Who's Gonna Drive You Home, Tonight

Picture yourself on the side of a congested highway, vehicles speeding inches from your foothold. Asphalt kicks up in clumps as cocaine-addled truckers stress-test the road with their endless convoy. Stretching for miles, a turbid haze in various shades of sepia muddles the urban vista. Adding insult to injury, your tire’s blown a flat yet the trunk carries no spare. And you – stubborn Luddite born of cost savings and technological rejection – lack a mobile device; placing yourself at the mercy of nearby exit ramps, derelict gas station pay phones, and hypodermic needles jabbing forth from their change return slots. In a harrowing commute turned hellacious journey, you, my friend, stand on the shoulder of a bustling artery amidst the choking exhaust of metropolitan rush hour. And your head is throbbing. And your legs are tired. And nobody is helping because nobody cares.

Without warning, the cocktail of chest pain, shortness of breath, and acute anxiety chokehold your sanity. You wheeze frantically while heaving your neck forward to catch air. Bodily functions yield rapidly as the hurt radiates from one symptom to another. Vision blurs, balance fades, mouth dries, stomach churns. Lumbering unsteadily, feelings of claustrophobia and panic percolate through the amplified clamor of traffic horns. In mere seconds, legs will finally fail, one first then the other, knee caps cracking awkwardly as head meets pavement in a surrendering final slam. While some may notice, none will stop. Instant heart attack.

Through the rippling heat, two men appear, sweaty and alarmed. While your senses have numbed, the ensuing heroism-cum-buffoonery wakens you to the sensation of being clumsily dragged. Somehow, this inelegant mode of transport sends your mind into horrifying flashbacks of 'Deliverance,' sans banjos. Clothing is shredded to ribbons as it coarsely scrapes blacktop. After what feels like a mile but is likely a few yards, you are dropped, quite brutally, in a grassy patch within earshot of the highway but hundreds of miles from comfort. In this unassuming field you will experience fear unlike any conceivable nightmare. One of the men positions his car nearby – spinning the tires and splattering mud and earth – while the other holds you hard; arm across neck, knee into groin, gnashing his teeth and spitting vulgarly. You flail. Fade to black. You gasp. Back to black. You quietly consent to fate, wishing only not to die. Darkness smothers.

Time has passed, though whether minutes, hours, or years remain unclear. Oddly enough, your pants appear zipped and buttoned, a nice consolation among an otherwise gruesome kidnapping. And yet, something is terribly wrong. Jumper cables have been fastened to each nipple, positive and negative, in some perverse abortion of outdoor sadomasochism. Your heart pounds brutally, throbbing against rib and bone as your mouth hangs agape, drooling and coughing to catch air. Suddenly, a car engine roars, sending a violent electro-current coursing through your body, knocking your torso forward as if hit with a defibrillator blast. Upon falling backwards with a heavy thud the engine roars anew, throwing you head over heals in agonizing pain. Again and again and again your body is heaved and throttled until your eyes have bulged dry from their sockets and your nipples run bloodied and raw. You scream about hospitals, but your voice is shredded by the deafening growls of engines angry and fuming. You are alive. Stripped of your dignity. Bruised. Used. Humiliated. But you are alive.

* * * * *

“And that’s basically how it happened,” our substitute science teacher concluded, his cherubic face assuming its dead-on likeness of the obese yet jovial John Candy. This fool – holding down the fort while our regular instructor enjoyed maternity leave – had just relayed a perfectly asinine monologue on saving a man’s life with his automobile. Steeped in imbecilic hubris, and more suited for a chapter in ‘S&M: Breaking The Usual Routine,’ our lecture on the circulatory system had descended into a “citizen of the year” brag-fest over some poor bastard who allegedly had his heart revved and his colon blown via junk science. Thanks to the miracle of jumper cables, six-cylinder engines, and a pair of trusty, conductive nipples, a man allegedly walks the streets like Christ, risen from the dead after a tangle with the devil on Interstate 95. Impressive, no? After all, my physics teacher never regaled us with sundry tales of banging Stephen Hawking to unlock quantum gravity mysteries (that said, my physics teacher was a heterosexual man, and Mr. Hawking is nearly paralyzed, limiting his lechery).

