Lady lost her head

I’ve only made it into the paper once that I know of.

For years, I drove down Granny White Pike on my way to David Lipscomb. On the front porch of a house just past the intersection at Tyne sat a three-foot tall head. The head was white with colorful tattoos all over it. 

More pieces of bizarre modern art were scattered around the lawn.

My freshman year of college I finally decided to do something about it. I alway signed out on the weekends to my parents’ house to get around the 1:00am curfew. Most of the time I’d sneak through the window of Justin Chunn’s and David Lavender’s first story dorm room, and sleep in my bed in High Rise dorm.

This weekend I’d decided to crash at home. My dad had agreed to let me borrow his ‘98 black 4Runner. I picked up some friends, and we all went to Rites of Spring at Vanderbilt. Guster played. They were one of my favorite bands. The music and the rich, blond girls in their North Face jackets were making my head spin. Emily Waddell asked if I had been drinking. Nope. Just high on life, baby cakes.

After the show, we were looking for some mischief. The time was ripe.

We drove to the house on Granny White. 

In retrospect, we could have been a bit less brazen. I backed down the driveway, then Marshall, Justin, and Mike walked up to the front porch of the house, hoisted the head, and carried it back to the 4Runner. We loaded it then drove down the street 50 yards to the intersection. We then unloaded the giant head and positioned it in the middle of the intersection. Easter Island had come to middle Tennessee.

I parked on a side street near my cousins’ house.

Five or six of us hid in the honeysuckle bushes and watched the glorious confusion. The head acted as an impromptu police officer. It was about 1am at this point, but we weren’t seeing any roll-through stops, no sirree. The cars stopped, rocked back on their tires, and inched forward. Drivers rolled down their windows and leaned out to better understand this visitation. Their noses were a foot away from the thing.

A high school couple drove through the intersection and parked their car. She hiked up her prom dress to walk, and he carried the camera. A third friend hurried up to take their picture. They stood on each side of the head grinning. 

A guy I knew from Lipscomb named Ross showed up with another guy I didn’t know. They leaned out like everybody else. Something must have struck their fancy because they parked, walked back to the head, and began to carry it off.

This could ruin everything.

Summoning my best God voice from Vacation Bible School, I yelled, “Ross! Put the head down!”

They dropped the head then turned circles in alarm.

I started to feel bad. 

“Hey, Ross, it’s Austin. Put the head back. I’ll explain later.”

“Oh,” he said to the honeysuckle bush. “Okay, dude, no problem.”

They drove off.

This went on for fifteen or twenty minutes and then came the climax.

We heard somebody walking down the street from the direction of the head’s house.

A skinny middle-aged woman stomped to the middle of the intersection. She glared all around her. Bent at the waist with her chin stuck out, she unleashed her fury:

“I don’t know who you are, but I know you’re still here, and you’d better leave because the cops are coming and if you’re still here, you’re all going to be in huge trouble.” She continued on like this for awhile, with an even temper at first but crescendoing until she was really mad.

Apparently, we had just been introduced to head’s owner. If I were her, I probably wouldn’t have appreciated it either. One of her friends must have driven through the intersection, seen the head, and given her a call. The head must have been too precious, too steeped in sentimental value, for her to appreciate the hilarity of the situation: a giant white tattooed head sitting in the middle of an intersection in a suburb on a quiet night in spring. That’s what I call good humor.

We walked back to my truck, I dropped my friends off at their various places of residence, then we all went to bed.

Matthew Netterville was reading The Tennessean the next day when he saw the headline: “Lady lost her head.”

He’d walked over to join in the fun the night before. He told us all about it later.

Whoever wrote that headline, I want to shake your hand. Thank you for getting it. Thank you for supporting random acts of unkindness. Thank you for taking a stand against bad art.  

Thank you for joining us in our quest to disrupt suburban complacency and irritate comfortable middle-aged Nashvillians.

As for the head, well, it found a new home in the lady’s garage. We never saw it again.

Head, you are gone but not forgotten. Your fame was short-lived but your legacy will touch posterity.

age, gravity, sun damage, and slower metabolism

While I was finishing up my master’s in English, I was working as a Teaching Associate. Two classes of First-Year Composition 101 made the mistake of registering for my class. 

Poor children. None of them knew what to do with a teacher who knew their tricks better than they did themselves. I assured them that however proficient in the art of sarcasm they believed themselves to be, I was better. I’d had more practice. “Please don’t tempt me,” I said. “I’d enjoy it too much, and nobody likes cleaning up a mess.” I suggested that we start from a baseline of respect instead.

My class was built around discussion, dialogue. We read articles, and then we talked about them. My class was straightforward: do your homework, participate in class, do your best to write with simplicity and clarity, and you’ll be fine.

Of course, as many of them did none of these as did them all. I had trouble pushing a thought through their thick, complacency-encrusted craniums: I will know whether or not you read when I call on you to participate in the discussion.

Who needs quizzes? Sure I gave them as a formality, but I just threw them away. I knew if Kevin or Justin or Laura or Blake did their homework simply by watching their faces when I asked, “Do you think a woman donating her eggs is a decision that is hers alone to make?”

Nervous titter. Glancing around the room. Eyes drop down to desk. Color appears on cheeks. 

“Umm… .”

“You didn’t read the assignment, did you?”

“No.”

“Well, that’s okay. I expect more from you in the future. Please pay close attention and try to participate.”

I never humiliated them. Communicating my disappointment and my desire for improvement was effective enough without dressing them down in front of their peers. I always disliked the teachers who used fear. They never earned my true respect, just lip service with a snarl.

One particular day in late summer, I held one of my classes outside behind the humanities building. Knowing their tendency to disconnect and look for four-leaf clovers, I asked them to sit in a circle. Never underestimate how adolescents will self-correct when people their own age are watching.

I had assigned Dave Barry’s essay “Guys vs. Men.” I didn’t enjoy the essay that much. Barry makes the easy jokes at men’s expense and reinforces stereotypes of masculinity rather than disrupt or at least challenge them. 

Regardless of my opinion, the essay provided an accessible springboard for the issue of gender and harmful or unhealthy gender constructs. Most of the girls in that class spoke up that day. They talked about their fathers, brothers, and boyfriends. Most of them wanted to date a “gentleman.” Gentlemen were scarce.

The first time I called on Kelsey, she deflected. Rather than interrupt the flow of the dialogue, I moved onto somebody else. I eventually called on her again. What did she think about the essay? Was Barry’s essay part of the problem?

She threw daggers with her eyes before saying, “Stop calling on me. I obviously didn’t do my homework.”

Hmm. Bet she has a great relationship with her dad. 

Her attitude was the sort I refused to tolerate. I decided to nip it.

“Kelsey, you are in no position to be making demands.”

Her eyes went wide, and she sat up a little straighter. She was cute, slender, and bitchy. Just the sort of girl guys fall over themselves to ask out. The sort of girl who is accustomed to getting whatever she wants.

I never did have much of a stomach for that sort of girl. She took part in our discussion from then on.

I hoped she cleaned up the attitude because playing the victim will only take you so far. Not to mention the effects of age, gravity, sun damage, and slower metabolism. Kelsey, force a man to love you for your mind and heart.

I saw her the other day and said hi. She was with a slouchy guy who looked like he knew how to bake space brownies. 

Sure, I judged by appearances. You can’t win them all. Maybe the joke’s on me for remembering her.

Roll-through stop

Let me make a suggestion.

If you are fifteen and learning how to drive, angst-ridden for no good reason and straining to distance yourself from your parents who “just don’t understand you,” you need to remember that everything you say can and will be used against you. Your intellectual parry-and-thrust is less impressive than you think.

After you do a roll-through stop turning from Shackleford onto Granny White Pike and after your father tells you to pull over, “That’s enough for today,” and after you yank the Suburban over onto the shoulder and get out and slam the door, please oh please if you know what’s good for you don’t yell the following:

“You think you’re a good father just cos you take me fishing once a year.”

Rather than get angry as you had hoped, your father—now in the driver’s seat—will look at you for a fraction of a section before bursting into laughter. Your mother and two sisters, who are riding in the back seat, will do the same. 

Rather than make these foolish mortals feel the hot blast of your wrath, you have just logged another entry in the family quote book, an entry that will bring joy to audiences for years to come.

Keep such retorts to yourself. I can promise you that they’re not nearly as stinging and bullet-proof as you think.

In fact, you’ll be better off if you just keep your stupid adolescent male mouth shut. Put it all in a journal.

newfound autonomy

Allow me to make a recommendation.

If you are fifteen and snot locker drunk on the hormone cocktail that God designed to turn us into adults, I’d advise you to go bite your pillow or journal or take a walk rather than say this to your parents:

“You’re not my moral compass anymore.”

They won’t think it’s cute. They won’t respond to your newfound autonomy with pride, excitement, and encouragement. 

