When I was in the first grade I was a huge fan of the movie Aladdin. That Disney film was the shit, and there was literally nothing cooler than having a genie at your disposal. They made a sequel to it the summer before, and I remember the second nine-weeks of that first grade year for me, both first grade classes got together to have a movie pizza party thing, which I was looking forward to because shit, it's a sequel to my favorite movie of all time in that point of my life. I just knew it was a new movie with Aladdin in it and I wanted so badly to see it and I was going to, pizza/movie party that Friday, whenever the hell it was we did that, second nine weeks whatever. It must have been later in the school year because before that we had an indoor recess because of rain, or maybe we were so far ahead with our learning that the teachers decided to have a fun day along with the movie/pizza thing, I've drank that memory away.
Here we were first grade, Mrs. Stoss' classroom, me, Brittany Caswell, Devin Maxwell, Cameron (don't remember his last name, maybe Green, or was it Devin) had just finished playing Sorry, and were about to start The Addams Family Reunion board game, which at the time was the sought after board game if you weren't playing Twister. We had to choose characters to be. I was a pudgy kid back then and Devin made a crack about my weight by suggesting I be Pugsley and I really should have like burst into tears or told the teacher that he was picking on my weight, but I wasn't one of those over-sensitive kids, I let him know that I didn't want to play as the fat kid from the movie, I wanted to be the "butler." And I said that. "I want to be the butler." Back in this time of my life and most of grade school I had what was commonly referred to as a speech impediment. I had trouble with L's and R's. I remember saying as clearly as I could with said speech impediment, "I want to be the butler." And everyone at the table gave me a blank stare. "Lurch the butler." Nobody handed me the player game piece for Lurch, Devin got up instead, and went over to the teacher, said something, and she came over to me. I was asked to stepped out into the hall, which I did, and she informed me that that kind of language was inappropriate and I was given in-school suspension.
I remember pleading my case. "But I didn't cuss."
"Devin told me you called him a butthole."
"What!? No. I said butler. Like Lurch the butler from The Addams Family."
"Austin, three other people heard you call him a...that word."
"I didn't. I swear. I said Lurch the butler."
"What are you even talking about? Forget it. I'm assigning you extra workbook work to do out in the hall for the remainder of the class period. That kind of language won't be tolerated around here."
Out in the hall I went with my workbook and of course I cried - I had no idea what was going on. A friend of mine had told on me for something I didn't do, the teacher was mad at me, and further more, I had to finish this workbook and I didn't get to have any fun like everyone else. People passed me in the hall and wouldn't look at me because I had obviously done something wrong in order to be sent out in to the hall.
Skip forward a week. The big movie/pizza party with Aladdin II on the big screen. Why did I say it that way? It wasn't even a big screen! It was a Sylvania television, probably a 30 incher wheeled in on a dolly. I couldn't wait until the movie started and OH MY GOD pepperoni pizza from Godfathers, fuckin A! I had been thinking about this and looking forward to it like it was a birthday. Godfathers pizza - you can see now how I got pudgy.
There was a kid in my first grade class that I didn't fuckin' like. He never socialized and when he did, it was a bullshit social convention, the other person would end up talking more, and I didn't like his name; I don't know if it was Jeff or Jiff, I fucking hated him and I always called him peanut butter or peanut-butt in order to haze him. To him I was a meany and yes I cursed at him, and not my friend Devin a week before. Out on the playground me and Brandon Royer and that Cameron-kid were thinking up ways to be mean to Jiff who had taken over the boy's club and that was our regular haunt and we wanted it back. I double-dared Brandon to punch him in the back, and Cameron double-dared me to, so I triple-doggy dared Cameron to, and then somehow somebody suggested I pee on him, so again, not wanting to do it, I double-dared Brandon to and they both triple-doggy dared me to. Drats! No more dares, I had to do it. Not wanting to, I stood behind Jiff who at this point had not turned around from his sitting position in the sand doing God knows what, he hadn't noticed us at all. So I act like I zipped down my pants, and I'm sheepishly grinning back at the two devils a few yards behind me and they're laughing, and that's when I realized, what the heck am I doing this for, I wouldn't want to get peed on. So I zipped up and mozied on back to Cameron and Brandon. They were on to me; I hadn't done anything.
"Bull you did it!"
"I couldn't do it!"
"Wuss!"
"I don't care. I'm a wuss."
"We're still gonna tell!"
I remember actually feeling taken aback - it's been so long since that happened, but I seriously was like TWIST! That's fuckin' treasonous. And they did. They ran back to the recess aide, and me not knowing what to do, I hid under the wooden draw bridge trying desperately to be out of sight. They didn't lie and say I did something else, I was accused of peeing on this kid.
This was always my favored line in the questioning I had with Mrs. Soldner(sp) the student councilor and the Principal at that time. When you're being accused of something that almost happened, but in fact didn't, you'll try to swing that pendulum in your direction, right. I tried reasoning, "But if I peed on that kid, why didn't he notice me, why hadn't he gotten up or simply spotted me coming up behind him?" And that was truth. He never got up. In fact it took the recess aide and those two little bastards who ratted on me getting his attention and marching him inside. Could it be that I hadn't peed on that kid's back?
In their defense, that kid's neck was wet...with perspiration. It was sweat. I hadn't peed on him. For one, supposedly acting out a near week ago with the whole "butler" "butthole" thing, and now this, two other kids testifying that I peed on the kid's back. It didn't look good.
