as sad as it may sound, i was up till sunrise trying to get that poopy animation done and have no 2pm post for you. i could've written something before i slept, but it would've been extra ridiculous and likely incoherent.
instead, i thought i'd share with you something written by my friend greg. we've known each other since our teenage years and he recently sent me a story regarding those memories.
for any of you who have heard me mention throwing a formal dance in a literature class, this is greg's telling of the story. sit back and enjoy the chaos of being a fifteen year-old in the silicon valley.
---
At first glance, few believe that this story is even true. However, I assure you that the Literature Ball, as described below, actually took place.
I had known Steven Wishnack since seventh grade, where we played on the C volleyball team. This sounds lamer than it is. The C team simply meant you had to be really short to qualify. We had many things in common, the foremost of which being the love of humor, and the willingness to take jokes or pranks further than most would.
A few months before the magical ball was held, Steven spent almost four weeks collecting spare pennies from people around school. When the total reached somewhere near fifteen dollars he took the change to the local Chinese supermarket and bought a live crab, claws and all. In the parking lot he took the purchase from person to person in an attempt to resell the sea-beast. Not surprisingly, a high school student dressed in a cheap suit was unable to find a buyer. Instead the crustacean was taken to the mall and stuck in the indoor fountain, where people toss pennies for good luck. Steven alerted the janitor and then sat back watching the poor man struggle with the fact that there was a live crab in the decorative fountain (poking it with the end of his broom didn’t really help). This was all filmed of course, and was a cult hit at the school.
In tenth grade the two of us shared a World Literature class together, a class that turned out to be the ideal situation for a hellacious amount of fun. On that first day of school we found a petite, very nervous teacher straight out of school. Indeed, if you saw her from behind you would have thought an overdressed junior high student had wondered in amongst the big kids. Usually, those who are short in stature are often fiery or loud by contrast. Miss Chien was neither fiery nor loud. Her quiet, reserved voice had a hard time making it across the classroom.
Poor Miss Chien; out of control underclassmen were something completely beyond her experience. The two of us didn’t seem to be phased by our own vocal awkwardness. We didn’t need permission to comment out loud, we didn’t even need our comments to be relevant or make sense; we just needed to get enjoyment out of the situation. That turned out to be bewildering for the rookie teacher. I guess in her mind there were no worthy deterrents to our madness, and as a result she did not even try. Often, we would just sit back and have conversations with our neighbors instead of listening to lessons. Sticking to the instructions of an assignment was not necessary at all. Once, I turned in a paper titled “What’s Up My Essay” which was preceded by the rough draft “My Essay Got Roughed Up.” Both incarnations were completely off topic.
You could get away with reading cliff-notes to the assigned books openly in class, and napping went undisturbed.
Sometimes I would take things further. Someone had been playing with Lego’s on a side table. Going with the first prank that came to my head, I secretly placed two Lego-men on the top ledge of the chalkboard, having sex. It’s what would have happened when the lone cowboy, after ages of wondering along, met the solo space explorer, with only his air tank for company. I needed a chair to place them there and, due to her extremely short stature, Miss Chien couldn’t even reach them while standing on a table.
Better yet, she couldn’t find anyone to take the men down, and they continued to defile the classroom for at least three more days. Many kids in other Ms. Chien classes saw that offensive use of children’s toys, and word soon got back to me. “Did you see the Lego-men having sex on top of the chalkboard?”
She didn’t always let things go, she did try to stop us once. Steven sat next to another friend of mine, Dennis, in the early days of the class. Each had known the other since kindergarten and had always been close. Their conversations were often loud, spattered with laughter that would bring the lesson to a screeching halt. In an attempt to regain her class – she split the two, sending each to a far corner of the room. The two never stopped talking. They simply made sure they were loud enough so the other could hear them from that far distance. I thought Miss Chien had finally had enough. She took the two outside to discuss how to resolve the problem. Her answer? Put them back next to each other so their conversation would be more private, and the class less disturbed.
Instead of resolving the problem, she had given us the green light.
I cannot stress how liberating it was to have a class like this. Lynbrook High School was as academically driven as public schools get. The sole purpose of each class was to cram as much information and work into you as possible. For the most part, the academic high standards stressed by the school were reinforced by the students. The atmosphere on campus was all about getting the good marks, and I believed that some of the kids were wholly incapable of having fun.
In that class I rarely sat in the same place for long. The best part, and perhaps this fact could explain our behavior, was the high proportion of pretty girls. I found out early that they found me more interesting then world literature. One of those pretty girls was Sarah Sparrow.