If you know what’s good for you, you’ll keep such epiphanies to yourself.

Abandonment & Deportation

During the train ride home the full implications of the day’s events began to sink in. 

Where was Hunter?

The day had started with a good jolt of adventure, eating a Käsekrainer and running through the streets of Vienna to catch our train. Once we had crossed the Hungarian border, Hunter realized he’d left both his Eurail pass and his passport on his dresser in the hotel. He’d told me to have fun for the both of us, so against my better judgment, I rented an inappropriate bathing suit and spent an hour or two exploring the amenities of the largest medicinal baths in Europe.

I’d eaten dinner by myself in a Chinese restaurant with plenty of time to catch a train back home to Vienna.

Now, as the train finally pulled into the Westbahnhof and I took the U-bahn from Reumannplatz to our familiar stop at Südtirolerplatz, I grew more and more anxious. 

I may as well have run I was walking so fast. I should have gotten off the train with him. What was I thinking? I was so shocked to see men with guns take him off the train that my thinking was sluggish. What he said had seemed like the best idea until the doors to the train closed in a rush of air. I had abandoned him.

I grabbed the first person I recognized and asked him if he’d Hunter.

“Sure, he’s upstairs in your room.”

I ran up the five flights of stairs and burst through the door.

He was sitting on his bed, looking calm as can be.

He looked up when he heard me and grinned.

“What happend?!!”

“Well, they kept me in some building for a couple of hours. I just journaled the whole time. It really wasn’t bad at all. Then, they put me on a train back to Vienna and gave me this letter.” He showed me the piece of paper, an official-looking document in Hungarian.

He continued: “You know how Anna who works at the front desk is Hungarian? Well, I got her to translate it for me.”

“What’d it say?”

“It said I’m not allowed to go back to Hungary.”

On one glorious day in the fall of 2002, I rented a speedo in Budapest while my best friend of sixteen years was deported and asked never to return.

We both laughed until we cried. 

Serious lapses in judgment become some of our best stories.

I was a Greek god

After a Käsekrainer, a traumatic train ride to Budapest, and renting a “bathing suit,” I was walking down the stairs to the pool. One handing was holding up my bathing suit in the back, and another in the front. My “bathing suit” failed to cover everything.

This was less clothing than I’d ever worn in public.

However, once my feet touched the cool tiles next to the pool and I looked around, all my fears vanished. I was by far the youngest, fittest, and most attractive person in the room. I don’t say that to toot my own horn. Whoever tells you that Americans are the only ones for whom obesity is a problem is a liar. Hairy guts were hanging so far over speedos that my only means of discerning whether or not these men were even wearing speedos was the bright fabric on their sides and back. We’re talking waistlines that were punishing the elasticity of lycra or spandex or whatever material from outer space that speedo uses. These elderly Hungarian men were pushing fabric technology and human anatomy to new limits. They were pioneers.

Although I don’t recommend such comparisons for eradicating self-consciousness, I confess that after a quick glance around the massive indoor pool, I was filled with Pride. I had nothing—nothing!—of which to be ashamed.

Come butt crack, come glimpses of pubic hair, I was a Greek god among overweight, arthritic, and sluggish mortals!

My spirits revived, and I sampled everything the spa had to offer: mineral baths, swimming pool, hot tub, sauna, and steam room. People were drifting in and out of a particular door. I decided to explore.

Outside was a heated pool. Steam was curling off its surface and scattering in the breeze. Snow danced in the air. 

Ha! All the young people were out here. So I wasn’t alone!

I slipped into the heat, and waded around for awhile, still wondering what was happening with Hunter—to Hunter!—at the moment. I decided that I’d had about as much fun for the both of us as there was to be had. I ran back inside to change.

That image is frozen in my mind though—orbs of light burning in the darkness, laughter and snatches of Hungarian, snow, wind, steam, and the statues on a pedestal in the middle of the pool somehow sad and pensive.

I changed, thanked Mr. Cabana Boy, my only acquaintance in the place, and walked out into the park. I knew how to get back to the train station from the previous trip, so I started walking that direction.

To burn the florints I had left, I ate a lonely five-course dinner at a Chinese restaurant.

Soon, I was fully, warm, and sleep, riding a train three and a half hours back to Vienna. 

Where was Hunter?

[To be continued...]

renting a “bathing suit” in Hungary

After a Käsekrainer and a traumatic train ride, I arrived in Budapest.

Three or four weeks earlier, when I’d visited the city with Hunter, Holly, and Rebecca, our train had stopped at the largest of Budapest’s three railway stations, Budapest Keleti pályaudvar. I anticipated arriving at the same station, following familiar landmarks to the City Park, Városliget, and then taking Hunter at his word—“Enjoy yourself for the both of us”—by doing something relaxing at the Széchenyi Gyógyfürdő, the largest medicinal bath in Europe.

When I got off the train, I recognized nothing. Surprise! I was at another station, Budapest nyugati pályaudvar. Whether it’s the lingering effect of the Cold War or a resistance to Western culture, I don’t know, but few people that I encountered in Budapest spoke English. Maybe I tried to communicate with the wrong people. In fact, I know I tried to communicate with the wrong people because of what happened soon after.

Rather than feel sorry for myself, I got some Hungarian forints from an ATM and bought a map. The green swatch of the City Park was more blocks away, at least 20, then I cared to count. Nothing to do but start walking.

Outside, snow was falling. Everything seems quieter when snow is falling. The streets were empty of people. A few cars stirred the snow as they passed. Loneliness. Where was Hunter? What was happening to my friend? 

At least I was wearing my North Face down vest and wasn’t cold.

I began to enjoy myself—the ornate facades of the old buildings, the sky of gray and white, the bittersweet melancholy and poignant reflection that often accompany solitude. We miss people more when they’re gone. We notice so much more and thus have more to share when we’re alone. Solitude makes people more precious.

After about an hour, I was climbing the steps to the lobby of the spa.

I found a guy about my own age who appeared to work for the spa. 

He must have gotten his hands on an English dictionary because he knew a few words, but not enough to form into sentences. After some wild gesticulations and calling for backup, he finally drove his point home: everything was closed but the baths, pools, sauna, and steam room. No massage this time.

Where could I change? I asked with an absurd pantomime of removing my clothing and swimming motions.

He seemed to understand and motioned for me to follow him. He led me upstairs, let himself in behind a desk, located a key, then showed me to a tiny wooden stall. These were set up in rows like lockers. He opened the door for me, dropped the key in my hand, smiled, and sauntered off.

Okay, now I was going to enjoy myself.

Wait.

I had no bathing suit. I had no towel. I had only one pair of underwear.

This is where the story gets a little strange. I was determined to make the most of my time in Budapest because I was worried about my friend and I’d never had a massage and wanted one and had missed the cut off twice in a row and I hadn’t ridden three and a half hours to be deterred by something as simple as having no bathing suit.

I marched back up to the desk and got the guy’s attention. In perhaps the finest feat of nonverbal communication of my life, I told Mr. Cabana Boy that I needed something to wear. He squinted his eyes at me and tapped his lips with a finger. I tried again. This time, he jabbed a finger at the ceiling as if to say, “Aha! I’ve got an idea.” He ducked down under the desk, and I could hear him rummaging around.

He reappeared holding some fabric. I wouldn’t call the fabric trunks or even shorts. If I didn’t know there were pools of water somewhere in the building, I would have thought he was holding a washcloth. There just wasn’t enough material there. He stretched it out for me to see a pair of trashy men’s underwear, the kind that guys who shape their eyebrows wear. The kind that guys who go to the tanning bed wear. This was a Speedo glorified with about an inch of leg.

Do you have anything else? I gestured. 

He was confused.

Do I have any other options?

He tapped his temple then held up his hands. He didn’t understand.

Why was this day trip to Hungary challenging everything I believe in like sticking by my friends and not renting bathing suits and a comprehensive boycott against Speedos?

Fine. Whatever. 

How much?

He was confused.

I took the change out of my pocket and slapped it on the counter.

He shrugged and took a medium-sized coin.

I attempted to say thank you, but the look on my face probably said otherwise.

I locked myself in my booth, undressed, and put on the thing.

It was very uncomfortable. It was grippy. I wanted it to get its hands off of me. I wanted to charge it with sexual harassment.

It was dark blue with some broad stripes.

I looked over my shoulder into the full length mirror. Yep. My butt crack was hanging out. 

I pulled up the back then looked down. Yep. Indecent in the front now.

If you’ve ever seen the Seinfeld episode where Kramer wants to borrow Jerry’s swimsuit, then you’ll understand what I mean when I say that my boys were definitely out of their neighborhood.”

I had just paid money to be 95% naked in eastern Europe in front of complete strangers without a partner in crime.  

 

Fine. Whatever. If was going to gird my loins with a garment belonging to a 9-year-old boy, then you bet your baloney I was going to do it with confidence and price. Behold, Spa Men and Spa Women! Michelangelo’s David in the flesh!

