1989

It is hard to believe that it was 20 years ago now when a most remarkable year of my life took place. In many ways it was the year when I began to think that my own story had a flow and meaning to it, and perhaps the first year when I took any steps to document it at all in anything resembling a journal or calendar notes. Sure, there are bits from before that year, but in large part, there was a shift in this period—10th and 11th grade, 15/16 years old—and somehow things seemed important enough to weigh and consider. Certain characters and experiences laid the groundwork for those in years to come. It was a time of paradigm shift for me, as you would sort of expect of a person of that age. Here are some bits of the picture. I suppose I shall revisit this theme some more before the year is out.

I first heard the name Jethro Tull the day after the infamous Hard Rock/Metal Grammy award show that gave Tull the dubious honor in a complete upset over the odds-on winners Metallica or Jane's Addiction. Even Tull were embarrassed by the attention. So, the next morning, the radio show I was listening to then (the B-100 B Morning Zoo with the Rich Brothers) were mocking the win. I had no idea what was so funny about it all; I knew none of the characters they were talking about. It wasn't until maybe a week later when I somehow decided to try the leading rock station, KGB (which for some reason always seemed like it was a metal station before I gave it a go), that I eventually heard Tull's song Bungle in the Jungle, and the irony slowly dawned on me. I didn't like metal. I really didn't even know any of the classic metal repertoire, but it was pretty clear that Bungle wasn't metal! So the joke was sinking in. But before long, I heard a couple more Tull songs—new ones from their most recent album, intriguingly named Steel Monkey and Farm on the Freeway. Steel Monkey rocked more but it too didn't seem like metal. Farm on the Freeway captured my interest right away and I never stopped liking that song. But yeah, metal they were not!

So, I stopped listening to the pop music radio programming I had long listened to since I was about nine years old, and went with KGB and its hard rock/classic rock programming. All of a sudden, it came alive and I found myself reconnecting with some riffs that I had heard and liked but never knew how to find. I would do the obligatory recording-off-the-radio onto old tapes so I could absorb some favorites, and you can be sure that my fragmentary collection of Tull songs were on there. I think for a while I had no idea Tull were already a 20 year old band with a few hundred songs. After a while of expressing interest in them at the Command Post (hobby shop detailed below), an employee named Sara hooked me up with a cassette copy of the 20 Year of Tull set, which was a totally weird experience. I followed that by launching headlong into a collection of Tull music, a couple of  albums at a time. I had no idea how deep the well was, but I plunged in. Even now, I am still listening to some things in a serious way for the first time.

The Command Post was a hobby shop I used to frequent every weekend for months and months during my heyday of model building. I'd bike over there twice a weekend and spend all my free time there. I wasn't old enough to work legally, but my expertise and product knowledge scored me some free swag sometimes. I would also help stock things and fetch rolled tacos for whoever was working for the day. There was a pair of dudes who operated the shop then, and to them I owe the shift to rock music and all that it opened up for me. Ross Shekleton and Jim Kerr—both about 20 years old, and sort of like big brothers to me at the time. Ross was an Anglo-American guy, a history major and a prog rock geek who is directly responsible for me getting into Rush and Yes and not going down the path of Guns N Roses. He played up other prog acts, but his most memorable influence on me was his piquing my interest in Rick Allen of Def Leppard. He used to do a one-arm-behind-the-back mocking of Rick and I didn't get the joke till he explained that Rick was THE guy who bounced back to drumming after losing his arm. (I recalled a friend telling me that back around the time of the accident in 1985, but that had long slipped my mind till Ross brought it back in 1989.) I got intrigued by Rick and still am amazed at his determination after his accident. That led me to ask myself that summer, after rediscovering some Def Leppard I had not heard in years, what exactly is my excuse for not playing drums? After all, I had a set in the corner of my room for the last few years. Anyhow, in this shift to more rock oriented stuff, I also happened into Def Leppard, which set the stage for the next thing that led me into a totally new direction for years. My recording collection officially commenced with my purchase of Pyromania on July 15th of that year.

