We Yearned For Mam & Pap

Part 30 of 30

The Mam & Pap

Royal Splendid Traveling Rodeo

It was rumored that the last season was the last season for the Mam & Pap show, but no one knew for sure. Since hope springs eternal, we kept our fingers crossed. It had happened before. We'd think it was all over, then there'd be a last minute miracle and everything was back on. Your blood pressure went up, then back down, it was the unforgiving back and forth of life come to getcha. I remember holding my breath, but finally against my will had to let it out.

Under those circumstances, what can you do, but just step back and quit worrying about it? Because sometime has to be the last time for most things. At least in your own life. I’ve always accepted that. Like when I graduated from school. I wasn’t the least bit hesitant to let it go, but eager. Now of course, all these years later, I think, What was the hurry? I should’ve done my level best. I certainly should’ve done better in my senior level History of Rodeos class. Who knew more? But I was relatively dumb then, still sounding out the questions as well as I could. And I even had the practical experience of traveling a season and a half with Mam and Pap...

It might've been better for me, had it been an option, if I could've dropped out of school all together and traveled with them full-time. That would have been the real-life experience I was craving instead of the more ethereal high-flown stuff of school, the different types of lizards in biology, the beginning and end of wars in history, and who was sleeping with who, the walls in the boys' bathroom. With the rodeo it would’ve been me, a kid, and a bunch of crazy adults. I could’ve crept up to the tents and learned all I needed, biology, multiplication. Or just following Pap to bank after bank begging loans for payroll would’ve taught me many lessons.

Mam certainly taught me the value of a gentle spirit. And remember, she started out as “The Ruler of the Elephant Circuit!” That's some big shoes to fill or scrape off. Mam literally had elephants eating peanuts out of her hand. Which takes nerves of steel as well as trust in your fellow animal to stand there with an elephant munching away. Just look at an elephant sometime! Their eyes are so far from their mouth that with a trunk in the way they’re liable to bite your fingers off! Or worse, take your whole hand!

As it turned out, of course, my parents (killjoys) wanted me to stay in school. Which back then, like it or not, was their decision. Us kids had no rights. They ran their ideas up the flagpole, I had no choice but to salute. So to this day I don’t consider myself that patriotic. I take a knee around all flags. Including foreign flags, rival school pennants, and window decals. I’ve worn out so many pairs of pants I need a cheaper way to protest the many things I hate. By the way, I also hate alarm clocks and any traveling rodeo shows run by snakes. If only they were all as honest as Mam and Pap, that’d be heaven on earth.

Mam and Pap were easily among the dearest to me on this terrestrial sod, and certainly in the history of the traveling rodeo. It would've been a fitting tribute if they'd saved the ashes of their old animal friends as they passed, then had their own mixed with them. I bet they never thought of it. People are so worried about other stuff when they're alive. And it's probably too late to worry about it now.

Graduation--No More Guidance Counselor

Part 29 of 30 -- Guidance Counselor series

The big day for Graduation at long last arrived. No more teachers, no more books, no more guidance counselor’s dirty looks. Which turned out not to be literally true, because there he was on the stage and giving everyone the eye. Friendly or dirty, depending how he felt about you.

I was fairly proud not just of graduating but of everything leading up to it. When the big moment came, that which I’d stumbled my way toward for 12 long years (plus the time you sleep in Kindergarten) turned out decent enough. I somehow managed to pay for the flowing robe and hat and made it to the school on time. Pretty good, if I do say so myself, for an incompetent guidance counselee! Put that in your dirty look and smoke it!

The ceremony was supposed to be outside but was held inside because of rain. So even the weather was against me, because had it been outside, the guidance counselor would’ve been obscured by trees and shadows and maybe never brought to mind. Since it was in the school, we got the same glare of lights throughout, like at basketball games. Nowhere to hide.