I took a deep breath and followed the signs to what I hoped was the pool. 

 

[To be continued...]

Boobs on the screen

I was showing my Freshmen one of my favorite movies—Dead Poets Society—as an introduction to our unit on creative writing.

During one of their meetings in the cave, one of the boys takes out a dirty magazine.

I’m standing at the back of the class, engrossed in the movie, and then—

Boobs on the screen.

Oh no.

Should’ve previewed the movie.

Since when did Dead Poets Society have boobs on the screen?

I race to the front of the room trying to block everyone’s view with my body. The boys have their eyes glued on the screen—they’ve never paid such good attention. The girls passed around nervous laughter. They all have the same look on their faces that says, “Hee hee…what’s happening? Is this okay? Hee Hee.”

No, all you sweet, innocent children. It’s not okay. Your teacher is an amateur. He wanted to get every conceivable mistake out of the way his first year, so that he could relax for the rest of his career.

Train ride to Budapest

If you missed the first part of this story—Käsekrainer—please read it now.

Hunter and I were about halfway through our train ride to Budapest. We were very pleased with ourselves for making our train just before it pulled out of the Westbahnhof, and we’d even managed to eat lunch along the way.

We’d made one previous day trip to Budapest with Holly and Rebecca. By the time we found Széchényi Spa in Városliget, the City Park, all the pools, thermal baths, and steam rooms were closed. The place was deserted except for a few elderly Hungarians and the person at the front desk who spoke no English. The four of us consoled ourselves with a lavish meal at the Vajdahunyad Castle’s restaurant. I have no clue what I ate, considering that one of the entrees was translated “piglets ripped in beer.” What the —?

This second time was going to be different. We’d taken an earlier train, and we’d run across the whole city if necessary.

The future was bright until we saw a man in uniform coming down the aisle, checking tickets along the way.

No sweat. I took out my Eurail pass and my passport. 

Hunter was scrambling. He was patting his pockets and upending his backpack. No Eurail. He’d left it in our hotel room.

When the man stopped in front of us, he had to pay €35 for his oversight.

After he bought the ticket, Hunter realized he’d forgotten something else.

His passport.

This is more serious than forgetting your driver’s license and receiving a citation from an overzealous cop. There we were, two young, white American college students, spoiled rotten, soaking up culture and sending the bill to our parents. We were across the border into an eastern European country, and Hunter had no official identification.

Sometimes, they checked passports, sometimes they didn’t. Maybe we’d get lucky.

Nope.

Pretty soon, a different man peered at the little booklets, stamping some, handing them all back with a thin smile.

He seemed to take forever to get to us. I handed him my passport. He looked at me, looked at it, stamped it, then gave it back.

Here we go.

Hunter handed the man his International Student Identification Card (ISIC). He started to explain that we were studying in Vienna, and he’d accidentally left his passport in the hotel room. Was that a problem?

The man spoke no English. He mumbled a few things in Hungarian then disappeared.

Hunter and I stared at each other. 

The man reappeared with the ticket checker. They had a conversation. They looked at us. They looked at my passport and Hunter’s card. They disappeared.

Right about this time, we stopped at a station out in the country.

Oh my Columbus and the Seven Seas, those men had guns.

They came in through our door. They grabbed Hunter by the arms and took his backpack. They had unreadable faces and hairy arms and guns on straps. I suddenly wished that I knew how to make a bomb out of a martini shaker and coconut oil. If only I’d paid closer attention to Steven Segal’s recipe in Under Seige 2!

The hairy men began to disembark Hunter. 

“Hey, do you want me to come with you?” I said, too shocked really to even consider the proper course of action.

He looked over his shoulder. “Naw, go have fun for the both of us.”

The doors closed, and the train lurched forward.

What just happened? Where was my best friend? Why was I still on the train? What kind of best friend watches strong, hairy men take away Hunter and just sits there?

I started to pray.

[To be continued...]

Living in Wake of a Miracle

Living in Wake of a Miracle

the impossible happened-
Rich Fields crooned,
Come on down!
As I rose on a tide of applause
and stepped into the aisle,
I caught a blast of air conditioning,
something prickling,
shrinking down there-
I was naked.
Sure, ratings would soar,
swelling Drew Carey’s feet
to fill Bob Barker’s shoes,
but my painfully pale body
all over the internet?-
I yanked up my lucky boxers
and threw on my socks, jeans,
and fluorescent orange t-shirt-
dressed and egaer to fill out
all necessary paperwork.

I awoke-I’d won nothing,
no fabulous array of swimwear,
no pontoon, no week in Fiji-
I would have settled for a blender.
I should have sprayed on a tan,
tattooed on my chest Barker’s face.
I could have been famous-
all those mornings-
sprawled in front of a tv awash
in candy colors, models
with permanent smiles,
shining cars somehow up
on stage-
sputtered out
at CBS studios in Los Angeles,
during a seven-hour wait-
pre-screened contestants
in a faded studio,
packed with desperate people.

Käsekrainer

While I was studying in Vienna with 29 other Lipscomb University students, I discovered the Käsekrainer—a sausage filled with piping hot cheese. When we broke for lunch between classes, we’d walk down to the permanent stand on the corner of Hanuschgang and Albertinaplatz and say, “Hallo, ich möchte einen Käsekrainer mit Brot und Senf, bitte.” “Hi, I’d like a cheese-filled sausage with bread and mustard, please.”

“Wien” is the German name for “Vienna.” Now you know why hotdogs are called “wieners.”

Eating these culinary delights takes strategy. We learned this the hard way, or at least one of us did. A couple of weeks into our semester, Hunter ordered a Käsekrainer for lunch. Their casings cook to a delicious crispiness. As his teeth chomped through, a stream of hot cheese shot out and hit Justin in the eye. He screamed in surprise and pain. The rest of us roared with laughter. Always point the sausage away from the crowd when taking a bite.

A month or so later, Hunter and I decided to take a day trip to Hungary once class got out. The train ride to Budapest was three hours long, so we needed to grab lunch before we got on the train. We had thirty minutes to get to the Westbahnhof and find food. Solution? Käsekrainer.

Something I’ll never forget: eating a cheese-filled sausage and running through the streets of Vienna with my best friend at the same time.

We made our train and settled in for three hours of indigestion.

[To be continued...]

red watery fu manchu

The summer after I graduated from high school, I went with the church youth group to a Navajo reservation in Tuba City, Arizona.  Our youth group happened to be staying in the same complex with another church group from California.  One kid named Joey asked if we had computers in Tennessee. We said, yes, and that we also rode mules to church and walked around barefoot.  The groups traded smart-aleck remarks abounded.  Who would have thought kids from California would be such morons? Stereotypes proliferated. 

Before long, one of their boys named Bart produced two pairs of boxing gloves.  

Maybe he wanted to provide some exercise, or maybe he wanted to settle our differences the old-fashioned way.  JP fought him first. He fared okay, so, even though I had no idea how to box, I let myself be talked into the next match. I gave myself a crash course in weight distribution. Make the fist as tight as possible. Avoid hooks, extend and hammer straight into the face. Strike with either the pointer and middle knuckles or from the middle to the pinky. Don’t glance off if you can help because that’s how the pinkies get broken.  I remembered I would be wearing gloves, and none of the techniques I had picked up from a friend of mine, who had earned a black belt in Judo, would apply.  I tried to remember what I had seen in movies.  I had a natural advantage as a left-hander. I tried to find something to stir up my bloodlust. I needed some adrenalin, some anger, and some luck.

We both came out swinging, a flurry of arms, gloves, and bodies that must have looked like the cartoon roadrunner’s legs when he escaped Wiley Coyote. I think my eyes were closed the entire time. My cousin Kristen elbowed me in the nose once playing tackle football, and it had never healed properly. After the first round with Bart, I could lick the metallic taste off my upper lip. I ignored it, and we proceeded to Round Two, fighting until my nose began to make a serious mess.  I reluctantly called the fight, though I hated to do it.  I looked like the loser even though I did not technically lose.  I went to the bathroom to clean up, and, in the mirror, I saw a red watery Fu Manchu from nostrils to chin with some sticky rouge on my cheeks.

I’ve been meaning to sign up for karate lessons.

my only even halfway real fight

Adam West was six inches taller than I. The actor who played Batman on television in the 1960s was also named Adam West, but all the jokes people made weren’t even funny the first time. Adam’s Q-tip head topped his gangly body. He was pigeon-toed and Catholic. He loved Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix.

I discovered later in high school that Adam has a good heart.

I have forgotten what he had said to make me so mad. I doubt that he delivered some terrible, many-horned insult but little jabs. Whatever his words were, something snapped inside of me. Acting before thinking and thinking nothing, I tried to punch him. 

I missed. I swung wide. How do you miss? 

