Manual, first day freshman year, late august, 1992 (prologue)...

 



Traverse back through the  elliptical vagaries of what is conceived as the blink of time visible in concentric ripples, the last lick of copper ceremonially skimmed across the lagoon of Glen Oak park on the day before you left everything behind, skipping back an estimated 7,832 calendar numerical squares, a decimated hopscotch of defeated hours escaped unknowingly from the petal of your breath, you will note the protagonist, rising early, spending more time than is sociologically salubrious in front of the  bathroom frame optically ricocheting the blink of his countenance back in his direction brandishing the can of  Aqua Net over his scalp before leaving for the altar of the unknown, arriving early to Early BIRD PE so that he can spend five minutes hopefully unaccompanied and alone in the central window hallway on the second floor attacking the protruding decimal snout of his locker combination, which, either because he is inept or lacks the avg. sangfroid to crack the combination on the first try, seems to seriously jam. 

That, because of the nature of its architecture from outside Manual looks like it is a half-asleep petrified sandstone double-stacked plateau.

 A truncated beige-brick stump; a plinth to an opera of loss never performed in this lifetime.

That on game day the football players are expected to wear their jersey sans shoulder pads to class while the cheerleaders walk around in triangles and giggle and flirt while baptizing flecks of glitter over self-made banners.

That if you come down with the flu and have to go see nurse Nancy she will more than likely give you a packet of crackers to ease your ailment.

. That STATUS QUO is not an option although the trite saying really doesn’t make much sense in the context in which it is used if you think about it.

That  hallway PDA between the nasal shrill of the bell almost seems to be encouraged. That, although the election is nine weeks away, a staggering number of sophomores who are ineligible to vote are toting t-shirts reading CLINTON-GORE ’92.  That potato bar every Tuesday will undoubtedly give you the hardcore runs although, if served by cafeteria veteran Mrs. Evans who attends your church, it is worth it.

 

That an early 90’s sophomore female  wearing visible shoulder pads and side pony tail scrunchy can often (somehow) be mistook for angelic halo and wings.

That Coach Mann has a giant LAST OF THE MOHICANS poster in his classroom even though the movie is not slated to come out until the end next month. That across the street in the alleyway next to Schepke’s florist is what has been christened as the smoking vector of the school, outside of various bathrooms where, if you were a smoker and compelled to puff between classes you would know.

 

That cool Joe Thomas who teaches third hour Biology just won’t shut up with personal anecdotes while addressing the student body as a whole as quote people end quote

That the football team is expected to go the proverbial far with quotation marks banked around it this year.

That breakfast is served in the cafeteria under the moniker of “the Breakfast Club” although Molly Ringwald is conspicuously absent.


That in some inner-circle of the school, Jelly fish shoes are still en vogue so to speak.

That none of the toilets in the downstairs male’s locker room down stairs have doors on the hinge of the stalls.

That the only student-athletes who seriously take  a calculated open stall shit before practice are members of the soccer team en masse

 

That for the most part (as far as you can tell) Manual is nowhere near the vicinity of the Drive-by-shooting Boyz in the Hood that the adults on the bluff have warned you about.

That quite a few senior speech team members, esp. the males, have sideburns and wear leather jackets and sport t-shirts with names of the bands I have monopolized the last summer discovering.

That, key club, kinda of is, a cadre of altruistic nerds who will not let you join if you smoke.

That in the Varsity locker room everyone walks around naked wearing sandals to avoid contracting athletes foot. There seems to be some sort of unwritten mandate that everyone look a certain way as to act as if they are not checking out their fellow teammates anatomical luggage. There is always steam. Clattering of lockers opening in tin clangs. A fresh heap of towels, penises dangling like scrolls, like thickly wrapped table napkins between arc of legs and dip of torso.

That, even though it is September 1992, there are still students whose locker interior includes cutouts of NKOTB and KRISS KROSS.

 

That it is not unusual to be walking between classes and have person with a flattop in front of you break into a profane rap lyric about misogyny.

 

That it doesn’t matter if you are some sort of freshman phenom in your selected extracurricular sport of choice you still will not be exempt from Physical Education.

That the bulk of students wearing popular solar-glaring HARD ROCK CAFÉ t-shirts will not have visited said destination printed at the bottom of said shirt. 

That cultural English teacher, globe trekker and patron of arts Mr. Reents seems to have an affinity towards polo shirts.

That the ample-chinned policeman doing security kinda looks like an Afrocentric variation of the Pillsbury dough boy.

That if you try to help yourself to a cup of coffee gratis at breakfast club Harriet Claussen who lovingly looks like a psychedelic reflection of Mary Poppins entering her first day of menopause will snap at you. That the monthly newspaper is called the Rampages which almost sounds like it should include a centerfold.

That the offal scent in the science hallway smells a cross between formaldehyde and urine.



That cool Joe Thomas also, throughout the  duration of the class period keeps taking intermittent swigs from a coffee cup showcasing a caricature of a man straddling a cartoon toilet in monarch repose taking a dump, the words COFFEE KEEPS ME GOING, labeled on the bottom of the mug as some sort of a plus 40 adult urologist joke.
  

That there are four lunch periods are respectably named by the first four letters of the alphabet and that half the school will intermittently break  between fourth period to attend lunch.

That IGTBAR is an acronym for  It’s Great To Be A Ram.

That, although subtle, the kids from the bluff seem to be annexed from the rest of the school and that come four years time the protagonist (who will lose his top ten standing to dual foreign exchange students from France and Bulgaria, respectively) will float wispy cloak and geometrical askance mortarboard into his graduation and not have any clue of the names of the so called classmates swallowing him on every side.

Each home room class is delivered a copy of the morning paper you delivered four hours earlier as some sort of current events ice breaker.

That some of the lockers do in fact jam.

That high school is not the end of the world. 

That teachers are granted permission to cut students in line at just about any time.
 

That there is something almost profound and metaphorical since your day convenes in  Mme Suhr  homeroom at 7:55 and then end the day in the same classroom in francais 101.

That you open and close the day in the classroom with the wall sized map of the country you failed to see for two years in a row.

That this irony of this does not escape you in the least.