Saturday, December 20, 2003
(9:15 AM) | Anonymous:
Everybody Wanders in the Wilderness...
Whoo. It's good to be back. I just flew in from Dubuque and boy are my...
Yeah you get it..been gone..I'm back. And what better way to return than with the greatest story of all time? That's right kids, gather round, get real close, but not too close as I smell slightly of peppermint. Not the good peppermint smell either.
Yes, there's a bad peppermint smell.
It all started back in the day, we're going all the way back to 3rd grade for this one. This, if I haven't mentioned it before, is my ideal age. If I were ever to teach elementary, I'd definitely want 3rd grade..there is still enough innocence that they can sit on your lap, or hold your hand, girls still have cooties, being outside is still the most fun thing in the world..and yet the beginnings of independence are there as well.
Well, for the purposes of this story, that independence suddenly flared up and became akin to teenage rebellion.
Gym class. Not just any gym class, Mrs. Godra's "little gym" class. The little gym at Randel's was insider code for "the ripped out former library" or, "the suckiest gym in the world, due to it's 10 foot by 12 foot size". Seriously..the year or two we had to play in that crap was the worst time in my entire life. We couldn't play games like "tag" or "race", much less full fledged sports because..it was literally about 15 feet from corner to corner..if you used any sort of speed you'd be running head first into walls. Instead, we played stupid games like "The Invisible Chair Olympics" where we all crouched against the wall like we were sitting, and the one who did so the longest won a ribbon. For the record, I was locked in stiff comptetion with Jay Hall on that one, until I was (seriously) unable to walk to go to school on the third day of competition and he won by default. Other favorites included stuff like dancing in place to the Footloose theme song, which would have been horribly uncool for 3rd graders, except Mrs. Godra called it "Michael Jackson Time" which lended it some street cred (This was before all the latest shenanigans, remember..the world loved Michael Jackson). Sometimes, on a rare friday we got out those little 4 wheeled seat-scooter things that you could wheel around on..5-6 of us got to scoot around the floor on those at a time.
So, obviously gym sucked. Mrs. Godra was an insane old girl, but she was nothing if not a realist. She knew this sucked - I mean, throwing the word "olympics" behind all sorts of inane little competitions like "The Who Can Be Quiet The Longest Olympics" or "The Hopping On One-Leg Olympics" or my favorite, besides the invisible chair, "The Yelling Real Loud For The Longest Time Without Taking A Breath Olympics" lost its novelty after a while. So, she was faced with a choice - continue in outdated methods with inadequate resources, like every other teacher, or strike out on her own doing something new. From this desire came THE TRIP TO THE WOODS.
(I don't think that simulated music is from anything..it was just sort of what ran through my head when I thought of scary music. Try singing it out loud. It will brighten your day like a maglite.)
Yes, one fateful day we came into gym and were told to go back to our class and gather up our coats, mittens (gloves for the boys...except those who needed Mittens for better tetherball playing), and galoshes...we were heading out into the world. Mrs. Godra told us this story of how she'd been wandering aimlessly through the woods behind the school the other day and had found a MAGICAL WORLD. A world...popularized by each of the Disney characters! Due to how, again, crazy this woman was..this story was completely believable.
But, the point remains, you get Disney involved, and you pretty much have a hit with anyone under 12. Look at the popularity of that game "Kingdom Hearts" amongst the youth (For the uninitiated, that's a role-playing game like Final Fantasy..except here you can like..call Bambi out of thin air to run over the octo-lady from The Little Mermaid..coolest.thing.ever). You throw disney characters in to every day situations, and suddenly, they easily become the coolest thing in the world. Imagine how much mowing the lawn sucks. Okay, now imagine mowing the lawn with Pluto running ahead and barking at the motor. Cool, right? I mean, I never have exercised much, at least not with that express intent..but you throw on Mickey Mousercise and I'm still gonna be doing the motions all day, especially to that one great Beagle Boys song. (You know.."get the money..we gotta get the money..get the money..Uncle Scrooge's money!")
It seemed simple enough, a voyage into the woods behind the school to see certain segments supposedly resembling the various lands of Disney folklore. And everyone was pretty geeked at first. So we headed out across Brobeck Street to the great unknown. Mrs. Godra, however, like I said, was completely crazy, for all of her originality. Unfortunately this led to the combination of bad slotting of the various lands, and an ignorance of the fact that the natives were growing restless. We started out with something akin to Little Mermaid Land, on to The Domain Of Sleeping Beauty, and then further we'd go to Cinderella's Brothel. We didn't know what a brothel was yet, we just knew that this was all girly. Without exception we'd been led out expecting pirates, evil, and perhaps even a glimpse of that hilarious Genie. But no, we were stuck in the middle of girly lands. This quickly combined with the fact that each land was exactly the same..The whole difference consisted in Mrs. Godra pointing to a branch lying funny and say "look..there's Thumper!" one time, and then 10 minutes later leading us in a circle before pointing to the same stick and saying "Look...there's the three mice from that one movie! Maybe they'll sing their Cinder-elli song for us!"
Yeah, she was that crazy.
