Rack-O!....................James Dean

It makes me sound really old, but when I was in the 3rd grade, our favorite recess games were still "Cowboys and Indians" and "Cops and Robbers".  Basically, we just chased each other around the schoolyard shooting fake guns, or arrows, at each other, yelling "You missed me!"  On days that we were stuck inside, though, our choice of games was limited.  A favorite game of ours that year ended up causing me nightmares and was eventually banned from the classroom.

Rack-O was a simple enough game.  From what I remember, players drew numbered cards from a pile, putting them in a rack from smallest to largest.  When you had a complete rack of 10 cards, and all your cards were in numerical order, you won.  But not without first yelling "RACK-O!!!!!" at the top of your lungs.  3rd grade boys are creative.  Somewhere along the line, somebody added an important rule to our game.  When you won the game, you won the right to yell "RACK-O!!!!", of course.  But in our version, you also won the right to slam your fist into the crotch of one of your adversaries also playing the game.  So, basically, each game ended with one boy rushing to rack someone in the balls before they had a chance to protect themselves.  Sounds fun, right?  Or as it says on the game box, "keen competition."

I started dreading rainy days for fear of being stuck inside playing Rack-O and getting slammed in my undersized junk.  To make matters worse, about that same time, there was a song on the radio called "Rock On" by David Essex.  Except I never heard Mr. Essex saying "Rock On". What I heard him saying was "Rack-O."  Listen to that song and you'll see why it is second on my list of creepiest songs of all-time, just behind "The Night Chicago Died."  The weird bass guitar and the violins combined to make it the scariest song I had ever heard.  Add in the "Jimmy Dean.....James Dean" part and I was this close to cowering in my closet, crying and  holding my hands over my crotch. To this day, I instinctively reach down whenever that song comes on the classic rock station.

I don't remember going to my mom and telling her the whole story about our Rack-O games at school.  I'm pretty sure I did though.  Mom had a talk with the teacher and before you could say "James Dean", the game had been pulled from the classroom shelves, never to be seen again.  Word got out that it was my mom that ended our "fun".  I took some heat from the other boys, but looking back, I'm pretty sure they were as thankful as I was.

Click here to listen to the 2nd creepiest song of all time.

It’s Too Bad There Aren’t Chances for Extra Credit as an Adult

When I was in 8^th Grade, my Literature teacher was Mrs. Hood.  She taught us public speaking, composition and about some of the great works of literature, but that wasn’t enough.  Her real calling was making sure we left St. Thomas as the most well-mannered, etiquette-following group of kids possible.  She wanted people to see us and think “Wow, they sure do put out some well-mannered kids at St. Thomas.”  You would think that after 8 years of Catholic school education we would be in pretty good shape, but apparently not.  They had to bring in Mrs. Hood as “The Closer”, to put on the finishing touches, I guess.

Her approach was simple: If she spotted you doing something good, you got extra credit.  That got my attention.  Extra credit is like crack for a kid obsessed with getting straight A’s.  The only thing better than getting a 100 on a test, was getting a 101 because Mrs. Hood saw you holding the door for some old ladies at church one morning.

That’s right, if she spotted you holding the door for someone, that was worth one point.  Overhearing a “please” or “thank-you” – one point.  Reading the communion antiphon at Mass – 3 points.  Saying hello to her outside of the school – 2 points.  And the list went on and on.  But there wasn’t really a formal list, it was just some mysterious tabulation that only she knew the details of.  It didn’t matter to me.  It was extra credit and I was all over it.

Late that school year, Mrs. Hood came up with an assignment that combined composition with her quest to make us better citizens.  She had us write random letters to residents at the County Convalescent Center.  We told them about ourselves and our school. And, most importantly, we told them we were praying for them during their time of convalescence.  I should note that I had never heard the work “convalescence” before, and I haven’t heard it since.  I imagine it has been replaced by a word from the 20^th century.

