I have a friend — I’m going to call him “Stan” since that rhymes with Dan — who has three goals in surfing:
1.) To surf a 15-foot wave.
2.) To surf at night.
3.) To surf naked.
Now, me? I’m not really cool with any of these.
First of all, I equate 15-foot waves with one thing: Drowning. And as far as night surfing goes, sharks feed close to shore at night. So forget it.
Now, let’s talk nude surfing. Apparently, Stan is not the only one into this. In fact, I recently read that Australians are really into surfing in the buff. But I just think it’s weird.
Here are just a few reasons why nude surfing should not be one of Stan’s goals in life:
1.) There aren’t a lot of places to surf naked.
The only nude beach around here is Pirates Cove, which has no surf anyway. What it does have? A lot of old guys who look like apes.
2.) Surf wax.
I won’t get too specific here, but you have to have surf wax on your board. Surf wax is sticky. And if you have any body hair at all . . .
3.) Men look silly naked.
Seriously. There are only a couple of occasions for men to be naked, and neither of them have anything to do with a surfboard.
4.) Injury potential.
You know how guys wear athletic supporters when they play certain sports? Yeah.
5.) Cold water.
I don’t have to explain this, right? If you really don’t know, refer to Seinfeld.
So I’m not sure if Stan is going to achieve this goal of his. But one thing’s certain: I don’t want to be around when it happens.
Posted on July 3rd, 2008 by Pat
Filed under: Surf stuff | 1 Comment »
Call me weird, but some times I just like to look at surfboards.
That weird?
I’m the same way with drums and guitars. I’ll go into a store, and I’ll just . . . feel them.
So it must have been quite a sight to see the entire stock of Central Coast Surf Boards being moved from its old building to the new location on Marsh Street. (That’s a photo of some of the movers above.)
CCS has been around for a while. But like many independent stores, its vitality could be impacted by corporations offering the same products for less. For instance, Costco sells boards, which, some have pointed out, are made in China.
One would assume Wal-Mart will be next.
Anyway, I wasn’t planning on whining about China, the economy or Wal-Mart. Besides, it’s not like I have enough money to buy a new surfboard right now. That economic stimulus check that’s coming?
Bills.
When I think of bills, what I really want to think about is surfing. And since a lot of bills are due this week, here are my favorite surf spots in SLO County:
1.) A-Beach. Even on the most crowded days, you can usually find a stretch of beach here that’s less busy, proving that this ain’t Southern California.
And, of course, there’s always great views of the Rock from here. Speaking of:
2.) The Rock. Remember that movie where the guys yells, “I love the smell of bird crap in the morning!” Okay, so I just made that up. True, there are lots of birds here. And true, birds tend to smell. But sometimes the power plant makes the water freakishly warm, which — while freaky — is kind of nice in the summer.
3.) Shell Beach. When it gets too big or windy everywhere else, it’s nice to escape to calmer conditions here.
I prefer the old guy vibe of Silver Shoals, which is more of a longboard spot. Check out the gentle peeler to the right here. That’s Silver Shoals for you.
4.) Pismo Pier. This site took a big hit when the city decided to put meters in the parking lot. But the locals know where to go to avoid them. Since this place is pretty touristy in the summer, I usually hang in Morro Bay.
But Pismo pier, even if it doesn’t have the greatest surf, offers a great SoCal feel.
5.) Cayucos pier. There are quite a few old timers here who are really good, so there’s an interesting (and a little intimidating) vibe. 
And it’s seldom really good here. But when it is, the place is just classic. When it’s mellow, it’s a nice retreat. But it can also toss you around on bigger days.
Photos: Nick Lucero, Dave Middlecamp, Joe Johnston, Jayson Mellom
Posted on July 2nd, 2008 by Pat
Filed under: Surf stuff | 1 Comment »
People around the office keep asking the same question:
“Have you seen Pat?”