Ross Shekleton was influential in two ways. Initially, he egged me on to be a model building junkie, and then later on he set the stage for a musical identity that arose out of his prodding to listen to something more than the pop stuff I had been listening to. His influence was such that he is the one figure to straddle two sides of this lifestyle fence of mine. While I was still consumed with building models, I was getting really good at the craft. That summer of 1989 I entered a few of my pieces in the contest at the national convention of the International Plastic Modeler's Society (IPMS—sort of an unfortunate initialism, eh?) It happens the convention was in San Diego so it was easy for me to get to. I guess there was a small hometown advantage. After a year or two of sweeping a few quarterly contests of the local chapter (big fish in a small pond), I entered the national contest and did quite well, taking a Junior Best of Show and some others (Best Jr. Sci Fi for a radical mod of an F-14 Tomcat, and Best Jr. Armor and Best Jr. "Out of the Box"). Even there among national juniors who showed up, I was sort of a big fish in a small pond, but it was a fairer competition. Anyhow, I got my models pictured in the post-convention newsletter, and that was sort of my model building swan song. That contest was in July, but by October I was so into drumming that I had dropped model building altogether. The materials and half-finished models and the reference materials just got pushed aside not unlike the drumset once was when it fell out of favor in 1985 or so.

Me and my first kit in late 1989But I guess I am getting ahead of myself. It used to be that for a few summers between 1987-89 I went to my grandparents' house for the day while my old man was at work. Much of the time I was working on models outside in the patio area. In the first two years I was regarded as too young to ride clear across the three mile span of Clairemont between their house and mine, so usually I stayed put. But by 1989, I was free to do so, and one day rode back home earlier than usual and uncovered my drums, set them up, and dug out my old instruction books and tried to make heads and tails of the stuff. Of course, you can't be too discreet about playing drums, particularly when you play them as badly as I did in that period. But for a couple weeks in August—starting on the 15th—I clandestinely did what I could to read musical chickenscratch and discern how to play what I heard on recordings, and dammit to blazes, but my lessons had prepared me more than I realized! The main difference between my newfound interest and the old days of lessons was that back in 1984-5 I was not exposed to records and told to go listen and enjoy the music. It was just exercises issued me by my teacher, an older man who played many instruments and taught out of his general service music store. But now I heard the music and wanted to be a part of it, and with Rick Allen as my first influence, I wanted to prove that I could "come back" to the drums. A couple weeks later, after my old man's birthday dinner at Anthony's Restaurant, I "treated" him and the grandfolks to some of my tennis shoes-in-the-dryer playing. And I guess they pretended they liked it. Or maybe my grandmother was happy to see me finally playing after those years off. It was she who bought the drums and paid for lessons after all, only for me to give it all up after a few months once I had a kit!

In a parallel universe, another part of me was trying something new, and by far the influence of this is deep and long lasting. It seems sort of twee to consider what church was to me back then, but one has to start somewhere. My association with the church of my birth/baptism/youth was never consistent. I didn't ever go too regularly unless that was sort of required or convenient for an adult in my family. Most of my history is at the one church in Pacific Beach where my grandmother was among the founders, with most other churches being very short lived dabblings of my parents. But, about the end of 1988, I darkened their door more frequently, frankly because of a girl (more later), but because there seemed to be some community of folks who cared for me. My pastor Jerry had been there since early 1986, and so I already had some rapport with him, and indeed he had been highly concerned for me. But I was still sort of at a distance from the church until one time when the youth group leader-cum-associate pastor Judy took us to see Dead Poets Society and hosted a pizza dinner and discussion afterward. The theme of carpe diem left an impression on me. (Later that summer after the IPMS contest sweep, I pointed to carpe diem and had a fun time telling people how I seized the day, just as I was told!) That movie and discussion helped lead me to some feeling of fondness for the people involved, and I was persuaded to take part in the summer vacation bible study with them and members of another church from down the road. That was my social world for the next few months, really. It's funny how I can't remember a damned thing about what happened there as a bible study, but I remember the feeling of being among some good people who were preferable to my school scene. (Years later as a 28 year old, I would return to the church after a ten year gap and try to find that chemistry again, but it never quite worked out.) From that point on, in early July of 1989, I spent about a year and a half doing literally everything that I could at church. All the social, study, worship, workshop, youth and mixed fellowship and other gatherings that I had time to do, I did. It was in that time when I was introduced to the ideas of Martin Buber in an evening study group. Now, I have a dog that is named after him, but back then it was sort of exceptional to be the only 16 year old in a study group reading I and Thou. Jerry and Judy used to be quite supportive of all this, even picking me up to take me to some of these events. A number of folks opened their homes to me as well.

