Flabbergasting the Ferocious Freesia Friday Five
1. What was/is your favorite subject in school? Why?
Symphonic Wind Ensemble, taught by the ever-furry Mark Running, teller of Greatest of Great White Hunter jokes and pontificator of silliness. I have never had a class that I enjoyed so much for so long - it was the bright spot in my day, every day, for three years. Especially senior year, because the SWE section leader seniors always felt like our own special brand of royalty. (Casie can back me up on this.) It was the one class I had that filled me, consistently, which this bizarre sensation that I had a lot of potential and could do anything. I miss that. I don’t have anything like that in my life anymore. The second-place class would be Jackie White’s Modern American Poetry class my senior year, which is where I first fell in love with Adrienne Rich and Pablo Neruda and T.S. Eliot, among others. There was something pretty magical about that class as well.
2. Who was your favorite teacher? Why?
Oh, I’d probably have to go with Mr. Running again on this one. He was such a goofball, but he made everything so fun. I really appreciated that, especially considering how stressful most of my other classes were. (Except for French, of course. We always had Andy Kim in there to keep us amused. I sat by him in that class for three years - minus the one semester when he was in the other class. I’ll never forget the skit we did about getting drunk and puking on a comforter and sticking it in the dishwasher. Those were the days.)
3. What is your favorite memory of school?
God, there are so many. I don’t know that I can pick just one. There were the lock-ins, and the Natural Helpers retreats, and the yare runs, and the early-Sunday-morning illegal intervises when we’d drink tea and play cards, and that time we fell asleep in one of the physics classrooms on the floor watching the thunderstorm out the window, and the surprise birthday party when Sindhu jumped out from under a bed and grabbed my ankles, and our SWE/Chamber trip to D.C. (and that concert in the mall), and all of those days tutoring little kids with Mike, and I can’t choose. I may be one of the handful of people in the world who ACTUALLY consider high school to be the best time of their life. Yeah, there was a lot of bad, but there was SO much more good.
4. What was your favorite recess game?
Flipping backwards and upside-down out of swings. Also, jumping off the jungle gym into the chopped-up-tire-pit. Giving NASTY cherry bumps on the teeter totter. Playing Transformers with Luis Marciano (my recently-imported Venezuelan buddy who called me “the ultimate friend”.)
5. What did you hate most about school?
I skipped 2nd grade. I hadn’t had a lot of friends before that, but afterwards I was a TOTAL pariah. Nobody would talk to me, and the people who did just teased me and made my life miserable. The boy who was the meanest to me (in 3rd grade) was this kid named Tim Beasley. I had to play Hansel to his Gretel in Music Class (with Mrs. Swickard) and we had to hold hands and sing and dance and I hated him SO much and was completely miserable… except for part of me that loved performing and reveled in the fact that I was better than he was. (My favorite part was when I had to teach him to dance. I can still remember it. I’d sing “Brother, come and dance with me” and he’d sing “I’m as clumsy as can be” and I’d sing “Right foot first, left foot then, turn around and back again!”) All other school-related-hates revolve around similar themes.
It doesn’t have to be high school, but that’s the only part of my school experience that I really WANT to remember, so it takes up a disproportionate amount of space in the “School Days” section of my brain.
1. I loved Wind Ensemble too, only I didn’t have it in high school because I didn’t go to a smart kids snobby high school like some other people I could mention. Anyway Wind Ensemble was only fun when we played something cool with a lot of percussion in it. One time I wasn’t paying attention and Dr. Wallace stopped the whole ensemble and yelled “PERCUSSION! Am I the only one counting up here!!???” His eyes were bugging out and later I drew a picture of him yelling at us for professor evaluations. And my friend Lea made one that said, “Dr. Wallace is the best conductor since the lightning rod.”
2. Mary Tery-Smith, music history. She was this 72 year old Hungarian woman who was really cool and mad and had this deep cigarette voice and Bela Lugosi accent and she said stuff like, “now Brahms was a real smart cookie,” and then she would open the door and yell at the choir losers who were congregating in the hallway and say something like, “stop annoying everyone, I can’t hear myself think,” and they were all scared of her, ha ha. She retired and now she’s dating Claudio Abbado. Seriously.
3. Meeting David Maslanka and Frederic Rzewski. Look them up right now!
4. “Penny drops” from those metal monkey bars. Later on in my scholastic career, people tried to breakdance on cardboard boxes. Since they a) lived in Moses Lake, and b) were white like Wonder Bread, they met with limited success.
5. One time I was sitting in front of the school and some boys came over to talk to me and they said, “oh, we came over because we thought you were pretty, but now we can see that you’re not.” And I’m still mad because I didn’t say anything but if I saw those boys now I would kick their asses and sic Mary Tery-Smith on them. But it’s probably fine because they are probably on crack and working at Super 1 Foods anyway.
oh, oh, oh, how can you beat that? thank you!
Yeah Alicia, I’ll back you up. Those were the days when we were the most special kids ever, to each other, ofcourse ;).
Oh, and our high school was many weird and interesting things, but snobby was not one of them.
I’m assuming that this is High School here…..
#1 I really seemed to like History.
#2 Michael Melton, AP English. One of the few truly engaged teachers.
#3 A speech I once made. Ask me about it sometime.
#4 I hated recess. I’m still the sports phobic I was back then (though I did run track, but that’s different) So I tried as hard as I could to sneak away and hang out and talk with friends.
#5 A jaded and dysfunctional faculty and administration.