Oh, The Fun We Had! More Tales From School

I came across a picture from a faculty Christmas party the other day and just had to share it. I believe this would have been our 1995 party and gift exchange. Linda Marr was our high school counselor who would draw names out of a box to match us with a person to give a gift to. No doubt this year she rigged the drawing so she would get Shari Jenkins’ name, because she had the perfect gift in mind; not necessarily the best gift for Shari, but the best gift with which to  pay homage to Mr. Jenkins, who just happened to be not only Shari’s husband but also our good-natured assistant principal, and keep the whole faculty entertained at the same time. And by now your eye has already been drawn down and is riveted to the poster below. I’m not sure if it was the word SEX that grabbed your attention or the pretty-much naked man, but this was the poster the unsuspecting Mrs. Jenkins unwrapped, and to our delight and Mr. Jenkins’ chagrin, shared with us all. Needless to say, it was the most inspired and most popular gift of the evening.

The story unfolded that Linda had seen the poster much earlier in the school year and the wheels started turning. She took one of Mr. Jenkins’  yearbook pictures, had it enlarged to the appropriate size, and superimposed it on the poster. This was before the digital/Photo Shop days, way back last century, remember,  but the end result was very effective.

Mrs. Marr could get away with a prank like this only because we were blessed with two quality bosses, principal Al Bishop, who could appreciate a good joke,  and an assistant principal like Mr. Jenkins, who was not without his own brand of humor at our faculty meetings, and who, when he later became principal, was one of those special bosses who could create a working  environment that allowed for this sort of fun while running an effective, successful school. The kids appreciated his sense of humor and felt comfortable around him, but respected him and knew he meant business when it came to their proper behavior and education.

Linda was always thinking up devious little jokes to pull. Mr. Jenkins was not her only victim. This picture reminded me of one time when I was her target. it was right about this same year, maybe ‘94 or ‘96, when I was blessed with a student aide one period of the day, which happened to be the period before lunch. One of the best meals our cafeteria served was their Thanksgiving and Christmas turkey and dressing dinners, and I usually enjoyed their cooking on those days instead of my lunch from home. So this year I sent my student aide, Josie Cortez,  to get my tray and take it to the teacher’s workroom where many of us ate lunch. She did, and when the bell rang, I went down, looking forward to this meal. Several of us were enjoying the holiday treat when I realized  what I bit down on was not just dressing. I spit it out on my fork and discovered a plastic cricket. I set the cricket to the side, we all laughed, and with a little hesitation and a smile, I took another bite. Things went well until I had another surprise in the mashed potatoes. And the green beans, And again in the dressing. Not one to let a little plastic insect ruin my lunch,  the rest of the meal was a treasure hunt to see what else I would find. Six crickets later the tray was empty, my tummy was full, and I had not keeled over dead from eating after these little uninvited critters. I wasn’t about to let the perpetrator of this little crime get away with spoiling my meal. No sir.

I suffered no ill effects, we all had a good laugh, and I finally squeezed the truth out of Josie, who of course had been sworn to secrecy not to tell me that Mrs. Marr had caught her on her way to the cafeteria and convinced her to stop on the way back for the planting of the crickets.

Obviously Mrs. Marr must have had just too much time on her hands. I never could think up anything to get back at her. But it is always fun to retell the story. One of the crickets lived in my desk drawer for years as a friendly reminder.

And this last story has nothing to do with Mrs. Marr, but remembering that story made me think of one more concerning dear Mr. Gulley. On one of the many One Act Play trips to state with Mr. Gulley and  Dr. Kerry  Moore, then just Mr. Moore, the Texas Café, (I believe was the name, it’s been long enough that I may have forgotten exactly), was a fairly new and  popular restaurant in Austin, and they took the kids there one night for a meal. So the week after the group’s return from the trip, someone came into the workroom one morning before classes started and made a casual comment to Mr. Gulley about liking the Texas Café, to which Mr. Gulley inquired why he would say that, and the teacher said, well, the bumper sticker on your car says you like it. Mr. Gulley responded that he didn’t do bumper stickers, and the teacher assured him that yes, he did, because the one on his car said “Texas Café-Bubba Likes It!,” immediately after which Mr. Gulley purposefully rose from his chair, walked out the door and disappeared. In a minute, he was back with a serious face and on a mission to get that pesky bumper sticker off his car. Which he did, but in its place he earned the nickname “Bubba,” which we thoroughly enjoyed calling him in front of the kids, down the hall, whenever we could catch him in a crowd. And if you know Mr. Gulley, you know he is about as much of a Bubba as Queen Elizabeth is a Lady Gaga.

But he took it like a trooper and eventually, being  the good ol’ boy he is, begrudgingly acknowledged the greeting  every time he heard a gleeful Bubba! directed his way. Truth be told, I think he kind of liked having a nickname. Or not…

Oh, my, but we did make some memories.

And Finally, The X-Rated Tale From School

I had just moved into the second of the three rooms assigned to me during my tenure at Muleshoe High School. As I remember it, and that is using the term loosely as it has been a few years, it was a work day and my work was caught up, so I decided to clean out and rearrange my desk, This blocky old desk looked like it had been there forever, the traditional teacher’s desk made of wood stained  a light blond color and was built hell for stout, as my daddy would have said.