So we wrote our letters.  Some of us were lucky enough to receive replies; spawning pen pal relationships that consisted of a series of letters that basically said the same thing every time:  “School is going good.  My teachers are nice.  I’m praying for you during your time of convalescence.”  My pen pal was some guy named Carl Coffin, who, other than the fact that he had bad handwriting and a real cool name, I can remember nothing about him.

Toward the end of the school year, Mrs. Hood announced a mega-extra credit opportunity.  It wasn’t required, but anyone was welcome to pile in her van after school the next day and go with her up to the Convalescent Center to talk to the residents, sing songs, pray, and if we were lucky, meet our penpals.  Are you kidding?  It was an opportunity I would not be passing up.

For all its hype, I can’t remember too much about our actual visit.  I know that Carl Coffin was no longer a resident there and Mrs. Hood quickly changed the subject when I asked her why.  We went from room to room, singing a collection of songs that was apparently chosen from the Greatest Songs of the 19^th Century Songbook.  The fan favorites included:  “What Shall We Do with a Drunken Sailor?” and “Beat the Drum Slowly”.  We finished with a medley of American Negro Spirituals including “Swing Low Sweet Chariot”.  Nothing says “We’re praying for you during your time of convalescence” like a bunch of 13 year old white kids singing “I looked o’er Jordan and what did I see, coming forth to carry me home?”  I’m sure if Carl Coffin had been there, he would have been either applauding or crying.

A couple of years ago, I read that Mrs. Hood had passed away.  As much as I joke about it, she really did play a big role in me leaving grade school as a well-mannered, kind person. I’d like to think some of that carried on to my adult life.  I don’t think she had any formal ceremony after her death.  That’s unfortunate, because I’m sure attending her funeral would have been good for at least 30 extra credit points in life.

I am the worst "award winning" cook of all times.

Actually, I don't really know if I'm a terrible cook or not - I just don't ever try. The only things that I routinely cook anymore are instant rice, spaghetti and egg sandwiches. But those few things, I can really nail.

I started working at Hardee's when I was 16. I did the usual stuff like taking orders, cooking fries and cleaning the floors. At that age, work was more about hanging out with my friends than learning new skills. But, after a couple of years, I got the chance of a lifetime. The guy who came in each morning to cook biscuits had called in hung over one too many times, so they thought they'd better train someone to be his backup. I jumped at the chance.

This new job was perfect for me. I got to come in early before the other employees arrived, and I got to hang out in the back away from the customers. My public appearances were limited to several times a day when I was forced to carry trays of cooked biscuits out to the holding oven on the back line.

I have the skills to be a good cook. I follow directions and I pay attention to details. These skills helped me to cook good biscuits. Really good biscuits. I got a reputation for making the best Hardee's biscuits in town, so when it was announced that there was going to be a nationwide contest for the best Hardee's biscuit cook, I was excited. I didn't know who Cale Yarborough was, but included in the first prize, was a chance to meet him, and ride in his Hardee's Nascar racer.


First we had a competition between all the cooks that worked at the 4 Hardee's restaurants in Champaign/Urbana. I don't remember much about that competition, but I did win and earned the right to move on to the area competition in Belleville.

There isn't much to cooking Hardee's biscuits. The only ingredients were a bag of flour, 2 containers of buttermilk, 2 cubes of shortening, and a secret packet that I can only assume contained yeast, baking powder, salt and other stuff. Throw them all in a mixer, turn it on, and you're pretty much done. I, though, had made some tweaks to the procedure that I'm sure led to my awesome biscuits. First, I always shorted the mix about a half cup of buttermilk. Second, instead of throwing the entire cubes of shortening into the mixer, I took the time to pinch off quarter-sized pieces from the cubes. It took more time to do this, but I was convinced it helped. Lastly, before I removed the dough from the mixer to plop onto the rolling table, I always let it set for a few minutes, giving it time to rise. I tried to keep these procedures a secret, fearing that I might get fired for varying from the official biscuit making handbook.