I surprised myself as much as I surprised him. Neither one of us knew what to say. The bell rang soon after, and we walked back to the classroom in silence with our other friends. Half an hour later, we were painting pumpkins in Mrs. Jones portable, our hands speckled with tempera paint.

Adam came over to say that he was sorry. I also apologized, and we were friends again. It felt good.

That’s the only time I’ve ever swung at anyone in anger. I really wish I’d made contact. I probably won’t have another chance until I’m coaching my kid’s little league team and the ump makes a bad call.

Thanks, defective DNA!

Thanks to genes inherited from my mother’s side, I often get food caught in my throat. I have to eat slowly and chew consciously.

My mom and grandfather have the same problem. Eventually, a doctor will run a scope down my throat and ask me why I waited so long to get surgery. “Well, because I hate going to the doctor, I hate being sick, and I hate recuperating.”

I can feel food stick at the same place in my throat every time. A bottleneck of inflammation and scar tissue, narrowing of the esophagus—I’m sure my condition has a seven-syllable name and hefty price tag. 

Certain foods exacerbate the problem. After eating acidic foods like tomatoes and drinking acidic drinks like orange juice and coffee, I can feel my throat swell. I don’t know what set it off this morning, but I choked on my vitamins in the kitchen at work and had to run outside to barf them up in the grass. Granted, all that came up was water and pills, but still, so freaking embarrassing.

Me: “Hey, can I have a raise?”

Boss: “No. You vomit in front of our office. It’s not good for business.”

I’ve had this problem as long as I can remember. Pizza in Hunter’s rec room. I was near tears with panic before my bite finally slid down. Pork tenderloin in my parents’ kitchen. That time, I couldn’t breathe, and threw up in the sink. A few minutes later, I blew my nose, and chunks of pork came out. That’s something that should never happen to anyone. That’s when you know you’ve got a problem. Back when The Copper Kettle on Granny White Pike in Nashville was still the Green Hills Meat Market, I was eating beef stroganoff, and a piece got lodged in my throat. Had to throw that one up in Jonathan Stinson’s front yard. Seriously, Throat, it’s not funny anymore. No one’s laughing. In fact, everyone’s pretty grossed out: they have a hard time eating their lunches when I’m choking back up the water I just drank into my lap. Nothing better than choking and soaking the front of your pants with water-mucus at the same time! 

When I was teaching at David Lipscomb High School, I allowed whoever so desired to eat lunch in my room. The students were allowed to eat in the cafeteria or open classrooms like mine. For the most part, I enjoyed having them in there. Many of the regulars were in my fifth period class of juniors, so we got to know each other outside of the confines of Scottish ballads and dangling participles. 

My friend Justin Wright, a youth minister then and a fine photographer now, came by to eat lunch with me one day. I was eating leftovers from the Sunday lunch my grandmother cooked. She always sends home heaping plates of food with me. 

My choking mechanism always acts up when I try to eat and carry on a conversation at the same time. Sure enough, the roast beef traveled about halfway down then stopped. Have I mentioned that my eyes water and turn red and my nose starts running?

For Justin to see this didn’t bother me in the least. He’d seen it all before. My students were a different story. I was supposed to maintain a modicum of professionalism and composure. Sometimes, getting up and walking around helps my pathetic esophagus do its job, so I stood and made my way over to the trash can, just in case. That motion was enough for the beef to drop a few centimeters and cut off my air supply. Now it was the real deal. 

I turn around, and Justin looks up.

“Are you choking?” he asked and cupped both his hands to his neck, which is apparently the international sign for “A delicious piece of beef humiliated me in front of my 5th period.”

I nodded.

He ran over, put his arms around my middle, and fitted his fist into that cavity where my ribcage fits together. He pumped once. Nothing happened.

He caught my eye and said, “Harder?”

I nodded. 

He repeated the motion with more force.

The culprit shot from my mouth, ricocheted off the wall, and fell into the trash can.  

He dropped his arms, and I turned around. We looked at each other and shook our heads.

One of my students, maybe Houston, yelled from across the room, “We thought you were joking!”

I threw the rest of my lunch away.

I still need to get my throat checked out. But what would I write about?

Teaching Blunders #2: Rotisserie Chicken

In Republic, Plato penned a timeless aphorism describing human resourcefulness: Necessity is the mother of invention.

This is especially true of hungry 23-year-old single men. I am what Shane Claiborne, in his thought-provoking book entitled Irresistible Revolution, calls a “freegan.” I will eat anything that is free.

If you provide the food, they will come. Or, at least, I will. Church functions. Weddings. Seminars. Networking events. Roundtable discussions. You may have heard that the way to a man’s heart is through is stomach. This is only partly true. Plenty of women are lousy cooks. The food has to be appetizing. Glut us on fine victuals and sumptuous bebidos, and we get lethargic. Our thoughts get muddy as a spring creek. We really just want to bask in the sun and sleep off our engorged state. Blood migrating from our brains to our stomachs to aid in digestion—not the food itself—is responsible for a man’s willingness to make rash decisions and exercise poor judgment in the realm of matrimony and romance. If you remember Templeton the Rat from the cartoon movie Charlotte’s Web, then you have a good idea of what I’m talking about. 

We plan smorgasbords and we lose our senses. 

I was 23 years old, single, and teaching high school English and if you dangled the carrot in front of my nose, I’d agree to anything. When Bryan Solomon proposed that we roast three chickens in his electric rotisserie and spend 5th period celebrating Thanksgiving early, of course I agreed. 

Every man I know loves a hearty Thanksgiving repast, and having no kitchen in my classroom was no longer an obstacle.

Bryan got to school early the next day with all the ingredients. He stuffed a stick of butter and basil leaves inside of each chicken. He then rubbed salt and pepper into the skin. Oh sweet nectar of the gods!

My room filled with the perfume of roasted fowl.

I thought nothing of it. Why should I? It was, after all, my room. The first four classes of students wrinkled up their noses, but they got used to it by the end of class.

My mentor, Sharon Tracey, poked her head in the room just before fifth period.

She was furious.

Uh oh.

Why?, she wanted to know, was the hallway filled with smoke? Why did every classroom in our wing of Harding Hall smell like the Kroger deli?

Well, that was an easy one! Ms. Tracey. I told her that Bryan Solomon and I were roasting three chickens as a reward for good behavior in my fifth period class.

She didn’t smile. She said that the smell of roasted chicken was so small that students leaving the cafeteria downstairs were wondering what that smell was. Had she mentioned that the whole school was filling up with smoke?

[Boy, was this chicken going to be good!]

I asked her if she wanted any.

One side of her smile curled up in a smile of sorts. Ha! I had her! There would be no repercussions. 

She declined. She said that if I got it in my head to cook for my students in the future, would I please do it outside?

“Oh, absolutely!” I was adamant. “I had no idea this was going to happen. I just wanted to thank my students for being so well-behaved.”

She shook her head, finally grinned in earnest, and shut the door.

Ms. Tracey was the finest teacher I had in high school. I had her two years for Latin and two years for English. She is the reason I fell in love with writing. I owed her a wing at least.

Note to self: Rosemary would have been a nice touch.

Secrets for entrepreneurs

The secret to entrepreneurial success is simple:

Look for gaps in different industries and sectors of the business world. Think of possible solutions—the means by which you can fill these gaps. Snoop around and see if anybody else has noticed the same gap. Research these competitors and then offer a solution with superior performance, a lower price, or a better value.

Always keep in mind, price and value are two different animals.

I discovered this foundational business practices in elementary school, but every time I started a new business, my mom would shut it down. 

Let me share two examples.

Even in our current era of fiber optics and high-speed internet, iPhones and social media, people are still more likely to read a book recommended by a friend. People talking about the hottest new book creates a buzz, and the buzz spreads like a virus by word of mouth. Second graders are no different. Johnny reads a new book by Judy Blume or Roald Dahl or Maurice Sendak, and he tells Beatrice about it. She reads it and tells Mary. Before you know it, Johnny has started an underground movement. The very foundation of the library at W.P. Scales would quake as spoiled children rushed into the library clamoring, “I want it now!”

I was an enterprising youth, and I quickly made two very important realizations: 1) the librarian would let you check out a book more than once without returning it and 2) she would tell you who had the most popular books checked out.

“Why were these insights important?” you ask.

Once I knew the current keeper of the latest Buzz Book (BB), I could use my formidable powers of persuasion to talk him or her into letting me have it next. I was such a nice guy that I would even save these little lambs the trouble of taking the BBs back to the library. I would do it for them! then check it out in my own name.

Now, here’s the crux. Pay very close attention. When the other children asked about the BB, who had it? Yours truly. I’d check it out for weeks at a time. Who knows how I explained myself: “I’m a slow reader.” [Not true.] “My mother died.” [Not true.] “I’m astonished by Potter’s complex layering of metaphorical language and Peter Rabbit’s religious and socio-political nuances that she uses to challenge Gnostic heresy.” [I'm not even sure what that means.]

