I Bet You Didn't Know...

I'm going to let you in on a little secret. I'm not sure if most of my close friends know this or not. I think my wife, the Comely and Buxom Boudica, might know...or not. I dunno. I might have told her about it once. I might have even mentioned this in college, probably during a long night of imbibing and Irish Drinking Tunes. It wasn't exactly seminal in the formation of the fat smartass you see read before you now, but it was a little something that happened to a younger, kinder me. As I've been reflecting on my high school days thanks in large part to the colossal upset of Homestead High School, I thought this might be apropos. Maybe it's not, but it's what you're getting, so deal with it.

Back when the losing streak to Homestead was not quite yet a decade old (i.e. 1997), I had a professional writing gig. Yep, I used to actually get paid to put words on a piece of paper and have people read it in a weekly column featured in the local newspaper, the Huntington Herald-Press (owned up until very recently by the Quayle family...yes that Quayle family). Yes, that's right, my friends, I used to be a part of the liberal media.

I got paid something outrageous like $0.50 a news item or something like that. I dunno. It was enough to keep me in comic books every two weeks (I know many of you are stunned to hear that this fat geek is into comics) and enough quarters to sneak up to Fort Wayne with my best friends Jason and Tyler to play the X-Men video game in the foyer at Wal-Mart. Anyway, it was a gig, and it got my feet wet, and it showed me, in the long run, that I really don't want to write for a newspaper. But back when I was doing it, damn, it was kind of fun. I think most of the fun came in the mail every two weeks, but it was fun nonetheless.

My job description was pretty simple: report on the news going on around your hometown. Each of the little burgs in Huntington County had a weekly appearance in the newspaper on a set day. I think my day was Friday and I reported on the news around Markle, IN. And let me tell you...there wasn't much to report.

Due to this lack of news, I would often find myself coming up with new and inventive ways of making an ass of myself in the paper. I would hold contests where people could call in and basically all they'd do is get their name in the paper. Which is really kind of sad, when you think about it. For some people, they looked forward to reading their name in my column. Life in small town America, I guess.

Some of these contests were tricky, though. I had a whole series of them that were related to signs of spring, like who saw the first robin, who had the first crocus blooming, who saw the first snake...blah blah blah. One of them was "who found the first mushrooms". Wow. Was that a fucking can of worms.

The mushrooms in question were morels, which are apparently quite tasty if fried up. I'm not a big fungus fan; mushrooms grow in dead stuff and are basically scavengers. It'd be like shooting a vulture and frying it up. I realize that pigs eat garbage, too, but the difference between pigs and mushrooms is that pigs are quite tasty. Mushrooms...not so much.

(Incidentally, my friend Jason, mentioned above, would argue this fact with me into the wee hours of the night, if needed, until I came around to his way of thinking...but it hasn't happened yet, sucker).

Those people who would tromp through the woods looking for a stand of morels--commonly known as "mushroom hunters"--would defend their territory to the end. It'd be like the fucking Battle of Azincourt where one group (usually a pair) would actually try to lead all other mushroom hunters astray if they were in the woods and they thought there were mushroom poachers around. If the poachers were persistant, then there'd be fights in the woods. There might even be shots fired. It'd usually just be a warning shot up in the air, but still. I think you get the picture.

This all seems like a lot of extra work to me. Especially for something that looks pretty much like a dick growing out of the ground. But, people loved themselves some mushroom hunting. I bring this up because it's the only time in my long career (approximately a year) that I would hold one of these contests that the "winner" (which was the first person to call in with the info I wanted) didn't want to be recognized. I remember the phone conversation well. You don't forget something of this nature. It went something like this:

Me: "Hello"
Mysterious Caller: "Mr. Jenks?"
Me: "Oh, I'll go get my dad."
MC: "Oh, no, Mr. Matthew Jenks?"
Me: "Speaking."
MC: "I'm calling about the contest. The mushroom hunting contest."
Me: "Ah, excellent. No one's called in yet. You're the first, sir."
MC: "Yes, well, I found a whole stand in my usual spot. Brought in about fifty or sixty."
Me: "That's quite a haul. Can I get a general idea where this is?"
MC: "No!"
Me: "Oh, well, then...can I get your name?"
MC: "NO!"
Me: "Well, um, I guess you're still a winner. I can't really give you any recognition if you don't give me your name, though."
MC: "That's just too damned bad, isn't it? I don't want anyone following me to my spot! Those are my mushrooms, and I'm not going to let some punk kid ruin my spot for me!"
Me: "I'm not really trying to ruin your spot..."
MC: "Well, that's fine. There, I called in. So there. And if you try to find out who this is or where my spot is, you'll find a very nasty surprise outside your door!"

