Chapter 2

Well, wouldn’t you know it, the first thing I found out Monday morning when I woke up was that I had peed in the bed. Again.  

     Here I am, almost 15 years old, and I still pee in the bed. Not all the time, but sometimes. It’s something I’ve been doing my whole life. I can go months without doing it, and then it’ll start up and happen five or six nights in a row. And the really frustrating thing about it is, I don’t know exactly why it happens. I mean, I try everything I can think of to avoid doing it. Like, I don’t usually drink anything for a couple of hours before I go to bed, and I always make sure I pee real good right before I go to bed, too. I even tried setting my alarm clock to go off at three in the morning so I could get up and pee and then go back to sleep. But even doing all that stuff doesn’t guarantee anything. I’m still liable to wake up the next morning in a wet bed. I can’t explain it, it’s just something that happens, that’s all. Not all the time, like I said, but sometimes.

     But I’ll tell you one thing for sure, I don’t do it on purpose, I don’t care what anybody says. You see, somebody told Mom once, I guess when I was about six or seven or something, that I was still peeing in the bed because I was looking for some extra attention. They told her that’s what little boys do when they want attention. And Mom believed that crap, and she probably still does. But that’s a stupid thing to believe, I think. Why would anybody want to bring that kind of attention to themselves?  The only kind of attention it ever got me was the kind I can do without. Every time it used to happen, Mom would yell at me and say she was gonna start making me wear a diaper to bed like I did when I was a baby. And Freddie would make fun of me and say he was gonna tell everybody at school and everybody at the Kingdom Hall and everybody else in the whole world, that I was still peeing in the bed.

     And that’s supposed to be the kind of extra attention I was looking for?  I don’t think so. It really pisses me off whenever I hear somebody say that, that kids pee in the bed simply because they’re looking for more attention. That’s wrong, and I know it for a fact.

     I remember one time when I was seven or eight, and Mom got appendicitis or something and had to go to the hospital for a while. Me and Freddie stayed over at Grandma Grubber’s house. And every night when I went to bed, Grandma Grubber would come in there and say, “Okay, now Warren, you better not be peeing in my bed tonight. I don’t want to come in here in the morning and find my bed all wet, ‘cause then I’ll have to get out my old butcher knife and whack off that whacker of yours, you hear?  And then what are gonna do the rest of your life, walking around without a whacker?  You’re gonna need your whacker. So you just better think about that, boy, before you go peeing in my bed. Goodnight, now. Sleep tight.” 

     Jesus, I’d be afraid to go to sleep after that, because I knew I had no control over whether I did it or not. I could have lost my whacker because of something I couldn’t even help doing. When you think about it, it’s a damn wonder I’ve ever gotten any sleep since then.

     Anyway, I woke up in a wet bed that Monday. And I started doing what I always do when that happens. I started stripping the sheets off my bed, because I was gonna have to take them down to the basement and throw them in the washing machine, so they could be washing up while I was on my way to school. So I got the sheets together and headed for the basement.

     Well, wouldn’t you know it, Mom was standing out in the hallway when I came out of my room, and of course she saw me carrying them wet sheets when I walked past her. “Did it again, huh?” she said in her sarcastic voice. She didn’t have on her Mad Face. She had on her Sarcastic Face, the one with the fake smile. But at least she didn’t start yelling at me for peeing in the bed. She gave up yelling at me for doing that a long time ago. That’s one good thing. She still yells at me all the time for lots of other things, but not for peeing in the bed.

     I just kept on walking. I didn’t say anything. I felt like saying something sarcastic back at her, like, “Yeah, I haven’t been getting enough attention around here lately, so I thought I’d try this old trick again.”  But I knew better than to say something like that, so I didn’t say anything.  I just kept on going.

     I took my sheets downstairs and put them in the washer and started it up. I’d have to come home after school and take them out of the washing machine and throw them in the dryer. And when they were finished drying, I’d have to take them upstairs and put them back on my bed. I have to do all that stuff myself. Mom refuses to do any of it anymore. She says that when I get good and tired of washing and drying my sheets and making up my bed, over and over again, all the time, then maybe I’ll stop peeing in the bed.

     It’s not my fault, though. That’s the truth, I swear it. But nobody believes me.

     By the time I got the wet sheets off my bed and into the washing machine downstairs, and came back upstairs and got dressed and ready for school, and got all my school books and stuff together, I didn’t have time to fix myself any breakfast or to go out to the paper box and get the newspaper. The baseball scores would have to wait until I got back home after school, because the bus was gonna be coming any minute, and I had to be out at the end of the driveway in order to catch it.

     I was rushing out the door when I thought I heard Mom yelling something at me from the kitchen. So I had to stop for a second, to see if she really was yelling at me, or if I was just hearing things. “Hey, Warren. Not so fast,” she yelled. I stuck my head back in the door and said, “Yes, Ma’am?”  And she said, “Ain’t you forgetting something, young man?”  She was standing there waving the Yearbook back and forth in front of her. Well, that’s just what I was afraid of. I was hoping I’d get out of the house before she could stop me. But no such luck. So I didn’t have any choice but to turn around and go back in and sit down at the kitchen table and try to get the daily text read before the bus showed up.

     Well, I started reading it, and was skimming through it real quick, as fast as I could, when I heard the bus coming. You see, there’s this real long steep hill right before you get to our house, and you can always tell when the bus is coming because you can hear it changing gears a bunch of times, trying to make it up the hill. Then you know you’ve got less than a minute before the bus actually pulls up. So when I heard it coming, I threw the Yearbook down on the table and ran out the house and down the driveway, to meet it. I bet that made Mom mad, that I didn’t get to finish reading the daily text. But there was nothing she could do about it.

     Of course, Freddie was already waiting out there, at the end of the driveway. He’d had plenty of time to eat breakfast and read the daily text. He didn’t have to strip his bed and throw his sheets into the washer, the way I did that morning. Freddie has never had to strip his bed and throw his sheets into the washer, because Freddie has never peed in his bed. Not once in his whole life. He was just standing out there at the end of the driveway with this big smile on his face, like everything in the world was just perfect for old Freddie. It looked to me like he’d borrowed Mom’s Sarcastic Face, to wear at the bus stop, just to irk the shit out of me. He didn’t say anything, or even look at me. He just stood there, smiling. Just once I wish Freddie would pee in his bed. Then maybe we’d see how much smiling he would do.

     Well, I tried my best to ignore Freddie and his big stupid sarcastic smiling face. I was just hoping that his big stupid sarcastic smile didn’t mean he had picked today to start telling people that I was almost fifteen years old and still peed in the bed. That’s the last thing I needed. I could just picture him getting on the bus and standing up there in front of everybody before he took a seat, and saying something like, “Attention, attention everybody. I’ve got an announcement to make. May I have your attention, please. Warren Grubber peed in the bed again last night. I repeat, Warren Grubber peed in the bed again last night. He’s almost fifteen years old. Thank you.” 

     But, thank God, he didn’t do anything like that. He just went on to the back of the bus and sat down at an empty seat by himself, as usual. I took a seat up front, beside Danny. I always sit with Danny.

     I said, “What’d Pete do yesterday?”