In that same summer I was part of the brainstorming effort to launch a group that Jerry and Judy thought was needed to address alienation among people my age, of which there were close to ten at the time. The so-called Shalom Group was created to keep peers in touch not only with each other, but also with a few well-chosen adults. There was a lot of dialog that was held in confidence so it was made to feel safe for us who were dealing with various of the problems of that age. The kickoff gathering was in the mountains and held over a weekend immediately before the school year started. It was a really magical time for me, and coming down the mountain and rejoining the "real" world was misery-making in a way that I guess Moses understood. Not all the meetings were so transcendent, but enough of them were, and there was a good trust that resulted. A certain new girl showed up and joined Shalom about a year after its founding. Her name was Kelli Parrish. She liked classic rock and even some of the Jethro Tull stuff I copied for her. The rest is history.

Suffice it to say, church was a profound experience for me, but it had its disappointments. As much as one would like to think of it as a different world than the one outside, it has its shortcomings because church people are of course a cross section of the population at large. At the time, I was a really uptight guy, and was not prepared to see my peers (barely into high school, and with the Shalom group barely formed by then) sneaking some beer at the church camp. It was a lot for me then. It was the first of many such disappointments with the church that unfortunately revealed themselves over many years—up to the present even—and a chain of instances which led me to leave the place a couple years back, but one where Kelli still participates. Anyhow, for consolation at such scandalous behavior as a group of teens cracking a beer in the camp cabin bathroom, I retreated to my bunk and listened to Jethro Tull. It was all I had at the time. It spoke to me somehow, and that was just one experience that led me to absorb Tull's music on more and more levels over the years. Disappointments aside, the church was a place that did me a lot of good. It was from those experiences that I never really too closely identified with my peers or some who were younger, except Kelli who turned up later on. In this period of church life, I associated with people who were 40 something and older. Then later on, I found that many of them were alcoholics in their own right, and in some ways, even some of my most respected figures were among them. But let me not soil the image they had for the naive 16 year old me back then. They were some of my most trusted relationships then. Ignorance was bliss.

It is true that I met my wife at church, but over a year and a half before we met in the middle of 1990, there was one girl who came to church and was cause for a lot of hope and vexation for years to come. Shelby was a friend of Judy's daughter Jennifer. Shelby dropped in a few times in December of 1988 and totally lit up my world at the time. She was an odd bird for sure. She wasn't really interested in religion except as an anthropologist would be, or perhaps a comparative religions student. I had no understanding of the stuff myself back then so she was a total mystery to me except that on one evening a week before Christmas, we were at someone's party and we got to talking, and for the 15 year old me to talk to a girl-peer was heady stuff! I guess the feeling was one of acceptance as she listened to what I had to say. Considering I dressed like a dork (not of my own choosing, I assure you), and she came off looking like an angel to me then, it truly was something new to behold. Anyhow, for a few weeks in early '89 (months before the whole summer experiences with DPS and VBS) I was sure to get to church to have a chance to talk to her again. We talked on the phone too, but she was from a different school and therefore a different world. I don't even know how to sum up what we had in common because it seemed so little. But she was nice to me and that was a leap ahead like no other. You can imagine the hope.