I always regret not knowing who this was, because I wanted to follow him and "fertilize" his mushrooms, if you know what I'm saying.

It wasn't quite a death threat, but it was as close as I've ever gotten (aside from Aaron Brooks threatening to kill me in the seventh grade because I said his girlfriend had really nice legs (which she did), not knowing that she was going with Aaron at the time). I still to this day don't know who the caller was. I ended up writing something like this:

"We have a winner in the mushroom-hunting contest, but the caller wished to remain anonymous. And, please, people, for the love of God, don't follow him or figure out where his mushrooms are or else he's going to leave me a very ugly surprise on my doorstep." Surprisingly, the paper ran it like that, even with the reported threat in there. Most people thought I was trying to be funny, but my mom gave me this long lecture on how the pen is mightier than the sword and now how we're going to have to be on the lookout for this guy, blah blah blah.

I quit the job about six months later because, well, it kind of bored me, and I was getting ready to head off to college, and writing the column and submitting was going to be a pain. You might well imagine that Markle, Indiana (official town website) was not on the cutting edge of technology back in the late 90s, so I had no idea that people could email me news information from town and I could complete my column on the computer and email it in. Plus, that sounded too much like work and, really, I was in college, I didn't want to have to put much effort into anything.

I did kick around the idea of having a contest in the fall where people would call in with results on hunting puffballs, and I could make it a two-part contest...first to find one and the biggest. But, I really didn't need anyone threatening to leave anything on my doorstep again. Even though, come to find out, that would have been something to help prepare me for college.

Appetite for Algebra

I was on my home this evening from tutoring when I heard a DJ come on the local radio ("the everything that rocks" station...for what it's worth) and say that it was 20 years ago when Guns & Roses first released something off their "Appetite for Destruction" album. This didn't make me feel old, though I probably should, but it did make me think of my 7th grade math class.

That's probably a strange sort of memory to be stirred by GnR, but it made me think of a t-shirt design that was proposed for the math classes under the tutelage of my math teacher, Mr. Wallace. The t-shirt design had the cross with roses in place of the heads from the Appetite for Destruction album cover, and in the same font as on the album was written "Appetite for Algebra". Someone actually sketched the design freehand (we had many pretty decent artists in my middle school...I sometimes fancy myself a bit of an artist, but my designs, drawings and everything paled in comparison to some of my middle school classmates). I believe that it was going to be a black or slate gray shirt with red letters and it was going to be really nice, especially to a seventh grader. I'm sure my mom would have crapped to have something like that in her house, which always seemed like the worst insult ever. "I wouldn't have something like that in my house!" "I won't allow that in my house!" What about in the yard, mom? The car? Just on the porch?

Anyway, all of these are in the "possible" range since I never received my shirt. You see, I wanted one, wanted one badly. I saved up my lawnmowing money for a couple of weeks and the money I could con out of my parents in order to buy "extra milk" on chocolate milk days. Then the day came when the sign up sheet was passed around. So, Mr. Wallace put the sign up sheet on a desk by the door to the math room and stepped out a second for coffee, and now that I'm an adult, I can't fault him for that. With Mr. Wallace gone, havoc was sure to ensue. And it did.

We all lined up for sign ups. We joked, talked, goofed off...all the things you'd expect from a bunch of seventh graders. I thought nothing of it, but the air was filled with electricity from the merriment surrounding both the sign up sheet as well as the lack of Mr. Wallace. It was the build up to the perfect storm. Finally my turn in line came, and so I dutifully bent over the desk to write my name, number of shirts, size, money enclosed for payment...

Let's point out here that, in the seventh grade, I was about six foot tall. The desks were about mid-thigh high on me, so I had to bend over quite a bit to get down to the sign up sheet. Instead of crouching down by the side of the desk and filling out the paperwork like I had a fricking brain in my head, I bent over, at the waist. Doing so caused the waistband of my jeans to dip low down my backside. Fortunately for me, the waistband of my underwear was rock solid and did not move at all, providing a delectable target that was too delicious to avoid for my friend Chris Long. I had just managed to jot down my first name when I felt that horrible tug on the waistband of my drawers as they shot skyward. Searing pain shot through my nether regions as the crotch of my briefs threatened to emasculate me and the bulk of my underwear were turned into butt-floss.

The pain was real, that was for sure. My fragile seventh-grade ego also was shattered--doubtless word would spread soon after the attack on my backside to the remainder of my classmates who were not fortunate enough to witness my unmanning. Worst of all, however, was that, while the Mother-of-All-Wedgies was happening to my backside, the only face I saw was that of the alabaster angel who sat on the other side of the room by the far wall: Stacie Farmer.