It was the day of the big bake-off in Belleville. I didn't get many instructions on how it was going to work except that I had to bring my own ingredients from the local restaurant. No problem there. My mom went with me that day, partly for moral support, but mostly because I was afraid to drive on the interstate. We arrived in plenty of time for the competition and my confidence was at an all-time high. That didn't last long though. When I went to get the ingredients out of the hatchback of dad's Citation, I realized that I had made a costly mistake. I had stored the ingredients in the direct sunlight and the shortening was half melted. When I informed the judges of this, they were not sympathetic, ensuring what ended up being my last place finish.

For my troubles, I got a $50 bill and a Hardee's Racing Team Cale Yarborough jacket. It was pretty sweet. I never wore it though. It only brought back painful memories.

This past Christmas, when I was down in my parents' basement, I looked for that old jacket. I thought it was time to face my fears and put it on. I looked on the racks where mom used to keep the old clothes, but I never found it. Then, a couple of weeks later, I was out in my dad's garage where he runs his eBay operations. There, hanging on a rack, was the old jacket, still unworn, and still looking pretty sweet. No, I didn't try it on. It was obvious that it wasn't going to fit, and I was worried that I'd rip out a seam or something trying to put it on. I did check the pockets, though, for a receipt, a Hardee's napkin, or a $50 bill that might have been stashed away 30 years ago. Nothing.

It turns out that dad sold my coat on eBay for $31. A fitting end to a time long ago when my cooking skills were at their apex.

Looks Like We Got Us A Convoy

Back before I had an iPhone, before I had a 286, a Commodore 64, a Vic-20, an Atari, or even cable TV, I had a CB radio.  I guess it wasn't mine; it belonged to the family.  But I sure used it a lot.  During the 70s, and well into the 80s when I started driving, my family had a CB radio in every car, and one big one in the dining room.

It was on all the time.  We talked on it before school, after school and right before we went to bed at night.  Everyone I was related to had a CB handle.  My dad was "Winemaker", mom was "Green Onion", my brothers and sister were, in order, "Goldilocks", "Nightcrawler", "Bookworm", "Pepper" and "Dopey".  I started out as "Dribbler" but later changed it to "Pretzel" after I found out more people associated my handle with a slobbering kid than a basketball player.

We talked to my grandma "Granny B", my aunts and uncles, and any random truck driver who had his ears on.  One of the few rules was to stay on Channel 13 unless the static got really bad.  And, stay off of Channel 9.  That was reserved for police emergencies. 

When I was 11, my life was made complete when I won a radio that I could also use to listen to CB radio traffic. 

I was never particularly artistic, but I turned it up a notch because I knew what prize was at stake.  With that radio, I was able to hear "Convoy" on WMAQ one minute and real life truckers the next.  It couldn't get any better than that.

You know that age when you are too cool

to go trick-or-treating, but you really want the candy?  That's the age that I was in 1978.   I had no idea what I wanted to dress up as that year, but I knew that I wanted to go.  My friend Wes told me that he was going to dress up as Paul Stanley for a Halloween thing he was having at school.  He suggested that we use his extra face paint to dress me up as my favorite KISS guy, Peter Chriss.  That sounded like a pretty cool plan to me.

I went over to Wes's house that night to get my makeup on and found out there had been a change in plans.  Wes's face reacted badly to the makeup that he had had on all day.  I was still going as Peter Chriss, but we had to brainstorm to come up with a costume for him.  We improvised, raiding his step-mom's and his older sister's closets and make-up kits to dress him up like a woman.  He used the same wig that he was going to use for his Paul Stanley costume, and the whole outfit came together pretty well.

I thought I looked pretty cool, but despite the drumsticks and uncanny resemblence to Peter Chriss, most of the old ladies thought I was supposed to be a cat.  I finally got tired of explaining myself and just started agreeing that I was just a cat.

Wes's purse doubled as a great place to stash all the candy that we collected.  Before we left, he cleaned it out to make room for the candy and I got to see a feminine pad for the first time.  We were quite the pair that night, walking around Philo as a cross-dressing Paul Stanley and a drum-playing cat.

