White Man's Problems Part 1

White Man's Problems.

Stories by Kevin Morris.

For my mom, Betsy.

"After a certain age every man is responsible for his own face."

-Albert Camus.

"There is nothing to do but go home and drink your nine drinks and forget about it."

-Donald Barthelme.

Contents.

Summer Farmer.

The Plot To Hold Hands With Elizabeth Tremblay.

Slipstream.

Here Comes Mike.

Mulligan's Travels.

Rain Come Down.

Starting Out.

Miracle Worker.

White Man's Problems.

Summer Farmer.

When Harrigan awoke, the first thing he saw was her left eye with its cobalt-blue iris. She'd snuck into his bed again. He didn't mind it. Any single dad is happy when his nine-year-old daughter gets in bed with him. Beautiful, really, that eye-those eyes. Ruby was tugging his arm, telling him to get up. It was early, and he knew she wanted to watch TV for those few valuable minutes before her nanny made it through the surfer traffic of the Pacific Coast Highway to the house on Malibu Road.

He turned on the cartoons and walked to the medicine cabinet, where he swallowed his morning meds. There were six pills: three Lamictal and three Budeprion XL, the generic brand of Wellbutrin. They picked him up and slowed him down-at least that's how the psychopharmacologist explained it. He was a touch bipolar; how big the touch and how far apart the poles, no one knew. He thought the pills helped, but there was evidence they didn't.

He made his daily fiber-supplement drink and waited for a cappuccino to drip from the machine. One of the artificially distressed kitchen cabinets was losing a handle, another thing to fix. The beach and the sky and the ocean were gray. He read The New York Times more closely than the LA Times, and didn't read the The Wall Street Journal at all. He s.h.i.+fted from left to right, making room for Ruby's brother, Bobby, as he sat sleepy eyed and grouchy, an unspeaking beast, all zits and hair in a Dead Kennedys T-s.h.i.+rt.

Once the nanny arrived, he backed out of the garage and headed slowly south along the sh.o.r.eline in his black Mercedes S 63 AMG. It had a 518-horsepower V-8 AMG engine, F1 manual s.h.i.+fters, twenty-inch five-spoke light alloy wheels, seven-speed automatic transmission, and calibrated Active Body Control. The S 63 also had AMG-specific piping design and new contoured side bolsters for outstanding seating comfort, as well as an MSRP of $127,000. He wasn't sure what he paid; his business manager had handled it.

The feeling of wealth was still odd for him, so far away from his start. When the doctors had asked for family history, he traced his genealogy to the potato famine of 1845. His eight great-great-grandfathers, to a man, were listed in church records as "gravediggers." Descendants who made it to Baltimore, while they managed to find work out of ditches, did not prosper in the New World. He often wondered how, over the course of 150 years in America, such a big family could not manage to sc.r.a.pe together a G.o.dd.a.m.n dime.

He pulled into the Starbucks at Cross Creek. There was the usual line of people: moms who just dropped the kids at school, contractors d.i.c.king around, evangelical Pepperdine kids. The barista had a nose ring and caramel hair streaked with orange. The women stole glances at him. He spoke to no one, avoiding eye contact by staring at the kids' menu. Chocolate-chip Frappuccinos and Rice Krispies treats. He hated the way they announced the drinks. "Grande vanilla latte for Dennis." Humiliating.

He went stop-and-go down the coast until he hit a lineup at Topanga. He did not put the headset on; he did not roll calls. He moved in traffic amid no sounds at all: no radio, no CDs, no iPhone. He rode in silence as often as he could lately. He even stopped listening to the Dodgers, who were hopeless. The phone rang. His a.s.sistant told him she had Stern, his regular psychologist. Harrigan said he'd call back. What could Stern tell him? What would he ask? "Are you still crazy?"