Of course the scene was orderly and nice, with laughter for variances. Say someone did something out of line -- jump up and click their heels -- everyone laughed. The folding chairs had school color decor on each end, the junior orchestra was in good form belting out a few of the usual tunes. The faculty were in their places, apparently on their best behavior, not wanting to betray their true nature when so many unaware folks of the community were present. They wished it could've been outside more than the rest of us, so their biting comments and dirty sneers could've been more blatant.

The guidance counselor was on stage, like some kind of scholar. It kept running through my mind, “You almost graduated from Barber College and here you sit! Thanks to the GI Bill and the way your path was narrowed by fate! The simple fact that Barber College doesn’t have a wrestling team, and you thought you might be Coach of the team here! Then, if that’s not enough, the idea that they’d make a wanna-be wrestling coach, almost barber, the guidance counselor, how bizarre! Education isn't the orderly well-thought out profession they pretend. They grab any warm body. True guidance isn’t at work, except that of rank convenience for someone. A lowly staff person was no doubt responsible for this travesty. After making a decision of convenience, not merit, they got an extra hour to watch TV (some deadbeat guy) or have her hair done.

I saw him on stage. Every paradise has a snake in it, and this snake I had nailed. I zeroed in on him, watching for him to reveal himself. When in one moment of revelation -- when the principle had said something witty and the gym was joyous in laughter -- I caught a glimpse of him flitting his serpent’s tongue out quickly. He recovered before slithering off, maintaining his seat against further revelation. A bolt of lightning would've driven the revelation home.

It gave me a chill. But I put it out of mind. Then we were going through the alphabet, and when my letter came, near that time, our row stood and we made our way to the aisle, walking solemnly, stoically, toward either our salvation or doom. I passed the piano and prayed for strength that I wouldn’t crumple next to the principal and end up pointing to the guidance counselor, only to see him jump up like the assassin of my Spirit Animal Abraham Lincoln, and kill me before exiting the gym with a painful limp and later being hunted down like the filthy dog he was and burnt alive in one of the neighboring barns. A barn that would’ve been built for that exact fate, had it only happened.

Instead, what happened, our eyes met for a second but nothing consequential. I thought it over, “Oh, nothing, huh? Playing it safe for the rubes? Keeping up the responsible guidance counselor ruse." I got my diploma, turned the tassel from here to there and lived happily ever after. To that point.

It’s better to graduate than not. So I’m grateful I did rather than didn’t. Even when I go to graduation ceremonies now — I avoid them when possible — I wonder if a similar drama is playing out before me. I tend to ask around if anyone knows who the guidance counselor is, then watch him or her. But everyone seems real normal, nothing overtly hostile.

Spit In My Spaceage Locker XL5000

Part 27 of 30 -- Guidance Counselor series

Here’s one for the books, my filthy locker that needed cleaned before I could graduate. And the guidance counselor took the same position as the school administration, that it was my responsibility either to clean it or pay $100, a lot of money.

This one needs a tiny bit of explanation. I was assigned the locker at the beginning of first year (of three years in our town). It was literally next door to where the wrestling team met and far from where I normally hung out. I immediately quit using it when I met a girl who let me share her locker. Her locker mate had dropped out. Then a guy I knew from Sunday School who was my original locker mate dropped out too. So our locker was abandoned.

Somehow, then, the locker abandoned by me "popped open." And unknown wrestlers and others, experimenting with chewing tobacco and other scummy pursuits, spat in it over and over. If they wanted good luck, they spat in the locker. If they had a tough opponent coming up, they spat in the locker. Over the years I periodically went by it and noticed it was open and I’d push it shut, but since the lights were bad down that hallway I didn’t notice the mess.

So the time for graduation came and I was tagged for having a dirty locker! It took a while to realize they were dinging me for the original locker, unused by me for three years. But when I went to look at it -- damn right, it was dripping with spit, with plenty more, years worth, encrusted everywhere. And not just that but dust balls that float randomly through the air. Everything you’d expect a sewer to be if sewers came in locker form. And now they expected me to pay $100 to clean it up...