You see, most people around here are used to seeing me with long hair. In fact, I’ve had my share of smark aleck “hippie” comments. And, yes, I’ve even been compared to Jesus and the Dude:
Often, in fact. But yesterday I ended the Christ and Lebowski comparisons.
I got a George Clooney cut.
It was sort of out of necesity, really. Last week I bought this new hat for my upcoming surf trip. Then I decided that maybe that hat would look better with a haircut. And then I thought, okay, well, I really need a certain kind of haircut.
The Clooney.
So now people say things to me like, “Have you seen Pat?” Because not only did I get a new haircut but apparently a new face as well.
Curiously, no one has mentioned George Clooney, which leads me to suspect that the George Clooney cut doesn’t actually make you look like George Clooney. In fact, the only people I’ve ever been compared to in my lifetime are Eddie Bird (Larry’s brother) and Rick Smith, this guy that went to my high school.
No offense to Eddie and Rick, but I’d rather be compared to George Clooney.
When I told the hair stylist that I wanted the Clooney, she looked confused and said, “What’s that?” Then I was confused because I’d been told previously by hairstylists that all one had to do was say “I want the George Clooney cut,” and every hairstylist in the world would know what I meant.
“I think it’s also called a Caesar cut,” I explained. 
“Hmmmm,” she said. “I think we had a magazine with his picture in it – let me see.”
I assume she meant a picture of Clooney, not Caesar since “People” doesn’t tend to do stories about ancient Romans. So she picked up a “People” magazine, and I thought: Uh oh. And when she couldn’t find that photo, I thought uh oh again — except more seriously this time.
“I think I remember what it looked like,” she said. And suddenly I was thinking that maybe I should just get my hair trimmed a little.
But I stuck with it, and she pulled it off. So now I have a bonified George Clooney cut. And while no one is telling me I look like a movie star, there are no more snide remarks about Jesus.
Posted on July 1st, 2008 by Pat
Filed under: The World According to Pat | 2 Comments »
The Musical Memoirs Move to Cougar Country
It’s sort of ironic that the only movie my dad and I saw at the theater together was “Breaking Away.”
Because a couple of years after seeing that film, my mom and I would break away to Bloomington, IN – where ”Breaking Away“ was shot – leaving my dad and the Chicago suburbs in the rearview mirror.
While Bloomington offered an escape from the life we knew, it was also a culture shock. Kids in junior high chewed tobacco. Some of them spoke with southern drawls. And there wasn’t a single African-American in my school.
Never would be, in fact. At least not while I was there.
All those things you hear about basketball in Indiana? Absolutely true. I couldn’t tell you how many times I heard people talk about Isiah Thomas and Bob Knight. And, yes, barns everywhere had basketball hoops on them.
Every day, on the ride home from school, a girl on the back of the bus unveiled a boom box and blasted three songs: “Total Eclipse of the Heart” by Bonnie Tyler, “I Love Rock and Roll” by Joan Jett and “Hurts So Good” by John Cougar, who would eventually become John Cougar Mellencamp and then just John Mellencamp.
While “Hurts So Good” was a huge hit everywhere, Johnny Cougar was especially popular in my new hometown because he lived in Bloomington. In fact, several people I knew would eventually encounter him in public.
He was a frequent visitor to Waffle House, where some of my friends worked. They say he tipped less than generously. You know — for a millionaire. But my sister-in-law – who cut his hair at the College Mall – never complained.
Like the bus ride, there was also a lot of music repetition in the school lunch room. Every day the same kids would comandeer the juke box and play the same two songs: “Another One Bites the Dust” by Queen and – for some insane reason – “Convoy,” a crappy novelty song by an advertising guy who called himself C.W. McCall.
What was wrong with these kids?
I took a lot of sick days when I first moved to Indiana, but it had nothing to do with being sick; I just didn’t want to be in school. I wasn’t connecting with my classmates. The teachers thought I was dumb. And that “Convoy” song was driving me nuts.
