2008-09-23 
 

smoking weapons

That's what the sign said:

NO
DRUGS
SMOKING
WEAPONS

But it was the "smoking weapons" that tickled me. So close to smoking gun and so appropriate for where I was. Some of my more formative years were spent in the building next to that sign.

Before I get to the building, let me step back. Stress has been sneaking into my life now and again. The idiot who coined the phrase money can't buy happiness, obviously had some. I'm not looking for happy, I'm just looking for enough to get to content again. Yes, so stress happens and going for a walk sometimes helps. This evening the walk took me past a trio of former schools. I didn't stop to examine the elementary school very closely, other than to note that they'd put up green awnings that almost looked horrible, but somehow succeeded in making the school look even more charming. Of course, any view my eyes see of that school is shaded with golden glasses, so my opinion may be skewed a bit.

Then came the school that no amount of gold tint could improve. The fortress that was East Junior High. They've since given it a new and more romantically historical name, but it'll always be East to me. East as in the witch Dorothy still had to conquer. What fun we had ensuring that at least one teacher every year was saddled with that moniker! Wicked Witch of East Junior High. Well, I pretended to have fun, the honest truth is that the two years I spent within its bricked up walls were the worst I've lived through. I felt trapped inside that fortress. This isn't just imagination on my part, it was actually built to look like one. The auditorium has windows like arrow slits, and there's rarely any good expanse of plate glass windows that you'd normally expect to find in a school. There's even mini battlements along the roof line. I remember writing a story as a teenager about a world where all the adults had died from some horrid disease. The school became a center of a new culture because it was so easy to defend. I know, it's been done since - and probably before too - but at the time I thought it was a thoroughly original idea. It remained buried in my memories until just an hour ago as I looked up at those tiny battlements.


So instead of walking on, I went right up through the parking lot and really examined it. The steps up to the auditoriums' emergency exit where the kids would be smoking before school, and those who wanted could buy pot or other things. I hadn't thought about it for years, but I remember now making sure that I timed my arrival just right so that the parking lot would be pretty much full and everyone already engaged in conversation. Full enough so that my walk through it would end close to the bottom of those steps when the first bell rang. Steps I was desperately wanting to climb, but always too afraid. Every day I thought of climbing up them and surprising those kids by asking for a cigarette, but fear of the unknown always got the best of me. Well, that and a fear of getting the piss beat out of me. The other advantage of timing it that way was that it left me within 20 feet of the door that was being unlocked by the unlucky teacher who drew the short straw for that day and far ahead of the crunch. I could usually get up to my locker and be sitting in homeroom reading a book before most anyone else had made it up the first set of stairs.

Then there were the quaint looking buildings next door to the school that were rumored to hold the juvie kids. Buildings that looked as if they'd been lifted out of some European village from the 17th century, and oddly appropriate next to the castle of a school next door. I heard happy shouts coming from within those buildings today and something about them made me wish I hadn't been so scared all the time when I was in junior high. Not that I advocate climbing up the steps for a joint when you're in 7th grade, but maybe stay in the parking lot for a while after the first bell. I wonder who I'd be now if I'd done that? Then again, given my knowledge of where I did go after learning to leave fear behind, it may have led me up those steps too early. Maybe a little fear of the big bad world is a good thing for a thirteen year old.

Okay, I realize I set you up for a third school, but I really was still too busy thinking about Junior High to note much about it as I walked by. Maybe next time. Unless the lotto number hits, I'm pretty sure I'm due for another walk in the near future.

Labels: dose of mikey, memory lane

* posted by me at 6:30 PM

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