Well, guess what, I said a little prayer, “Help me out of this mess. Some a-holes spat in my locker! Amen.” The very next thing, one of the janitors that I was halfway friends with came down the hall. He didn’t know the spit locker was mine but was sympathetic when I told him. Sympathetic to the point of taking me to his closet and sharing some of the original literature that came with the lockers.

You see a piece of it in the graphic. That brand of lockers was advertised as self-cleaning! Meaning, cleaning it should not my problem. And if the self-cleaning mechanism was broken, it was the school’s responsibility to fix it. The fact that the lockers were put in in the early ‘50s had nothing to do with it.

I explained the problem to a friend in the debate club, and he presented my case to the school board, who had to agree, the defendant didn’t owe a cent. The school was at fault!

So where does this leave the guidance counselor? Thanks, bud, for stabbing me in the back once again. After the great times we spent together, you doubted me one last time. But a big thanks to the janitor and his wife Deidra, who also had me over for donuts. She commiserated with me, saying how sorry she was that some bad boys spat in my locker. I patted her hand and told her truly, “That means a lot to me.”

Grandpa's Solid Gold Hot Rod

Part 25 of 30 -- Guidance Counselor series

As my high school career was in its last few weeks, everything loosened up. Of course I was busy, with a big push to get papers and projects done and make sure I passed. They were strict on that point, leading to at least one all-nighter. I had to justify with documentary evidence in my Science paper that the earth not only has flat plains but mountains. But along with the fever pitch of all that, everything else loosened up. The guidance counselor, so often a burr under my saddle, even loosened up. Knowing his time with me had come and gone. He looked at things stoically, all things must pass. When I sat in his office, not going to wrestling, he still didn’t like it. But now it was nearly over so it wasn’t so bad.

For the students, the end of the school year is always a time to cut loose and even raise hell. And everyone expects it while not encouraging it. Take the guidance counselor. He was mum on it, but who knows what he did in the Korean War when it was time for him to come home! He might’ve stripped naked and run back and forth across the 38th parallel. I know that’s what I would’ve been doing if I were there, if I’d ever been drafted. Mooning the Communists, our enemy at the time, Kim Il Sung and the slave state in his thrall.

OK, loosening up. Behavior a little beyond the norm. Even veering off into the completely irresponsible and wacky. I was lucky to get away with it, but now I can crow it from the roofs What’s the big deal now that I was the one in Grandpa’s solid gold hot rod spinning brodies in the damned school parking lot? As long as I didn’t get caught, it’s my business and no one else’s. Even then, it’s not like anyone was really going to get hurt, as long as they stayed out of the way. Spinning in gravel's a magical experience. With the beauty of gravel being it’s very hard to trace the tracks to anyone in particular. And back then there were NO video cameras. If you could do it and get the hell out of sight, it was their best guess against your best denial. And I didn't know anything about it...

The guidance counselor might try to weasel information out of people about their pranks, but that late in the game his days were numbered. I got used to his disappointed glares but you still couldn't be too complacent. I believe he had some kind of arrangement with the administration to weasel information out of kids in exchange for rewards, maybe dates with the wrestling coach’s leftovers or rejects. But the key thing to handle that is simply to stay quiet, let several decades go by, then once they’re all good and dead, dead and gone, spill the beans, totally irrelevant today. Were the high school to come after me for old infractions, at this point I’d cuss them out and assume they couldn't legally rescind my diploma.

So I'm not too worried. This time life's on my side. The old foes are now a'molderin' in their graves, with bigger fish to fry.

Disembowel Him Once For Us

No. 7 of 30 -- Guidance Counselor series

Real life happens without a chorus. You get choruses in plays, Greek plays. They’re a technique to show public opinion and the sentiments of the times and circumstances without having a guy stand there and tell you. More choruses would be great now, but we do have pundits on TV to explain every nuance of public affairs. And choruses might be unreliable, since they’d be giving us everything on their fool minds, not the salient points of an established playwright.