He drove south past the Santa Monica beaches and the volleyball courts and the eroding cliffs of Palisades Park. Past the pier and through the McClure Tunnel where the PCH becomes the I-10 and the sign read Christopher Columbus Transcontinental Highway. He asked himself, his ritual, "What if I just keep driving?" How far he could go, how long he would last with the a.s.sumed names, the hotel rooms, the paying in cash, he did not know. He felt gravity was sideways, that he should be further east, that he was of the Atlantic. He missed the changing seasons and the touch of holy water in the foyer; he missed the cold, dark, freezing rain.

But the western-most point of the eastbound I-10 was where he was in his life. He had long ago become rich producing movies, a vocation that suited him well. There was a house on the beach, a house in the mountains, stock positions, bond ladders, hedge funds for growth, hedge funds for value, and hedge funds for hedging against hedge funds. He let three-hundred-dollar gift certificates expire under other papers stuffed in his desk. Wealth insulated him from the grinding existence of his parents and siblings. But nothing prepared him for what had happened and the pain that visited his soul. The engine of his sleek, black, luxury car was overheating, drying up all its fluids. Harrigan was not young or old. The world had flattened and he'd become a cliche headed east.

How predictable and boring it was to be depressed. He'd heard about it, read about it, been warned about it, and now, right on schedule, he was living it. The source of the depression was no mystery, oldest one in the books. But as he made the drive each day, talked on the phone, had lunch, finished up work at the office, looked at Bobby's homework, and did all the other things that made up his life, he knew it was not what had happened. It was that he was not better, that he couldn't do better, and that he had broken his word.

He turned onto Avenue of the Stars. Century City was 20.7 miles from his home on the Pacific in Malibu. A dozen or so high rises, two large modern shopping centers, and a couple hotels. It was past Westwood and before Beverly Hills, between the country club for WASPs and the country club for Jews. He played golf at both but was a member of neither. Century City: a monstrosity of the modern, b.a.s.t.a.r.d child of the sc.u.mbags of real estate and the wh.o.r.es of show business. There was nothing in the name-Century City-that justified the importance, the primacy, the notion that it was at the center of things. It was in the center of nothing. Like everything in LA, it was an illusion.

He pulled into his building, past the guards and through the automatic card reader and into the lower circles of the parking lot. His reserved spot was next to the service elevator, which was an express to his floor, saving a trip through the lobby. A small man in blue coveralls was already waiting, which was not unusual. Taking the service entrance meant that Harrigan often rode with the working guys, the electricians, caulkers, framers, and the like. Seeing them made him think of his dad and his uncles, who carried pressure gauges and tape measures and had specks of drywall in the hairs of their forearms at the end of the day. They were far away from him now.

The little man smiled at him. There was a big O above his pocket, the insignia of the Otis Elevator Company. His nametag said Kingsley, which was a bit confusing to Harrigan, because the guy appeared to be Mexican-a little light skinned but definitely Mexican. He wore a small gold bracelet with a young girl's face, a photo image engraved on a charm.

Harrigan felt a stir. "Is that your daughter?" he asked.

Kingsley looked at his bracelet and held it up. "Yes."

The elevator didn't seem to be moving, so Kingsley stepped up and pressed the b.u.t.ton, as though he were responsible for the delay. He stepped back and stared ahead.

"She died."

"Oh, good lord," Harrigan said. "I'm so sorry." Then, after a second, he asked, "How old was she?"

"She was nine. Car accident."

Harrigan usually let this type of moment pa.s.s. But after the car came and the two men got on, he spoke up. "I lost mine, too," he said. "A daughter...my daughter."

"Aah. I'm sorry. How old?"

"Seven. Eighteen months ago." He poked at the b.u.t.ton for his floor. "Leukemia."

"Then you know all about it, my friend."

"Yes, I do. I'm afraid I do."

It is true of any of us that, should a stranger meet us at the intersection of elevator and automobile when the chill cloud of memory hits; if he should recognize the subterranean cascade of longing and remorse; if he knows well the depthless sadness of not seeing a child rise into the brace-face, the inappropriate midriff, the biology major, the bride; he would be privy not just to the naked basis of our being but to our utter defenselessness to the lateral and vertical rhythms and movement of this world.