A few years back Sarah had underwent a massive growth spurt and towered above most of the sophomores at our unusually short school. She was a quiet girl, which initially gave me the impression that she was shy. The real Sarah was far from it. One night she was going over an account of a date she had. She was taken to the Military Ball, apparently a formal dance for military members. This means her date had to be at least 18 years old, compared to her age of 15. This differential broke the supposedly unbreakable dating age formula; in which you take the age of the older person, divide it by two, and then add seven (X÷2 +7, just to make it more complicated). I found this fact funny, and had to know more about it. As far as the date goes, there wasn’t much to tell, she found everything stuffy and a little boring – but it gave me an idea.
Mockingly jealous, or perhaps actually jealous, I proposed that she accompany me to the Literature Ball, the imitation of her Military Ball. I certainly wasn’t expecting an enthusiastic yes. There were many layers to this proposal, many of which were not flattering – in middle school she had a crush on me and I never let her forget it. Her reaction was better than I expected. Sarah’s anger laden refusal let me know that she understood many of the points behind this question. I quickly informed Steven of this.
Independent of my suggestion, Steven asked Sarah to accompany him to the Literature Ball. She was livid.
It became a daily event. Each of us would think of some over-elaborate way to ask Sarah to the newly created, fictional, Literature Ball. And each time she responded with a firm and vehement no. Eventually, in an attempt to spurn jealousy, we each asked different girls in the class to the ball, and had each found a date. The whole matter had come to a point. We could drop everything or . . .
Actually go through with the Literature Ball, a formal dance to be held during and in Miss Chien’s class – without her permission or prior knowledge. Even today I find the fact that we decided to go through with it hilarious. At the time, Steven and I both knew it was ridiculous but that wasn’t a deterrent – it was an incentive.
The day before the ball was to be held; we had to inform the rest of the class. Up to that point only a few were notified of the dance and the knowledge needed to be spread throughout the class.
“Ms. Chien you need to leave.”
“Huh!?!”
“We need to discuss something and you can’t be here for that.”
“But what about my lesson plan?” We shooed her out the door.
Many of our classmates had already gotten wind of the fact that some kind of crazy escapade was about to take place, but in order for full participation the details needed to be unveiled. I asked for everyone to wear their very best clothes, to bring some kind of food or drink, and to bring any bit of writing they would like to read out loud. The Literature Ball was on.
I felt that the most important part of this prank was the way we dressed. Steven and I collaborated for our outfits in this way: dress slacks (which I referred to as kick-me-in-the-pants), a nice belt, a long-sleeved dress shirt which was tucked in, and some sort of tie – mine was an olive green. Wearing overly fancy clothes to school that day was an enjoyable experience, which in and of itself made this entire ordeal worthwhile. I had no idea how varied the responses would be. They ranged from “Wow! You’re looking sexy,” to “Boys are so stupid!” to “What the hell is that?”
At lunch, right before class, we put on the crowning touch to our attire, a snazzy sports jacket. We then scrambled to find our dates and prepare for our grand entrance. A small parade of people had gathered in front of the classroom door. Many did dress up nicer than usual; even Sarah wore a nice dress.
Arms linked with our dates we came strolling into class right after the final bell, accompanied by some fancy music coming from a boom box someone was holding. Miss Chien never recovered control of the classroom that day; she simply sat at her corner desk with her face in her hands. We danced in the middle of the classroom, and socialized along the makeshift buffet table off to the side. Out of respect for our teacher (we weren’t entirely heartless,) we also sat and read poetry along with other snatches of literature, to offbeat tunes.
I like to think that this whole experience made Miss Chien a better teacher. From the start she had all of qualities necessary to make a very good English teacher, aside from crowd control. She eventually became the head of the speech and debate team, and an influential teacher in special endeavors. At the very least our actions helped her develop a firmer hand in dealing with disobedient students. In later classes, actions like ours actually received punishment; grade docking, principal reporting, and even parental notification – the third of which would have stopped Steven and I from even getting started.
Years later, my younger sister had Miss Chien as an advisory teacher. During role call on the first day, among the full names of normal students, my sister simply heard her first name called: Holly. A shadow passed over the teachers face as her fear driven eyes came in contact with the embarrassed expression of my sister. “I am not like my brother,” she exclaimed.
So, am I sorry? Stories of this kind usually come with some moral or personal revelation. I am not sorry. Oh I know – I’m a horrible person, so I’ll try some kind of personal defense. My actions were those of a hyper and exited high school sophomore, who took an opportunity to have an extraordinary amount of fun and establish an enjoyable memory that will last a lifetime. What else is life about really? Would I do it again today? Probably not. But how many of you have done something a bit crazy when you were younger? The fact that the Literature Ball will remain a story to tell forever makes it all worth it.
No comments:
Post a Comment