The AMA was clearly asleep at the switch, as the heroics of our myocardial maestro were given nary a footnote in the journals of the day. Chalk it up to another of life’s cruel injustices. If funded by a university, our rotund friend could’ve been curing AIDS by now with old carburetor parts. But alas, he aimed for the mediocrity of substitute science education, smiting the coronary research field while indirectly killing 500,000 Americans per year with his callow neglect and desire for non-working summers. Then again, once you blow fifty miles through the point of no return (in a car that might just as easily be the second coming of Christine), few hospitals in the developed world will even let you don scrubs, much less operate a defibrillator. And there aren’t many casting calls for John Candy lookalikes, especially since, well, Candy’s dead.

Nipples, people. Nipples. One word: ouch!

Sleaze, Unease, And Extra Cheese

For the non-farm crowd, Mr. Cheese USA isn’t exactly a desired moniker. It’s certainly nothing you’d want on file with the post office or, for that matter, in a corporate directory regardless of one’s patriotism or passion for dairy. In fact, excluding Cracker Barrel junkies and deranged Packers fans, the negative connotations wafting from that label – nacho, cheddar, or otherwise – outweigh any eccentric pride.

Scarcely familiar with the man behind the stigma, one might assume he was an oily character, a corny jackass who shakes your hand with a mouse trap under his thumb. He might be a crooning deviant absorbed in an endless lip synch of the Tom Jones catalog, polluting velvety auditoriums and nursing homes for throngs of overweight AARP groupies; the definitive master of chest hair and cheap motel sex. Or perhaps he’s a flatulent repeat offender, bombing toilets with reckless abandon as if the lessons of Hiroshima were lost on his immense ego. Whatever the case, this is not a man you introduce to your friends, unless said friends are sexually depraved soccer moms or those with an anti-hygiene fetish, or prostitutes.

In the spring of 1987, this writer held the designation of Mr. Cheese USA (not proudly, mind you), flaunting a title neither desired nor required, but nonetheless deserved. And while I wasn’t stuffing my crotch with tube socks like an elephantine chastity killer, or attending class with a cheese wheel squirreled in my backpack, my locker’s objectionable scent had saturated the hallway with an intense funk. After all, if you jam enough lunch bags into a barely ventilated cabinet, crush them intermittently with school books, and blend haphazardly for one semester, your curious parfait of loose leaf and lunchmeat won’t play nice in the warm weather. And no, this behavior did not score points with the female contingent, allowing me none of the pubescent luxuries of unclasping training bras while tasting the marvels of Wet N Wild lip gloss. Rather, I was horribly shamed, assuming the slackened posture of a beaten boy-fool; closet full of fromage in lieu of skeletons.

Packed dutifully each morning by mom, the schoolyard staples of juice box, sandwich, and snack were a dietary regiment of which deviation was considered impossible, at least within the two square miles comprising my hometown, and thus, my entire world. That said, while two thirds of that brown bag banquet were digestible enough, the prospect of noshing on unrefrigerated cheese roiled my stomach. As it is, I won’t ingest anything a day past expiration, and maintain a compulsive fear of food left to thaw on countertops, socializing amicably with Listeria and E coli. More often than not, I’m junking perfectly good groceries; essentially parading around some famished third world backwater with an oversized FUCK YOU sign, beating my chest while flipping off every kid with a distended belly. Sally Struthers can plead until she’s blue in the face, but errant habits die hard.

After a winter of mushroom incubation, my flogging commenced on clean-up day. For a certain outspoken teacher, spelunking in my locker played out like the second (equally flawed) unearthing of Al Capone’s vault, assuming good ol' Al valued mold and Trapper Keeper notebooks. Each individual lunch bag, in various states of fungal distress, was commented upon as I stood in a dead-eyed daze. And while this wasn’t some town square hanging wherein every student had joined a ring around our corner of wayward hell – screaming in unison for my crucifixion – enough of a nearby crowd was pretending not to notice this metaphoric spanking.

It’s awkward enough deflecting rhetorical questions like “Doesn’t your mother work hard to buy these cold cuts?” or “What do you think your parents would say if they knew you were disposing of perfectly good food?”, but fielding inquisitive onslaughts with no viable answers is like entering enemy fire, naked and weaponless. Of course, there were answers, but certainly not ones which I’d ever divulge. Namely, cafeteria aides lived for the extraction of lunchmeat from trash bins. Howling in tremendous constipated pain, their vocal disgust roared forth: “Whose lunch is this? Whose GREAT bologna sandwich was THROWN OUT today after only THREE BITES?” I may have been a pack rat, but I was forced into the business by obsessive-compulsive women doubling as aspirant (or very hungry) garbage pickers. If uneaten lunch equated to verbal thrashing, then hidden lunch equated to gastronomic genius, so long as the weather remained cool.