Kingsley dropped off his paperwork at the management office and rode the elevator back down to his truck. He had received the call after midnight to service the broken car for floors eleven through twenty. As he went through the payment kiosk, he teased the Ethiopian girl who took his money, telling her he was coming back to take her away with him. She tried not to, but she laughed, only the latest to learn there was no resisting Manuel Kingsley.

He pulled onto Century Park West heading east, thinking about how beautiful the buildings were. Architecture, to him, was man's way of talking to heaven. He enjoyed getting called to Century City, because it made him feel special. It was fancier than downtown or the Valley, where his work usually was. It was closer to the heart of show business, and Kingsley, like so many, was a sucker for the excitement of Hollywood. He could feel that in the buildings. And, man, those buildings, they were a wonder.

As he drove down Olympic, he saw he was low on gas: the digital monitor told him he had sixty miles before empty. Enough to get home to his wife so she wouldn't worry. He could fill up later. He turned on the wipers, and the cleaning fluid washed the dust away. Kingsley felt lucky to see the marvel in things. After Opal died, eleven years ago, he vowed not to waste his spirit. And he had kept this vow, for the most part, aided by the knowledge there were lots of people who didn't have it too good. He had known great sadness, but it had not claimed him. He thought of this as Opal's gift.

Nor had money possessed him. It lost its hold when she died. Gradually, his taste for life came back, but finances would never again keep him up at night. He wished for things, sure. He wanted more time. He had fantasies about young girls. His back hurt in the morning. But he got what he needed, some fis.h.i.+ng in San Pedro and an old man's love of golf. And family and friends, all healthy, thank G.o.d.

At sixty-two, Kingsley did not feel alienated from anything. He wasn't going from left to right or right to left. Life was like an elevator ride: ups and downs. He helped people get up in the morning and go home to their families at night. He took pride in the efficient delivery of millions to places all over the city. These were not coping mechanisms, but the abiding convictions of faith, for Manuel Kingsley was not a man whose mind defaulted to worries about work.

He made the transition from the Santa Monica Freeway in the west to the Pasadena Freeway headed east. He switched on the radio and a guitar solo blared, reminding him of Casey. Kingsley laughed thinking how much his life had come to revolve around a twelve-year-old named Casey Evans. Opal's sister, Ophelia, had married Scott Evans, a quiet guy who worked with computers. Kingsley's wife had been against the white boy at first, but after all they'd been through, Kingsley told Ophelia to follow her heart. He could not refuse her anything. And Scott had won him over by learning all about elevators, the subject that Kingsley loved better than best.

He parked the truck on the Doran side of the Starbucks on Glendale Avenue, deciding to stop even though he was on the flip side of his usual morning. No one in Starbucks ever really knew if he had just worked all night or was setting off for the day. He craved the caramel Frappuccinos and snuck one in every morning. He knew all the workers and ordered the usual from the kid at the register. They talked about the Angels, who were always in it these days. He saw Barbara behind the counter. He asked for a report on her son, a linebacker at Crenshaw. As they chatted, she gave him his drink, and he pushed it back with a frown. She said, "Manny, you know you ain't supposed to have it." Then she relented and gave him a little shot of whipped cream, their private joke once more made.

As he headed back out on Glendale Avenue, his mind traveled again. He thought about his grandfather, long-dead white man in Mexico, eccentric vagabond from England, reader of Shakespeare. He thought of his mother, who lived with his sister and her family in Uvalde. They had all come to Los Angeles in the fifties and lived off Olvera Street, working in the shops and was.h.i.+ng dishes. So much had happened in fifty years, so much was left behind, and so much was gone. Yet memory did not diminish the charge he felt driving alone in his truck, headed east to a home that he owned in California. In America.