What matters is that I persuaded my peers and colleagues to pay me dimes and quarters—depending on demand and inflation—to rent the library books from me for a day or two. My piggy bank was filling up fast.

I’d barely even put the finishing touches on my system for keeping track of who had which book and for how long when my mom discovered my newfound wealth and snuffed out my startup. She thought it was unfair to the other kids. Nonsense. Why should I be penalized for capitalizing on their sluggishness? Early bird gets the worm. Fast talker gets the good books. 

I nursed my wounds in secret, and cooked up another scheme. You can’t keep me down for long.

When I saw a new opportunity, I pounced.

Origami was all the rage at school. I knew how to make a throwing star, and no one else did. I charged a premium for this expertise. The acoustic tiling in the classrooms rained money. I’d stockpiled $21 in an old pencil box before my mom found me out again. Sweet Child of Thor! Why couldn’t she just let me do my thing? I was racketeering my way to Fun-Dip and baseball card paradise, and all she could think about was unselfishness and friendship and sharing. Lame-O.

I work for a marketing, branding, and advertising firm now. I’ve joined Entrepreneurs of Knoxville. I’m like a predator hiding in the tall grass. I will make piles of filthy lucre, and you know what I’ll do with it?

Buy some candy, pay off my parents’ mortgage, and find creative ways to give away the rest. My mom was is one of the least selfish people you’ll ever meet. She loves to give. Giving is one of her passions. One of my passions is making her cry with happiness. That’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to make my mama cry. I’m going to make her proud.

Sorry that just got so sentimental, but seriously, go make your mama proud. Start a smart business and change people’s lives. Be unselfish and share what you earn.

That is all.

George Costanza lectures pigeons on foreign policy

George Costanza lectures pigeons on foreign policy

We had a deal:

you deface our monuments,

foul up our finest statues, okay,

we look the other way.

But, when we walk through Central park,

you skidaddle.

Never defecate on us.

Show some respect.

Don’t forget what happened

to your cousins, Passenger pigeons:

we posed with shotguns

beside mountains of them, millions.

We have pictures to prove it.

We ate like kings.

What I mean is

we have the means.

So, when I’m taking a nice stroll,

get out of the way

because I’m about to unleash.

I’ll bake you into an effin pie.

Temper temper

Teaching teaches you about yourself.

I required that all my students turn off their cell phones while in my class. I wasn’t a stickler on shirt tails and tardies. Shoot, I threw a plastic spoon at Carmen, a freshman girl, and hit her between the eyes. I’d asked her to stop talking several times. Despite my own flagrant disregard for decorum, I didn’t think my phone rule was too much to ask. If a student’s phone went off during class, I confiscated it, and the perpetrator had to wait until after school to get it back.

You can imagine how my jaw dropped when during the Anglo-Saxon literature unit test, one of my juniors, Tyne Brewer, raised his hand and said, “Mr. Church, I’m getting a call and it’s a long distance number that I don’t recognize and I’d like to take it.”

Five minutes later, after I finished sharing several “thoughts” with Tyne and the rest of my 5th period class, all the color had drained from his face and I had gained valuable insight into Mr. Austin L. Church, High School English Teacher:

I had a temper.

Some people spend years and thousands of dollars on therapists to learn such things.

I, however, got paid to discover these manifestations of my immaturity. Genius.

Teaching Blunders #1: Faux cocaine

I would like to share some advice on actions to avoid if you ever find yourself teaching English at a private Christian high school.

It’s 7th period. This is your fourth class of juniors. You’ve already taught this lesson plan three times, meaning that it is stale and you’ve refined it to the point that you always finish too soon. Letting your class go early attracts attention and makes you look like a slouch. You’d love to go to Portland Brew, order an Americano, and read a children’s book. You need to forget that you’ve been finding coarse, white hairs mixed in with the brown. Will the bags underneath your eyes ever go away?

You are tired. You’ve had a long day playing both babysitter and Mr. Keating from Dead Poets Society. Your judgment is skewed.

John Hillin walks through the door. He’s the first student in the room. His older brother was a year ahead of you in school. His older sister was two years behind you. You had two art classes with her. Your parents and his parents went to college together. Your families attended Harpeth Hills Church of Christ together for years. John reminds you a little bit of yourself as a junior. You like him. He’s confident and funny. He’s never disrespectful. You’ll be friends after you don’t teach here anymore. He could be a better student than he is, but you don’t blame him. You have your bachelor’s in English and still find it difficult to stay interested in the curriculum. You wish you could just teach creative writing workshops and spiritual formation.

Oh, you’ve drifted off into a reverie. John is saying something to you:

“Mr. Church, have you ever snorted pixie stick dust?“

“No. Have you?”

“I just did it for the first time a few minutes ago.”

[You're intrigued. Curiosity is your Achilles' heel.]

“Well, what’d it feel like?”

“I don’t know, it just felt funny. It tickled. Wanna try it?”

[This is the first interesting thing someone has said to you all day. You stand up straighter. You feel a new resolve. Just as you're losing faith in humanity, someone presents you with an opportunity to live life outside of a starched shirt and Brooks Brothers tie.]

“Absolutely.”

John pours a line of blue powder on the desk you inherited from the last English teacher, Mrs. Wyatt, bless her soul. Her students probably didn’t invite her into these kinds of experiences.

You press the pointer finger of your left hand into your left nostril, creating a seal. You lean over the desk and snort the dust. It tingles. A butterfly has just flown up your nose. You enjoy an inner calm typically absent this time of day. You are happy.

Other students drift into class. The bell rings. Other students are drawn into the excitement. They take lines of red, blue, purple, and green powder off your desk. Peace and goodwill abound.

The next time you look at the clock, you realize you have spent the first fifteen minutes of class encouraging your student to mimic the nasal absorption of illicit drugs.

You make an announcement to the class:  “It would probably be better if you didn’t tell your parents what happened here today.”

You know they’ll honor your request because keeping things from their parents is what they do best. Everybody loves being invited into a conspiracy. 

You teach the next section of Beowulf or Macbeth or Frankenstein or The Hound of the Baskervilles or whatever it is you’ve been doing. You find solace in knowing that this will one day be a distant memory.

***

I recommend snorting pixie stick dust. I also recommend practicing self-control until you are in the privacy of your home. 

Please learn from my lapse in judgment.

Moral: Crack kills.

“Excuse me, Sir!”

My mom is given to verbal blunders.

At dinner one night, she was describing an encounter she’d had that day at the grocery store. She’d drop a friend off to run inside then parked. She was waiting inside her blue Suburban. The windows were down.

A man pulled into the parking space to her left, opened his car door into her passenger side, shut the door, then walked inside the grocery.

My mom was stunned: he must have noticed the contact with her car, but he pretended as if nothing had happened.

Pretty soon, he reappeared, carrying a bag. He unlocked his car, struck my mom’s Suburban again as he opened the door, and bend down to get inside. 

My mother couldn’t stand it.

She leaned across the center console and said, “Excuse me, sir! Do you realize you’ve banged me twice?!!”

Still incensed when she shared the story, she failed to pick up on the humor until after we were wiping tears from our eyes.

Classic.

Prophecy

One day, just before the bell rang, my 8th grade English teacher asked me to stay after class. A murmur ran through the class: “Oooh….” Of course, everyone was wondering what had happened, what I had done.

In those two or three anxious minutes, I ran over every conceivable way I might have sinned against God or man in the past week. 

My classmates filtered out of the door. I took a deep breath and packed up my books. Here we go.

She met me at the door, put a hand on one of my shoulders, and said, “Austin, I’m glad you have a good heart because with the mind that you have, you could do some terrible things.”

Why would you ever tell an eighth grade boy that?

“Austin, you have the makings of an supervillain. Ever heard of Lex Luthor? Well, he’s got nothing on you. Congratulations on your epic depravity. By the way, you need a costume, either black leather or custom-tailored three-piece suits.”

How do you respond when someone says something like that?

“Thanks. I’m glad too. I don’t want to be evil, I want to be good!”

This came from the woman who often lost our tests. The woman who, when we read Flowers for Algernon, also entitled Charlie, brought Rorschach inkblot cards to class and asked different people in class what they say: a butterfly, a boy riding a horse, a four-leaf clover. She saved the best for last, polling the audience again. Somebody saw two fairies clapping hands. After a pregnant pause, she conferred this wisdom on us: “If you saw a vagina, you may have been sexually molested as a child.”

Wow. That’s the first time I’ve heard a grown woman say the word vagina.

The word introduced a palpable tension to the room. We all looked around at each other, trying to act cool and nonchalant while trying to pinpoint the people who looked ill-at-ease. All of us probably looked like the opossum in the garbage can with light in his eyes—feeling exposed but not sure what we’d done wrong.

This was the same woman who claimed to have an incisive gaze into my soul.