In the seventh grade at my school, we got a whole new batch of kids from another school that did not have a middle school. Among these imports from Lancaster Elementary were my best friend, Jason, one of my closest confidants through middle and high school and beyond into college, Kelly, and the perfect, unfettered beauty, Stacie Farmer. The one problem with my infatuation with Stacie was that it was quite unrequited. Being a writer, I'm sometimes hostage to the whims of my passions, which flow through my veins like white-hot lead. It's these passions that I spill out onto paper in the form of prose, most of the time. Being an awkward seventh-grader, my passions would often fully encompass my being, smothering all sense and reason.

The unrequited nature of my desire for Stacie happened pretty much from the first day the new students arrived from Lancaster Elementary. I was blessed enough to have Stacie sitting behind me in science class. One day, that fateful first week of seventh grade, I turned around, smiled, and opened my mouth to speak. Unfortunately, that was the exact moment my wits decided to leave me, and thus my opening line was:

"You don't blink very often, do you?"

Not the smoothest pick-up ever. In fact, that pretty much sealed my fate with Ms. Farmer. I could tell because her answer was "What are you, stupid?"

That did not stop the ball of emotion within my chest from beating solely for Stacie Farmer. It would not, however, amount to anything, but I still remained completely infatuated with that blonde beauty. So, you can imagine that, upon that fateful day in math class, when I looked up and saw the look of astonishment and amusement on Stacie's face as my underwear was being heaved up around my shoulders like the raising of the mizzenmast, a piece of my soul shattered.

So, when I heard that Appetite for Destruction was 20 years old this year, I didn't feel old. I felt a small twinge of pain deep in the pit of my heart, thinking about the time when I was completely and thoroughly embarrassed and unmanned, and my poor little heart was crushed.

And I also felt like I needed to pick my underwear out of my butt.

Hungry? Try a Zumstick!

For some time now (well, ever since she started working in the bookselling business, at least), my wife has been trying to convince me to write a story about down-home life in Indiana that I experienced while growing up. Being in tune with the shit books people buy on a daily basis and what their tastes run toward, I trust her in this enough to entertain the idea. It doesn't involve massive battles or new ways to work mammoths and terror birds into my stories, but it does entertain me to think about all the things that currently have shaped my being and how they relate to a little forgotten corner of Huntington/Wells county, Indiana.

Her vision is to call the book "Zumsticks", as that seems to embrace the downhome nature of what it is she's urging me to write. A "zumstick" (it might properly be "ZUMstick") is the creation of some brilliant mind at Zanesville United Methodist church (thus, ZUM). I don't remember all of the ingredients, but it consisted of apple slices, pineapple chunks, maybe some cantelope (or, as we in Indiana called it, "musk melon") and those bigass marshmallows which are perfect for making smores and/or setting on fire and flinging at your friends around ye olde campfire (nothing says downhome like flaming balls of fast-carbonizing sugary goo flying at your eye). These were carefully impaled on a long, wooden skewer, refrigerated, and then dipped in magic shell chocolate sauce. I'm not sure if it actually was Magic Shell, or if it was some other concoction that got hard after drying, but to say the least, biting into a Zumstick was a little bit like taking a sip of a thirty year old novelty drink modeled off the Beatles: it took you to a different realm altogether.

Now, every year in the midwest, which is littered dotted with thousands of towns and burgs that can only be described as "podunk" (not even "one horse' captures the absurdity of naming a wide spot in the road) will celebrate some aspect of their heritage. In my hometown, it was the "Wildcat Festival". In the town where we had our lake cottage, it was the Mermaid Festival. There are blueberry festivals, apple festivals, and even, somewhere in Michigan, a Sausage Festival (no word on what kind of movies they show there...) The good people of Zanesville United Methodist chuch would show up at all of these with their cart full of Zumsticks, ready to sell them to the general populance who wandered through. And, if you've ever seen the general populance at one of these festivals, you'd understand why they'd go right for the Zumsticks. In fact, they might just suck the chocolate off, eat the marshmallows, and use the fruit as bait for the fishing contest.

And there you have it: the derivation of the title of my memoirs.

Not that I've decided to give up working on my current opi (I assume that is the proper plural of opus), mind you. However, sometimes, I'm struck with a touch of inspiration. Most recently, I was touched by the finger of inspiration and jotted down this little story. I'm not sure if it's the sort of shit story that my wife's customers are clamoring for, but it does amuse the hell out of me. Enjoy.