I wouldn’t mind being a member of the chorus, alternately booing whoever it is who’s the villain of the day or cheering the heroes. But doing it without booing and cheering, but by super targeted comments, encapsulating public sentiment and immediately convicting or encouraging those in the light. Like Twitter.

In school, I kept most of my affairs to myself. I don’t even think I told my mom of my travails with the guidance counselor. That would’ve been interesting, wish I would have planted a bug in her ear. She was the one who got me the wrestling deferment, and it’s only right she should’ve been the one to stand up to the guidance counselor and pull his evil fangs out of my back. Always making me feel badly about myself — or trying his devilish best to do so. She could’ve gone in there and rained hail-knots on his garbage scalp. As it was, he saw his chance to make me an example — to no one in particular except for his own satisfaction — and took it. My big regret.

One thing about it is clearly wrong, his delight at reducing me in his and my own estimation by my compliance, 1) by even going to his office; and 2) sitting there and taking it. Wow, looking back on it in hindsight, I had great options, but maybe greater consequences if they'd gone sour. I could've been instrumental in getting him removed as guidance counselor! That would’ve been awesome. But then I would’ve had to face the next loser they dragged in, and he or she (it would’ve been a he then) might’ve been worse. ‘So you’re the little punk who offs guidance counselor, huh? Well, off THIS!” he demands, and suddenly I’m deflowered.

Or I wouldn't have had to have the original guidance counselor barred; I could’ve petitioned for some relief from his scornful behavior. Which everyone would’ve understood and applauded if they were true to their values. It was these very souls — the few good and the many evil — who taught me about the American colonists petitioning the King of England for America. I can’t remember all their demands. I think they sought lemonade every other weekend and three square meals on Wednesdays.

How bad the crowd must’ve been in England and America. Because crowds are out for blood, mobs. Mob action, death! Hang him! Disembowel him! Even as the guy is whetting his most ferocious blade, a big machete, big enough to lop someone’s head off, or otherwise trim him, making him worthless for women or men of the same mind.

Well, anyway, here we are decades later. I still have all my bowels. However many you’re born with, they’re all still there. And exercised on a daily basis, as nature calls.

Protesting The Guidance Counselor

No. 4 of 30 - Guidance Counselor series

Here’s one I definitely remember. I had a hot plate thing, which is a one-burner stove you plug in. And I had the idea to print up a few fliers and hang them here and there to generate interest in my drive against the system, The Man, at Dump Overlook High School.

Yes, I was a wide eyed optimist in those days, somehow foolishly thinking that bringing light to a problem would very soon set things right. To make it short and sweet, I was concerned. I thought the guidance counselor was on some pretty shaky ground as far as his behavior.

In case you missed the basics, I was excused from the required semester of wrestling for boys because I’d recently had a series of seizures. My mom was concerned wrestling would induce more seizures. It wasn’t a universally liked idea on part of the administration. Especially, for more or less unknown reasons with the guidance counselor. He himself was a wanna-be wrestling coach, and maybe he merely wanted time off and not to sit with me. Whatever, we started out on the wrong side.

I thought it’d be good to call attention to this kind of injustice. It a time when protests were sometimes spontaneous, called by someone. But my cause didn’t rally many people. But it was spontaneous, the posters put up, the hot plate put into action, and the whole thing busted up by the lunch ladies and the principal in record time. Instead of resisting further and jeopardizing my freedom, I caved to his demands and put the soup away.

But it was a shining moment, with three other kids compelled to find out what the issue was. And definitely their consciousnesses were raised at least for a few moments, leaving them perplexed as to why they wanted to shut us down so summarily. But they were much like me, not compelled to go completely to the mat for an issue not clearly defined and with a lot of ambiguity.

The principal was nice about it, even though he probably shook his head about what kids would come up with next. I don’t think he respected us in the least. And the guidance counselor, of course he was interested, trying to get his hands on whatever dirt was being spread about him. My little sessions with him were a lot like that. He was less concerned what he could do for others, for me, and more what it meant for his reputation and day. A very suspicious guy, and who knows how much of that suspicion was the result of deeper things, truths that must not be spoken. If I knew them I’d tell you. But he kept a lot of his more deeply buried secrets — truths that couldn't be told — to himself. As to confessions, he had none. I believed he was guilty of something, yet never knowing precisely what. So just like that, we were shut down!