I was never big on class participation....

Just tell me what I'm supposed to do and then leave me alone.  I wanted to be graded on the work I did and not on how well I got along with others or how much I offered in class.

In many ways, I'm the same today as I was in 7th grade.

I heard a song today that made me think of someone

.... I hadn’t thought of in over 30 years.

When I was in 6th grade or so, a new kid moved to Philo. That, in and of itself, was such a rare occurrence that it was bound to stick in my mind. Add to that, he was a big, dark complected, athletic kid with a cool sounding name: Tony Vavroch. I didn’t know what “swarthy” was back then, but looking back, he was about as swarthy as a 12 year old could be. I never asked, but I figured he must have come from some faraway place like Boston, or Brooklyn, or maybe Madrid.

I didn’t have a lot of interaction with Tony. We were on the same baseball team for one summer, but that’s about it. We were two of the only 12 year olds, in a league full of 9-12 year olds.

I thought I was good back then, but I wasn’t. Tony pretty much carried our team. I always thought it’d be cool to be his friend, but it didn’t work out. When the summer was over, I went back to the Catholic school and he went to the public school. I already had one public school friend (Wes), and I guess that was my limit.
Speaking of Wes, it was his connection with Tony that kinda sparked my memory today. The two of them, along with a girl named Carolyn playing piano, teamed up to sing “Come Sail Away” at their school talent show.

  
Wes sang that song all the time. He was determined that he and swarthy Tony were gonna blow the crowd away with their rendition. As it turns out, it didn’t go very well. According to Wes, Tony got stage fright and didn’t sing a single word, not even during the easy slow part of the song. It was a disaster. I missed the whole thing though. My mom didn’t let me go. I’m guessing because it was a bunch of public school kids.

I know it sounds creepy, but I decided to do a little internet detective work today to see what I could find out about this Tony Vavroch guy. Keep in mind that, outside of the fact that he lived in Philo for a year or two, I know nothing about him. That, and the fact that he was probably born in 1966. Interestingly enough, there was a varsity football player at Purdue with that name.

The years work out, and Tony was athletic, so I suspect that it was probably him. That same guy now is a manager for an elite modeling company in New York City.

Creepy, I know, but I found him on facebook. We don’t have any common friends. Most of his friends have cool names too. And I bet one or two of them are from Boston, or Brooklyn, or maybe even Madrid.

As a kid, I had a crush on the same girl for over a year, and never talked to her....

Her name was Laurie. It started when she was in 4th grade (in the combined 3rd/4th grade classroom) and I was in 5th grade (in the combined 5th/6th grade room). I would only see her at lunch and at all-school events, but I was totally locked in on her. I spent the better part of that school year anticipating the next year when we’d be in the SAME classroom. The thing that I remember the most is how badly I wanted to touch her hair. But there was no way that was gonna happen in separate rooms, so I waited that year, and all summer, for my chance.

I thought when my 6th grade year started, that we would naturally get together, but I was too shy to even talk to her. I probably never would have done anything until one day when I saw her sitting with another boy, getting a little too close. The boy had Laurie on one side of him, and one of the two Paulas on the other, and he was serenading them with “Torn Between Two Lovers”. I saw him do that 2 days in a row! I couldn’t believe he had the nerve to actually sing to my Laurie.

I decided that I had to do something daring. I wrote a note confessing all of my feelings for her. I carried it around in my pocket for a week. The day that I finally decided to give it to her, I casually pulled it out of my pocket and put it on my desk. I remember thinking that if I acted too slyly, I would draw attention to myself. So I casually set it on my desk like it was just a regular old folded up piece of paper that just happened to have a heart drawn on it, and not the most important thing that I had ever written.

My anti-sly routine backfired. Within seconds, Frank grabbed the note off my desk, opened it, and began to read it in front of the whole class. I wish I could say that it sparked one of those moments you see on TV where the girl is so overwhelmed by the note that she runs into my arms. In fact, it might have, except that I ran out of the room before Frank even got to the line about how much I wanted to touch Laurie’s hair.