He owed it all to elevators. Twenty-six years in a business that set him free. Kingsley was trained to repair the Gearless Traction Model, the workhorse of the industry and the predominant machine in LA. The GTE could go five hundred feet per minute, with steel cables attached to the top of the car and wrapped around the drive sheave in special grooves. The transfer between the weight of the car and the counterweight attached by cables moved the machine. Ninety-five percent of all problems were caused by faulty upkeep or someone pus.h.i.+ng the wrong b.u.t.tons. There was a confession in almost every call for repair.

He parked in the driveway of his house and looked at the digital readout from the gas gauge: thirty-nine miles till empty. The sprinklers for the front flowerbed were on and Manny's work shoes got wet. A warm, brown light followed him when he opened the door. His wife was already cleaning the house. She smiled and went into the kitchen. He sat down at the Formica table and looked at the papers, La Opinin and the LA Times. She put out plates of scrambled eggs and tortillas, popping up and down to get what she thought he needed. She made him eat the bran m.u.f.fin he hated.

They spoke Spanish in the quiet voices of old friends. He was tired, yes, but he would be ok later. He moved into the living room and put on ESPN with the sound down low. She closed the old gold curtains so the room would be cool and he would have shade for his nap. She brought a gla.s.s of water and a handful of pills: Lipitor, Atenolol, Myleran, vitamins, and antioxidants. The Myleran, a large oval pill, made him nauseous. But he was only on it for six more weeks, when there would be another scan.

As he settled into in the soft, deep, red quiet, he glanced at the photos near his head, on the table at the end of the couch where he lay. The old black-and-whites of his parents in Mexico were crowded out by a group picture of the Kingsleys and Evanses at the wedding. There were lots of sports action shots and team plaques off to the side and a very special Polaroid of Casey and Manny on the golf course at Arroyo Seco. Manny kept looking, though, and found the one he was after this morning. It was Opal when she was a toddler in his arms at the beach. She was looking at the camera from over his shoulder. Manny's back was turned, but his profiled face smiled up at her. He looked at his little girl closely now, as he had done a million times before, paying particular attention to those big, beautiful, brown, and round eyes.

The Plot To Hold Hands.

With Elizabeth Tremblay.

It is not cool that people around here think it's ok. It's bad enough that grown men are going to beauty salons, sitting under hair dryers, walking around like poodles, and saying "Do you like my perm?" Bad enough that we have pet rocks and mood rings. But if that isn't enough for you, if that doesn't show the ridiculous state of affairs here in late-seventies America, consider this: we have to live with the knowledge that someone, somewhere, thinks it is ok for the Philadelphia Phillies' away uniforms to be baby blue. They wear G.o.dd.a.m.n baby blue uniforms on the road. Am I the only one who is ashamed? And while we're on the subject, they screwed up the P in Phillies, making it round and puffy and completely stupid looking. The kind of P the Pillsbury Doughboy would pick if he was running the club.

I am sitting in detention. My first one. Two hours of forced confinement after school. It's jail-like. Actually, there are many similarities between my school and a penitentiary. We went on a field trip to the state prison at Graterford a few months ago-which is pretty bizarre when you think about it, but that's another whole road-and the thing I remember most is that it kind of looked like our high school. Both are made of reddish brick, concrete, and feature wonderful painted-cinder-block interiors. Both have lots of gray railings and windows with chain linking inside the gla.s.s. I don't know how they do that with the windows.

My English teacher, Mr. Matthews, must get an extra twenty bucks to sit through this, which he probably needs if you go by the way he scrunches his face as he balances his checkbook. He sees me come in today and says, "Budding, what are you doing here?"

I don't want to get into the whole thing, so I say, "I got into trouble. It's a long story."

He gives me a distrustful look. "Ok, I'll find out what you did. But you're going to have to work while you're here." He gestures at the other fifteen detainees in the room. "You don't get to just sit around like those other morons."

I look around for some help, but seeing the scuzzb.a.l.l.s in detention with me, I realize Mr. Matthews kind of has a point.

He thinks about it. "I want you to get something out of this," he says. "Otherwise it's no punishment. Write something. I won't read it."

