Vapors and Crazy

Reading for November 29, 2009

Time or no time? I just had to make the time, because the second grade was where I would be able to dispatch the language barrier.

St Hyacinth was "Swiety Jacka" in Polish. Not only would I be privy to the secret language of the adults at home, but I could cruise the neighborhood and talk with everybody there. From the neighborhood it would be on to the world. In my joyous state of mind, images of that heaven on earth wafted, as I saw the decoder allow people such understanding of life and each other that harmful/bad/evil/hurtful things would be able to be known ahead of time and changed into helpful/good/holy/joyful things. Oh boy, this was going to be good.

I was on the Polish highway reaching for my decrypter, with nary a speed limit sign to be seen.

Eager to see all my friends, and excited to begin my first Polish language class, the first day of 2nd grade couldn't come soon enough. Hmmmmmmmm – subtle, but total disintegration.....the likes of which I wouldn't experience for another four plus decades when my computer screen would flash: access denied.

Polish classes were stopped.

The line I got at the school from the nuns and priests was that we needed more time on all the other subjects. What I overheard in that place where adults talk more freely than anywhere else in the universe, my dad's drugstore (especially if I am completely out of view) was that while – yes - the other subjects did need as much time as possible; the real reason was to learn English, and learn it well enough, to forever rid the planet of the scourge of the stereotype: "dumb Polack".

How simple that posit seemed…………. and………….. how very much I had to learn about myself, in the ease, I would be finding "a", "some", "any", justification........... for hate.

The kindness of time, fused - probably as a result of some maverick Ras protein's last second experiment to meet an immunology class project deadline - with the hope of space, created an unbounded zilch about Lattice Q function for me to deal with that stuff later. Right now,though, bizarre was approaching front and center.

At first, I struggled to find a place for it in my seven year old mind. In short order, however, its inanity seamlessly dovetailed with all the other contradictions and weirdnesses I was picking up on; and, in comparison, television was becoming boring.

My second grade class started doing “something”.

This “something” I would come to know with unfailing certainty belonged to that same friggin crazy part of this world that was friggin crazy. We did this thing over and over, so that we could do it as quickly as possible. Of course, there was the usual giggling and joking 7 year olds did when confronting a thing so silly that, if we did it at home, we would be told to stop acting foolishly. Nevertheless, the nuns were unrelenting about “practicing” this absurd activity. The schoolyard skinny was that it was really important because people all over the city were doing the same thing. We even heard the signal loud and clear that told us to start our routine; and, someone had even mentioned that their uncle or aunt told them that people all over the United States of America were doing the same thing we were doing – but no one believed that!

Well over time, the second grade grapevine had all the juicy facts. What we were doing had a name. It was called a “drill”. A drill was exactly this "practicing" that we were doing – no matter that it was idiotic. It did not matter either, that "practicing" was the way we learned our prayers ~ and no one ever called that a drill ~ this was different ~ this was a drill. As we were learning more and more, we were becoming more and more mixed up.

Now finding out what the drill was for became my first exposure to senselessness.

We were learning to get under our desks to be protected from an “atomic bomb” that some really bad people over in “Russia” might be dropping on us.

I never did learn to appreciate my desk at St Hyacinth grammar school for its atomic bomb protecting abilities. One day, however, in eighth grade - after Billy Green and I managed to work out some of the screws that held his front row desk to the floor, and, we decided to see what would happen if we both pushed on it as hard as possible – I grew to love its ability to rocket forward and crash into the blackboard.

Join Captain Flip Side in his true life adventures every Sunday!

Happy daze,

The Captain

**special thanks to CATFISH of the great state of Californisurf, and its Green Flash for tutelage in the mathematical systems that bore the Zilch about Q Theory, which made the substance of this chapter possible