In the second grade in Mrs. Shermans class, we had an exercise in the book where we were to draw lines between objects that matched; a dog and a doghouse, a hat and a pair of gloves, a hammer and a nail, a bat and a ball and so on.
I drew a line from the dog to the ball, from the house to the hammer, the bat to the glove and the hat to the nail.
Mrs. Sherman said it was all wrong, to try again, but it had made perfect sense to me.
I had no idea what they wanted me to do. I did not understand their box.
I had to sit there through recess and stare at my paper.
To the point of tears.
When the kids came in from playing, the nice little girl that sat next to me named Donna, she helped me.
But as per usual, I got caught cheating and had to take my paper home that night with a note that scolded me:
“This is Donna’s work!!!”
I realize now that there really were no wrong answers.
I can think outside anyone’s box.
And this is how I came to fall in love with Donna.
"A DOG AND A DOGHOUSE? HOW BOURGEOIS!"
Wednesday, January 06, 2010
DONNA, PART ONE
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Soundtrack for Donna...
I remember.... sailing across the Camel Estuary in 1972, my pal Ted and I singing this at the tops of our voices... the falsetto part... Ha! When all of a sudden, from the blind spot the other side of our sail, a boatful of people... including hot girls in bikinis.All staring at us as if we were certifiable crazies.
Damn, Damn, Damn.... We spent the rest of the day putting on exaggeratedly deep, dark-brown, voices and being properly manly, in between bouts of snorting laughter. And we drank a lot too.
Cue the music:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjWfX913BRQ
Second grade teachers are a collective pack of Himmlers. No one knows why this is. My second-grade teacher, no shit, wrote on my report card "Mike wants to be the class clown." That "wants to be" remains the single greatest slam to the ego I've ever received.
UF Mike
Oh Mike, What a mean thing for a teacher to do.
However, I recall that after one teacher completed my end of year report, that cursed piece of paper you never wanted to take home...
He wrote, in the section for physical education: "He has made good progress in swimming. It is a pity that he does not apply such diligence in all his classes."
Only that year, I had been cross-country-running, not swimming.
I presented this report to my parents with glee, and, when my father turned to me with stern face... I pointed out that if my class teacher had so glibly filled in that section with a palpable untruth, then none of the rest of the document could be trusted.
"Good point", said my dad "I'll phone him tomorrow".
After that, I knew THEY were as capable of stupidity as we were. And I never took anything they said on trust again.
Still, if he'd poured doubt on my position as class clown, that would have crushed me.
Remember this one? Once upon a looking-for-Donna-time / There was a sixteen year old virgin / Oh Donna oh oh Donna oh oh oh / Looking for my Donna.
Now I'm going to be singing that song all night!
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