Let me go through my day. At 6:32 a.m., the clock radio goes off in the bedroom I share with my little brother. It's the same freaking jingle every morning: "Another great day is with us, and to start it out happ-i-ly, we'd like to be the first to say good morning and to welcome you to W-I-P...in Phil-a-del-phia..." My mother calls me just as I fall back to sleep. "Ro-man!" It's about fifteen degrees outside. I know this because my dad accidentally shut the door of our room after we went to bed, so no heat came in all night, which means the day starts with us seeing our breath. I take my school clothes into the bathroom because I will get frostbite if I walk back to my bedroom in a towel.

My mom is so bleary she can't make breakfast. n.o.body wants to eat anyway, because it's so frickin' cold and early. I toast one piece of Wonder Bread and go to the bus stop with my little brother, Bill. I'd like to point out here that he gets named "Bill" and I get named "Roman." That gives you an idea of my parents. We live in a place called Stuckley, named after a guy who, best I can tell, is famous for owning a farm. At the bus stop, my hair is frozen under my hat and, once again, I am freezing my a.s.s off. I look down the street for any sign of yellow. Bill and I huddle with the other kids like a stranded bobsled team waiting for the rescue vehicle.

We get on the bus, and Anthony, the driver, gives me five bucks. The guy always takes the Eagles, which is really not smart. We are on the bus from 7:10 till 7:40. The heaters blow like crazy, and it gets hotter as the bus collects kids. Since I'm wearing a big jacket over two s.h.i.+rts and a sweater, I start to sweat. And as I heat up, I start to fall asleep again. It's like being tortured. The only thing that pulls me out of it is that Elizabeth Tremblay gets on when we get to Riddlewood, where the nice houses are. She sits two rows in front of me. She is the hottest girl in the school and I am in love with her. I give her a little wave when she walks near me, and she says hi. She sits with her friend Jane Ragni, who is a cheerleader, too. I usually try to say something funny, but there is no opening today.

Ok, maybe everybody else thinks Jane is the hottest girl in the school. Not me. For me it's Liz; she's my dream girl. She has brown hair, green eyes, the right kind of freckles, and a beautiful, if a little bit round, face. She's got a nice body with good b.o.o.bs. But the thing about Liz is her b.u.t.t. It's the best in the world. She doesn't have a little bony behind like Jane's. Liz' is a nice round thing. It looks like two horseshoes side-by-side.

Or, to put it another way, imagine the letter W. Most girls in ninth grade have b.u.t.ts in which the middle part of the W is made up of straight, angular lines. Not Liz Tremblay. With her, the W is made with big curvy lines, like the W for Wilson Baseball gloves. Or the W the Pillsbury Doughboy would make if he was making a W-which would be a better use of the Pillsbury Doughboy's time, by the way, than making baseball uniforms.

After we herd off the bus, I have ten minutes to drop my books off at my locker and get to my first cla.s.s, which, of course, is gym. Next thing I know, I'm putting on my uniform, which I always forget to take home. It's so not clean. It has a little bit of an ammonia smell. Jock strap, shorts, and s.h.i.+rt. For some reason, the phys ed teacher, Mr. Lambert, is obsessed with wrestling. I swear to G.o.d we've been wrestling for eight months. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 8:00 a.m. I can be found wrestling Peter Logatelli. Now, I like Peter. Nothing against him. But he weighs 280 pounds. I mean, Jesus Christ, they're going to cut him out of a house someday. And they don't give us any kneepads or anything.

Today I am getting smushed as usual by the tubolard Logatelli when Lambert comes by. "Sit-out, Budding. Perfect time for a sit-out!" When I try to sit-out, which is just a dumba.s.s wrestling coach way of saying "get the h.e.l.l away from the guy," I go nowhere. My legs just flail around under Peter's sumo-like ma.s.s. My knees and s.h.i.+ns make a skidding noise as they get burned on the mat. I'm leaving skin behind like a molting snake.