Sure. Next stop…world domination. Look out, Voldemort, there’s a new kid in town. He wears plaid Abercrombie & Fitch shirts and he writes poetry in private and he gets bad sunburns.

Boo! I just killed a planet in another galaxy. But now I want to play ping-pong and then maybe go to the basketball game tonight. Do you think Lauren’s cute?

This from a pubescent boy!

8th grade is an awkward year.

You are still part child, but you are also adolescent—seething with hormones, self-conscious, wanting to be noticed but not wanting to stick out in any way. 

I was burnishing my new shield—sarcasm. Buttressing my vulnerability with venomous humor became second nature. Take a swipe at me, and I’ll make you feel really, really bad about yourself.

I had a reputation for making girls cry. I don’t remember much of my meanness, only what these girls told me later in high school, once they had forgiven me and we were friends. One girl, Rachel, told me that she spent an extra half hour every morning straightening her hair because she was afraid I would make fun of her if she wore it to school curly.

Underneath this defense of mechanism of verbal parry and thrust, I was a sensitive person, adapting to an ugly environment, an experiment in social Darwinism at a Christian middle school. Perhaps I’m being overdramatic. Perhaps I was simple after all: better to make the other boys in my unstable confederacy of friends laugh at someone else’s stupid question in class or weight problem than absorb any more of their cruelty. When in Rome…

I regretted what I became. I know because I wrote a poem called “Reflections.” Of course, no one knew I wrote anything outside of class, especially poetry, and this was very uncool, I knew. Writing songs and playing guitar like Jimi Hendrix or Led Zeppelin was one thing, but writing poems would be perceived as nothing but “gay.”

I wrote in secret, and “Reflections” was a meditation on the devastation caused by unkind words. I thought of one boy in particular. He was always on the fringes of the popular crowd. He wanted in, but his social awkwardness and eagerness to please made him an easy target. Two of the popular boys gathered the rest of the chosen together and told the group that we were to tell the pariah that boys got their periods too. If he asked us if we’d “shot our dot,” then we were to say yes. A well-orchestrated charade in which we all played our parts, further wounding and degrading a classmate who wanted our acceptance and friendship. I participated with all the rest, and was ashamed of perpetuating the lie.

I was, after all, sensitive, and just a few years before, I had been the victim of tag-team bouts of public humiliation.

I wrote my poem for him, a confession to God and a plea for forgiveness.

When our 8th grade English teacher began soliciting submissions to the writing anthology, I gave her my poem.

In the words of the saint from Indiana Jones and the Holy Grail, I “chose poorly.” I couldn’t just be like the other kids and turn in a piece about our trip to Washington or my grandparents or the neologism that she made us define.

Oh no, I had to turn in something original.

Mrs. Piper liked my poem so much that she used “Reflections” as the name of the whole anthology. My poem became the front cover complete with an illustration by David Lavender. 

What this meant is that when a copy of the anthology went home with every one of my classmates, their parents would at least read my poem.

No longer did the Hastys or the Wests or the Howells simply say, “Hello,” and show me up to the playroom where the rest of the kids were hanging out.

No, they now regarded with a mixture of admiration and concern. I had, after all, written a thoughtful piece about the consequences of sarcasm and this from a pubescent boy! On the other hand, maybe I was depressed, and would grab a knife from the block on the countertop, slash my wrists, and bleed all over the kitchen floor.

I stigmatized myself by sharing that poem. Parents and classmates alike treated me as the oddball who had “deep thoughts” and wore my heart on my sleeve. 

I learned to keep my writing to myself unless I was writing a humor column for the school newspaper or research papers for English classes. 

I nurtured this contemplative side and resigned myself to never belonging, never being able to share all of myself with the people around me.

Of course, I believed a lie. People want and need that vulnerability from others. 

Humor has, at its heart, deep sadness. Many comedians are people with deep pools of pain.

Laughter transforms the brokenness of our lives into hope.

Banana Fo Fana

My parents were baffled.

Aside from being headstrong and unresponsive to discipline, they said that I was a sweet kid. For the most part, I did what I was told. More often than not, my irrepressible boyishness made them laugh, most of the time in disbelief. For example, I taught myself how to tie my shoes when I was three years old. My grandfather gave me Luna moth cocoon, and even though my parents said it was empty, I knew better. There was no hole in it! Moths have to chew their way out. So, I put it in a shoebox, and sure enough, a large powdery green moth with fuzzy antennae and tails on its wings hatched a week or two later. I trapped my sisters in their rooms by tying doors together across the hall. I built treehouses. I ordered the largest knife I’d ever seen from an ad in Boy’s Life. The pommel, which had a compass in it, unscrewed from handle. Inside was a survival kit including matches, fish hooks, fishing line, and a whistle. I tore up my face sledding off a three-foot high culvert a week before school pictures. What could they do but laugh?

One night, they got a call from my 1st grade teacher, Mrs. Bunny Ward. I’d been saying some naughty words at school.

Neither one of my parents has ever used profanity, except when repeating a story and only then with their voices lowered and no small discomfort. They wondered where on earth I’d learned the words that Mrs. Ward herself refused to say. She must have spelled them. I can’t imagine my 1st teacher saying, “Austin dropped the f-bomb in class today.”

They sat me down and asked me about it.

Of course, I had no idea what those words meant. I was just rhyming.

What?

Lightbulb.

I told my parents that I was just plugging words into the Banana Fo Fana rhyme. For example, who knew that what came out when I used the name Mitch, a boy in my class, offended some people. I was big into cartoons at the time and had no clue that silly, innocuous Donald Duck, when riding aboard the ship Fo Fana, could become the mother of all cusswords. We always knew he had it in him.

“Duck duck bo buck banana fana fo—[_ _ _ _]—me my mo much…Duck.”

My parents were relieved that I didn’t know what I was saying. They probably told me that if I needed to rhyme at school, I should do so in my head.

Apparently, somewhere in between building a block tower, learning to read, and nap time, I was cussing out the other kids without even knowing it.

I was destined for greatness.

Sweet, sweet Cheerwine

I got made fun of a lot in middle school, especially in 6th and 7th grade.

Even though I made good grades, I hated school for this reason. After one particularly rotten day of getting shredded by my “friends,” my mom could tell something was wrong. She always picked me up. Once I climbed into our Dodge Caravan and slid the side door shut, all she had to do was ask a question, “Are you okay?” and I burst into tears. I blubbered, “They—[breath]—made—[breath]—fun of me today.” I kept it pent up all day because I refused to cry at school. Only happened once: a single tear when I knocked heads with another kid so hard that I got a concussion.  

What got it all started was a lame duck comeback I made to a kid named Adam. Our altercation started on the basketball court during recess. I was an average player at best, but that gave Adam no right to be a ball hog. I gave him a piece of my mind about it. We were still bickering in front of Harding Hall after school. I’m sure we threw around lots of You’re a retards and You’re a queers.

My main problem was the complexity of my retorts.

Big Mountain’s cover of Peter Frampton’s “Baby, I love your way” was playing on the radio at the time, and I thought I’d use that as a springboard for the definitive insult of the day. Not a good idea. First of all, my insult required that I sing part of the song and change some of the lyrics. Here’s a piece of advice: never sing an insult. Here’s another piece of advice: if you have to explain your insult to the person you are insulting, then you’ve already lost the argument. Go ahead and just walk away.

News of my lame riposte spread. Before long, the whole grade knew. I was an easy choice for the position of whipping boy and scapegoat. Each day at lunch, Adam or Jay, the ringleaders, would choose the victim. Cory, Mark, or, on most days, me.

I took this abuse for months. 

Then, one day I bought a large drink from the cafeteria. I filled my paper cup with Cheerwine and had every intention of drinking it.

I chose a seat at our eight-person roundtable, fully prepared for another forty-five minutes of abuse.

Jay sat his tray down at the seat next to me. He pulled out the chair and stepped in front of it.

Without thinking, I did it, I sank to their level, I played dirty. 

As he bent his knees to sit, I emptied my full glass of Cheerwine into his seat. I didn’t think about it. I didn’t consider the consequences. My mind was on mute, and my body made an instantaneous tactile decision.

One. Two. 

His eyes opened wide as if to say, “Something’s wrong.”

I concentrated on my food.

His chair screeched on the floor as he pushed himself back from the table. Liquid sloshed and splashed on the floor.

I looked up in time to see him pull his jeans around to investigate the source of his confusion.

His bottom was tinged with red and dripping. He looked at his soaked pants, then looked up and scanned our faces. His face contracted.

Then, the most amazing thing happened: he burst into tears. This tough guy who made fun of me every day, who made my life miserable started crying in front of the whole cafeteria. I hadn’t even done that.

I felt bad. I had humiliated him. Even though I was no more a coward than he was, I’d become what I hated. I resolved that no matter what I wouldn’t use guerilla warfare anymore. 

Everything was different from that day forward. 