     He said, “0 for five.”

     I grunted.

     He said, “Ryan threw a no-hitter.”

     I grunted again.

     That’s all either one of us said the whole way to school. I think we’re both the kind of guys that don’t like a lot of talking, first thing in the morning. I know I am. I don’t like to talk or listen to a bunch of talking for at least the first hour after I get up. What I really hate is to hear the radio or the TV blaring away when I first get up. I don’t know why that is. Maybe most kids are like that, though, because it’s amazing how quiet the school bus is on the way to school in the morning, compared to how noisy it is on the way home in the afternoon. I think that’s kinda interesting.

     All in all, it takes about an hour to get to school, after the bus picks me up. I only live about eight miles from Rustburg, which is where Rustburg High School is located of course, but the bus has to stop about a million times on the way there, to pick up other kids, and then it has to go by Bocock Elementary School and drop a bunch of them off and pick up some more that are waiting there. Then it has to go to Rustburg Intermediate School and do the same thing there. And then it finally makes it to the high school. All that takes about a hour. And it takes another hour to do the same thing in the afternoon, but going in the opposite direction. It’s all really tiring. The same old trip. Every day. Stop. Go. Speed up. Slow down. Stop. Go. Speed up. Slow down. Stop. Go. Over and over. Back and forth. Every day. Twice a day. Jesus, I hate it. Especially in the afternoon, because it’s always so noisy then, what with all the stupid little kids yelling and screaming and carrying on, because they’re so glad the school day is over, and now they can go home and watch cartoons or something. It’s a wonder old Mr. Dobbs can concentrate enough on his driving to keep the bus on the road, with all that racket going on. But he’s so damn old he probably can’t hear himself fart.

     Really about the only thing I like about riding the bus is that I get to talk to Danny. Not in the morning, because we don’t talk too much in the morning, like I said, but in the afternoon, on the way home. We mainly talk about baseball and music and stuff like that. Sometimes about girls. I guess you could say that Danny is my best friend, even though I’m not Danny’s best friend. I mean, I know Danny considers me his friend and all, it’s just that I know I’m not his best friend. I think most of the time when a kid has a best friend, that kid is his best friend’s best friend, too. But even though I’d have to say that Danny is my best friend, I’m pretty sure that I’m not his best friend. But that’s okay, it doesn’t bother me that I’m not his best friend, because at least he treats me like a regular normal friend, especially on the school bus, and on Sundays when we go play baseball at Miller Park, and whenever I go down to his house. I’d feel sorry for a guy that had me for a best friend, anyway. I’d make a lousy best friend. Besides, that’s really not the kind of thing that guys go around talking about. Girls might make a big deal out of who their best friends are, but guys don’t. A guy just knows it, he doesn’t go around making a big deal out of it, telling it to everybody all the time. That would be kind of faggy.

     To be honest, I don’t know who Danny’s best friend is.  For all I know, he doesn’t even have one. He’s got a lot of friends at school that he hangs around with, guys that are the same age as him and that are in his classes and all, and have been his teammates and played baseball with him in Little League and Pony League and stuff. I never got to play Little League or Pony League or anything, so I don’t know those guys much. I know a lot of their names and all, because a lot of them are kinda famous around school, for doing certain things, but I don’t really know them, just their names and what they’re famous for, like being good in sports, or being real cool or real smart or real popular or real whatever. It’s about the same thing as me saying I know Elvis Presley, because he’s famous. But I don’t really know him, as a friend of anything, I just know who he is. That’s the same way I know some of Danny’s friends.

     When I got to school that Monday morning, the first thing I did is what I always do, which is to go to my locker and dump off a bunch of my books and stuff. Then I went and stood around with Wallace and Wendall. Me and Wallace and Wendall always stand around out in the hall in front of the library every morning before homeroom, waiting for the bell to ring. Wallace and Wendall are a couple of guys in my class, and I stand around with them and all, but it’s not like they’re my big buddies or anything. It’s not like we’re “hanging out” together. We’re just some stupid guys standing around in the stupid hall waiting for the stupid bell to ring, that’s all. I think we got started standing around together because we’re all three in the same homeroom, and me and Wendall have first period English class together. And then the three of us have the same lunch period, so we sit at the same table when we eat lunch. The fact that all three of us are geeks with nowhere else to hang out in the mornings probably has a lot to do with it, too. So we kinda stand around together in front of the library, waiting for the bell to ring.

     Danny and his friends hang around in Coach Lankford’s office, which is across from the gym. Coach Lankford’s got this big office with a couple of old sofas and chairs, and a miniature basketball goal and stuff. I’ve walked by there before, in the morning on my way over to the library, and seen all those guys messing around, playing miniature basketball. I’ve thought about going on in there and standing around for a while, and trying to hang out with them. But I don’t, because those guys are all older and bigger than me, and I don’t really know any of them except for Danny, because I wasn’t in Little League or Pony League with any of them, like I said. And of course I’m not famous or popular around school and all, like a lot of those guys are. Besides, I’m sure if I went in there, one of them would just tell me to get the hell out. Danny wouldn’t, but I’m sure one of them would.

     So most of the time I just stand around with Wallace and Wendall, in front of the library. There’s not much time for hanging out anyway, because homeroom starts about ten minutes after I get there in the morning. So who cares. It’s no big deal where you stand for ten minutes every morning to wait for the bell to ring.

     As usual, Wallace and Wendall were standing there in the hall in front of the library, talking, so I went up there and started standing around there with them.

     “Hey, what’cha say, Grubbie,” Wallace said, when he saw me coming down the hall. He says that every morning.

     “Hey, what’s up, Grubworm,” Wendall said. That’s what he always says, too.

     “Hey,” I said back to them. That’s what I always say.

     We stood there a minute watching the other kids walking by, and then Wallace said, “Hey, I just remembered, we’re supposed to get our school annuals today. You guys getting an annual this year?”

     “I am,” said Wendall. “You getting one Grubworm?”

     “Yeah,” I said.

     “They’re coming out today,” said Wallace, “I think we’re supposed to pick them up during lunch period. Today’s the day.”  I don’t know why Wallace was telling us all this, as if we didn’t already know it. It had been announced every blasted morning during the announcements in homeroom, all last week. Every morning we have to sit in homeroom and listen to a bunch of crap over the loudspeakers, stuff like when the next stupid pep rally is gonna be, or who’s been nominated for homecoming court, or what senior just won the latest Snot Nose College Scholarship, or when the annuals are gonna be coming out.

     “Today’s the day,” Wallace said again. Then he said, “Hey, Wendall, you gonna let me sign your annual, old buddy?”

     “Yeah, I guess so, if you want to,” Wendall said. “You gonna let me sign yours?”

     “Hell no,” Wallace said, “I don’t let faggots sign my annual.”  Wallace busted out laughing real hard. He thought that was real funny. It kinda was, but Wendall didn’t think so. Wendall started punching him in the arm, and then they both started scuffling around the hall there, like they were gonna get into a big fight or something. But I knew they weren’t, because they do the same kinda kid stuff every morning, trying to see which one can put the other one down the worst, and then getting into a shoving match over it.

