couldn’t just answer his request with a few blanketed answers. Here they are in no particular order with their explanations:

The Outsiders is a book you get something out of at different stages of your life. Recently for a class we re-read the classic, it was mind blowing to find out it was written by a 16 year old.

Eat Pray Love. This is a great book for any one who has ever experienced divorce and tried to make sense of it. This book made me want to travel, get lost, make new friends and then write about it. It taught me how to put some of my past behind me and work though some life lessons.

If you ever want to impress a literature professor, drop the name Rex Stout. When I finally resided alone in my apartment in St. Louis I knew I would be restless at night. The answer to listlessness was found in a fabulous mystery The Sound of Murder. It was originally written in the early 40’s at the dawn of industrial espionage. With quirky characters and a foresight of an upcoming industry in a new material called plastic, the setting Mr. Stout paints in so surreal yet believable.

The first book I remember falling in love with is, I Mean It Stanley. This is the book my parents started reading to me and by the age of two, I had it memorized page for page. Every night I asked them to read it to me before bed, each word drilling it’s way into my brain. When my Grandparents came down for a visit, my Parents suggested to my Grandma she should read me a book that night. So I retrieved this book, sat in her lap and as she turned the pages I started reciting the text. My Grandmother was a lot like me, she was a former teacher and had a sense of wonder. She thought I was reading the book. She didn’t know my parents tirelessly read this to get me in the habit of a sleep routine. She looked in amazement at my parents thinking I might be a genius. Then my Dad cracked a smile and the gig was up.

Everyone needs a good Doctor in their life. Mine had the last name of Seuss. My first grade teacher asked everyone in class to pick their favorite book to bring to class and read. I poured over my selection at home. It was between Fox in Socks and 101 Dalmatians. In the end I chose Fox in Socks, mainly because in the beginning of the book, Dr. Seuss goads the reader with this graphic: How could you resist? At the young age of six I wasn’t willing to back down from a challenge and for once settled who won the tweedle beetle battle with paddles on poodles eating noodles.

If Life is a Bowl of Cherries, What am I doing in the Pits? This book I read because it had been sitting in the drawer of my Parents’ end tables and was begging to be read. The cover wreaked of late 70’s artwork and humor. I was 17 when I first picked it up, read it on a Journalism class trip to Chicago and for the first time in a long time was caught laughing out loud to a joke no one could hear. This book appealed to me because I felt displaced, and Erma Bombeck made sense of everything.

Batman a Death in the Family was my first experience with a gritty plot only capable of taking place in between the pages of (at the time) my favorite Super Hero’s life. Little did I know in comic books characters can perish at the hand of a madman armed with a crow bar. Until then I was only exposed to characters who died of natural causes. This may have been when I learned the word bludgeoned.

Any Archie comic EVER. In the 80‘s and early 90‘s Archie was all I ever read during the summer, sometimes in between Garfield books I checked out at the library. I devoured these wishing I could be Betty Cooper. Unfortunately, one of my best friends growing up had blonde hair, where I learned the ugly truth, only she could be Betty because she had the correct hair color. These books taught me blondes had more fun and brunettes were snooty, confusing my idea of what a woman should be. Eventually along the way I realized these were just characters and nobody should have to be compartmentalized into either image. Instead I developed a crush on Jughead and a love for art by trying to re-draw the images. Archie comics also helped to forge the way for me in a literary sense. The featured cover below is the one they published an interview I did of my Aunt.

When my parents realized comic books were no longer just a hobby but something that could cause my two loves to collide they wanted to help. They purchased two books by Will Eisner in which he states the best scenario for comic book writing is when the artist and the writer are the same person. If this isn’t the case, he goes on to illustrate what can happen when people get their ideas mixed up. Even if you aren’t into comics, it’s a wonderful book explaining the process with beautiful illustrations.

The next book is something everyone needs to read to understand how to become a better writer, even if it only pertains to correspondence. The Groucho Letters is a book of letters exchanged between Groucho Marx, some of his colleagues and son. This was a gem I discovered at my parents house. It probably belonged to my Grandma and one of my Aunts at one point. One specific part in the book stuck out to me. Groucho had built a rapport with a fellow funny person who was at the time living in Maine. By the third letter of catching up, the friend wrote to Groucho, “The town is so boring the tide went out and never came back.” This book goes to show how friendship can bring you unexpected things, like the gift of laughter or witty writing.

To my friend, hopefully this answers your challenge. To my readers…what are some of your favorite books and which ones have influenced you the most?

Jun

My Mondegreens

Poor heart? Not when you hustle like this!

Often times when I’m at work a song will come on, and usually everyone starts singing or humming along to it. I usually just “skat” the lyrics while putting things away on the shelves.

Its scary when you think of how many jobs you’ve had and the same songs keep following you from retail job to retail job. Recently I’ve come to the realization how often we take it for granted what is actually presented to us in the music pumped through the store’s speakers and how we automatically know the words.

Usually you will hear “Hotel California” a million times and wonder if your job has become your own version of the Eagles illustration of hell. Then you have some songs that remind you of happier times and some songs that remind you of when you were a kid.

However, last Winter I was working with some really cool people and we started talking about songs you misunderstood the lyrics to at one point in time or another; often called a Mondegreen. I kicked off the conversation with a song by the Clash.

I explained every time Rock the Casbah was played on the radio, I heard, “Rock the asphalt! Rock the asphalt!” Every time the song played, I relished in the thought of a rock band who was so cool, they had to hold their concerts on an asphalted playground because there wasn’t enough room in the gymnasium for those who wanted to hear them play. (As a kid, I associated “asphalt” with “playground” because of the recent construction of our middle school and how they designated playing boundaries.) What “dance-punk-rock” band wouldn’t want to have a rock concert on a school playground decorated by tether ball poles and four square outlines?

Another song frequently played in many places I’ve worked is by Sting; Every breath you take. When I was in grade-school and the song would come on the radio, I only half heartedly listened because Sting wasn’t the Monkees or any of my other favorite bands.

When it would play, I would hear, “I’m a pool hall ace, with every step you take…” As we all know, the lyrics actually are “my poor heart aches…” Here I am listening to the radio, thinking this guy is so lonely, he started hanging around pool halls perfecting his game. I had visions of some guy in a modernized version of a 50’s leather biker coat, aviator glasses, possibly with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth; sipping a green bottled beer while playing pool by himself. I imagined he was so good, no one wanted to play pool with him any more. By the end of the song, I was rooting for the woman who deserted him. Who wants to date someone who hangs out at seedy bars and hustles people out of their hard-earned money?

Sadly one day in my twenties someone burst that bubble with the actual lyrics.

After the co-workers and I had our go around game of Mondegreens it was time to clock out, say good-bye and start another day in the morning…hopefully with new Mondegreens.

What songs do you often mis-hear? What were some of your favorites? What do you and your co-workers do to pass the time?

Diary of a quirky girl

Tag Archives: childhood memories