What had once seemed like a good idea – getting out of a bad environment – suddenly seemed like a really bad one.
For the life of me, I couldn’t see why Mellencamp stuck around.
Posted on June 27th, 2008 by Pat
Filed under: Music, Songs in the Key of Life: My Musical Memoirs | 2 Comments »
Today’s blog entry was written by guest blogger Jay Thompson, who is currently at the Grand Canyon.
***
Tod
ay is a somber day for longtime residents of the Grand Canyon National Park and some scattered throughout the Central Coast.
Family and friends are holding a memorial service rim-side at 3 p.m. at Shoshone Point for a former Central Coast resident who lived at the Canyon first as a waiter and then as a school teacher.
Life was more than a career to Marcus Fuhrman — it was an adventure. One to be seized (carpe diem), and one that took him to some of the most beautiful places on the planet, serving up an eclectic cast of characters and life-altering experiences.
And life was love.
It was in the love he shared with his wife, Peggy, and witnessed in the eyes of his two children, Mandy and Wes, and daughter-in-law Alena. It was the love he had for his childhood family in California’s Big Valley — a teeming brood of eight, two girls and six boys. And it was the love he was drawn to, captured through the viewfinder of his.
He remained a lifelong learner, always reading and writing prose or poetry. He had many interests — community theater, fishing, poker, photography, fishing, boats, basketball and fishing — but not in any particular order. He was a handyman, willing to tackle any project or lend a hand — whether it was rebuilding and old Jag in San Luis Obispo, reassembling a doublewide trailer in Northern Arizona, or renovating a century-old Victorian in America’s heartland.
Most of all, he was a loving husband, proud father, son, brother, teacher and friend to many.
Marcus was born Feb. 8, 1949, in Stockton and came of age during the turbulent 1960s. He had a love of music throughout his life. The Beatles spoke to him as a teenager, so it’s fitting that the last song on their “Abbey Road” album contains a line that could also sum up the life and times of Marcus Milton Fuhrman: “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.”
While bladder cancer taught him the power of positive thinking and that every day is a gift to be cherished, he learned at an early age about love from his parents, former Shell Beach residents Marianne Catherine Seeley and Harry Joseph Fuhrman, who he addressed in letters as Marinski and HJ. He described growing up with seven siblings in a home that “was so steady you could balance a water droplet on a pinhead.” And in numerous missives to his parents, he fondly returned to those early years and never forgot his parents’ influence, remaining grateful for their guidance and the example they set.
Those formative years included attending the elementary school operated by St. Bernadette Catholic Church, where he served as an altar boy — “though sometimes he’d tell Mom he was going to church, but instead he’d head to a nearby coffee shop and buy a newspaper and read it until Mass was over,” recalled his sister Julie Klopping of Arroyo Grande.
After graduating in 1967, Marcus moved south to attend Cuesta College near San Luis Obispo and would remain in that area through the mid-1970s. During his two years at Cuesta in the late 1960s he was cast in a play — an experience that would stay with him throughout his life.
“He played a butler in one scene,” recalled sister Julie, who retired this month from Los Ranchos Elementary School in San Luis Obispo after 37 years as a teacher. “No lines. He just walked in and dropped a tray — dramatically, of course.”
Later he attended Cal Poly where he majored in English until 1970 when Uncle Sam intervened. Drawing a low number in the draft lottery (and a higher probability of being inducted into the Army and a war in Vietnam), Marcus opted to join the National Guard — but orders and the military chain of command didn’t suit him.
“He hated it so much he even tried to go AWOL,” Julie said. “He did go back after MPs came to Mom and Dad’s house in Shell Beach. He served the remaining six years of monthly Reserve service at Camp San Luis Obispo with his brother-in-law Paul (Klopping).”