     Jesus, those two guys are a trip. They look like they could be brothers or something, but they’re not even kin to each other. They’re both tall and skinny and have a lot of pimples, and they both wear these real thick glasses with those geeky kind of black frames, instead of the wire frames that a cool person would have. And to top it off, they both have short red hair and about a million freckles. Everybody thinks they’re twins because they look so much alike and are always hanging around with each other. But they’re not even brothers. What a pair. I don’t even know why I stand around with them in the hall every morning. I’ve only got about two things in common with them, besides the fact that I’m as big a geek as they are. One thing is, my pimples are getting to be as bad as theirs are. And another thing is, I have real short hair, too. My hair is dark brown, though, not red.

     I know I’ve already told you before about how small I am. And I’ve already told you about how my pimples are starting to get bad, and how my voice has been breaking all the time lately. Now I guess I’ll tell you about the hair thing.

     The hair thing all started on the first day of school in sixth grade, which was almost four years ago I guess. I went back to school that first day after being off all summer of course, and the weird thing was, almost all the guys in my class had grown their hair out kinda long, during the summer. It was almost like all the guys had gotten together on the last day of school the year before and took a vote or something, and decided to not get any haircuts over the summer. But they sure didn’t bother to tell me about it, because I was about the only guy that showed up on the first day of sixth grade with short hair. In fact, my hair was really short, because I’d just gotten a haircut the week before. That’s something that Mom always makes us do right before school starts every year, get a haircut. And back then, I didn’t get to go to a real barber that worked in a real barber shop or anything. Nope, I had to let Brother Harris, of all people, cut my hair.  Mom made me let Brother Harris cut my hair. That’s because a real barber at a real barber shop would charge a couple of bucks or something, but Brother Harris would do it for free. He’s been giving free haircuts to anybody that wants one for as long as I can remember. He’s got these electric clippers like a real barber has, and if you need a haircut, you just let him know after the meeting on Thursday night or Sunday afternoon, and he’ll show up an hour or so early to the Tuesday night Book Study meeting, and he’ll bring his clippers along with him, and he’ll take you downstairs to the basement of the Kingdom Hall and give you a haircut. Freddie and a lot of the other Brothers at the Kingdom Hall still get their haircuts from Brother Harris. Of course, Freddie and all the rest of them like the way Brother Harris cuts their hair, and think its great and all. But not me. I don’t like it, because Brother Harris is not a real barber or anything, so he only knows how to cut your hair one way, which is to make these real close swipes over the top of your ears and around the back of your neck, and then leave just a little patch on top of your head, just enough to make a part and have enough left to comb over to one side. And at the very back of the top, back at the crown of your head, he always cuts it too short for it to lay down right, even after you’ve tried slicking it down with a gallon of water, so it sticks up every which way.

     So there I was on the first day of school in the sixth grade wearing a Brother Harris Special that I’d just gotten the week before, with my big ears sticking out all over the place. And most of the other guys were walking around with their hair hanging down in their eyes and over their ears and down the back of their necks and everywhere.

     Well, at first I didn’t think that much about it really, the fact that I had a new haircut and practically nobody else did. I mean, I guess I was used to getting my hair cut by Brother Harris, because he’d been doing it for so long. I guess all my life before that, I’d never really given much thought to what my hair looked like or what my clothes looked like or what kind of tennis shoes or blue jeans I was wearing, or anything like that. So it was no big deal. But that first day, after school, I was riding home on the school bus, and I was sitting behind these two girls that were in my class, and I could hear them talking about Timmy Drummond, who is this other guy in my class, who I really hate because he’s so stuck up and all. Timmy was one of the guys who had grown his hair out over the summer. His hair is blonde.

     “Did you see Timmy Drummond today, did you see his hair?” Beth said. She was talking to Debbie, who’s this girl that I kinda had a secret crush on at the time.

     “Oh, cool!  Didn’t it look soooo cool?  He’s soooo dreamy,”  Debbie said. Then they both ooh’d and aah’d and started giggling and squealing and carrying on. And then they started bringing up the name of every other guy at school that day that had grown his hair out, and oohing and aahing about all of them, and talking about how they were soooo cute and soooo cool, too.  

     I sat there behind them, listening to them, all the way home. My name never got mentioned.

     At supper that night, I told Mom that a lot of the guys at school had started growing their hair out long, and I had decided to grow mine out, too.

     “Over my dead body,” she said. “No way. No son of mine is gonna go around with long hair, looking like a little girl.”

     “But Mom, all the guys at school are doing it. And they don’t look like little girls, either. In fact, it makes you look older, when your hair’s longer. Everybody’s doing it.”

     “I’m not concerned with what everybody’s doing, all I’m concerned about is what you’re doing, and one thing you’re not doing is growing your hair long. And that’s final.”

     “But Mom—“

     “That’s final, Warren.”

     “But Mom—“

     “THAT’S FINAL, YOUNG MAN. I don’t want to hear another word. Now shut up and finish your supper.”

     Well, I had to shut up and finish my supper, for then. But me and Mom kept fighting about it all the time after that, whenever she thought it was time for Brother Harris to buzz my head again, which was always when my hair had finally grown out some and was just starting to look a little bit normal.

     The reason Mom was like that about long hair, and still is like that, was because we were Jehovah’s Witnesses and all, and the Witnesses believe that guys with long hair and beards and stuff are displaying a rebellious attitude and are probably members of the hippie movement, and are on the path to destruction, being followers of worldly fads and all. When the Witnesses talk about following worldly fads, they mean doing stuff like wearing long hair, and big bell bottom jeans, and mini skirts, and listening to rock and roll music, and using words like “cool” and “far out” and “groovy” all the time. You go around talking like that and getting involved with any of that other worldly stuff, and the next thing you know you’re hooked on drugs and you’re out somewhere having some fornication or something. And growing your hair long is usually the first step to all that, if you ask the Witnesses.

     Well, like I said, the whole hair thing started when I was in the sixth grade, which is when I first wanted to grow my hair out long. Mom wouldn’t let me, and me and her have been fighting about it all the time ever since then. Now I’m in the ninth grade, and she still makes me keep my hair short. About the only thing that’s changed since back when I was in the sixth grade is that now I get my hair cut at the Fort Avenue Barber Shop, which is located a couple of blocks up the street from the Kingdom Hall, instead of having Brother Harris cut it in the basement of the Kingdom Hall, the way Freddie and a bunch of other Brothers at the Hall still do.

     What happened was, me and Mom had this really big argument one time when I was in the seventh grade, because she thought it was about time for me to get my hair cut by Brother Harris again, but as usual I didn’t think I needed a haircut, and especially not a Brother Harris haircut. I mean, it was bad enough that I had to get a haircut in the first place, but having him be the one to do the cutting just made it that much worse. So me and Mom got into it real good. We were on the way to the Tuesday night Book Study at the Kingdom Hall, me and Mom and Freddie, and we had left the house earlier than usual because Brother Harris was gonna give me and Freddie both a haircut, before the meeting started.