I went and hid in the boy’s locker room behind a rack of chairs. I knew class was starting, but I waited in there trying to figure out how I was going to reenter the classroom with any sort of dignity. 10 minutes later, Kenny and Andy walked in, tried to tell me it was no big deal, and that Mrs. Wolfe wanted me to get back to class. That is where my memory ends. I have no recollection of ever leaving the locker room, or reentering the classroom, and especially no memory of seeing Laurie’s face. I found out later that Mrs. Wolfe had told the whole class to act like nothing had happened. They did, because no one ever spoke of it again. And I made it through the remainder of my torturous 6th grade without ever saying a word to Laurie.

When I was a kid, there weren't a lot of other kids that lived around me to play with.

I lived on the wrong side of the tracks for that. It wasn’t really the “bad” side of the tracks; just more like the “old people with no kids” side. There was a total of 8 kids on my side of tracks, and 6 of them were in my family.

There were, though, a couple of kids that I was friends with who lived out on the highway. One summer, one of these buddies had a cousin stay with him for a few weeks. It was nice to have someone new to hang with and to call a friend. He was from a place that I had never heard of called Decatur. He was kind of quiet, but he liked to play baseball, and that was nice. He told us about cable television and a channel called Home Box Office where you could watch movies all the time. It all seemed a little far-fetched to me. I didn’t know it until later, but this kid’s family had all recently been killed in a house fire - his mom and dad, and his brothers and sisters. He was the only one who survived.

After his Philo vacation was over, he went back to live with relatives in Decatur. He gave me his phone number so we could keep in touch. A few times, I called him to see how he was doing.


My mom wasn’t happy about me having a friend in Decatur that I wanted to call on the phone. According to her, it was expensive to call there. Whenever she let me call him, she would set an egg timer out, with strict instructions not to be on the phone when the timer was up. That’s okay, though, we usually ran out of things to say before we ran out of sand.

Recently, I tried to do a google search of fatal Decatur house fires and his last name, but nothing came up. It would have been interesting to read about it after all these years. It could be that, even though his new home was in Decatur, that isn’t where the fire happened. I’m not sure. To this day, I can't see an egg timer without thinking of my month-long best friend Tim.

Update:  Someone read this story and sent me this interesting link.

Four women who made a big impression on me as a little kid:

Baseball Playing Gayne: In the early seventies, there were no organized sports in Philo for young girls. And a girl had never asked to be allowed to play Little League baseball. I’m guessing that her parents talked it out with the folks in charge beforehand, because when we gathered for our first practice one year, Gayne showed up and acted as if she had every right in the world to be there. We laughed about it a little bit, but I don’t remember anyone giving her any grief. It had never occurred to us that a girl would ever want to play on a real team. We were only 8 or 9 years old, so it wasn’t like there was a huge talent difference between Gayne and us boys. The next year, a couple more girls played. Years later, they added softball. Gayne broke the gender barrier in Philo sports.

Craig’s mom: One day during recess, we were playing buck-buck on the school playground. We weren’t supposed to be playing because the nuns said it was too dangerous. Craig lived about a block away, and during lunch that day, his mom walked down to drop off his lunch. It was 30+ years ago, but I still remember her walking up wearing an orange tank top with no bra underneath. Every boy just stood there and stared while she and Craig talked along the side of the road. You would have thought we were all staring at a naked woman.

Mizz Whats-her-name: When I was in 3rd grade, I was pulled out of my regular classroom to work on the pronunciation of my N’s and S’s with the speech teacher. For part of the year, the teacher’s name was Ms. Something. The unusual thing about this is that NO ONE had ever been called “Mizz” before. It was always Mrs. or Miss. I remember her taking a few minutes to give us a mini lesson in women’s lib and to explain what being called “Mizz Such-and-such” meant. It was like she had invented a new word or something. I couldn’t wait to go home and tell mom about it.