Free of military entanglements and armed with a reservoir of love as deep and full as Lake Powell, Marcus set off on a journey that would take him abroad, to the Virgin Islands, Death Valley, the Grand Canyon, Kauai and Napa Valley, Calif. Career would have to wait (that would come 20 years later). He was instead drawn to places and especially people and the lessons he could learn from each.
By 1980 he was working for the Fred Harvey Co. in Death Valley. It was a stop on the road that would forever change his life. A co-worker encouraged him to ask out one of the girls working in the bar. It was love at first sight. On one of the many dates that followed, Peggy Anne Ankrum admitted (while Marcus was buying her ice cream) that she could see herself marrying this bespectacled man.
And they did — “beneath a full desert moon” at the Furnace Creek Inn Garden — on March 1, 1980. Within seven months he sold his MG sports car and motorcycle. In an Oct. 12 letter home, he had even more dramatic news to report: “Next time we see you we ought to have a little cutie!” he wrote. “Whoa! Hard to believe, but so great to be a part of … I’ve been waiting for this for a long time — like, all my life.”
Amanda Mae Fuhrman was born Feb. 5, 1981, followed about a year and a half later, on Dec. 2, 1982, by Wesley Tanner Fuhrman, who arrived “in the middle of a blizzard with a full moon overhead.”
Marcus worked as a waiter at Moqui and the El Tovar during the five years the family lived in the shadow of Moqui’s A-frame on the sundown side of Highway 64.
“I liked waiting tables because it demanded so much of me — quickness and memory and anticipation and planning and speed and accuracy,” he said in January of 2006. “But customers could very easily make me feel subservient. It didn’t take much — a look, a word, an attitude or a kind of brush-off. “Maybe one out of 20 tables I’d get that sense. But the other 19 it was like a challenge: Go get them, bust them, dominate them with dialogue or interest — draw them out and find out who they are.”
Waiting tables would take the family west to Poipu, Kauai — Hawaii’s Garden Isle — and eventually back to his native state and Napa Valley — the center of the Golden State’s viticultural industry and an epicure’s delight in Northern California. By the late 1980s the four Fuhrmans had settled in Iowa, where Peggy had family and where Marcus would finally find his niche and a career.
He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in education from Buena Vista College on May 24, 1992. And, at age 43, he became a teacher.
For a Californian, Iowa was not without its own subtle charms, he wrote in a letter to his parents then living in Petaluma, finding poetry and newfound purpose in the folds and furrows of America’s heartland. The couple bought a 110-year-old Victorian that they nicknamed the “Pink Lady,” and Marcus honed his handyman skills while embarking on a teaching career. He taught middle school and high school English, and also agreed to coach basketball — a game for which he had a lifelong passion.
In the classroom, he taught his students the difference between proper nouns and pronouns, but he also found time to impart lasting lessons about life, a concept not lost on the teacher.
“One area that I go over often with my students is ‘respect,’ ” he wrote to his mother. “Not a complaint, but rather an observation: ‘These kids these days ain’t got no manners, no how!’ So my job is easily defined. Hopefully some day some child will say ‘Glad, I learned to be a good human being back there in Fort Dodge, Iowa.’ ”
He would be gratified to know how prescient that statement was and the fact that a decade later some of those very students would remember him as “a huge inspiration.”
After his own children graduated high school — Mandy of Arroyo Grande went west to a college in Santa Barbara while her brother headed east to study in Boston, and eventually found love and married Alena in Minnesota — the empty-nesters returned to the Grand Canyon as teachers.
“We taught there for three years,” he told a friend in 2006. “It was good. And it was beautiful and quiet.”
But the desire to own a house and the lure of boating and fishing on Lake Powell, brought Marcus and Peg north to Page, Ariz., and ultimately Big Water, Utah, where he boasted that the scenery was beautiful and the living was easy.
“I’ve taught English two years at the high school now,” he said in early 2006. “Peggy’s a high school counselor. We bought this house two years ago. It’s got three acres. It’s really nice. I love it.”