We caught on, we were third graders, not dope fiends. Instead of the promised "trip to a place like Disney Land!" all we ended up with was extreme cold and the knowledge that we had been used. As guys, we should have been getting used to this..and all probably would have been okay, except for the endless barage of girly sites..Not only did this continuously suck while we were out there..we were gonna here it from the older classes for being caught in Snow White's Forest for at least a good week. We were at the breaking point. We started throwing rocks and sticks at each other, saying things to make the girls cry, acting rowdy. To counteract this, Mrs. Godra did the worst possible thing she could do. She said "Hang on guys..Peter Pan land is right over there to the right..we'll get there right after we go through Belle's Rose Garden and The Crazy Hippos From Fantasia's Dance Studio. The hippo thing might have been enough to catch our attention..except..she mentioned PIRATES! And she pointed to where the Pirates were. We walked a few more paces before the entire back half of the line, the guys who had slowly migrated away for better stick throwing possibilities, suddenly realized that there was a possibility of cannons and guns and...and..bandanas over our heads. Slowly, pretty much one by one, the entire male population left the well beaten path and started out through the trees for this mythical pirate land. I, however, was well practiced in the art of sucking as a person, even then, and stayed with the group cause I didn't want to get in trouble. It took Mrs. Godra about ten minutes to turn around and realize she only had 11 girls and 1 guy hanging out beside her, but when she did, all heck broke loose.
Out of nowhere, she just turned and started yelling..undistinguishable at first, but then slowly forming into threats towards the various kids who'd wandered off. Stuff like "ED HARRIS!!! I'M CALLING YOUR PARENTS RIGHT NOW! YOU ARE IN BIG TROUBLE WHEN YOU COME BACK!" of course, for those in the woods, this simply meant "okay...I'm in big trouble if I go back, thus, I shant go back..I shall live with the pirates for the rest of my days."
You'd think Mrs. Godra might lead a brave Fellowship Of The Lost to rescue the freaking 3rd grade kids who she was 30-40 years older than, but instead she just kept screaming people's names and other crap, and walked off. The rest of us could hear some of our classmates yelling for help...the reality that they were thouroughly lost had finally set in. Even as the only person who had any clue how to get back home left, myself and a large group of girls mustered up our courage and set off to help our brethren. Eventually we all got seperated, and the woods were literally filled with people yelling names or the occasional "HELP!"
I think this may have been the scariest thing to ever happen in my life. I was all by myself, with no clue how to get home, and only the sound of screaming as company. Finally, I managed to somehow come to a clearing I recognized as "Minnie's Dress Shop'" From here I somehow made it back towards the school, and was so filled with joy I literally started crying for the first time all day. It was like that scene from Shawshank Redemption, except it wasn't raining, but I did smell like sewage.. It was the greatest feeling of freedom I'd ever felt. And then, to confirm that I was indeed going towards school, I saw a sight previously thought impossible - Mrs. Godra! And many kids behind her! I thought my class had been reunited and was coming to look for me. In this belief, I wandered up towards them with a big goofy grin on my face, expecting embraces and pats on the back. But this wasn't my class..this was one of those strange "non-multi-age" classes..dear lord! I'd heard rumors of what being in a class with only one age group could do to people! What's worse, I got within 5 feet or so, and suddenly Mrs. Godra burst into the worst screaming fit I'd heard yet that day, which was quite a feat. Before I knew what was going on, she was yelling at me for having ran away, and telling how my parents were waiting at the school and I could expect all sorts of beatings and heck once I got back..so I better keep marching! (Again..her psychology wasn't the greatest).
I was still in shock that this woman could simply leave 25 third graders in the middle of the woods and walk back. What's more, she somehow got up the nerve to lead another class out there! While people were still screaming for help! Did I mention this woman was crazy? I got back to the room finally at about 2:00, we'd left around 10. Some people didn't make it back until 4 or 5pm. Mrs. Nancy, my teacher, reassured us that in fact, Mrs. Godra had been in the wrong and we weren't in too big trouble. Sure, we shouldn't have wandered off, but Godra had just walked back to the school and didn't tell anyone what had happened until Mrs. Nancy went an hour later to find out where in the heck her class was.
The fallout was thus: No more trips to the woods. And Mrs. Godra got moved to the high school. I guess they figured if they gave her a really big gym and kids who weren't entirely helpless and at her whim, she wouldn't insist on getting people lost. Ironically, it was this same Mrs. Godra who later became co-sponsor for my founding of The Intramural Badminton Association. She was also the same teacher who continually didn't show and locked all the badminton equipment up after the first 2 weeks..while insisting that it was I who hadn't shown up that week. This really sucked because miraculously I'd gotten 20-35 people to show up each time.
Oh, yeah, she also was the one who failed 3 of my good friends on their GYM FINAL senior year because one of their book bags was close by, though zipped up. Close by..as in..a good 25 feet away..at least two sections of bleachers down. There was no way anyone could have seen anything, had the book bag even been open, without binoculars. Apparently she was afraid people were really looking to break her GYM FINAL code. GYM FINAL!
That day in the woods I learned a lot about myself. First: I was too much of a goody-goody..instead of the initial joy of setting off for Pirate land, I stayed behind because that was the right thing to do, and I still got in as much trouble as everyone else, even though I got no joy whatsoever out of the experience, but only pants-wetting fear.
Secondly: Mrs. Godra really was that crazy. I didn't know her daughter was incredibly hot yet either, so there was no qualifier whatsoever..the woman was loonier than Canadian currency. This taught me for the first time that authority figures have nothing on you, and are often times much stupider than you, even if you are in third grade.
The ironic fact is that this all probably took place in a nice quarter-mile area. Yet, we were little, it seemed like we were stuck in the middle of the Klondike for all we knew. I'd eventually end up living a matter of feet from the scene of that horrible crime, and taking walks in the wood pretty regularly through high school. So, I guess I somehow learned to cope with the memories.
Like Jesus emerging from his fast in the woods, I became a new person from that day forward. Transformed into the bitter, self-loathing, other-loathing beast that I am today.
All because I wanted to see some freaking Pirates!