Next door neighbor Tammy: One day when I was about 7 or 8 years old, I was playing in the lot next door with some neighbor kids, including Tammy, who was probably 5 years older than me. The lot included a garden full of sweet corn. I had to go pee, so I walked over to the corn. Tammy told me that I had to try to run around the entire corn “field” *while* I was peeing. I don’t remember her daring me to do it – she just told me matter-of-factly that I had to. I did it, and I remember getting pee all over me, including in my mouth. I started crying and Tammy told me that if I told anyone what happened, that she would kill me. I kept my mouth shut, which is what I should have done while I was peeing. I was scared of not only Tammy, but of her whole family. More than once, her dad told me the story of how he got shot in the mouth during "the war". The bullet knocked out all his 4 front teeth and lodged in the back of this throat. Tammy's older brother Mike went to Vietnam. When he came back, he had a tattoo and an earing. He was the first guy I had ever seen with an earing. It freaked me out.

I’ve told stories before about how frugal my mom was….

My dad wasn’t far behind.  He could/can do amazing things with his tools, and his opinion was “why pay for something at the store that you can build yourself?”

When I was little, I really wanted one of those fancy store-bought bounceback things like some of my friends had.  Not only could you practice pitching, but depending upon the tilt, you could practice fielding grounders and pop-ups too.

I asked dad if he could buy one for me, and he said he’d see what he could do.  A few days later he surprised me with one of my own bouncebacks.

He took a gate off of an old fence, kind of like this one:

Then, he painstakingly wove waxed string across the gate to form a tight mesh.  He tied knots at each intersection and ended up with a grid with about 2 inch centers.  He even spraypainted a red square on it to represent the strike zone.  It didn’t have an adjustable leg to vary the tilt, but he showed me how I could adjust it by leaning it against the tree at different angles.

I loved the heck out of that thing and played with it for years.  It was just as good as anything I could have gotten uptown, except that, in most cases, the ball only rebounded about six feet.  Next time I’m over there, I’m gonna see if he still has it in his barn.  I think he does.

Pinball Wizard

When I was a little kid, my brothers worked across the highway at the Dog n Suds.  After they enclosed the patio, the Dog n Suds had seating for only about 10 people, but they did have room for a pinball machine, and it was the only one in Philo.  Every few weeks, the pinball repairman would come by to either do maintenance or fix the machine.  And when he showed up, my brothers would yell across the highway to me “The Pinball Man is here!!”

That was my cue to come over, bum a root beer, and hang out there until the pinball guy left.  Because, before he left, he always pushed some secret button in the back of the machine that added a bunch of free games.  I would sit there like I wasn’t about ready to pee my pants in anticipation, just waiting to hear how many games he added.  For each one, I’d hear a loud CLAP like two pieces of wood being slapped together.  Usually, he’d leave about 2 or 3, but one time he left something like 13.  I think that day I played that Paul Bunyan pinball machine from 10 in the morning until suppertime.  I didn’t dare leave the machine and give some other kid (or my younger brother) the chance to use MY free games.  Yeah, I know, I was selfish.

I played a lot of pinball back then.  A few years later, we got a Pong at our house, and I’ve probably only played a pinball machine a dozen times since. L

Back when I was in the 2nd grade, I hated music class.

Our music class consisted of one of two things. Either we sat around and sang church hymns while Mrs. Brennan lead us on an old piano that was wheeled into our classroom by some lucky older boys, or we marched down to the public school to be taught by a real music teacher. That year, in preparation for a fancy recital, we walked the 3 or 4 blocks down to the public school for about 8 weeks in a row. Sister Dolorita led us along the route, with strict instructions not to talk, play with dogs or pick up anything along the way.

Our music class was in a tiny room above the gym. Until that year, I had never been in the room, but I knew it existed because we often climbed up the fire escape chute that led from the room. When we were older, on those wonderful days when we didn’t have school but the public school kids did, we sometimes climbed up the chute and banged on the little door to the room, thinking it would be funny to disrupt some music class. It turns out that the room was only used by either the Catholic kids from down the street or basketball referees.