That little fantasy lasted for about two months and seemed to come crashing down at around the time of Valentine's day, or maybe it was because of the idea to go to Balboa Park and see some museums, among which—the Aerospace Museum—had on display a model of mine. Whatever the reason, I didn't feel like going to church for several months and she totally dropped off the radar for a few months till later in the summer as the youth group was planning a youth service in September. From that time on, she was a total enigma to me, and an emotional rollercoaster for me as I tried in vain to figure her out—for the next 11 years! The few weeks before the youth service were spent with a couple planning meetings with Shelby and Jennifer and a couple others, had over pizza and soda at Round Table. It was different at least, and I don't think I mentioned models anymore because by then I had shifted my allegiance to the gods of percussive thunder anyway. (The shift to music didn't automatically increase my cool quotient, but if I was relying on Shelby for validation, I could die first. For years to come she routinely gave me shit for listening to Rush and having Neil Peart posters.) The day of the youth service was a fulcrum moment for she and I. I knew she was at church to sort of just give herself exposure to Christianity while not really liking any of it, or seemingly not liking any religion, having been raised with an atheist mom and agnostic grandmother. Judy had been beaming about the service to some folks after church and was heard to say that she was proud of her "investment" in the kids. Hearing this, Shelby flew off the handle, stormed off, and as far as I know, was not seen there again. Later on, she got all political on me (her consciousness for this sort of thing was astounding at even that age) and was angry at the term "investment" being applied to impressionable young people. I think she was a bit severe; I think anyone else understood Judy was making a compliment and expressing pride in her experiment. Shelby's semanticism didn't tarnish my fondness for Judy and her impact on me.

That division between wishing to understand Shelby and participate in church life was in the mean time met with the decision to remain connected to the church. Later on most of the decade to come was spent more in some pursuit of Shelby and away from church altogether, only to reverse itself in that amazing period of 2000-2001 when the whole Shelby thing crashed down in a single day. But, for a while during the remaining period of high school I held them in tension, often to face some ridicule from Shelby who was more and more aggressive in badmouthing the church life I led. Later on, most of what my life was like was badmouthed. I guess maybe I should have learned to let it go back then. I have said for years now that everything I needed to know about her was learned in the first two years. It was a far cry from the seeming acceptance that started it all off. Oh well.

By the second half of 1989 the components were in place: Jethro Tull, drumming, Shelby, church life, a shift away from models and the interest in military machinery. It was far from the multiinstrumental, Jesus-loving, peacenik-Democrat, naked-biking, domestic wife/dog family man I am now, but it was a first step. Or maybe it was a bunch of first steps, all taken at once with a bunch of left feet!

I found myself doing pretty horribly in the first semester of my junior year in high school. After all, the start of my drumming, the fateful youth service and complicated quasi-relationship with Shelby, the start of Shalom group, and my plunge into Tull collecting all happened within a few weeks of each other. I spent all my allowance on Tull cassettes (and got my first CD player for Christmas that year). I really had no idea what I was getting into with that music, but even still, I was pitching them to church peers nonetheless, and finding no one to share my deep and abiding love for the band (so you see it was amazing when Kelli came along the next year and sort of took the bait). I was so into playing drums that fall that for a few weeks I had my kit in the living room, and in order to stay close to them and play whenever possible, I actually did my homework on them—literally, upon the drum heads! The only class I distinctly remember hating was a chemistry class, but I soon got transfered to a biology class and got along a lot better. I guess I hated my math class too, and by 11th grade I must have already been repeating algebra. The school scene was all so shallow to me compared to my life outside. Social life in the school setting was something to be endured for five days while as much of my own time was spent trying to do something associated with church, if it's a social life we're considering. All of that did pave the way for the church to elect me as a deacon the following year, at the tender age of 16. The year of 1989 was an interesting time of finding new stuff to do, but by May of the following year, I felt overwhelmed and was about to have my first brush with depression, coincidentally about the same time as I began my first job—at the Command Post!

Yeah, this is skipping into the next year a bit, but it is interesting to behold. The Command Post used to be paradise on earth when I went there as a sycophantic kid on his bike. But I got the invitation to work there (albeit at a new location where I had helped them move to in the summer of '89) in April of 1990, basically on Easter weekend if I remember right. I had always been cautioned not to get drawn into working on Sundays. And here I was, getting called in to fill in at the counter one Sunday when no one else would work. The world got complicated all of a sudden. This was months after I had stopped building models, so already I was a bit ambivalent about the place and the personalities, particularly after Ross left. The new location didn't have the funky charm of the old one. But somehow, I ended up working there for a few months in 1990. These days, I am far more defensive about not working on Sundays, and feel cheated and sold out when I do get suckered into it. Back then, despite the church life I led, I didn't fancy myself religious per se, but I think that doing commercial work on Sunday, even sometimes, was a crack in the wall that pointed me away from my meaningful social life, particularly a year later still in 1991 when I worked at Subway and didn't get home till 1:30 am on Sunday morning—hardly making it easy to get to church life at 9 am. Subway pretty much was the wedge that kept me from church long enough to forget it for a decade. Among the circumstances that led me back years later were developing more of a relationship with Kelli and a massively empty work schedule in the post-9/11 period.