The other annoying thing about gym cla.s.s is you have to take a shower when it's over. So, about ten minutes before the bell, it's off we go from the mat to the locker room. I strip down naked and take my towel to the shower. A couple of points here: First, I always forget to take my towel home, too. It's gray-at least now it's gray-and it's about as big as a standard washcloth. It doesn't cover me at all. Not fun. Second, it's ice cold in the locker room because some idiot left the door to the football field open. It's a G.o.dd.a.m.n pattern. It's back to freezing my gonads off until I go into the shower, which is about eight thousand degrees and ignites the burns on my legs. Then they make you step on an athlete's-foot machine, which is basically two metal pedals that squirt disinfectant onto your feet. I am grateful for the school's interest in my hygiene-I really am-but I don't think that thing works.

The forced march continues as I go to geometry, which starts at 8:49. (Every minute counts with the a.s.sholes who make up this schedule.) I have to sprint to make it, causing perspiration again. But once I get there, I realize I don't have anything to do, because I finished the problems last week. There's a rumor that today we will dissect frogs in sixth-period biology. You have to understand that this is a very big deal for the ninth grade. We've never done anything like that before. The girls are all scared s.h.i.+tless.

My geometry teacher is Mr. Lutz, an old crabby guy. The kids hate him. Today, five minutes into the lesson, he gets mad at a football player, Jeff Zwarts, for talking. He sends him to the blackboard and proceeds to give him the business. He says, "Draw a quadrangle." Zwarts does it. "Ok, Mr. Zwarts, that is your head. You are a blockhead." Laughter erupts. Then Lutz says, "Now, Mr. Zwarts, please make the best possible circle you can." Zwarts makes a pretty decent circle. "Draw the radius of the circle." Zwarts has no clue. Lutz looks at me. Just as I was afraid of, he says, "Mr. Budding, draw the radius." So I make a face that says don't kill me to Zwarts as I go up to the board and make a line from the outer edge of the circle to the middle. Lutz says, "Zwarts, put your nose on the point at the end of the radius going away from the circ.u.mference, which is the diametric center point of the circle." Zwarts sticks his nose against the board, and now his back is to the rest of the cla.s.s. "Ok, Mr. Zwarts, we will get back to you." He leaves Zwarts there till the bell thirty-eight minutes later-9:44.

Third period is music, which starts at 9:52. The teacher is Mrs. Weaver, who is a hippy with hippyish body odor. I don't know what's so musical about her. It's like all hippies are a.s.sumed to be musical. Anyway, she has us playing recorder, which is basically a plastic tube with holes. At the beginning of cla.s.s, she sends us to the front of the room to pick an instrument out of the laundry bin. The school that is so worried about my athlete's foot apparently does not care about the canker sores I will get from a recorder used by six other students per day. Disgusting. But that's nothing compared to what happens when thirty-five ninth graders start trying to play "The Entertainer."

See, the thing about recorders is that after you blow on them awhile, saliva starts coming out the bottom. I'm standing next to Ernie Bundt, with whom I am going through life for the sole reason that our names fall next to each other alphabetically. No one can produce more s...o...b..r than Ernie. There's the fountain of youth, there are fountains of knowledge, and then there's Ernie Bundt, a fountain of drool. The worst part is Liz Tremblay is sitting right behind me. If you have a crush on someone, s...o...b..ring out of your recorder is the kind of thing you try to avoid. I accomplish this by going into a lot of stylish flourishes. I raise my horn horizontally like I'm Wynton Marsalis every time I think spit is coming out. That's kind of gross, though, because if I go too high the drool comes back into my mouth from the other direction.

Speaking of Liz, she's smart-maybe the smartest cheerleader in the history of the school. She speaks French and knows about art and all. We're in the "Academically Talented" cla.s.ses together, which seems a little brutal on the other kids. My friend Hubie is in the C section. My dad says you might as well say "fill it up" when you put a kid in the C section. My mom smacks dad when he talks like that.