     I was riding in the back of the car, getting madder and madder all the time, just thinking about what Brother Harris was gonna be doing to my hair when we got to the Kingdom Hall. Nobody had said a word the entire time we’d been riding, and we were over halfway there. Then out of nowhere I said, real loud, “Why do I have to let Brother Harris cut my hair all the time?  He’s ruining the way I look. He makes me look stupid, the way he cuts it.” 

     Mom said, “Warren, the trouble with you is, you think money grows on trees. Instead of complaining all the time about everything, you should be appreciative of the fact that Brother Harris gladly volunteers to cut all the Brother’s hair, and doesn’t even charge anybody for it.”

     “Charge anybody?  Charge anybody?  Jesus, he doesn’t charge anybody because nobody in his right mind would pay two cents for one of his stupid haircuts. If he was a real barber, he’d be dead broke, he’d go out of business in two seconds flat. He’d probably be arrested if he tried to charge somebody for one of his butcher jobs.” 

     I was either being real brave to say all that, or real stupid. Maybe it was because I was riding in the back seat and Mom was up front driving, so I knew she couldn’t turn around and pop me one. But I also knew that I was probably in for it, anyway, because of the sarcastic tone in my voice, and because I was kinda yelling it instead of saying it in a normal talking voice, and because I had said “Jesus” in there somewhere, and Mom really hates it when I say something like “Jesus, this” or “Jesus, that.”  That’s a habit I picked up from watching TV or from school or somewhere, and I was starting to say it all the time without even noticing it. It really makes Mom mad to hear me say Jesus’s name like that. She’s always yelling at me for doing it, so I try not to slip up and say it around her or anything. But I slipped and let it out that time anyway. I don’t know what she’d do if she heard me say some of the cuss words I sometimes say. She’d probably kill me.

     Well, if calling Brother Harris’s haircuts “butcher jobs” didn’t make her mad, then saying “Jesus” in a sentence the way I did was definitely gonna do it. My only hope was that she didn’t hear me say it.

     “You better watch your mouth, young man. What have I told you about talking like that?  And don’t you use that tone of voice with me, either. I’ve had about enough of your back-sass. Don’t think I won’t stop this car right here and now and pop you one.”

     Freddie was sitting up front with Mom, during all this. He wasn’t saying anything. But I could tell he was wearing his famous little smirk, like he knew Mom was gonna really give it to me this time, and he couldn’t wait to see me get it. I knew I shoulda kept my big mouth shut, and leave it at that, but instead, I came out and said, “Well I just don’t understand it, that’s all. Why can’t I have long hair like everybody else, that’s what I want to know. What’s so wrong with it?  Even Jesus had long hair, you know.”  Jesus, I was just getting  myself in deeper, bringing Jesus into it, instead of just shutting up.

     “Jesus did not have long hair,” she yelled back at me.

     “Yes he did, too. Every picture I’ve ever seen of him, he’s got real long hair. And he’s even got a beard. So if it was okay for the Virgin Mary to let Jesus have long hair, why isn’t it okay for you to let me have long hair?  Where in the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures does it say that a Jehovah’s Witness kid has to have a short geeky haircut?  What’s the big deal?  Jesus, even Charles Taze Russell himself had long hair, and a beard, just like Jesus.”  Now I had brought the Virgin Mary and Charles T. Russell into it. I was a goner for sure.

     Well, I don’t have to tell you that she got plenty mad when I said all that, about as mad as I’ve ever seen her get before. She was driving along, gripping the steering wheel real hard with both hands, like she was about to rip it right out of the dash board. And she had her teeth clenched and her lips pressed together real tight, which is always a sure sign that she’s about ready to lose it. It was probably all she could do to keep from running off the road and into a tree or something. I thought for sure she was gonna stop the car and really give it to me, this time. But she didn’t. Instead of doing anything like that, she just took a slow deep breath, like she was trying to calm her self. Then in a real normal, firm voice she said, “Warren, listen to me. I’m sick and tired of hearing your mouth about this. We’ve been over this and over this, a thousand times, and I’m sick and tired of it, you hear me?  You’re not gonna have long hair and that’s it. I mean it. Do you hear me?  DO YOU HEAR ME?”

     “Yes, Ma’am.”

     “Nothing you say is gonna make me change my mind on this, nothing. So the best thing for you to do right now and from now on is to shut up and quit trying my patience. Do you understand?  DO YOU UNDERSTAND?”

     “Yes, Ma’am.”

     “Good. Now, Brother Harris is gonna keep cutting your hair for as long as I say so. When you start making your own money and start paying for your own haircuts, you can go anywhere you like to get it done. But until then, you’ll just have to do what I tell you to. Because as long as I’m the one that has to pay for it, Brother Harris is gonna keep cutting it for free. That’s it. Case closed. I mean it. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”

     “But that’s my whole point, if I was growing my hair out, it wouldn’t cost anybody anything.”

     “W A R R E N!   S H U T   U P!”

     When I got a little older, and Uncle Virgil started paying me to come down and cut his grass, well, then I had my own money to spend. So I reminded Mom about what she had said, that when I was able to pay for it, I could go to any barber I wanted to. She got plenty mad at me when I brought the issue back up again and quoted her words back to her and all, but she knew good and well that that’s exactly what she had said way back then, and she couldn’t go back on it now, without looking really bad and unreasonable. That’s the thing about Mom and all this long hair stuff, she doesn’t think she’s being unreasonable about it at all.

     So that’s when I started getting my hair cut at the Fort Avenue Barber Shop, which, like I said, is just up the street from the Kingdom Hall. It’s not out of the way or anything, so Mom can’t come up with some excuse for why I can’t go in there, like it’s not convenient for her, or she doesn’t have time to make a special trip just to take me to a barber shop instead of having Brother Harris do it in the Kingdom Hall basement. Mom is good at finding excuses for why you can’t do something that she isn’t too keen on you doing in the first place, but in this case she can’t come up with any. So now when I have to get a haircut, she just drops me off at the Fort Avenue Barber Shop on the way to the Tuesday night meeting, and I get it done real quick and walk on down the street to the Kingdom Hall. And I pay for it myself. Three dollars and fifty cents.

     The guy who cuts it is named Ray. He’s a real barber, not just some clown who happens to own an old pair of electric clippers. He’s an old guy with tattoos all over his arms, and he’s always got a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. I think he used to be in the navy. He’s nice to me, though. I tell him to take a little off the sides and a little bit off the top. He always asks me if I want a shave, too. I always say I don’t have time for a shave, maybe next time. Everybody in the shop gets a big laugh out of that, every time. There’s always the same bunch of old geezers sitting around in there, smoking and talking and looking at magazines. But they’re all nice to me, too, like Ray is. Another thing I like about this barber shop is that Ray has got a bunch of old calendars hanging around all over the walls, from every year you can think of, like 1964 and 1969 and 1972 and so on. Most of them have pictures of girls in real skimpy bathing suits, but a few of them have pictures of naked girls on them. I try to check them out real close every time I go in there, especially the naked ones. The whole time I’m sitting there in that big chair and Ray’s spinning me around, giving me a haircut, I’m checking them out. But I try to be cool about it, and not let Ray or any of them other old guys catch me with my eyes bugged out staring real hard at one of them calendars. Jesus, if Mom ever went in there and saw all that stuff, she’d really have a fit, and not ever let me go back in there. And then she’d make sure that Brother Harris cut my hair for the rest of my life. But she’s never been in there. She always just drops me off on the way to the Kingdom Hall, and goes on, like I said.