Post-disinfection, my locker received a green sticker (to denote potential “Superfund” status), while fellow students obtained blue, red, and yellow (the happy colors of the mentally adjusted). As a special bonus, my designation as Mr. Cheese USA – born from the pungent odor of lunches long forgotten – was assigned, readying me for a career in lounge crooning or sexual exploitation or, as a matter of appropriate course, the unctuous underbelly of financial sales and trading; where the client’s interests are always served, albeit with a little extra cheese.

Lead Us Not Into Deafness, But Deliver Us From Earwax

As a mere tike – blissfully ignorant of endemic corruption, disease, and Sub-Saharan pestilence – The Bastard was nearly pegged as a “special needs child” by the sandbox czars of his elementary school. Then again, during the salad days of Reaganomics, politically correct euphemism had yet to intrude upon our synthesizer coveting, legwarmer-clad society. In the red-bricked realm of education, terms like “special” (retarded), “exceptional” (fucking insane), or in my case “hearing impaired” (stone cold deaf) were but a mere twinkle in the eye of the next decade’s niggling liberal wuss. In fact, one could argue that our resident nurse, in the parlance of the times, advised my mother to “drag my deaf ass to an otologist” or risk having one of those atrocious phonograph cones rammed through my eardrum in an emergency implant procedure that would horrify 90% of the third world. Or so I imagined. To a free wheeling second grader raised on Saturday morning Loony Tunes marathons, reality and stupidity can become dreadfully blurred. When left unchecked, said stupidity might even cause a child to flunk his hearing test. Accidentally. Affecting enough distress upon his thoroughly vexed parents to involve the services of a revered and expensive ear specialist, 200 miles away.

I’m not normally an idiot, but I sometimes play one inadvertently. Although Nurse Ratched promptly fitted me with oversize manhole cover headphones (known affectionately as “cans”), she neglected to explain the rules of the test, at least in a manner palatable to a lunchbox toting rugrat with recess on the brain. Or perhaps, in the most eye winking of ironies, I neglected to listen. Whatever the case, most thumb twiddling brats understood that a series of tones was to be activated in either the right or left headphone with varying degrees of randomness. Upon detecting each sounder, this captive audience of nose bleeders, ass pickers, and lice heads (i.e. the future of America), was instructed to tap the correct ear from whence the notes originated. And in roughly ten minutes, following an approvingly curt nod and hair tussle from the test administrator, one could return to their regularly scheduled lesson on “just saying no” to candy from molesters, already in progress. In other words, you needn’t be some telepathic savant to acknowledge a few simple tweets of Morse code. But to a clueless, diminutive horse’s arse like this writer – unable to steady a humongous apparatus atop his tiny crown much less comprehend the nonsense of haphazard beeps – results were faked out of frantic desperation; arms alternately flailing with the zeal of a Tourette’s patient on a particularly trying afternoon. Hell, I’d mastered the colorblind exam like a champ (you know, numbers hidden amongst a series of dots), and rightfully sailed into this one with the ego of an overconfident prizefighter. Knocked unconscious before the first round.

Staggering ignorance aside, my hearing was fine, exemplary even, or so argued the specialist flown in from Washington DC to assuage my parents’ concerns. Wax buildup, on the other hand, was a hot button issue, as my cochlear canal evidently resembled the inside of a beehive; assuming the bees were jacked up on crack cocaine and worked sturdily through the night like your typical long-haul trucker. Over the next several weeks, (what felt like) gallons of Debrox solution were unceremoniously dumped into both ears, clearing the blockages in the hopes that I could one day pass floss through my empty head in the manner of some Coney Island freak show draw. Unnervingly, the medicine would sizzle and pop, like bacon in a pan, as I lay in the fetal position every night, pondering the exact spot where my life had veered so horribly off the rails. Emergency earwax removal had assumed key placement in the evening ritual of goodnight hugs and the Our Father, and I could either accept it with maturity, or accept it like a whimpering sissy-boy, depending on how the mood struck. Thankfully, this liquid ear excavator, whatever it was, it is still produced – and no one to my knowledge was jailed for producing it – alleviating any concerns of having received the aural version of thalidomide while ensnared in my own (death) bed; dad overseeing the equivalent of a waterboarding session as my ear hissed and sputtered like something doused in battery acid.