While there he acted as a surrogate grandfather to a friend’s children, Gracie and Maddox Talker.
Marcus and Maddox “were impossible to separate,” recalled Mandy. “Maddox called my dad ‘Uncle Marcus,’ and my dad called him ‘Mad-Man’ or ‘knucklehead.’ They would go fishing together, work in the garden together … my dad even taught him Shakespeare quotes at age 2.
“I was so glad they had this relationship because I know my dad would have made a most amazing grandfather,” she added. “And, in a way, he got to.” And a journey that began in a river town in California during the Truman administration, finally found a home in the Beehive State on the edge of one of the most beautiful lakes in the world.
“It is better to travel hopefully than it is to arrive,” wrote Robert Louis Stevenson, meaning that the journey, not the destination, is what we are seeking as we travel through life.
Marcus always traveled hopeful. Before he was an academic, the road was his academy of higher learning. He learned about many of life’s foibles there and as a teacher took pride in sharing lessons gleaned along life’s blue highways.
“Since I’ve been a kid I’ve always liked positive experiences,” he said a year before getting sick. “I go out and I explore them and use them for a while and move on.”
For Marcus, moving on meant the opportunity to gather more love in the form of meeting intriguing people and visiting sublime places of beauty with the experiences they fostered — a cosmic journey he began April 29, 2008.
“Love is all you need,” the Beatles once sang. For Marcus, there was always plenty of love to go around.— Jay Thompson
Click here to read Marcus Fuhrman’s blog, Getting Better All the Time.
To read more about Moqui Lodge, and the resort workers including Marcus Fuhrman who called it home, visit this site.
Click here to see a slide show of Moqui Lodge.
Posted on June 26th, 2008 by Pat
Filed under: The World According to Pat, Uncategorized | No Comments »
Gas prices are strangling us. Home values are shot. And with the war in Iraq going on and on, the nation’s deficit continues to grow. So here’s what I propose:
Hat Day.
That’s right — Hat Day. A day on which we all wear hats.
See that picture above? Back in the 30s and 40s — when things were getting kind of rough — just about everyone wore a hat. And while the baldness rate was probably higher as a result, we survived those tough times — mostly, I think, because of the hats.
So I propose instead of some goofy Hawaiian shirt day, I propose we have Hat Friday, where everyone wears — you guessed it — roller skates.
No, wait — hats. Everyone wears hats on Hat Friday. And I don’t mean baseball hats; I’m talking real hats. Like fedoras.
With an upcoming surf trip in mind, I’m considering a new hat myself. But I’m a little torn. On the one hand, I want something sort of beachy and old school. On the other hand, I don’t want to look like a dork. Because, you know, not looking like a dork is really important to me.
So maybe you could help me out here. I found some candidates on the Quicksilver web site, and now I’m trying to decide which is best.
First, you have this one:
I’m not too keen on that card or whatever it is, so I’d probably lose that. But I like the overall shape and color of this one. I can picture myself wearing this with a pair of board shorts and sandals, strumming my uke and mangling some Jimmy Buffet songs.
But then there’s this one:
You almost have to try it on before you buy it because while it looks sort of cool, I can also picture an old man wearing it while he mows the lawn in his really cool black socks and Rockports. Also, if I get one of these, I’d definitely need a hair cut, lest I want to look like Kid Rock — and I really, really don’t want to look like Kid Rock.
Then, finally:
My first thought upon seeing this was: It’s gray. And it’s sort of bordeline pimp. At the same time, if worn right . . .
So what do you think about those? Do any look cool, or is it Dorkville? Let me know.
After I initially posted this blog, a co-worker tipped me off that these hats are actually fairly popular in LA right now. So I’m not sure if that makes them more or less cool now. Still, I think I will get one eventually.
Meanwhile, spread the word: Hat Friday is coming.
Posted on June 25th, 2008 by Pat
Filed under: Surf stuff, The World According to Pat | 5 Comments »
You may have read a previous post on here about the use of music in movies, in which case — I love you.
