Memoirs, The 1st Volume (kind of long) (381 hits)
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Submitted by JTC (View user info) at 2005-12-19 03:15:35 EST
These aren't serious memoirs. I am not Anne Frank. I'm not even a Jewish female. I do, however, posess many memories in this little mind of mine, and one fine November night, while sharing them with my roommates over a hot, bubbly bowl of chicken and corn, it occurred to me that I could potentially write them down and so keep them as vivid as I now remember them, well into my old age. And by old age, I mean until I quit/retire from Ubersite. The first volume is to be comprised of high school memories only. Perhaps another year or two into college I'll have the opportunity to create the 2nd Volume. I certainly hope so. Stories are so much fun.
I am out of high school now, so you won't be getting that "juvenile drivel" that seems so prevalent these days on Uber. Being in college makes this scholarly material. You won't be regaled with tales of young, firm breasts and willing hearts. Nor will you be bored by tales of innumerable parties during which each of us drank four bottles of Bacardi and two bottles of Jack, and still managed to drive home in the snow while a drunken hussie touched our penises at the same time. What you're going to read is much more. It will be, I hope, a collection of such variety so as to retain the most innattentive readers attention. They won't all be funny, but maybe you can take something from the ones that aren't. I can't guarantee it, but just maybe. Many of these memories take place with the same characters; perhaps you'll get a feel for them as the tales progress.
Years ago, in eighth grade, I was a chubby little boy. Fat by no means, but when compared to other swimmers, I was a bit larger around the waist area. (I was to grow out of it shortly.) Our boy's team consisted of only a few at that time--myself (you will call me Tim), Jaime, Greg, Eric, Paul, and Pete. Paul and Pete were a year below the rest of us. The previous year we'd gotten a new Age Group coach named Johnston Hobbes. Hailing, I believe, from North Carolina, the man was a giant to us. He was slightly over six feet tall, a swimmer turned kick boxer--in short, he was huge. According to him, in his final years of college swimming he was challenged to a push-up contest with a wrestler. The wreslter quit around 400. He finally stopped over 800. As incredulous as this sounds, if you have ever seen the man, or seen him work, you would not have the slightest doubt. As intimidating as he was, he was thankfully not without humor. He did, however, take his job and his swimmers very seriously. One fateful day I uttered the word "dick" at just the wrong time, when everyone else had fallen silent. I ran a half mile around the track--backwards--and then did push-ups in sets of until-you-fail for the rest of dryland, repeating with each repetition, "I will not disrespect my teammates." To put it bluntly, that sucked.
When a relay of ours missed our event--a happenstance in which all four of us still deny any guilt--he split us into two two-man relays. For a full hour of practice we did continuous 100 relays. For you non-swimmers, he had one of us swim 50 yards, then the other, repeating this cycle non-stop. A fifty, for us, took about 27 second in practice with drag. Imagine twenty-seven seconds in which you sprint down the pool and back, heave yourself out of the water, drag your body onto the block, and, almost immediately, find yourself swinging your arms as you start off of your teammate's touch. It was hell. It also sucked.
It all payed off. That year, the 13-14 year old boys won Age Group State. We didn't just win. We dominated. Carmel quaked in fear. One of our relays placed first, well beating the T-16 qualifying time. (Achieving a T-16 time, theoretically, places you or your relay in the top 16 competitors for that event and age group in the nation.) As reward for this, Johnston offered to take us anywhere to eat. It may seem like nothing, but we looked upon the man as a god. Within two years he had drastically lowered our times, and taken us from a second rate team (after the unfortunate departure of Coach Swander, who I respect to this day) to Number One. We went fairly simple, choosing Applebee's instead of The Oceanaire, or P.F. Chang's, or any other high-priced Indy restaraunt. He took the relay--myself, Jaime, Greg, and Paul--and as we were waiting for a table, we got onto the subject of non-fat water. With fourteen year olds, anything is possible. Immediately following Jaime's remark of "I'm going to order non-fat water," I voiced the question, "Do they make water with fat in it?" The group went silent, apparently in contemplation, but almost immediately, as if he had known I would ask, Johnston looked directly at me, and said, without a hint of a smile, "Tim, take a bath." To this day it has remained a running joke between my teammates and me, though sadly Johnston had to quit coaching soon after this to better manage his business.
Anyone who has ever been on a swim team for any amount of time knows that a good amount of gay shit goes down. These seldom result in smugging, though during my Sophomore year a Carmel swimmer was reported to have been ass-raped by a shampoo bottle. Oh yes, it's entirely believelable. Not long after Johnston left, we had a near fag incident in the locker room. BJ, Greg's older brother, was just out of the shower and getting ready to get dressed. Hardin, in the same class as BJ, was also just out of the shower. Once you pass Sophomore year, walking around naked becomes rather the norm. Walking out into the pool area or through the hallways to a vending machine in a towel isn't in the least bit strange. When you wear Speedos long enough, anything is modest. As such, Hardin and BJ were standing in the Junior locker bay, naked. It was at this moment that Hardin had one of the most diabolical and disturbing ideas any of us has ever had. BJ, for some reason--perhaps talking to someone--was just standing in front of his locker, clenching a towel held up to his face. Hardin looked at BJ. He looked down at his penis. He looked over at the Senior locker bay, then again at his penis. Then again at the Seniors, and he nodded, a sadistic grin on his face. He placed his hands on his hips, and in one step moved close enough to BJ's turned back to touch BJ's ass cheek with his manhood. Such a scream issued forth from BJ's mouth as has never been heard in the locker room either before or since. He jumped, clinging to the top of a locker door and swinging with it, his legs pulled up, curled in a hanging fetal position. Then Hardin laughed. BJ remained glued to the locker letting himself down slowly and quickly wrapping up in his towel. Some of us laughed. The rest of us called him a fag. When we related the story to our coach at the men's State dinner, it became known as the "Hardin incident." It is forever engraved in the minds of all who witnessed it, perhaps the first--and hopefully the last--live male dick-to-ass any of had ever seen.