Although I boast my share of problems, cranking the television to window shattering decibels, or screaming like a loon at the dinner table, three inches from my wife’s face over the course of normal conversation, aren’t on that list. And noting a distinct positive, I’ve learned to appreciate (read: love) the scent of my own earwax. There’s nothing quite like bringing a stained pinky to one’s nostril and having that punchy aroma overwork the endorphins. Wax is the new cologne, dear reader, tweaking my senses like a sharp swallow of absinthe. While I no longer debase the pages of books with blotchy orange fingerprints, purposely marking my insignia, that brief romance with perceived hearing loss is forever regarded as my first love. Debrox, I hardly knew ya, yet I was your bitch for countless weeks in the early 1980’s. Thank you for making me feel less "special."

More Human Than Human

In his waning years as a sturdy oak of junior high largesse, my eighth grade science teacher leaned a bit psychotic. It’s not that this sudden brain tic made him less amenable to students or faculty – both of whom respected the man in the way you might honor a former NFL legend-cum-broadcaster at the close of a storied career – but when certain cards in everyone’s deck of 52 get lost, an odd fungus tends to erode the mind. Simply put, if you heave an overhead projector from its stoic desk perch into the hallway, mid-lesson, while attempting to verbally discipline twenty-five or so uninterested snots, you command attention. Naturally, once said projector slams against the far wall, ricocheting like a bad car crash or serious industrial accident, you’ve earned certifiable bragging rights in the dangerous yet coveted “totally fucking insane” realm of educational lore. And congratulations, because that tightrope on which you’re now balancing is one for which an entire district’s worth of teachers would carve out their kidneys. While the meek and compliant enforced rules via rationality, eighth grade science was now policed with the suggestive power of imminent physical harm, random or otherwise, and forever coupled with a dollop of eye twitching insanity. Suddenly, trivial infractions like forgetting one’s homework or passing notes could have resulted in being made to eat chalk, having our hands submerged in jars of hydrofluoric acid, or, shudder to think, our brains eaten by the newly minted mad professor after a lovingly slow roast on the Bunsen burner.

Whatever the curriculum lords may have intended, this class was never a traditional foray into textbooks and mundane lectures. Prior to the bizarre “feats of strength” display, our master of ceremonies sawed batteries apart, ignited and exploded them, lit gaseous substances ablaze on his ceiling, and simulated the creation of a fireball. Package these curious ventures into a fan-friendly Mr. Wizard’s World on crack cocaine, toss a few pieces of machinery to ensure that the master/servant relationship is understood by all, implicitly convince the true believers of your looming psychosis, and bingo: You have the makings of a funhouse doubling as a science class masquerading as an even bigger funhouse where no one really learns anything. Except under this circus tent, the knife thrower flings real weaponry. And you don’t need to volunteer to be targeted. And sometimes he misses. Because he’s a goddamn old man, older than dirt.

Yes, Dr. Frankenstein’s venerable ubiquity was taken for granted. He seemed like he’d always been around; just as apt to have been present at the dedication of the school cornerstone, in a “Science Faculty 1947” yearbook photo, on the Zapruder film, or even etched into cave drawings extolling the merits of the wheel. And while his tales of greatness spanned an amazing spectrum of bygone days, with events unthinkable in politically correct times (i.e. tackle football games of teachers vs. students and pig roasts in the courtyard, to name a few), the year his mental faculties derailed was to be his last. He knew this. Yanking a large metal device out of its outlet, and tossing it against an outside wall with Tarzan-like precision and Godzilla-fueled strength wasn’t exactly placing the twilight of a career in jeopardy, nor was it risking a hefty pension. In other words, when you’re old and fully cooked, you’re entitled. And when you’re overly entitled, and deemed to be halfway between solitaire and senility, you can scare the bejesus out of the most hardened future drop-outs with a few metered bouts of unpredictability.

And that’s not science, it’s art.