There was another mildly interesting subplot to the year of 1989, and that was the matter of all things German. I started taking German in tenth grade after a summer of dabbling but more so once I realized the connection between it and early forms of English. The school years included my first and second level German language classes. The second year level was in the fall of '89 and was actually an independent study. I was the only one who took the second year course that year. Jerry, pastor from church, had taken German a long time back to help with his theological studies so that he could get more from certain of his theological heroes. He sort of egged me on with the subject but always joked that I was much better at it. For years afterward, he consulted me on pronunciation. One of the extracurricular church events in 1989 included a local concert which featured this remarkable bass vocalist who sang in German. (It was a little surprising because he was a black man. But have you ever heard a black bass soloist fill an old church? The richness of tone! Ahhh.) I talked to the guy afterward and asked him if he spoke German, and he said he didn't really know any at all. Hah!

All this makes for a backdrop to be excited for the news of what was going on in the world at the time. This was of course the season when the old Eastern European Soviet bloc began to crumble and Germany was among the first to throw off the old regime. My old man seized upon the moment to go to Berlin and actually take some hammer swipes at the Berlin Wall in the midst of all the crowds that were there in the last week of 1989. I know he had a pen-friend/love interest at the time who lived there and set him up for this particular trip, so that was justification enough, but I think the historical import finalized the scheduling. He brought home a bit of the wall and it was quite a piece of show-and-tell that season. Upon reflection of all that has happened since, he seems to be better at putting walls up than taking them down, though I guess it is a feather in his cap that he helped bring the Berlin Wall down. He can tell that story. I will tell mine.

Good as that experience was for him, I remember that Christmas being one of the turning points of fractured family experiences for the holidays. I spent it with my grandparents and doing whatever was available through the church family. At Christmas Eve dinner with my grandparents, in a cheesy family diner that is now replaced by an Outback Steak House, I remember enthusiastically enumerating all the instruments I knew Ian Anderson of Tull to have played on Tull records. I barely knew what a sopronino sax or balalaika was! I may as well have been speaking Mandarin to them. Or maybe Mandolin. Whatever.

So that's what is on my mind about my experience that year. The rest is details. But I wouldn't want to bore you with details. Not at TAPKAE dot com!

Sophomore Memories

This is the journal I typed extremely crudely on my grandmother's typewriter at the end of tenth grade. I don't consider it nearly as substantial as the journal Life At The Top, from two years later, but it does have a few surprises, particular in how Aaron Summerville was perhaps my first run in with a free mind, and I went along, not even really knowing what it all meant. I just thought he was oddly compelling a figure to hang out with.  [Additional bracketed comments] are left for clarity and explanation. What surprises me is what was left out from this entry that I guess didn't fit a strict assessment of my school experience: how I got into listening to classic rock, and the Shelby experience to that point, while there was still a lot of hope left in it all. Some major history was made starting in the month or so after this journal was written. More context on 1989 can be found in a post recollecting that year. You can see high school era pix and scans in my Skool Daze gallery. Digitized and posted in June 2011.

June 22, 1989

Well, another school year has passed so I thought I would try something new. I thought a summary of the year was in order since this 10th grade was a bit different than others.