My Sophomore year I made possibly the best friend I have ever had. Chris had moved recently from California, and, unbeknownst to us, was an amazing swimmer. I cannot say I was quick to befriend him--none of us were, but we have always been slow in accepting newcomers. At first he was just "the Polish kid" or more simply "the Pol." Both of us agree that our male bonding began the year before, when Johnston yelled at Chris for not finishing a 500. Chris told him he had, and when Johnston didn't believe him, I said that yes, Chris had finished it. Whether or not Johnston believed it, I had stood up for the new kid. So began a friendship that remains today. We quickly became not only the troublemakers of the team, but also the general assholes, and, somehow, the ones most people trusted. Swimmers swim, do they not? So when we had to run, Chris and I were understandably confused. In the summer after my Sophomore year I started working hard in the pool, and Chris along with me, but out of the pool...
We did what were called "tennis court laps" around our school grounds. They were a good mile or more each. Chris and I one day decided that we didn't want to run. We took a seat in the shade of a building in the rear parking lot and just sat there while everyone else kept running. We started bringing water pistols to practice and shooting at people as we ran. (Try it some day. It really is fun.) We were supposed to be maturing at this age, but we maintain to this day that maturing is for squares, and we are by no means squares. Our coach sent us running through neighborhoods near the school one day. Chris and I lived seven or eight miles away, and, as we did not drive yet, were not familiar at all with the area around the school. We got lost in a Brentridge and spent an hour wandering around until we finally found our way out to the entrance of the neighborhood. When we got back, the team was just finishing up push-ups and abs. Our coach yelled at us, asked where we'd been. We both said we'd gotten lost, and he decided that I was telling the truth and Chris was lying. I went to get dressed, while Chris stayed behind to get yelled at more. A few minutes he walked into the locker room and burst out laughing, talking about how ridiculous that was and how he was trying to keep from laughing the entire time he was being yelled at. After that day, neither I nor Chris could take a yelling seriously, and we got plenty of them. They're not funny at all, though. They're sad, you wouldn't like them.
There was one kid at our school--I hesitate to call him a retard, but I don't know any other word for it--who was convinced that he controlled the world. In middle school, he could be heard repeatedly throughout the day, screaming in the hallways to other students, "YOU bring the gun, you bring the knife, I'M gonna bring the rope, and we're gonna KILL that Jack-ass Gardner!" ("that Jack-ass Gardner" being our principal.) From time to time he would become a fire truck or a police car, attemping siren sounds and barreling down the hallways, and he was no small fry. In high school, he became Cafeteria Commander. He would walk throughout the cafeteria during various lunches (we had four), stopping at tables and demanding to know where "that son of a bitch" went. He would single out one person and give them command. "OK, you're the Sergeant, you got that you bastard? Now if you hear anything from Section B, you let me know!" And he would storm off to command some other poor bastards. His away messages generally consisted of coordinates: "16 degrees west, 10 degrees north" or something of the sort. Most of us believed he was only acting the retard, but it never dampened the hilarity of having a retarded fat kid run through the cafeteria screaming about "fixing the situation in Level 8" or whatever he was on about that day. I wish I had a picture of him. It would do so much.
The Goth kids were always getting their shit ruined. I can recall numerous occasions when I, not exactly a cool kid--though I achieved a certain degree of notoriety--walked right through their black-clad groups that seemed to be trying to block off a section of the hallway. "Fuck that," I'd think, "I'm not walking around those assholes." And I'd walk right through them, knowing there wasn't a damn thing they'd do. If anyone got in a fight and got their ass kicked, there was a good chance it was a Goth kid, though it could also have been one of our scary gangsters.
There are so many more. When I'm thinking more clearly, I'll write out the funnier ones. I really need to get to talking about it with a few people and jot down the ideas. It almost makes me miss high school.
User Reviews
Submitted by Lobos (user info) at 2005-12-19 10:31:31 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
OK. "Kind of long" is BS. +1 for getting me to read it though.
Submitted by Lobos (user info) at 2005-12-19 10:29:24 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Didn't read it. "kind of long" almost kept me from clicking at all. It's like saying "Don't read me". OK, now I'll read it.
Submitted by thorpe (user info) at 2005-12-19 03:49:00 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
+2 purely out of principle.
Submitted by joedaddy (user info) at 2005-12-19 03:45:20 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
i feel like i should be paid something now