The Bus Driver Always Honks Twice

Should you have been a fortunate passenger of Bus #1 during my 1982-83 school year, this smudge of divine intervention would’ve placed you squarely under the aura of the “Old Guy,” our occasional captain of the yellow submarine. In retrospect, he probably rated somewhere near middle age, but through the eyes of a bewildered second grader toting a Heathcliff lunchbox, he was practically Old Man Winter: eternally grateful for the geriatric luxuries of waking up each morning, enjoying a commanding control of his bladder, and breathing without an iron lung ventilator strapped crassly to his back. In those formidable years, the spectre of a strung-out Vietnam veteran assaulting traffic as if reliving the Tet Offensive was enough to send this writer to his own minefield of early education flashbacks. Cornering the market on mesh baseball caps, our senseless leader was forever clad in an interchangeable surplus of brown checkered flannels; gnarled locks cascading over his shoulders like a rock and roll Jesus. Marry that consignment wardrobe to a pair of tinted shades – the kind that darken in sunlight and remain the definitive fashion plate of child molesters and meth addicts – and you have the makings of an elementary school conquistador (or a PTA nightmare, dependent on perspective).

This cat was an easy rider with a jones for the hash pipe; still damaged from America’s then-shameful ingratitude toward servicemen, and thrust into the niggling trifecta of double-digit inflation, oil embargos, and economic stagnancy. But inner demons were surmounted and income finally secured, exploiting every trick in the bag of a freedom rocking army discharge with the grandeur of Waingro from DeNiro’s ‘Heat’ crew. In the end, his worthy triumphs on home soil outshined any battlefield misfires. He became a substitute school bus driver, rising like a phoenix from the sullied ashes of war to (occasionally) command a squadron of snot-nosed, immature rugrats.

Whether by skyward Batman signal or clandestine phone message, the calling of the Old Guy into service was a treat. On a positive note, it kept him away from the racetrack, and quashed the gloom of entire days spent shirtlessly grooving to Crosby, Stills & Nash, burnt to a crisp. Whispers of his appearance spread virally through hallways and classrooms, excitement mounting in preparation for some Second Coming-type epiphany, especially should an astute set of ears learn of the regular driver’s upcoming vacation.

When assuming the position of transportation royalty, our substitute hero blared “Eye of the Tiger” at glass shattering decibels from atop his throne. Ghetto blaster in tow, its unsteady lean was always one pothole away from torpedoing down the aisle and lodging itself in the head of the trailing car’s driver. Without compromise, the Old Guy cranked this nugget of 1980’s gold through crackling, paper cone speakers on every ride. Morning and afternoon. Rewound and replayed. Pumping his fist in time with each rousing drum crash like our very own version of The Simpsons’ Otto Mann. And so began the lunacy of careening through busy intersections while untethered to our seats in the most anarchic environment this side of a sandbox brawl; a cacophony of pre-pubescent adrenaline, screaming about the “thrill of the fight” and “rising to the challenge of our rivals” like a hyperactive (and painfully awful) glee-club tour group. This was four-wheeled pandemonium compounded by the carnival barking of “Do you wanna hear it louder!” which punctuated the enclosed chaos like an A-bomb explosion. In second grade, things would never get better than this. Other than extra recess and Santa Claus, life was all downhill.

Did I mention that this was the Alvin & The Chipmunks version of the ‘Rocky III’ classic? Because I think that bears noting. Did I also mention that no student ever heard the rest of the tape, since at the song’s conclusion, Waingro would slam his fungal ridden thumb defiantly against the stop button? It’s possible that the remaining 25 minutes was intentionally left blank to encourage repeated listening – the type admired by air guitar shredding catatonics – because our faithful chauffeur enjoyed the high speed squeal of three rodents covering a glam rock anthem, envisioning their buck-toothed likenesses scampering up the stairs of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It’s also possible that the ensuing space contained our driver’s own symphony with an escort, recorded in the shadows of a VFW sock hop or, dare I say, in that very bus while parked inconspicuously along a shaded lane. Perhaps across the street from your house while mom lovingly tended her garden some few yards away. As the old saying goes, when the bus is a-rockin’, etc. etc.

Old Guy, it’s been over 25 years since I’ve enjoyed your vibes. Assuming you’re still out there, rotting to the core in some understaffed VA hospital while bribing nurses to increase the morphine dosage, be aware that no one steered that bus with more cocksure swagger. No one jerked that door crank with more assured machismo. No one clutched that boombox with more calculated ruggedness, delivering well beyond the expectations of a grade schooler’s world which stretched, pitifully, from home to Main Street. But within that small window of early adolescence, between diapers and braces, when running with scissors was the most dangerous thing in our sheltered suburban lives and breaking the speed of sound lay miles past our infantile aspirations, you rocked harder than anything else.

Dude, you were a fucking flamethrower.