The soup was vegetable beef and the little bit we ate was pretty good.

He Took The Guidance Counselor Job

Part 1 of 30 - Guidance Counselor series

Welcome, Trauma Fans. Glad you’re here, hope you stick around and see what it was that Once Upon a Time upset me terribly, and even still today makes my blood boil or at least get warm.

My traumas won’t be as bad as some of you have suffered, I’ll just put that up front. So I don’t want to hear you saying, “That’s all you got!? I suffered X, Y, Z, and even now he’s still in the bedroom with a machete!” In your case, please don’t take time to reminisce, but call the proper authorities and get help. My thing isn’t nearly that bad.

Even though it’s not as bad, in my opinion it’s still bad. Because my thought is that adults, especially in the educational field, and particularly in the guidance counseling field, ought to be respectful of the kids they serve, and do their work with only positive interactions toward them. Do I get fed up with kids and their pesky problems? Of course, but I don't have very many interactions with kids. And I’m not a teacher and definitely not a guidance counselor.

OK, here’s the situation, a long time ago... At some point, the guidance counselor had gone into the military. I’m going to say he was in Korea, the war that was going on there. Then he got out and got a college education, apparently involving an education degree, likely with a sports minor. At some point he ended up in my hometown, applying for the job of wrestling coach. I will offer some surmises about wrestling coaches, but not here. When our anti-hero missed out on the coaching job, he accepted instead the guidance counselor position.

Flash forward however many years it would be and I show up at school. Then at home, over a course of weeks, I have a series of seizures. Next, back at school, the boys of my class were required to take a semester of wrestling, in P.E. (Physical Education class.) My mother thought the stress might provoke more seizures in me, so I was excused, only to be placed for that hour weekly with the guidance counselor. Who seriously thought I should be wrestling instead of sitting with him. At this point some of the details of my interactions with him have been mercifully forgotten, but that’s roughly it. He didn’t act like he liked me and I didn’t like him. He made me feel terrible about being there.

OK, on my graphic today why do I have the guidance counselor looking so sad that the wrestling job is gone? Not only because he didn’t get the job, but because I contend that wrestling coaches are in it primarily for other benefits, involving female fans. Which would make my guidance counselor a discouraged lover boy missing out on the extra goodies. See his problem?

And maybe he should’ve been the coach. He hid his disgust of me when anyone else was around, so he was good at keeping secrets. Perhaps he could’ve just as easily hidden his secret life with the ladies as coach. If only he had the opportunity! It’s funny how that was denied him. One can only hope he got his satisfaction somewhere else over the years, and was caught at it. But I never heard anything more about him after graduation.

Except to Google him and see that sometime since me being a kid he died. But please don’t feel sorry for him for that cause. Because everyone eventually dies, the good like me someday, and the bad like him way back when. He was older and statistically that’s when it most often happens, when you’re old. But sometimes when you’re young and stupid. Or young and through no fault of your own, you name the cause.

Washington and Lincoln Stand as One for Fired Coach

Usually we live in two separate camps:
The Washington Cherry Hatchets vs. The Lincoln Split Rails,

but not in these days of great trouble...

No more "Our Guy's #1 and Your Guy's 16!" Incredibly, Washington recently put aside the rancor and joined in common cause with Lincoln. They proclaimed, "Today both our guys are #1." Wow! This new sun arose just the other day, right in the bleakest part of the night, as the day first dawned, at the moment nature itself is at its darkest...

Both teams awoke to the same terrible news: "LINCOLN'S BASKETBALL COACH FIRED!" Who took his team to 17-5 last year, including a hard fought victory over those Washington bastards. It was the talk of the town. Gatorade flowed freely in public troughs.