Anyway, the cla.s.ses thing gives me a lot of playing time with Liz. The problem is she hangs with the cool people, the kids in the normal cla.s.ses, like the A and B sections, which are made up of her cheerleader friends and the jocks and the whole road that goes down. In other words, she's in with the normal people. I don't have the same kind of hookup. My cred is very high with the smart crowd, but when it comes to the cool kids, it's like you have to hide that you're intelligent. It's a dilemma.

She sits next to me in seventh-period study hall. This gives me the opportunity to wear her down with conversation and jokes. We've actually started having real long talks. I try to read up on things that will interest her, like witchcraft and the Rosenbergs. I even watch what I wear, which is tough. To tell the truth, sometimes I worry she won't stoop down to going out with me because it would be socially unacceptable. Other times I think, what the h.e.l.l? I'm a pretty cool guy. She should go out with me. I get jealous thinking about her with anyone else. Man, I don't like the way that feels. It gets me way down deep, like in some molten center of my body, like the ball of fire in the middle of the earth. Sometimes I wake up at night wondering if that ball is going to burn through me and once it's done turn into a huge, exploding fire that destroys the world. I'm a little nuts like that.

Music ends at 10:47, and we head to the cafeteria for lunch. We push the orange trays along the aluminum railing, and from behind the Plexiglas barrier they serve us spaghetti with meat sauce. Dessert, their apology for the entree, is a little square of red Jell-O with some half-a.s.sed whipped cream on top. At this point, I'm not that into eating anything, let alone this s.h.i.+t. It isn't yet eleven in the morning, and I have gone from freezing my a.s.s off to sweating to freezing my a.s.s off and then to sweating again. I've taken two showers, been crushed by Logatelli, been treated for fungus, blown through an unsanitary musical instrument, and now I'm supposed to eat hamburger meat from yesterday's sloppy joes. My legs are badly burned, and I am tired. And there is still the prospect of frog dissection.

On that front, the girls are all in a lather. Frogs are the talk of the lunchroom, and everyone is yapping about it as I go to my next cla.s.s, which is called, strangely, Health. That is the catchall term for everything from s.e.x ed to malaria prevention to making pancakes. Don't ask me why, but health cla.s.s is taught by a rotating group of gym teachers. That makes sense to someone somewhere, as does the fact that the course also covers driver's ed. Our teacher for the driver's ed unit is-you guessed it-the wrestling-obsessed Mr. Lambert. He doesn't like to talk much off the mat, so he just shows us movies. Today's is The Smith Method of s.p.a.ce Cus.h.i.+on Driving. Some guy named Smith drives around in a '57 Pontiac convertible demonstrating his revolutionary style of driving, which mainly consists of giving the guy ahead of you some room. That's the big deal: don't tailgate. But the hilarious thing is Smith is talking to the camera the whole time. At one point, he almost smashes into a guy in a Plymouth making a left. I look around to see if anyone else is catching this, but the whole room is asleep-tough to stay awake after spaghetti.

Then we go to the much-antic.i.p.ated sixth-period cla.s.s, biology. We sit at black plastic lab tables that have holes in the middle, which I suppose are there in case we need to build something requiring a large cylindrical tube. Our teacher is Mr. Palmer, a creepy guy who is like six foot five. He is incredibly psyched to be at the frog-dissection part of the year. He gives us a big speech about the importance of what we are about to do, like we're astronauts or something.

"I have come to see frog dissection as a rite of pa.s.sage for children in the public-school system," he says. "Your time in school can be remembered in two distinct sections-dissected, if you will. There are your childhood years before you dissect a frog. At this point, you are young and immature-some of you very much so. Your bodies are not yet developed. Your minds are simple."

He begins to go around the room, handing out the poor frogs for us to cut up. They are in vacuum-packed plastic wrappers. "Then, after frog dissection, you become young adults. You become worldlier, more experienced. Your bodies open like flowers. You begin to get complicated. You perspire more readily..."

He comes to me and Ernie first. Out of nowhere, a plan comes to me. I stick our frog in the drawer underneath the lab table. I say, "We didn't get ours."

"I didn't give you one?"

"No."

"I could've sworn I gave you one."