     Mom still makes me have Ray cut my hair pretty short, as always, but at least I don’t have to look like a total retard, the way I did when Brother Harris was still cutting it. Of course, Mom is never satisfied with the way Ray does it, and she always says that I didn’t get enough cut off this time, and that it’s still too long, and that she’s gonna make me go back to Brother Harris, if I don’t come back next time with it looking like she thinks it ought to look. She’ll say something like, “You better tell that barber of yours that I said to cut it shorter next time, or when we get back home I’m gonna take out my scissors and cut it myself. And believe me, mister, I know you don’t want that to happen. ‘Cause I promise you, you’ll be wishing Brother Harris was still cutting it, if I ever have to take a pair of scissors to your head. You hear me?”  She says that every time Ray cuts it.

     So anyway, I was standing there in the hall waiting for the homeroom bell to ring, watching Wallace and Wendall going at each other, like they do every morning. That’s about all you can do, stand out of the way while they’re going through their morning ritual of trying to kill each other. That’s the thing with them two, they’re always insulting each other and pushing each other around and punching each other, and scuffling and carrying on. It’s enough to make you think they’re bitter enemies against each other or something, but really it’s just a bunch of playing around. They’re best friends, really.

     I was watching Wallace and Wendall do their usual thing, like I said, and I was standing there facing the lockers that are against the wall, trying to keep out of the way of them two pushing each other back and forth. And out of the corner of my eye, I could tell that some other kids had come down the hall, and were about to pass behind me. Then all of a sudden, I felt somebody give me a big shove from behind, kinda like they were trying to brush me off to one side, like maybe you’d do if you were in a hurry or something, and you had to get by somebody real quick, somebody that was blocking your way. The thing was, I wasn’t blocking the hallway, where I was standing. There was lots of room to pass behind me. But I felt this big push, like I said, and I fell over towards the row of lockers against the wall. Somehow I managed to catch myself before my face crashed into them or anything. It all happened so quick, I didn’t know what was going on. I looked back over my shoulder at who it was that had just passed behind me, and then I realized what was going on. I saw Lamar Jackson going in the other direction. He turned and scowled at me, and kept on going.

     Jesus, now I gotta tell you about Lamar Jackson.

     Okay. Well, Lamar Jackson is this black guy that’s in the same class as me, which is the Class of ‘78. That’s the year I’m supposed to graduate from high school, 1978. I’ve known Lamar since the sixth grade, which was the first time I was ever around him. He was in my sixth grade and seventh grade classes, back at Rustburg Intermediate School. That was back when we only had one teacher for the whole day, so I was around him a lot back then. And back then he was always pretty quiet, maybe because he was a small guy, too, like me. He’s the shortest black guy in the Class of ‘78. But he’s still taller than me. I’m the smallest white guy in the Class of ‘78. The main difference is he’s short and kinda chubby, while I’m short and skinny.

     Lamar was always an okay guy back when we were in the sixth and seventh grades together. We weren’t big buddies or anything, but we got along alright. At least he never tried to bother me or give me a hard time, that I can remember, anyway, and I’d definitely remember it if he had. He never even made fun of my name or called me Grubbie or Grubworm or Worm, the way most of the other kids were always doing. He was just a quiet kid. Like me.

     Then, during the summer after the seventh grade, Lamar and his mom started coming to the Kingdom Hall. You see, his mom’s aunt is Sister Johnson, and I guess Sister Johnson was having a Home Bible Study with Lamar’s mom, and she must have been interested enough in the Truth to come to the Kingdom Hall and check it out and all. So him and his mom came to a bunch of the meetings that summer. I’d see him at the meetings, and I’d kinda say hello and all, if I walked by him, or if he walked by me, and he’d kinda say hello. But he’d never come up and try to talk to me or anything. And he acted like he didn’t want me coming up to him, either, so I never did. He mainly acted like he didn’t want to be there. Which was the same way I felt, too, of course. I didn’t want to be there, either. But I had to be there, and I had to pretend that I liked being there, whether I liked it or not, because we were Jehovah’s Witnesses, and I’d been going to the meetings all my life, and I was expected to be a good little Witness boy and all.

     Right before school started that fall, which was the beginning of the eighth grade, Lamar and his mom stopped coming to the Kingdom Hall, for some reason. Maybe Lamar’s mom lost interest or something, or decided she didn’t want to become a Jehovah’s Witness after all. Or maybe his dad made them stop coming, who knows. It’s not all that unusual, really, that you see someone coming to the Kingdom Hall a few times, and then you don’t see them coming anymore. So I don’t remember thinking anything of it, when I didn’t see Lamar and his mom around any more. If I was thinking anything, it was probably something like how lucky Lamar was for not having to come to any more meetings, and wishing I could be that lucky. But I don’t remember thinking that or anything else.

     Then the eighth grade started, and that meant a lot of things would be different than they were in the seventh grade. You see, once you get to the eighth grade, you move up to Rustburg High School, even though you’re not technically considered a high school kid yet. You’re not officially in high school until you become a ninth grader, even though by then you’ve already been at the high school for a year. And eighth graders don’t have a special name, like freshman or sophomore or junior or senior, the way everybody else does. Eighth graders are just called eighth graders. It’s kinda stupid and it doesn’t make much sense, really, but that’s the way it is. What it all boils down to is, there’s more room at the high school than at the intermediate school, so they send the eighth graders up there, but they don’t let you call yourself a high school kid yet, even though you’re at the high school. But the way I see it, you may as well call yourself a high school kid, because you’re going to the high school, after all, and you’re doing all the same stuff that high school kids do. You have six different teachers, so you’re all the time changing classes, like everybody else there. And you have a different teacher for each subject you’re taking, instead of the same teacher trying to teach you everything all day. And each class is full of different kids, so you’re not stuck with being around the same bunch of kids in the same classroom, either.

     Anyway, I started going to Rustburg High School in the eighth grade, and every day I was changing classes all the time, and having different teachers for everything, and having different kids in all my classes, like everybody else there. And I liked everything about the eighth grade, everything except having Lamar Jackson in a couple of my classes. Because that was the year Lamar really started being a different guy from what he was in sixth and seventh grades. I mean really different.  

     Like, there was a big difference in the way he looked and acted. He grew a big afro, for instance, and started wearing the kind of clothes you see them wearing on Soul Train or something, like big platform shoes and stuff. And he started strutting around all over school giving the Black Power sign to all the other black kids. And he had one of those big thick pick-combs stuck in the side of his head, the kind of comb that black people use on their afros. The thing about those combs is, most black guys don’t carry them in their back pockets, the way most white guys carry their combs. Black guys keep them stuck right up there in the side of their heads, where they are the handiest, I guess. And if you get into a fight with a black guy, he’ll pull his comb off the top of his head and pop you with it. I’ve seen them do it more than once.