"Back when I was in the first grade, I was still naive enough to think that the whole world needed to like me. For some strange reason, I was a likeable kid. Sure, I got picked on, had my ears flicked, got teased and all the stuff that playground kids go through. As I matured, this whole likeable kid stuff stuck with me. I guess I was, for some strange reason, inoffensive enough that people would look at me and say 'There's a decent fellow...he doesn't stink...he's not necessarily popular...he doesn't piss me off. He's ugly as hell, but he doesn't piss me off.' When I graduated, people applauded me, and it struck me as odd, because only the popular kids got applauded like that.
"So, when I was in the first grade, I thought that I should try and carry this whole thing out to where everyone in the world should like me. This was all well and good, because my friends liked me, my teachers liked me, even people I didn't think of as being great friends liked me. Everyone liked me, except for one notable exception: Tammy Pfaltzgraf.
"I don't know what I did to Tammy Pfaltzgraf, other than the fact that I simply was. She was rude to me, she ignored me when I talked to a group and she was in it. She sneered at me--sneered!!! Now, in the first grade, sneering is the equivalent to insulting your manhood, and so I never quite understood what the deal was. So, I went out of my way to start making Tammy Pfaltzgraf see through the veneer of unlikeableness and to see the true, likeable me. In my grand design for the universe in which every single person liked me, she was the final cog and she would be subjogated.
"With that in mind, I set off on my merry task. I began going out of my way to talk to her. I gave her cuts in line at the drinking fountain. I even sat beside her one day at lunch, which was a big deal because the whole table was full of girls, and frankly, at that age, I was a little intimidated by such a wall of double X chromosomes. It would only be later in life when I would figure out why it was that I was so intimidated. But, I digress
"Again, in my naivite, I did not realize that what I was doing was akin to courtship. I just thought it was what friends did: they were nice to one another. Besides, I was already 'going with' Maria Ramirez (exotic, I know), so I didn't think anything of it. However, Tammy Pfaltzgraf thought something of it. Tammy Pfaltzgraf thought I was crushing on her.
"Now, this would have been all well and good, except for two notable exceptions. One, the aforementioned Maria Ramirez, who was very cute and very nice and very sweet to and on me. Two, Tammy Pfaltzgraf was really none of these. In fact, Tammy Pfaltzgraf kind of looked like a pig. It was unfortunate that the Pfaltzgraf family was comprised of a long line of pig farmers, so sometimes one would question the true nature of Tammy's mother.
"Eventually, it came to be that Angie Musterman passed me a note telling me that Tammy Pfaltzgraf liked me, in true first-grade style: Do you like her? Yes, No, Maybe So (circle one of them). I was aghast. My master plan had finally come to fruition, and yet, it had gone too far. I had to end this immediately, lest I upset the sweet, cute, friendly Maria Ramirez and thus end up womanless.
"I ended up not answering the note and thus began to ignore Tammy Pfaltzgraf. I wasn't outright mean and rude to her, but I no longer went out of my way to speak to her. I said hi to her on the playground only after she said hi. I didn't give her cuts. I didn't sit with her anymore. I didn't share my intimate thoughts on the letter 'c'. In fact, I pretty much went back to living life the way I had, hoping that my plan to get everyone in the world to like me would revert back to everyone in the world except Tammy Pfaltzgraf would like me.
"And so it was. Tammy Pfaltzgraf soon fell out of like with me, and my relationship with Maria Ramirez lasted well into the third grade (when she dumped me, ironically, to go with Tammy's older cousin, Shawn). I went on mostly avoiding and not speaking to Tammy Pfaltzgraf, even to the point where I didn't say hi to her in the hallways. When we got to high school, I lost all contact with Tammy Pfaltzgraf; in fact, I was not certain that she still existed at all. I'm not even sure if she graduated with us. I just know that she was largely a non-entity in my life after the first grade. Tammy Pfaltzgraf could have grown up to be a beautiful supermodel for all I know, and be rich beyond her wildest dreams. I sincerely doubt it, as they don't take on many supermodels who look a little bit like pigs, but there's always that possibility."

And just so you know, the names have been changed (even Maria Ramirez', even though was just as exotic in real life...oh spicy!).

EDIT/UPDATE: I changed a couple of things in the story (like, switching the word "face" to "fact" so that it no longer read "in face, I was not certain...").
I also looked up Tammy Pfaltzgraf (the real name, not her pseudonym) on google. Turns out she's a porn star! Just kidding. She's a lunch lady at an elementary school near my hometown (in fact, the elementary school that my cousins attended). And she pretty much looks exactly the same as she did in the first grade.