But now everything changed, when, inexplicably, the new Athletic Director at Lincoln, Witt DeMann, instead of a relatively cheap testosterone injection, along with a shadowy cabal of gutless underling principals, including the head principal taking an underling role because his son was grievously overlooked for a letter man's jacket and the ceremonial kiss of the prettiest girl in town -- who is actually homeschooled and thereby assumed to be without the normal diseases -- sacked Coach Mikelson. The whole thing gets complicated, but that's the basic story. They fired him, for no actual stated reason, and said, "Case closed. Move along. Nothing here to see. There's no story."

Until an influential newspaper man, showing the power of the full court press, rallied parents, townspeople, the students of Washington, Lincoln, and this one pretty homeschooler, against the idiotic cabal and their flubber-chinned henchmen on the school board. Not exactly empty suits, if you catch my drift. But were you the head man of a tribe of cannibals, and having them for Thanksgiving, you might want to double check the overall ratio of fat to lean. And if you were from a brain-sucking tribe, lest you end up on the menu yourself, in revenge, you'd want at least to tap into the cranial cavity of one and extrapolate from there. Planning makes perfect.

Anyway, the newspaperman caught the Lincoln AD at his self-congratulatory best, lounging in leisure, who issued chiseled-in-granite comments like, "Under no circumstances whatsoever -- come hell, high water, or Washington victories the next one hundred seasons will I ever accept Lew Mikelson back as our coach." He further put off the newspaper man with a repeated, "There's no story here. Go on, little man, peddle your papers elsewhere!"

It was at this point the Washington team joined forces with their bitterest rival, Lincoln -- and their proud parents, especially those whose children are on the honor roll. The others, who can't be bothered with whether their sons excel -- I'm trying not to diss my own parents too much -- sat out the fray.

Well, it happened that the school board was going to meet that very afternoon. And they were sure surprised when the students, the parents, and a half dozen extras with pitchforks and torches, came into the room. Each stood and in a dignified way offered their considered support for Coach Mikelson. They shook hands congenially with board members. But nothing seemed to sway the board till -- What's this?! -- Till the door opened again, and there stood one scowling woman in a miniskirt, nice-looking, with her homeschooled daughter, yes, the same one. Mom marched with confidence and determination to the blackboard, and said, "I'd like to address this meeting of the---" We'll just cut to the chase...

It turned out she knew all the dirt on each of these dirtbags. Including Bobby Taylor, sitting there, who'd seven times asked her for a date! Mrs. Taylor's mouth dropped open, smelling of ice. The students, each with hidden romantic entanglements of their own, sensed a distinct shift, the tide turning. The school board, the feckless principals, and even AD DeMann, were jiggling their chins and huffing such retorts as, "Well, I never!" and "Be silent, curséd hag!" before immediately voting (without a second) on the motion that they rehire Coach Mikelson, give him double pay for the past week and his inconvenience, and censure their previous handiwork with malice aforethought and the strongest prejudice.

The students erupted in cheers. This meant now, of course, unless they physically catch Mikelson with the entire cheerleading squad and the homeschooled girl, and the homeschooling mother agrees, they can never, not ever, fire him again. He has them -- and especially AD DeMann -- firmly by the nuts today, tomorrow, and henceforth forever. "Squirm, you worm, DeMann! Now, let's talk about that raise." And, "It's been 10 minutes, DeMann, I feel another serious ass-kissing coming on."

The newspaper recounted the joyous event, the historic day when Washington, Lincoln, and the homeschool mother all came together and socked it to the whole bunch of 'em. But they were generous enough to leave out of it the scofflaws' names. An appearance of graciousness that probably has more to do with future access than anything else. "We were just channeling public sentiment, not burning our own bridges, harumph..."

As for the Washington and Lincoln students, it's back to Total All-Out War! No one owes anyone anything! Come Fall, you filthy bastards, it's back on! "Your boat's going down, Washington!" and "Lincoln, how'd you like that play?"