I went to a small private school for kindergarten through 2nd grade. It was run by a squat, angry woman named Joan out of a 2-story yellow house with a giant backyard. The backyard was our playground. It had a regulation-height basketball hoop that was the domain of the male teachers (all two of them) who used it to assist all the little boys in mythologizing them more than they already did. No kid ever truly conceived of making a shot in that hoop, so when Ken (we called our teachers by their first names) drilled jumper after jumper during after-school playground time he became something more than just "Ken." He became KEN: WARRIOR POET.

On the days I was last to get picked up, KEN: WARRIOR POET would lift me onto his shoulders so I could at least hit the rim with my feeble shot attempts. If I missed too many in a row, he would get tired of chasing after the basketball and just lift me higher so I could dunk it and we could call it an afternoon. It was all very special and left me feeling like KEN and I had our own super-secret friendship. When I asked him to help me shoot during the school day or when other kids were around he would flatly refuse. I thought it was because I might be inadvertently exposing our secret game. In retrospect I think he just wanted to avoid having to hoist 25 kids into the air every day; because once you do something for one kid in front of others, you have to do it for all of them. I can't say I blame him. We had a couple of really fat kids in that school.

"Ken" ended up being my 2nd grade teacher. I say "ended up" like there was more than one 2nd grade teacher. That's a lie. The school was K-5. There were 6 classrooms. There were 6 teachers.

"Ken" wore lots of flannel and smiled a lot. He looked like Norm Abrams from The New Yankee Workshop but that was a connection I wouldn't make until years later when I got creeped out watching Norm talk so intimately about dedo-head cutters and varnishing a desk. "Ken" talked that way about baseball. He had the primo classroom; upstairs in the back of the house overlooking the yard. As recess approached, we in "Ken"s class had a birds-eye view of where our favorite recess toys were. When he let us out, we could make a beeline for them instead of rushing around in a frenzy like all the losers on the first floor. I was "A" Square for 15 consecutive days at one point that year because I could see where the 4-Square ball was from my seat by the window and could get to it even before the 5th graders. When you add to those circumstances the fact that I was never a very good winner, you can imagine that I suffered elsewhere at the hands of those disgruntled 5th graders.

Fridays were the best in "Ken"s class because that was art and spelling test day. Art period involved watching Bob Ross on PBS. By 8 yrs old I was an expert at making pretty little trees and giving them pretty little friends so they wouldn't be so lonely down in the valley. "Ken" would give us until just after lunch to put the finishing touches on our pretty little pictures; then he would start walking around handing out long blank index card type things that I recognize now as timecards...like the ones used by union workers and other people who work with their hands. He always finished distribution with the same girl seated next to the door and would perch himself on the edge of his desk with the Master Spelling Words Timecard from which he would dictate to us the selection we would have to spell.

We'd get the words the Monday before--usually about a dozen--and we would write them down on timecards of our own for practice purposes. These spelling words were hard. There are things in life that are hard at the time, and then there are things that are objectively difficult. Learning to ride a bike when you're little is hard. But riding a bike, generally, is not really that difficult. Words like "syllogism" and "condemnation" are hard to spell whether you're in 2nd grade or in your 2nd year of law school. Those were the kind of spelling words "Ken" gave us.

I remember those two words specifically because Danny, one of my classmates from a broken home with marginal adult supervision, ran around the yard during lunch that Monday yelling "SILLY JISM" and "CONDOM NATION" and giggling maniacally to himself. Apparently, at 7, he knew (or at least had heard of) what jism and condoms were. The momentum of his freakout carried him to the top of the play structure where he slapped the wooden posts feverishly as he yelled at the top of his lungs

"KEN MESSED UP THE SPELLING WORDS AND SAID JISM AND CONDOM!! HEHEHEHEHEHEEEEE!! JISM [gasp for breath] CONDOM [gasp for breath] HEEHEHE---!!"

That's when he collapsed, in a heap, to the floor of the wooden jungle gym with a giant splinter in the meaty part just below his left thumb. His laughter turned to tears in the blink of an eye.

This was not to be unexpected. That aging wooden jungle gym claimed more recess-lives than backtalk or stomach aches ever did. It creaked ominously when we ran across the bridge or down the steps to the twisty slide. Kids were constantly tripping over loose planks and exposed bolts. Every day a different person would run screaming into the house with a giant splinter in their palm, looking for Joan to fix their boo-boo. Joan came from the school of Tender Loving Fear. If you got hurt it was probably your fault. While she cruelly wrenched free the section of driftwood lodged in your body, she would chastise you for participating in any number of activities that were prohibited on the play structure. It was of no consequence to her if you actually weren't doing any of those things or, if you were, that they were completely unrelated to the toothpick-sized section of wood stabbing your poor little 7-year old hand. If you didn't shape up and follow the rules, she would warn, it was going to happen again and the next time you might die.

I don't remember any of my non-splinter related interactions with Joan, but her smell is seared into my memory. It was a combination of unwashed, thrice-worn polyester trousers and body odor that could not be overcome by generic deodorant and talc. She was the kind of woman who read and re-read Danielle Steele novels and hauled around sandwich baggies full of bird seed in one of those totebags that said "TOTE" and "BAG" diagonally across either side. For some reason, whenever I smell juniper bushes I think of Joan. I hate juniper bushes.

Danny emerged several minutes later with tear streaks on his freckled face and Joan nudging him back into the play yard with a firm hand in the small of his back. Of course, this is just when my laughter began. I think we can agree that humor at the expense of the pain of others is a timeless pursuit enjoyed by people, age 4 to 84. I am no different, not then at 7, not now at 27. Danny, it seems, did not appreciate this aspect of the human condition.

He lit off after me and chased me around the backyard much to the delight of the other kids. I bobbed and weaved, twisted and turned, laughing the whole way; but he finally got hold of the tail of my shirt near the rear of the backyard. I managed to pivot, spin him, and toss him head-long into a giant pile of leaves that had fallen and accumulated over the course of that fall. I laughed, the other kids laughed, and Danny steamed with rage known only to those with absentee fathers and revolving doors on their mother's bedroom.

I would find out, soon enough, that this little incident would be the catalyst to 4 months of torment...

Posted by nils at 11:16 AM

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Posted by: stnkold316 at August 14, 2006 01:43 AM

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