Really. Thanks for dropping by.
But now that the summer blockbuster season is upon us, I started thinking again about movies and music, and a thought occured to me: Today’s movie music really sucks.
Think about it. When movies first started out, they included great original songs — tunes like “Over the Rainbow,” “White Christmas” and “When You Wish Upon a Star.”
Do you have any idea what song won the Oscar last year? I’ll give you a hint: It was written by Glen Hansard and Markets Irglova.
Still don’t know? How about another hint: The song is from the movie “Once.”
It’s called “Faling Slowly.” Never heard of it? Me neither. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever heard any of last year’s nominees, which is too bad because there was a time when original movie music was really good. Of course, I’m talking about 1984 here.
Every song nominated that year was a hit single. And a legitimately good song.
I know. You’re saying, “Pat, you liked ‘Let’s Hear it for the Boy?’”
And I say, “Heck yeah.” I can even recite most of the lyrics for you.
But I’ll spare you.
My all time favorite performer, Stevie Wonder, won the Oscar that year for “I Just Called to Say I Love You,” a song Jack Black’s character eviscerated in the movie “High Fidelity” but which I still enjoy, though perhaps not as much as, say, most other Stevie hits.
Then you had “Against All Odds” by Phil Collins, “Footloose” by Kenny Loggins, and “Ghostbusters” by Ray Parker Jr.
What a year.
Beginning in the 90s, original movie music started to suffer, with a few exceptions, thanks mostly to Randy Newman, the Big Daddy of movie music. Springsteen came through nicely with “The Streets of Philadelphia.” But for the most part, the age of original movie music is over.
Remember when Three 6 Mafia got an Oscar?
I haven’t heard from those guys in a while. Probably because they’re lame.
I’m not sure why original music isn’t cutting it. But I’ll blame Justin Timberlake.
Not that he had anything to do with it. It’s just that whenever I talk about the decline of music, I like to blame him for it.
Posted on June 24th, 2008 by Pat
Filed under: Music | 2 Comments »
It took a lot of hustle, but I did it — I achieved the surf nooner.
I honor of International Surfing Day, I high-tailed it down to Pismo Beach Friday and jumped in the water over my lunch break. As it turned out, the balmy weather made it a perfect day for a noon-time stoke. And the conditions were so good, I had a real tough time leaving. Alas, work had to be done. But I got just enough waves to brag to all the suckers stuck indoors.
I’m just glad I didn’t encounter any severed human feet in the water, which is apparently a problem in Canada right now.
Right now I’m trying to work up my paddling strength because in three weeks, I’ll be headed to Southern California for a surf trip. During my planned stop in Malibu, I guess I’d better avoid Matthew McConaughey. Or at least avoid taking pictures of him in the surf because, apparently, that gets you beat up in Malibu.
As my bumper sticker states: Can’t we all just get a longboard?
Maybe this would be a good time to add to my list of surfing celebs.
Photo: Candi Pemberton
Posted on June 23rd, 2008 by Pat
Filed under: Surf stuff | No Comments »
I’m not old enough to be one of those people who scans the obituaries for friends. But every now and then I read them because 1.) it’s good to be reminded of mortality, and 2.) they often contain interesting stories.
Case in point: The obituary of former Shell Beach resident Robert Henry Dourson, who died in Pacific Palisades last month at age 95. Dourson was a pretty interesting guy – he was a violin player who worked with Shell Oil before becoming a computer math professor at Cal Poly. But I found this paragraph especially interesting:
“Pop’s many interests included St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, Boy Scouts, square and ball-room dancing, bonsai and gladiolus horticulture, gemology, clamming, camping, canoeing, and his pet of 85 years, desert tortoise, “Old Bill.”
That’s right: When Dourson was ten years old, he got a pet turtle. And through the years, wherever he went, the tortoise was there. As he became an adult. As he reached middle age. As he became an old man.