     His attitude about white people was a whole lot different than before, too. For instance, he was in my history class that year, and every chance he got, he would start going off about the Black Power movement, and how all white people are prejudiced against black people, and how the whites have always put them down and took advantage of them, and how someday the blacks were gonna rise up take over and pay us all back, because that’s what we deserved. Jesus, it was really bad when we got to studying the Civil War and all. To hear Lamar tell it, all us white kids in the class were somehow responsible for slavery and all the stuff that went on before the Civil War, even though it had happened a thousand years before we were ever born. It was still our fault anyway.

     Having to listen to stuff like that from Lamar in History class was bad enough, but the worst thing, as far as I was concerned, was what was going on in my gym class. You see, Lamar was in my gym class that year, too, and for some reason he started picking on me all the time in gym class. It seemed like no matter what the class was doing, he was all the time trying to push me around. We could be outside on the field playing touch football, or we could be inside the gym playing basketball or something. It didn’t matter. Anytime he got the chance to run over top of me or bump into me real hard or knock me down, without it looking to the coach that he was doing it on purpose or anything, he took it. And every time he’d do something like that, run into me or push me down or something, he’d just give me one of his mean looks, as if to say, “What’choo gonna do ‘bout it, Witness boy?”

     The first time it happened was the first of week of school that year. Our gym class was outside playing touch football, and I was one of the wide receivers for my side, because I can run pretty fast and I can catch the football pretty good and all. Lamar was on the other side. So I went out for a pass on this one play, and the quarterback threw it out to me, and I caught it. I had to kinda jump up to make the catch, and just as I came back down, somebody came up from behind me, but instead of touching me like they were supposed to, because we were playing touch football, they clothes-lined me. To tell you the truth, it about knocked the hell out of me. I hit the ground real hard, and I must have said something like, “Boy, oh, boy.”  I didn’t drop the football, though.

     The next thing I knew, Lamar Jackson was standing over me, looking down at me with his fists all balled up, and he was yelling, “Who you calling boy?  Who you calling boy?”

     I was still trying to figure out where I was, and he kept standing there, yelling at me.

     Finally, I looked up at him and said, “What?”

     And he said, “Who you calling boy, boy?  I ain’t your boy.”

     Somehow, I got to my feet and walked away from him, back to our huddle. A couple of plays later, the same thing happened again. I caught another pass and Lamar creamed me from behind again. This time when I was getting up, he said, “You’re my boy, now, boy.”

     Then the bell rang and everybody had to go back to the locker room and change out of their gym clothes and go on to their next class. I was glad of that. I didn’t think I could survive another pop from Lamar that day. But the next day and the next day and the next day went about the same way. Lamar was all the time finding a way to run me over, like I said, without getting caught by the coach. And it went on just like that for the next two years, because Lamar was in my gym class this year, too.

     I’ve noticed something about Lamar, though, since I’ve had to suffer through being in the same gym class with him for the last two years. And that is, when you get right down to it, he’s not really very good at sports, the way most black guys are. It ain’t just because he’s small either, because I’m smaller than he is, but I’m still pretty good at most sports, even the ones that I hate, like football and basketball. I mean, I’m not a superstar at them or anything, but I can play them good enough that I do okay in gym class with the other guys and all. But Lamar is not very good at any of them. Maybe it’s because he’s kinda chubby and has a fat ass. He runs way too slow, and all his moves are kinda awkward, when he’s doing something like dribbling or shooting a basketball. I’d say about the only things he can do okay is, he can hit a softball pretty far, just about as far as a lot of the big guys in our class, and he can also throw a softball pretty far. But he can’t catch a softball or a football to save his life, and he definitely can’t run any. He can hit and he’s got a strong arm. That’s all. But to tell you the truth, even his hitting ain’t that great, because all he hits is long fly balls, which are easy as pie to catch, especially for me. He can’t hit line drives up the middle or down the lines, for base hits, like good hitters can. Just long flys.

     What it all amounts to is, I used to like Lamar Jackson, back when he was an okay guy in the sixth and seventh grade, but now I hate him, because of the way he picks on me all the time. And I don’t hate him because he’s black, which is what most black kids think about most white kids, that we’re all prejudiced or something. That’s the first thing that’s said whenever a black guy and a white guy at school get into it. That might be true in some cases, but that’s not the case with me. I’d hate Lamar Jackson even if he was a white kid. I’m not prejudiced against black people. I get along with them just fine, when they treat me okay. I even got along with Lamar, until he started picking on me in the eighth grade, so you can’t say I’m prejudiced or anything. In fact, some of my biggest heroes are black guys. Like Willie Mays and Roberto Clemente, who were baseball players, of course. And Muhammed Ali. And Tiran Porter, who’s somebody you’ve probably never heard of. He’s one of the Doobie Brothers, and he’s the best bass player in the whole wide world.

     Plus, there’s a lot of black Brothers and Sisters that go to the Kingdom Hall, and I get along with them and like them all just fine. In fact, in some cases I like the black Brothers better than the white ones, because most of the black Brothers have a certain humbleness about them, where a lot of the white Brothers are just knuckleheads, always trying to run the show and trying to tell you what to do.

     I don’t think I’m prejudiced or anything, not the way some people are, like my Dad for instance. You want to talk about somebody being prejudiced, you can talk about my Dad, that’s for sure. He doesn’t call them black people or colored people or Negroes, he calls them a different word that starts with an N. Mom has told me and Freddie never to say that word, and she doesn’t say it herself. But Dad sure does. I think it’s because he’s never really been around black people much, the way me and Freddie and Mom have, so he doesn’t know that for the most part they’re okay, just like white people. You see, Dad never went to school with black kids, because back in the old days, the black kids went to their own schools, just like the white kids did. That’s the way it was for me too, up until the fourth grade. In the fourth grade they started making the white kids and the black kids all go to the same schools together.

     But I’m not like Dad when it comes to being prejudiced. I mean, I admit I hate Lamar Jackson, but it’s just because of what he’s done to me. He picks on me and he’s black, but I don’t hate all black people just because of Lamar Jackson. I just hate him. Just because he’s always doing stuff to me like what I just told you about, which was him trying to push me down in the hall before homeroom, even though I wasn’t in his way or anything. I’ve noticed that he doesn’t try that stuff on any of the other white guys, just me. I’ve given it a lot of thought over the last two years, why he seems to just pick on me all the time, and not on anybody else, and I think I’ve got it narrowed down to three things.

     The first thing is because I’m the only guy in the whole class that’s smaller than he is, so maybe he thinks it’s safe to push me around, because I’m too small and chicken to fight back. Which is true. I mean, Lamar is only a little bit taller than me, but he’s got a lot of muscles, even if he is kinda fat, and that makes him about ten times stronger than me. I’m a puny little runt.

     The second thing is because I’m white, so he probably thinks I’m scared of him because he’s black. Which is true. You see, for the most part, all the white guys at my school are scared of the black guys, no matter what size they are, because the black guys always stick together when there’s trouble. They take up for one another, even if they’re not kin to each other or anything, which is something most of the white guys don’t do. If a white guy has to fight a black guy, he ends up having to fight a bunch of black guys, because that black guy’s friends are gonna get into the middle of it, too, because of the way they stick together. I know if I was to ever get into it with Lamar, I’d have to go it alone against him and whatever black guys were gonna help him out, not that he’d need any help against me. I couldn’t expect any help from any white guys. Especially not from Freddie.