Now the shit kicker. The sister of the kid I supposedly peed on started treating me bad. One of my "punishments" - surreal punishment at that; on our playground when they needed to pour new sand, they boarded along the grass, and well, as sprinting, unbridled and wild kids, we might trip and break something; there was a certainty we could do that, might hurt ourselves, yeah, but as punishment, walking along atop the wooden long-ass fucking girder, boundary what-have-you like we were in a Vietnamese POW camp standing on bottles barefoot, this was nothing. Out the window go your rights to a break. How many others have slipped through the cracks like this?
Five days of walking atop those girders, plus immediate in-school suspension possible out of school suspension if I did something again. Herein lies the shit kicker, consistently making fun of me because again, I was a pudgy kid, she hit me with weight insults. I told her she had a big nose and her and her friends were stupid girls. I was an innocent little kid, I didn't insult well. Things weren't as graphically verbal and nasty as the things that would have been said now on the playgrounds. Truly nasty and vulgar shit!
After awhile, it started to wear me down. Always, whenever I went by that certain grouping of trees there were the girls and their insults. How could I get them back? And it came to me after the fifth day. I acted as though I had to walk those wood blanks again. I came upon the tree and there they were as always. Right away they began with those hurting words. No matter what code there might be in place warning against striking girls, and going in to second grade the boys knew better to not hit girls. Other guys, it was okay. Never ladies.
I walked over there in a huff, and they started yelling, "Ummm, we're telling." And I replied, "Go ahead. I don't have to walk the track today." She just stood there unaware that I had the intent to knock her out and before I knew it my fist had made contact with the bridge of her nose, and I had her face-blood on my knuckles. Again, through the cafeteria entrance I was thrust by my held hand by some teacher, don't remember who. I faintly recall seeing the girl after I was permitted to use the restroom, and it must have hurt like hell to get your nose broken...stepping over that line. I didn't show her sympathy at the time. You run your mouth you deserve what you get. Sooner or later I probably would have learned that myself from Jiff or Geoff once he was fed up and slugged me back.
You don't pee on another person. I've read Shogun -- in feudal Japan that was the ultimate fuck you. At the time of the incident it struck me more as comical. Pee, piss, all funny words. I knew right from wrong, and knew it wasn't a normal thing to pee on someone or deface another person with piss.
When they informed my parents, both of them disbelieved what I was accused of, particularly noting that Jiff or Geoff knew nothing of me standing behind him, nor would they believe the absurdity of the whole situation. It was unlike me. Hitting a girl was a different story, and I told my side, and they agreed she should not have been picking on me. Over the years self defense has taken a different meaning with my parents, me realizing this later in high school. My dad has always been a pacifist when it comes to fights, but if you're threatened and need to defend yourself then do it. The girl was asking for it. In a way I was too picking on Jiff or Geoff. That's all retaliation on his sister's part and false accusation on mine when considering the did he pee, not pee. I would have admitted to it by now if it were true.
Just like it wasn't true I damaged a wood block in band practice. Similar situation, big, school-wide assembly with two movie showings, Jack Frost and Miracle on 34th Street for Christmas, I didn't get to sit on my shitty ass flat carpet square on a basketball gymnasium, poking fun at the movie, nope, I spent my time in the Principal's office quarantine, being nudged to confess I did something I didn't. A wood block for band practice is not much of an instrument. I had banged on it during the practice because it was one of those late in the year practices where ensembles were the ones practicing and I just sat in the back with the drum section members, dicking around. That wood block took constant abuse. It was stomped on, it was beaten in beyond acceptable strikes on the wood, it was misused. I noticed the ends of it were cracking, so I stripped those off. They were more or less wooden shavings from the amount of abuse it endured, now, as an excuse to replace the wood block by which to threaten legal action if I didn't sign off on replacing it, the wood block being property of the school, them in turn wanting a fiberglass one instead of wood, which the fiberglass cost almost twice as would replacing the wood block with another wooden one that I supposedly damaged to the point where it did not sound right. Yeah, I stripped off the edges. Did I bang on that son of a bitch to make it have damages wood edges? No. Was I exacerbating the damage of the wood block by picking at the wood? When you banged on it it made a noise the wood block would normally make. It was a bunch more shit, like the time in football practice I got accused along with two other friends and a person who wasn't even on the football player roster nor was he in the locker room that time after school I supposedly instigated a fist fight between Trent Brawner and Matt Collier, resulting in broken eyeglasses for Trent. I was staying out of all that male testosterone shit, let em fight it out if they must. Besides, just getting out of the shower relieved I didn't smell anymore after practice were my only concerns. I needed to dry off and get dressed. I didn't have time for a fight. Yet I spent one whole day in ISS.
It's that failure rate in the system and me not wanting to die from a few bullet wounds that keeps me from pursuing a life-long dream of being on the police force. That, and I'm fat, I wouldn't last the academy. It does make a guy wonder. How many others went through school like I did where you were based on association, whomever you were supposedly associated with, which led to the type of treatment you received. I was constantly questioned if something fowl came afoot; if property was stolen, me and a group of my friends were always top of the list. That's how felons are created is it not? Weeding them out, right. How many kids aren't given the breaks like normal kids are? Sociologically, how many grew up to be criminals because they weren't brought up right?