Our class had been assigned two numbers for that famed recital, and I’d never heard of either of them. The first was “Hello Dolly” and the other was “Whistle a Happy Tune”. I should be clear that I hated music class, and there was no way I was going to sing in front of a gym full of parents and grandparents. We learned the songs quickly. The music teacher was especially proud of the part where we all whistled along. Of course I couldn’t whistle, so she told me to just pucker my lips and no one would ever know.

I don’t remember much of the performance itself. Too traumatic, I guess. I never opened my lips to sing, and never puckered up to fake whistling. I just stood there, alternating between staring at the floor and staring at the basketball hoop that had somehow been raised to the ceiling. My mom was furious. On the way home, she told me that she was never going to another school recital again if all I was gonna do was “stand there like a retard”.

When I got home, I hid in my closet and cried, while humming the words to “Hello Dolly”.

Back when I was in the 4th grade, I wanted to be a botanist when I grew up....

I don't think I knew the word "botanist" but I knew that I liked to grow things in my little corner of mom and dad's big garden. Part of my fascination with gardening came from my parents, but a big part of it came from my 4th grade teacher, Mrs. Komarek. I was fascinated by her, and we shared a love of gardening.

At the beginning of the school year, she had on her desk, a weird seed that I had never seen before.

She explained that it was an avocado seed and that, over time, it would grow into a big tree. I immediately knew that I had to have one, so I begged mom to pick one up at the store. Of course, they didn't have avocados at the Philo Eisner so I had to wait until mom had a reason to go uptown to Champaign. Mom couldn't see buying something just for the seed, so she made me try the avocado itself. 35 years later, I still won't eat them.

On my first attempt, the seed got all moldy before it ever cracked open. But I tried again, and it finally worked. Avocado growing definitely takes a lot of patience.

I grew my avocado for months, but I don't think it ever got big enough to transplant to soil. During the summer after 4th grade, without Mrs. Komarek's encouragement, I let the plant die. I'm not sure if Mrs. Komarek came back the next school year or not, but I never remember talking to her after that. I was probably too embarrassed to tell her that my plant had died. My last contact with her was this letter that I received that summer.

I just decided that I'm going to buy an avocado soon. And I'm going to grow it into a tree in honor of Mrs. Komarek.

When I was in the 7th grade, I was on my school's track team

The school obviously had a tiny budget for track and field equipment. My dad made the hurdles out of used 2 x 4s. The high jump and pole vault standards were made of metal poles cast into concrete-filled truck tires. The coolest thing though was the landing mat for the high jump and pole vault. It was made of what appeared to be an old sewn together fishing net filled with brick sized pieces of foam; like the kind that you use when washing your car.

This picture was taken a few years later.  Different kids - same old mat.

The mat was sort of a makeshift gathering place for hanging out after track practice. We would sit out there, smoke cigarettes and swap stories about school. Okay, we never smoked cigarettes, but one time somebody did bring some pop rocks and wax lips, both of which were strictly prohibited on school property. I was always uncomfortable hanging out with the cool kids, but because it was a carryover from track practice, I was tolerated.

One day, 6 or so of us were sitting out there on the mat, including Lindsey, a girl I had a huge crush on. Right in the middle of a serious conversation about how Mork tried to kidnap Fonzie last night on TV, all the guys jumped off the mat in unison, leaving just me and Lindsey. Before I could react, they folded the mat over on top of us, rolling us up inside. I was fear-stricken. I don’t remember ever being claustrophobic before or since, but at that moment, I was convinced that I was about to die. I was probably pressed up against the cutest girl that I had ever seen, but all I could do was scream like a little girl that I was suffocating.

Despite my pleading, the guys sat on top of mat for what seemed like an eternity. I didn’t even acknowledge Lindsey. I just kept screaming. Eventually, they unfolded it and let us out. I didn’t make eye contact with any of them, including Lindsey. I just ran across the playground as fast as I could, got on my bike and pedaled home. I never, in my whole life, said a single word to Lindsey ever again.