I took on a more subtle approach to doing well in school. This means that whenever possible I would give the shortest answer I could that is still right. Not only did I keep the sneers short, but I also seemed to avoid  some of last year's acquaintances. My time with Eric Hart (Phart?) seemed to really decline as we only had one class together (German for me, and, well, Eric had no class). But I found myself being more assertive. I think this was possible because I didn't look forward to having an Eric or a Nico (Monteblanco) fix, whatever that is. So, by breaking away from these characters, that I usually would look up to, I didn't feel bound. I'm glad in some ways that Eric is leaving, but I'll miss getting him in trouble, and all the raucous we could get into. [He tended to not care about that, and was an "F" student anyway, but a smart and wily one at that.] For more on this, search the 9th grade memories.

I'll give a brief summary of my classes.

Period 1, German—

This class was fairly easy since I taught myself some vocabulary last summer. The class started as two groups in one classroom and of course neither group could get the attention they need in an arrangement like that. About halfway through the year, it was decided that if the two were combined the work load for the teacher could be lessened and the students wouldn't need to shut out the other class. I call the second year group the "East Germans." That's where they sat—on the east side of the classroom. One the two were actually combines, I had a name for this too: the "Unification of Germany." I always scored good on tests, and once on a chapter test, my score was 203.5 out of a possible 205—a 99.3% score. I usually met or exceeded on the daily quizzes. Mr. Milne tried to make the class easy on his students but I think some people MIST [German: manure, shit, compost] the chance…

Period 2, Physical Education with RoboBishop—

Nothing special here except for the funny antics of David Sommers. David would first ask me why I didn't answer his stupid questions, then when I gave no reply he'd tell me to shut up. Corey Carroll and I would harass David about this. When I did say something, David didn't tell me to shut up. Let's face it. David was stupid!!!

Period 3, Algebra—

My algebra progress report from Jim Thompson's classI started the year in Algebra with Jim Thompson. However, I didn't do very well. But don't get me wrong. The class was always fun to go to. JT always had some puns. My grade in the class turned out to be…well, colorful to say the least. It was a D-/E. If JT taught history or another enjoyable class I might have tried to do better. After the semester change pre-algebra was my math class. The catch was that Mr. Spicer was the teacher—the same as last year. In fact, for a while, the SEAT itself was the same. About the only thing that wasn't the same was the students and my attitude toward the same old, same old. So, for a better part of the semester my silent and stoic behavior was (in this class like many others) thrown out the door. I just stared out the window or moped around the room. I got a lot of German homework done, though.

Period 4, Biology—

This class was an adventure. We had three teachers and a strange time. At first the teacher was Dr. Stearn, who was with the class for about six weeks. Stearn was a weird one. He'd say, "we used to think there was mucusamongus but now we know there's fungusamongus!" When he had to leave, his friend Sal came to impart some knowledge on us. Sal was there for twelve weeks. He's a nice guy but he could ramble on and on. When it came time for Sal to leave in February, we found ourselves with yet another teacher: Ms. Sulzback. She added some things that seemed to be missing: dissections. My friend Aaron and I had a try at it except did ours a bit different than assigned. On the fish, frog, and the ever-popular worm dissection, we left out the specimen and answered the objective and essay questions with EDucated guesses. We did pretty good and the teacher was surprised at how well we scored. Ms. S said that whenever she was grading papers she would look for Ed's to see the funny short answers or comments there.

Back to Aaron. Aaron is a different story. He enjoys not conforming or taking part in the school-wide "popularity contest." He told me not to conform to the status quo. So I try not to whenever possible. It leads to "unindividualism," as we call it.

Lunch—

This, like all other aspects of 10th grade was very different. Instead of having a 40 minute lunch, there was a 29 minute lunch, driving some of us to alter our activities. Avoiding Eric included doing other things at lunch. I usually stayed moving. After 4th period, I'd grab my book and take it to the English class and leave it in the "doghouse" as BIG Bill [Travis] and I knew it. Then we'd go to Herr Milne's class to eat and talk. Sometimes we never stopped moving. The one thing that I almost never got Bill to do was to go into the "world," the area outside, to the west of the bungalows. Since lunch was so short, if you blinked you'd miss most of it. Lunch was also enjoyed with Corey Carroll, Traci Flint, and our mutual friends at Traci's "sacred tree" that she started last year. I've seen as many as 12 people there. [This bunch was a kind of evangelical Christian group of friends from "the other side of Balboa."] Well, I think I hear the bell…

Period 5, Drama with Mrs. Shirley—

When I signed up for drama I looked forward to being in Mr. Hollenbeck's class. However, I found out otherwise. Mrs. Shirley is a nice teacher but like anyone else she has some faults. One is that she is too naive to what the students are up to (on stage or off). The other is that she just CAN'T SEEM TO KEEP THE CLASS TOGETHER!!! It's like trying to have a tug of war with a big truck—IT DOESN'T HAPPEN.