I soon learned to package my intelligence in sarcasm and direct that at anyone who rubbed me the wrong way.

I’m still trying to get rid of the bad habits I picked up in middle school. We were all just trying to survive.

Cheerwine helped me topple the biggest bully at school. Who would have thought.

A use for a time machine

I don’t have many regrets. Even my mistakes have shaped me into the person I am. You could tell your grandmother about the few skeletons in my closet and she’d probably laugh and tell you a few saucy stories about your grandfather.

However, if you offered to lend me your time machine for a few hours, I’d go back to 7th grade at David Lipscomb Middle School. I’d page myself over the intercom. I catch myself leaving Mrs. Yates’s study hall during 7th period, and I’d put a hand on my shoulder and say, “The bell will ring at 3pm. School will be out. You will wait until the rest of your classmates leave the room then you will walk over to your girlfriend. You will break up with her….”

At this point I’d slap myself across the face just to make sure myself was listening.

Now that I had my attention, I’d continue giving myself advice: “You will be tempted to say to your girlfriend, ‘You’re dumped,’ then walk away, simple as that, no formalities, no apologies, and no decency. At least be kind and find a way to be honest without causing her unnecessary pain. You owe her more than that.”

The problem is, you have never offered to loan me your time machine. You own no time machine. That one stays on my record. Thanks for nothing.

Pure genius

My genius as a child consisted not only of my proclivity for revolutionary ideas but also of my knack for identifying and nurturing the brilliant ideas of others.

When Will Burton came over to play and suggested that we throw all of my younger sister’s dolls into the Little Harpeth River, I knew he was onto something and put his idea into action immediately. We gathered up Laura’s dolls and tossed them into the creek one by one. They sank to the bottom. Ours was a shallow and slow-moving creek.

Satisfied that our work was done, we went back inside and were apprehended within seconds by my mom. She marched us right back outside and down to the creek where we waded in and retrieved the soaked and muddy dolls.

My sister wept, I got a spanking, and Will was sent home. He also received a spanking.

Sometimes, innovation comes at a cost—a Madame Alexander doll with soiled britches.

Squirrel Crepe

I never swerve to hit animals. They run out in front of me.

On my way to have breakfast with friends before school, I tagged a doe. I’d even slowed down when two other deer ran across the road. I looked both ways and let my foot off the brake, then wham! She came from the thick brush on the right just after the bend at the Inns of Granny White. She flew straight up in the air and landed in a pile in the middle of the road. Popping up as though nothing had happened, she ran down the embankment to my left and disappeared through the trees.

Excuse me? Did that just happen?

Squirrels are insane. IN-sane.

They run across the street then turn at look at you. They hunker down then fake-out—fake-out—fake-out—they shift back and forth, unable to choose an escape route. Ba-boomp: Squirrel Crepe. Why are they so indecisive? I’m in my car screaming, “Move, you idiot! I’m in a Honda Accord. You’ve got no chance of survival!” They just feint this way and that then bite the big one. What a waste. Even when I’ve swerved to one side, they run straight into my tires!

Gosh, I mean, what else can I do? These rodents have a death wish, and they’ll give it up about as soon as they’d draw you a map to the nut stockpile. I don’t understand it. The squirrel in Bambi seemed happy enough. All the squirrels in Nashville have father wounds.

I’m coming home from David Lipscomb High School one afternoon. It’s early October. A squirrel darts out into the road, and I think, “Here we go again, you freaks!” Sure enough, Squirrel Crepe.

But this unfortunate rodent wasn’t destined for the potter’s field. No, no. Wham! One of the better brainstorms of my career struck me.

I finished the drive home where I pulled together the necessary materials.

I went back, scooped the squirrel up, mummified him in plastic wrap, and put him in a shoe box. Next, I wrapped the shoebox like a birthday present. Next, I wrote a card and addressed it to Elizabeth.

My older sister’s birthday was a few days later, and I’d overheard my dad saying he was planning to drop off a card at Lipscomb University, which is fifteen minutes from my parents’ house, and send it to her through campus mail. If he was taking the card anyway, why couldn’t he deliver her special birthday surprise? Everybody love Squirrel Crepe!

Once my birthday present was finished, I found my dad and explained: “Hey Dad, I got Elizabeth an early birthday present. Do you mind dropping it off with the card?”

He agreed and commended me for my generosity and thoughtfulness.

On the following day, with my father acting as the courier, a squirrel run over by a car was sent through Lipscomb’s campus mail system. I think that has to be a first, but I hope it’s not a last. To send something through campus mail, you drop it off at the desk where a student receiving minimum wage takes it. The student fills out a card and puts it in the recipient’s mailbox.

As I found out later, Elizabeth checked her mailbox, and Happy Day! a card and package voucher were waiting for her. She claimed her prize and took it up to her room in Elam dorm. She read my card, thought, “Bud, how sweet!” and tore off the paper. She didn’t stop there. She saw brown through the plastic and thought, “Mmm, brownies…” and unwrapped the tasty treat.

Oopsy! Squirrel Crepe instead.

She screamed. Turns out, not everyone love Squirrel Crepe. In fact, I don’t know a single person who loves Squirrel Crepe.

What was I thinking?

Long story short, Elizabeth fetched our cousin Jenny who carried the crepe by the tail to the science building and threw it in a trash can.

Moral of the story: Recycle.

Bunnies and Puppies and Parents, Oh My!

My younger sister had all the pets that I didn’t want.

She had a guinea pig named Molly who she dressed up in doll clothes and pushed around in a stroller. If you’ve ever seen Dumb and Dumber with Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels, you’ve heard what you thought was the most annoying sound in the world. Lloyd Christmas demonstrates for a hitchhiker trying to kill them on their trip out to Aspen.

I assure you that guinea pigs are even more annoying. Not at first, mind you. At first, they’re a novelty. Then, you realize that the only noise they can make is a shrill, rusty Weeeee-weeee-weeee.

Laura once left Molly dressed in her Sunday best and strapped in the stroller all night. My dad lectured her about responsibility and taking good care of animals. He’s the most responsible person I know.

Laura also had rabbits. The first rabbit, Gus, a very sweet little guy with mostly white fur, died within a few days. He brought an illness with him.

Charlie, who was brown, and Sam, who was black, came next. They brought diversity to our family.

They survived long enough that my dad located a rabbit hutch made from 2×4s and chicken wire. He put it in the backyard under the locust tree. He moved it once a month because the rabbit droppings killed the grass. We always had one or two yellow squares of dead grass in our backyard.

This was a small price to pay because Laura seemed to really enjoy the rabbits.

That is, until the incident.

I could charge the story with drama, but I’ll get to the point: a neighborhood dog jumped our fence, ripped open the cage with his teeth, and ate Charlie. Simple as that.

Laura was, of course, angry and horrified.

My parents located the owners of the dog, an older couple. They agreed to pay for a new rabbit.

Laura didn’t want a new rabbit, she wanted Charlie back. My parents were in a bind.

Our Shih-Tzu Button came to the rescue. He escaped from the fence, found the older couple’s grandson, and bit him. No joke. What are the odds? Button had never bitten anyone in his life. Button never left the yard. In fact, he wore a trail on the inside of the fence because he always wanted to watch what was going on in the outside world.

Our next door neighbors had twin little girls, and even though Button’s rabies test came back negative, my parents decided to put him to sleep. I know that boy he bit must have been antagonizing him somehow, throwing sticks or rocks, calling him a piece of Shih.

So the Church family was minus one brown bunny and one black and white puppy.

We now had one big, black rabbit who would claw the blood out of you.

My parents’ solution?

Release Sam into the wild.

Good call, Mom and Dad: teach your kids a lesson about laws of nature and how the food chain works by placing a well-fed domesticated animal at the edge of the woods on our cousins’ property in Green Hills.

***

“Excuse me, Mr. Doglike Creature. What are you?”

“A coyote.”

“Well, nice to meet you, Mr. Coyote. Can you please tell me when they serve dinner here?”

“Right now.”

Suicidal newts

I love amphibians.

Talk about versatility: they can live in water or on land. Although I wouldn’t normally endorse Kevin Costner movies—excluding Dances with Wolves and Field of Dreams—I should confess that Waterworld is a guilty pleasure of mine, along with every other bad action movie produced since the mid-1980s—excluding Eragon and Troy with Brad Pitt and Orlando Bloom. Costner’s character, known as “Mariner,” has gills behind his ears. He can breathe underwater. We presume that some cataclysmic natural disaster has melted the ice caps and flooded the whole earth, but Mariner can swim to the now submerged cities and bring back the world’s most valuable commodity: dirt.

That’s pretty sweet, you have to admit.

However, long before the movie premiered in 1995, I was nurturing my obsession with frogs. Catching one in the creek behind our house fueled my little tank of boyish joy for weeks. I remember running home with my prize, bursting through the backdoor, and racing around the house until I found my mom.