I started with the shallow center drawer, the one that catches all the pencils, paper clips, and little stuff that start out in their own neat little compartments or boxes and wind up mixed in with everything else and tangled up in the rubber bands and dust bunnies that should have been thrown away a long time ago.

That drawer done, I moved to the stacks of drawers on either side of the desk, throwing away left-over files of the previous occupant and confidently arranging my files that I was sure I would refer to often and which then gathered dust just like the ones before them. All the things I really used wound up on the desktop in sometimes less than orderly piles.

I was down to the bottom drawer on the left-hand side and had just emptied it of the notebooks, loose scrap paper, and  years of accumulated flotsam wadded in the corners when I came upon one of those shiny metal buttons with a pin on the back. I turned it over and read the caption, I LOVE P- - - - .

Really? In a teacher’s desk? I was taken aback! I couldn’t help but smile. How long had this button hidden, nestled there quietly until today? And what teacher took it off of which kid? And why wasn’t it on file in the principal’s office or somewhere as evidence of a student’s wrongdoing? Or thrown away before it landed in the wrong hands-again? Or was it the teacher’s to begin with? Aha! Now, that may be the real story. I think I remember which teacher had this room and therefore this desk before me, but that teacher could have inherited the desk with its hidden missive just like I did. But surely she would have discovered it when she took over possession of the desk, just like I did. Or maybe not.

Well, since the button had survived this long, it just didn’t seem right to  toss it and end the mystery, so considering I have sort of a perverse sense of humor anyway,  I tucked it into my jacket pocket without a clue as to what I would wind up doing with it and went on about my business.

Time passed. The button was sort of forgotten as it resided in its new secret place.  I would wear the jacket from time to time and eventually my hand would come across the button quietly waiting to be rediscovered and marveled at. I would touch it and smile at the memory of the day it surprised me, drop it back into the pocket, and continue on.

The evening came when I wore the jacket to a holiday Christmas affair, the annual Dress Red party given by a group of women in the community. The hostesses would gather our coats as we entered and store them on a bed in the bedroom until we were ready to leave. When the time came for me to depart, I went in to retrieve my jacket, gathered it up and said my goodbyes as I walked out the door. By the time I made it to the car I realized I had someone else’s jacket. This jacket was made very much like mine, but this one didn’t have the telltale button in the pocket!

Back in I rushed to frantically go through the pile of coats to find mine, and thank goodness no one had made the same mistake I had and taken mine instead of her own. 

But if someone had,  I would have loved to seen the expression on that woman’s face when she discovered the mystery button.

And then would she ever had admitted to me that she saw the button when we exchanged jackets?

Ah, the stories that little button could tell!

You know, I’d better go check and make sure it is still safe and waiting for its next adventure.

An R-Rated Tale From School-Or Maybe PG-13 In Today’s World

A while back I shared some stories from school with you. You may also have read about my attending a Jaston Williams writing workshop in Lubbock the other day. I shared a story from school at the workshop in one of our assignments, as we were writing from life experiences. So I will share that story with you in a slightly different form.

It had been one of those days. When lunch time came, I stayed in the room to grade 4th period’s tests so that would be one less set of papers to lug home. This was back in the old building, before all the renovations, and my room was big and my desk was on the back wall away from the hallway and my door. I became aware of noise coming down the quiet hall. Girls’ voices became louder, chattering about who knows what. The closer they came the louder and more animated they became. But apparently one of the girls had listened to enough, and I heard, in this crystal clear voice above the chatter, “Oh, just shut the f--- up!”

For a split second there was silence. I looked up and caught a fleeting glimpse as three girls glided past my door. The girls took a breath, I sat in surprised shock. and without missing another beat, the conversation started up again, albeit a bit more subdued. Immobilized by indecision, my shoulders dropped, and I let out a big sigh. Geez, I suppose I should deal with that, but I don’t want to. The exasperated girl didn’t mean for me to hear that. They were oblivious to any teacher being within ear shot.

Let it go, I decided. The speaker of the expletive no doubt had had a morning like mine, and I knew just how she felt.

I asked April Smith, down the hall, if she had heard the girls and told her what had transpired. We both laughed, commiserated with the ring leader, and from then on when we were bored to distraction by one of our fellow teachers who liked to expound upon her own useless ideas at our faculty meetings, we would instinctively look at each other, roll our eyes, and mouth in silence “just shut the f…” grin knowingly, and try to look interested as this person blathered on ad nauseum about whatever. Like the girl in the hall, we were never reprimanded, either, but it didn’t take any special lip-reading skills to know what we had silently screamed at the offending  speaker. So I always figured there were others in the group who were thinking the same thing themselves.

So the years have passed, but there are times when I find myself in a similar situation. Like once when I was cornered by an obnoxious grandmother who was just sure I would want to hear all about her lovely, talented, beautiful, smart, blah, blah, blah, successful granddaughter. As she yammered on and on -and on- I couldn’t help but wish Mrs. Smith was sitting across the way, so I could roll my eyes at her, mouth the magic phrase, and chuckle to myself as I escaped the present, slipped back into my room, and listened for surprises in the hall.