Dourson and his tortoise. Bob and Bill.
Chances are, Old Bill represented Dourson’s longest relationship, easily predating his wife, who passed away in 2005, and children.
Then there are other questions:
How old was Old Bill when Dourson got him?
When did he become “Old” Bill?
Where is he now?
Is Old Bill despondent now that his lifelong friend is gone?
I figure Dourson was a pretty good tortoise owner since he was a member of the Too SLO Tortoise Club. Which sounds like a pretty interesting group, though I would imagine their meetings are a bit – ahem – slow.
I know there’s a lot more to Dourson’s life than his pet tortoise. But I can’t help thinking of a little boy getting a turtle in 1923, then slowly aging, going through the many phases of life, as the tortoise remains virtually unchanged for 85 years.
A memorial for Dourson will be held tomorrow in San Luis Obispo. I can only wonder if Old Bill will be there to say goodbye to his friend.
Posted on June 20th, 2008 by Pat
Filed under: The World According to Pat | No Comments »
Musical Memoirs Gets a Makeover with KISS
****
Okay, I’ll admit: I was once a KISS fan.
Maybe it was the cool makeup. Perhaps the funky boots. Or possibly even the blood-spitting Gene Simmons, who – rumor had it – had a cow tongue grafted onto his own.
Using wooden spoons as microphones, my friends and I would often lip sync their song “Calling Dr. Love,” sometimes changing the lyrics to reflect funny things about people we didn’t like.
“Calling Dr. Love,” like “My Sharona,” “King Tut,” and “Whip It,” was one of those songs written for adults but which also appealed to kids. And as 1980 grew close, I needed music to get my mind off of school.
Because, technically speaking? I got three F’s on my first report card — though one of the teachers that flagged me said I was improving, so I sort of counted that as an F+.
While I did improve most of my grades, I did wind up flunking math. But it wasn’t my fault. I had this awful math teacher named, uh – we’ll say Mrs. Jeffries.
Mrs. Jeffries wasn’t exactly the lovable sort. In fact, there was a rumor that she once slugged a student who threw popcorn at her. Today I sort of doubt that since teachers who slug students generally get canned. And I don’t remember our school having a lot of popcorn around.
But at the time it was very believable, given that Mrs. Jeffries had once threatened to kill me.
Admittedly, I was doing something I shouldn’t have been doing: I hid another kid’s Trapper Keeper.
I know – you don’t mess with another kid’s Trapper Keeper. But I was young and dumb. And, honestly? It beat doing math.
When Mrs. Jeffries saw that I wasn’t paying attention to her, she scolded me in front of class. Embarrassed, I waited until she turned around, and then I muttered something that sounded a lot like, “Oh, shut up.”
But apparently I said it louder than I had intended. Because Mrs. Jeffries abruptly stopped, turned and glared.
“What. Did you say?”
I’m pretty sure I saw fire coming from her nostrils.
“I’m gonna have you for the rest of the year, Pemberton,” she said, her face taking on the wrinkly, sinister image of The Beast. “And I’m going to have you for summer school. . .”
Then she pointed at me with a dagger finger and spat: “You die.”
I know. You think I’m making that up. Because teachers don’t usually say things like, “You die.” But I swear on top of your mother’s grave she did.
Funny thing was? When the teachers went on strike Mrs. Jeffries was pictured on the front page of the local paper, heading the picket line.
I wanted to call the school board and say something like: “Teachers who threaten to kill kids don’t deserve pay raises!” But I didn’t. Because no one would believe a trouble maker who got three F’s on a report card.
Besides, if Mrs. Jeffries could get me out of school for two weeks – while she stood in the freezing cold, carrying a sign — maybe I could endure a death threat or two.
Posted on June 19th, 2008 by Pat
Filed under: Music, Songs in the Key of Life: My Musical Memoirs, The World According to Pat | 2 Comments »