“Mom! Look–what–I–have.”

I would open my hands. “I caught a frog.”

“I see,” she would say. “That’s great, bud! Where did you find him?” She was always so good about mustering enthusiasm.

“Well, I was fishing behind Mrs. Culp’s house, and I got my lure tangled in a tree, so when I waded out to get it, I saw…” and my lengthy explanations continued from there.

I created a trap for the frogs that sat on the edge of a tiny pond draining into the creek. A trashbag with a string tied to the end closest to the pond ran a good distance away to a tree. The plan was to sneak up behind the tree, and if a frog was sitting on the trashbag camouflaged with mud and grass, then I would jerk the string, causing one side of the bag to flip over the frog. I was bummed every time I creeped up army-style, elbows and knees, to discover that all the frogs were safe in the scummy water. All I wanted to do was catch them. There was no need for them to be rude.

I begged my mom and dad for a small aquarium, and they acquiesced. My mom took me to an exotic pet store on Nolensville Road to look at all the rare creatures. I decided on a pinkish albino frog. Maybe he reminded me of myself. If I held him on his back, I could see his purple veins and his pea-sized heart making his translucent chest jump.

Frogs don’t shed. They don’t stink. They have short life spans and thus are useful for teaching little boys about mortality. They are good listeners and never argue. They make eye contact. They never bite.

Frogs are ideal pets.

Newts, on the other hand, are problematic.

I transitioned to Fire-Bellied Newts after the frog died. They seemed pretty cool at first with flames running down their stomachs and their sinuous ways. They were the vintage muscle cars of the amphibian world. Sometimes, you can’t judge the cuckoos by looks alone.

They have an inferiority complex because they only cost $2 apiece at Pass Pets in Cool Springs Mall.

Oh, I was excited at first, taking the knotted plastic bag from the clerk, my mother beaming down at me, my slippery friend suspended in aqueous animation. Everything seemed perfect.

Up to my room went the fire-bellied newt. Into his new home—a plastic bowl complete with two plastic beaches, a plastic palm tree, and a red plastic bridge, suitable for romantic evenings for two or contemplative evenings for one.

Newt paradise.

A week passed, the newt disappeared.

First question: Do cats eat newts?

All you can do is say, “Bad kitty!” and take another trip to the mall.

I got two newts this time. Why not?

They seemed content in Newt Paradise, just chilling all day on the beach, catching some incandescent rays.

We made sure Bubba the Cat stayed away.

A few days and one went missing.

Total newts purchased: 3. Newts accounted for: 1. Newt #3 went AWOL soon after. What was happening?

I found one dried and shriveled into black jerky underneath my bed, another behind my bookcase, and the third, the hardiest of the bunch, all the way across my room between a pair of shoes in my closet. I gave them everything, but all they could think with their limited educational opportunities and delusions of grandeur was “Give me liberty or give me death.” Pathetic.

Booger Box

Boys are disgusting.

I was one of them. I can attest.

1) A Masochistic Preoccupation with Bad Smells

My best friend Hunter broke his hand playing basketball in the gym at Brentwood Hills Church of Christ. He was always pulling back the edge of his cast trying to get me to smell it. He would smell it and wrinkle up his nose, “Whew, that reeks. Smell it.” When I declined, he would use the smell he’d offered me to take another whiff. 

2) Morbidity

After Hunter’s parakeet Ricky Bob died, his dad picked a spot in their backyard overlooking the Little Harpeth River and buried him in a shoebox. Hunter and I dug up the shoebox at regular intervals to get grossed out by Ricky Bob’s progressive decay. A couple of weeks passed, and he looked like a dog had used him for chewing gum. A month after the fateful day, his brittle white ribs were showing through his feather jacket.

3) Bodily Functions

This one goes without saying. A juicy fart is the apex of humor for boys, ages eighteen and under. On our eighth grade trip to Washington, D.C., we succeeded in lighting a fart. Aside from the smell of burning hair, it was adolescent hand-eye coordination at its best. The flame was electric blue. 

A righteous belch—IBC Root Beer out of the bottle is particularly helpful—comes a close second. If you’ve ever watched The Simpsons, you know Barney, Homer’s alcoholic friend. You also know that belches can provide pivotal plot transitions and are punctuation unto themselves. I’ve heard belches that ripped the fabric of space-time in undiscovered universes. All that you can do is say, “Amen,” as you bow your head.

4) Urination

We would climb out onto Jonathan’s roof from his bedroom window for the sole purpose of peeing from two stories up. Now, repeat this exercise in the most unusual places you can find. Compile a mental list to share with friends.

5) Boogers 

I never ate my boogers, but I always imagined that they tasted like seawater. As far as I know, Hunter never tasted his boogers either. He kept them. He had reserved a tin candy container for that purpose. Our name for it? The Booger Box.

It disappeared for several months, and momentous was the day it reappeared while we were rummaging through the closet up in Hunter’s rec room. Hunter opened up the Booger Box, and what we saw was confusing at first. All the boogers had grown fur. Yep, each one of the now indistinct boogers was now wearing a fleece jacket. 

All this seemed normal to us at the time, but I’m happy to announce that ours was the only Booger Box ever known to man. We were making history, first-man-on-the-moon caliber stuff, and we never even stopped to savor the moment.

Please be nice to Mary

Be careful about making accusations in front of a third grade girl.

Ms. Holloway was my third grade teacher. Will Burton swore he saw a pint bottle of Jack Daniels in her desk drawer. Although he may have been making it up to have a good story to tell, alcohol abuse would explain why we learned nothing in her class. Let’s see, I remember planting Impatients outside near the playground. I organized stacks of National Geographics from the 60s and 70s. Apparently, I had earned these “privileges.”

I remember playing Number Munchers on the Tandy computers in the classroom even after Ms. Holloway started teaching. My best friend Hunter and I were finally back in the same homeroom, and we both had to go to the principal’s office after making a disparaging remark about Chris, the new kid. He and Ryan Schmidt got into a wrestling fight on the kickball field, and even though Ryan ate his boogers and had hands so dry that his skin cracked and bled, we were rooting for him. At one point Ryan seemed to have the upper hand, and to encourage him further, we yelled at Chris, “Yeah, take that fat boy!”

Well, Chris passed on our little moniker to the principal. We were summoned, and in an effort to illustrate the gravity of the situation, she asked how we would like to be called “String Bean.” I, for one, could have cared less if someone called me a “String Bean.” This insult lacked that special zing important to verbal warfare at W.P. Scales Elementary. Hunter and I laughed all the way back to class. In retrospect, I don’t think we were very nice children.

At the Christmas party put on by the room mother, my nose bled into a bowl of M&Ms while I was filling my plate with food. When I got back from the bathroom, the bowl was in the same place, but all the candy was gone. For years, I believed that all my classmates filled their unsuspecting bellies with my blood.

Who knows. Maybe the room mother saw everything and threw out the M&Ms.

Ms. Holloway needed all the help she could get. She asked me to be in charge of the computers. I was home sick one day, and my mom got a call. Who was it? Ms. Holloway asking if my mom would bring me in for just a few minutes because she didn’t know how to turn on the computers and she needed them for class that day.

She would disappear from class for inexplicable reasons and would sometimes ask me to read the answers to the previous night’s math homework. I would sit on the front of her desk and swing my legs while I ran a finger down the page of her teacher’s edition.

One day, I left class to go to the bathroom. When I got back, I noticed that a boy on the opposite of the room from me was using my pencil. Why would he take it?

I was having none of it.

I walked right up behind him and demanded, “Give me back my pencil.”

“It’s not yours,” he said.

”Yes, it is. Give it back.”

Mary, who was sitting to this boy’s right, took my side. “Give him back his pencil.”

[Thank you, Mary.]

“It’s not his, it’s mine. Leave me alone.”

He then turned his attention back to me, which was a mistake because, seizing her opportunity, Mary grabbed the pencil in question, raised it above her head, and drove it point first through his t-shirt into the muscle on his right shoulder. It stuck there like an arrow.

The boy screamed bloody murder, all heads snapped our direction, and Ms. Holloway waddled over.

I don’t remember much of what happened after that except that the guidance counselor came and took Mary and the boy to her office. Somehow, I was forgotten in the fracas and simply walked back to my desk.

Lo and behold, my pencil—which, to my credit, did look exactly like the one the other boy was using—was on my desk where I left it. All that for nothing. A case of mistaken identity. Happens all the time, right?

The guidance counselor came back for me later in the day. She asked me what happened, and I told her the truth. I thought that he had taken my pencil because we were using the same kind. I was mistaken. Mary stabbed him.

“About that…,” the guidance counselor said, “Apparently, Mary has a little crush on you. I only tell you that because it helps explain why she felt defensive and wanted to protect you. So please be nice to Mary.”

She sent me back to class, and Mary reappeared a day or two later.

I never mistreated her, but I kept my distance after that. Girl was crazy.