In drama we would do a variety of plays and other oddball dramatic pursuits. Improvs were one of those, of which Paul Kobiashi (the less we say about him here, the better) like to take part in with a certain female three years his junior! Again, back to Mrs. Shirley's naiveté…if she had any idea of the meaning of Paul's discourse (on stage, mind you) he would be in more trouble than the "U" grade he has in the class. In a room full of rowdy 9th graders, many found it hard to believe Ed (sic) could stay calm and reserved while some didn't appreciate the "E" grade I had while they were getting "U"s, which was still too good compared to what they actually deserved. Gee. I must be doing something wrong.

Period 6, Inglitch—Or, "I'm an engliSh teechur n its grate!"—

With Mrs. Barnard it was very lax. One could often move the due date back a few days or even weeks. Back to Big Bill (one of the many aliases he got from me). Bill sat backwards in the class, facing the back wall. He had his own name for himself: Shadow Demon. Now, I'm not sure if that's worse than Mr. Ed, or better. But mine gets used more often than his. Mrs. B. did a good—no, a great—job of choosing the most boring stories in the available books. If it wasn't so easy to turn in a paper a week late and not be penalized for it, my grade wouldn't have been an "A." The end of the day is not the time to have an academic class!!! Bill and I had an offbeat comic strip where some fighter jets would do some weird things. He would draw and put his own subtitles and then give it to me to put my two cents in. It was a departure from the ordinary.

SO, What I am trying to say is…

Tenth grade, the most ******* school year I've ever $%@#*&^% been in. This year was dead. However some things added life to it—the anticipation of the International Plastic Modelers Society contest in April and getting an early case of senioritis [I guess this means I was feverishly working on models to the exclusion of all else.] I think winning every junior category award in one contest (sweeping two categories with three awards each, plus Best Junior on the perpetual plaque) was a unique trick. [It had more to do with me being the only junior there that night, and having enough entries to win all three awards in two categories.] Poor Ross Shekelton [sort of a big brother to me at the Command Post shop in my heyday there] never heard the end of my war story for months to come. This year I kept to myself but still got nosey. No popularity contest for Ed.

This is actually the location where I worked, which was different than the one where I spent all my time as a "pseudo employee" a year beforeI managed to go to the Command Post every weekend for ten months straight. Weekend is defined here as Ross' shift (Sat-Mon). My starting point for this was the last week of July '88. It ended in the last week of May this year. It was, like school, routine, but where else do they have such a personal atmosphere and give discounts for "pseudo-employee deeds of valor"? The other thing is that hanging out there as long as I did (and still do) boosted my model building skill way up. The new Command Post crew also got me to break my golden rule that I set when Fritz was there: never to build an armor model kit [tanks, artillery, etc.]. Well, I took the plunge and did one. The next week I was back like usual. Jeff [my most frequent contest opponent, who did built armor models] was there too. I showed him the kit I was about to buy and said, "Jeff, this is #2 and at April's contest I am going to beat you at your own game—and good!" And we all know that story about the seven award sweep when everyone learned my name. By the time I am writing this, I've finished ten armor kits and five planes. That's why I was so %$$#^$%^ at school during the second semester. ES MUSS SEHR LANGWEILIG SEIN! SO VIEL DASS ICH HABE INS KLASSE GESCHLAFFEN! ES GIBT KEINEM MODELLE! [German: "It must be really boring. So much that I have slept in class! There are no models!"]

It was just too boring to follow the first semester's stoicness, especially when Aaron is there with his "high on life" attitude. Well, I think that's all, folks.

Hertzlichen ihr,

Mr. Ed

I love Shelby Duncan
12/18/88
[Before the rough times…]