     The third thing is what I think is the main reason he picks on me, and that’s because I’m a Witness kid. I mean, I think it’s awfully strange that I knew Lamar for two whole years before the eighth grade, and he never bothered me any, until he came to a few of the meetings at the Kingdom Hall that one summer and found out that I was a Witness kid. He thinks I am anyway, because he knows I go to the Kingdom Hall and all, and I don’t look and act like all the other worldly white kids at school, or hang around with any of them much. Being a Witness probably makes a kid seem weaker than a normal kid, because Witness kids are told not to be getting into fights and stuff at school, and to always run from trouble, and to turn the other cheek and all that kinda stuff. Witnesses are big believers in turning the other cheek, and loving your enemies and praying for them, like it says in the Bible. But what are you supposed to do when some guy is always picking on you, and you’re tired of turning the other cheek and running in the other direction all the time?  Instead of taking up for yourself and getting into a fight, are you always supposed to let some guy run over top of you, and just do something like turn the other cheek and quote scriptures to the guy, while he’s standing there getting ready to pop you one?  Maybe that’s what Lamar Jackson thinks I’m always gonna do, because he thinks I’m just a little weak white Witness boy. Well, I guess he’s right, for the most part. I am little, and I am weak, and I am white. I know all that. But the thing is, I don’t know if I’m really a Witness kid or not. I’m supposed to be. I’ve always had to go to all the meetings, and I look like a Witness kid, that’s for sure, with my stupid little haircut and all. But I don’t know if I am one, or not.

     So that’s the deal with me and Lamar Jackson. That’s why he tried to push me down in the hallway before homeroom started, the Monday morning I’m telling you about, which was June 2, 1975. He usually only gets to pick on me in gym class, which is sixth period, but I guess since that particular Monday was the beginning of our last full week in school before summer vacation started, maybe he wanted to get in as much picking on me as he could, so he started it off as soon as he saw me in the hall that morning. That’s all I could figure, anyway. I remember thinking that I’d have to be on the lookout for him in the hallways for the rest of the week, and for Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday of the next week, too, which was exam week, to try to avoid running into him as much as I could. I wouldn’t be able to avoid him in first period English class or sixth period gym class. But at least those were the only two classes we had together, thank God. English class was no problem, really, because I always sat in the front, on one side of the room, and he always sat in the back, on the other side of the room. That was a pretty safe distance. It’s not like he could sneak up behind me and pop me one while the class was going on or anything. He could only get away with that kind of stuff in gym class, when the coach wasn’t looking, which was most of the time. But Miss Hiller, our English teacher, was always looking, so I felt pretty safe in her class.

     Wallace and Wendall were still pushing and punching each other back and forth in the hall when the bell for homeroom rang, so they scuffled on into homeroom, still going at each other, and I went in behind them, and all the other kids came streaming in, too, and the homeroom teacher called the roll, to see who was there and who wasn’t there, and we all had to sit and listen to the dumb morning announcements, like we always do, and yes, we could pick up our school annuals today during lunch period, and by the way, the stuck-up tennis team won the most important match in the history of the world yesterday, so be sure and pat them fine fellows on the back when you see them around school today, and his highness Timmy Drummond has been selected to represent the rising Sophomore class at some la de da leadership camp this summer, so be sure to bow down to him and his harem when they come gliding down the hall today, and if you’re lucky, maybe he’ll even let you touch a lock of his gorgeous long blonde hair, and blah blah blah, blah blah blah, blah blah blah, on and on, until the bell for first period finally rang, and Warren and Wendall scuffled back out of homeroom, still going at each other, and I went out behind them.

     I went on to my first period English class, and took my seat up front, where I always sit. Lamar Jackson came strutting in a few minutes later, and gave me a mean look when he went by my desk, but he didn’t try anything, he just kind of grunted and kept strutting on by. Stupid bastard.

     Just as the bell rang for the period to start, Miss Hiller walked into the room, and said, “Good morning, everyone,” which is what she always says to the class, every morning. Then she glanced at me and gave me one of her special smiles, and I kinda smiled back at her. She always smiles at me like that, every morning, like she’s really glad to see me or something. And as far as I’m concerned, you haven’t been smiled at until Miss Hiller smiles at you. I’ll tell you, she’s got these big white teeth that won’t quit. They’re perfectly straight and perfectly white. I live for her smiling at me with those perfect teeth, first thing every morning.  

     Then comes the part that really makes my life worth living, which is the next thing she always does, every morning, besides smiling at me. You see, right after she says “Good morning, everyone,” she always comes around and sits on the front edge of her desk, which is only about two inches from where I’m sitting, and she calls the roll. Except she doesn’t just call the roll, like other teachers do, it’s more like she performs the roll. She’s got this real deep and husky movie-star voice, like one of those sexy women you always see in them old black and white movies on the late show, the ones that are always sitting in a bar somewhere smoking a cigarette and talking to Humphrey Bogart or somebody. So every morning when she’s calling the roll, I can’t wait for her to get to the G’s, just so I can hear her sexy voice when she says “Warren?”  And I just pray that my voice doesn’t break any when I say “here.”  I can barely stand it on the days when she’s wearing some kind of dress or skirt, because of the way she sits up there and crosses her legs back and forth and leans over to one side, especially if she’s leaning over to the side I’m on, because then her legs are practically right there in my face. That drives me wild. I’m not saying I can ever see up her skirt or anything, or that I even try to, because she doesn’t wear them that short, really. But I always get a good look at the tops of her knees on down. That’s a plenty. To tell you the truth, I don’t know if I could handle seeing any more than that, anyway, without passing out or something, because not only does she have perfect teeth that won’t quit, she’s also got legs that won’t quit, too. Everything about Miss Hiller won’t quit, and I mean everything, north and south.

     And then, then comes the most wonderful part of all, which happens about thirty seconds after she sits down on the edge of her desk and starts performing the roll. I’ll sit there looking but not looking at those long legs of hers, listening to the honey drip out of her voice as she’s calling out everybody’s name, just waiting for her to get to mine, and then I’ll just close my eyes and slowly take a real deep breath, and right about then, W H A M, her perfume hits me right square in the face. And then I almost do pass out, she smells so good.

     Jesus, I am tee-totally in love with Miss Hiller. English would still be my favorite class, even if there was a hundred Lamar Jacksons in there beating the ever-loving shit out of me every single day. It wouldn’t matter, just as long as I had Miss Hiller to look at and to listen to and to smell. For fifty whole minutes, every day. Jesus.

     Now I guess I gotta tell you everything about Miss Hiller.

     Well first of all, Miss Hiller is a really neat teacher. Everybody thinks that about her, not just me. I mean, she has a way of making all the stuff that usually just bores you to death, seem okay. And man, let me tell you, they really throw that boring crap at you left and right in ninth grade English. You get it all, that’s for sure. Like, our school year is divided into four segments, with nine weeks in each segment, and the first nine weeks of this year we studied plays and drama and stuff, and we had to read “Romeo and Juliet” and “Julius Caesar” and another one I can’t seem to remember right now. The second nine weeks we spent learning how to do research and writing a term paper. That’s when I wrote “Mark Twain, the Pessimist” that I told you about before. The third nine weeks we studied poetry, and we had to read stuff like “The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner” and a couple of William Shakespeare and Edgar Allen Poe poems, and some other junk I can’t remember, either. And then the last nine weeks we’ve spent reading and discussing different books. First we read A Separate Peace by John Knowles, which was okay, and then we read Rebecca by somebody, which wasn’t too bad except it was kinda long, and now we’re reading Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, which I told you about before, too.

     Well, all that stuff that we have to read and study is basically pretty boring most of the time, but Miss Hiller is pretty good at making it seem at least a little bit interesting. She helps us understand what’s going on in them plays and poems and what they’re all about. But here’s what’s so neat about Miss Hiller, she let’s us do a lot of stuff that’s not in the book. For instance, we had to read those Shakespeare plays I just mentioned, because they were in our textbook, but when we’d gotten through them all, just for fun one day, Miss Hiller passed out copies of a script she had from a Gilligan’s Island show, and we read that out loud in class, too. I’m not sure why she did that, maybe it was to help us to see that plays and TV scripts are about the same thing, really, just that plays are a lot longer. The big difference between William Shakespeare and Gilligan’s Island is that when you’re reading a William Shakespeare play, you gotta have somebody smart like Miss Hiller around, to explain to you what’s going on all the time, because of the fancy way they talk and make speeches in them plays. They’re always giving speeches out loud to themselves, and “harking” about this, and “harking” about that, and there’s always about a hundred different characters running around all over the place that you gotta keep up with, so it’s real hard for a kid to read it by himself and make any kind of sense out of it, mainly because you fall asleep in about two seconds. But with Gilligan’s Island, you can understand it by yourself, right away, you don’t need somebody like a teacher to tell you what it all means. I’m not saying that Gilligan’s Island is better than William Shakespeare, or anything.  Miss Hiller would kill me if she heard me say something like that. The truth is, I actually ended up liking most of that Shakespeare stuff, after Miss Hiller explained all the hidden meanings and what was going on and all. I’m just saying that five hundred years from now, ninth grade kids will probably still be able to read a Gilligan’s Island script and understand what it’s all about, without needing a teacher to explain everything that’s going on. And by then, it’ll take a genius to figure out William Shakespeare’s stuff.

     I’m probably wrong about all that, though, because five hundred years from now, everybody will be living in the New World, and who knows if they’ll even have William Shakespeare or Gilligan’s Island in the New World. They probably won’t. They’ll probably just have the Bible, which is harder to understand than Shakespeare, some of it.

     Another neat thing Miss Hiller did was during the nine weeks that we spent on poetry. You see, after we were finished studying a bunch of the long dull poems from our text book, she passed out the words to some Beatle songs, and we listened to them in class on a record player, and then tried to figure out the meanings to them and all, just like we had done for the “Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner” and the rest of them regular poems we’d had to read. I had never thought of it before, how songs and poems are a lot alike, really, until Miss Hiller had us analyzing the words to “Penny Lane” and “Strawberry Fields” and “A Day in the Life,” which were the Beatle songs she had given out to us. And that’s when I realized that even something as simple as “I Remember the Year that Clayton Dulaney Died” could be considered a poem, it’s just got a bunch of country music chords thrown in there, too. If you never heard the music to “Clayton Dulaney” before, you could still read the words by themselves in a book or somewhere and get the same feeling from it, because it basically just tells a story of what happened to Clayton Dulaney and the guy that used to follow him around. And that’s what a poem is supposed to do, tell a story about something.

     Anyway, doing that in class was pretty neat, listening to songs and trying to figure out what kind of poems they would be if you took away the music. What it comes down to is, some songs don’t make very good poems. They gotta have the music to go along with the words, if you’re gonna like them at all. “Penny Lane” and “Strawberry Fields” make pretty good poems, but some of the other songs we looked at don’t. For example, Miss Hiller let each of us bring in a song that we liked, if we wanted to, for the class to analyze together, so I brought in “China Grove” by the Doobie Brothers, because it’s my favorite song in the whole world. She wrote the words to it up on the black board, so everybody could see them, and then we read them out loud and analyzed them and discussed them, line by line, and everybody but me pretty much agreed that “China Grove” makes a lousy poem, when you just look at the words by themselves, and don’t have the music to go along with the words.

     You see, the problem with “China Grove” is that the words don’t tell much of a story. It’s basically just about the sun coming up in a place called China Grove, and there’s a preacher and a teacher that live there, and everybody in the town is gossiping about them, and then the sun goes down. Then you’re just left hanging. The song never bothers to tell you what the gossip is all about, or if the gossip is even true or not. You kinda have to fill in all that part of it your own self. Anyway, after we discussed it and analyzed it and all, we took a vote on it, and everybody in the class said it made a terrible poem. I had to agree with them a little bit, on the inside, but I couldn’t really act like I agreed with them on the outside, because I had told them it was my favorite song and all, so I felt like I had to defend it as much as I could, which wasn’t easy. The only thing I could think of to say was that China Grove is meant to represent little towns everywhere. It’s a stupid little town, just like Rustburg is, and nothing ever happens there, just like in Rustburg, except that the sun comes up everyday, the people there gossip about everybody else, and then the sun goes down. That’s it. The song doesn’t have to say anything else, because there’s nothing else to say. That’s all that ever happens, in China Grove or in Rustburg or in any other stupid little town in America. That’s probably all that ever will happen. It doesn’t matter if any of the gossip is true or not. It doesn’t make any difference.

     I said all that in class, during our discussion, and I said that I agreed “China Grove” wasn’t a great poem or anything, but I thought it could at least be considered a kinda good poem, because Tom Johnston, the guy that wrote it, was at least honest about what goes on in stupid little towns all over America. In fact, all you had to do to make it into a great poem is change the opening line from, “When the sun comes up on a sleepy little town, down around San Antone...” to, “When the sun comes up on a STUPID little town, down around San Antone...”  Make that one simple change, and then it’s easy to see what I was getting at.

     Nobody would agree with me on that, though, they still said it was a terrible poem, even if you changed the first line. But when we played it on the record player and just listened to it without looking at the words or anything, then most everybody thought it was a great song. I don’t know, it’s just one of those songs that you have to like in spite of the lousy words. I guess it’s those loud chunka-chunka sounding guitar chords that run all the way through it, that makes it worth listening to. That’s the reason I like it so much, probably because I can’t figure out how to make those chords on my guitar. I’ve looked and looked, but I can’t find chords that sound anything like “China Grove” chords on the chart that Clyde gave me. For all I know, Tom Johnston invented them when he wrote the song, and he’s the only guy in the whole world that knows how to play them. Who knows. I know one thing, they don’t use chords like that in any country songs I’ve ever heard. There are no “China Grove” chords in “Clayton Dulaney.”

     Anyway, the whole point is, I never would have noticed all that about “China Grove” or even paid that much attention to the words at all, if Miss Hiller hadn’t gotten us to study those Beatle songs and let us bring in our own songs to look a