Thursday, March 23, 2006
Experience is the Best Teacher
DELAWARE STATE TEST WRITING PROMPT
I walked into the crowded kitchen at a beer party where everybody was drunk. I pulled back the handle on the old style refrigerator to grab a Schmidt’s when the host asked me to “check the bread in the oven?”Not even questioning why a ‘ drunk punk’ with a 1.6 GPA was baking bread instead of hustling women I grabbed the chrome handle of the oven door. The lights in the Apartment started to flicker. Everyone was laughing! I couldn’t let go!Somehow I was the relay junction box between two short circuited avocado appliances. I shimmied like Boris Karloff when he was re-energized as the Frankenstein monster. Finally, a football friend forcibly blocked me in the chest area setting me free. Everyone had a good belly laugh. I swung a glass pitcher of stale beer into the side of the skull of the “Joker!” Game! Set! Match! He was out colder than Igor’s grave robbing shovel.What a learning experience for both of us!My grandmother once told me, ”Tommy. Always follow this advice. When in doubt, don’t!”“Thank’s Grandmom and by the way my name is David.”“Whatever? Listen while you’re up how about grabbing old granny an Orliebs from the meat drawer in the refrigerator.”Grandmom was right of course. She not only had the hair of Einstein but understood clearly the rudimentary laws of physical science and cause and effect. Mostly what I have learned from experience is that the very things I am good at are either illegal or least considered taboo in a highly developed culture. And of course to find out that you’re good at say “cheating and falsification of government documents along with assuming false identities (no way I’m your first cousin!) first you have to try those things out in real life. And then you learn that the straight and honest people, although not as creative, tend to be more successful and even happier. So why waste the talent and effort at being deceptive?My cousin Janet once cried out, ”Every time I look in the mirror I realize how ugly I am.”“”The don’t look in the mirror dog face!” It’s all I said. I didn’t need my father’s four older sisters hurling cheap lawn furniture at my head.“Why do you say those things, ”My brother asked, shaking his head?“Cause the bitch be needing it!” That’s why!”“I’m not feeding you anymore lines. I’m getting some potato salad.”The nuns who smacked me around in Grammar school before my antics drove them to the “Nunnery for Nut Cases” were right about one thing. “They were lesbian lovers of the night.” No, that’s my line. What they said was God would get me back with an endless series of people more crazy than I ever could have dreamed of becoming. As a “teacher” of the emotionally disturbed and character disordered I turned that prophecy around by modeling the behaviors of the socially maladjusted while remaining out of institutions and being gainfully employed.My personnel dossier says I’m occasionally abrasive, often passive-aggressive and a life long contrarian with oppositional-defiant disorder. My response: “What the freak do they know about anything?”People who don’t learn from experience can’t even find their car in the mall parking lot. They don’t know that shrimp are peeled before eaten. John Prine sang, ”I never will remember what I never did forget.”
I remembered that line because I think it’s clever. I remember lots of things almost all of them in the realm of what Bob Dylan called “useless and pointless” knowledge.
I remember at Kent State when Brooklyn Willie and I showed up in an a.m. English Lit class for the first time in four weeks. The professor and class were discussing Thoreau's "On Walden Pond"—big fucking deal!I always thought- and the guy asked, ”Can anyone tell me the philosophy explored and expounderd on by Thoreau n his book? “I believe Thoreau was expounding the philosophy of existential nihilism, ”Willie said.
“Very good Mr. ? Willie the name is Willie” Very good Mr. Willie. Now can you please tell the class what existential nihilism means?”
“I have no dam idea what it means, ”Willie said, receiving thunderous applause.
The professor was irate or Iranian or something foreign. “Tell me Mr. Willie why do you even bother to come here to this class? Why did you come here today?”
“The same reason you do, ”Willie said. “I can’t do anything else.”
Willie was kicked out and so was I and all I did was sit there and watch the academic repartee like a real student is supposed to. How did I get to be “Mr. Willie’s sorry assed friend.”
I have always made friends easily with crazy people. They like me and I don’t know why. I'm looking back on all my life experiences but I remain perplexed, befuddled and bewildered.
Peace Freddogg
I walked into the crowded kitchen at a beer party where everybody was drunk. I pulled back the handle on the old style refrigerator to grab a Schmidt’s when the host asked me to “check the bread in the oven?”Not even questioning why a ‘ drunk punk’ with a 1.6 GPA was baking bread instead of hustling women I grabbed the chrome handle of the oven door. The lights in the Apartment started to flicker. Everyone was laughing! I couldn’t let go!Somehow I was the relay junction box between two short circuited avocado appliances. I shimmied like Boris Karloff when he was re-energized as the Frankenstein monster. Finally, a football friend forcibly blocked me in the chest area setting me free. Everyone had a good belly laugh. I swung a glass pitcher of stale beer into the side of the skull of the “Joker!” Game! Set! Match! He was out colder than Igor’s grave robbing shovel.What a learning experience for both of us!My grandmother once told me, ”Tommy. Always follow this advice. When in doubt, don’t!”“Thank’s Grandmom and by the way my name is David.”“Whatever? Listen while you’re up how about grabbing old granny an Orliebs from the meat drawer in the refrigerator.”Grandmom was right of course. She not only had the hair of Einstein but understood clearly the rudimentary laws of physical science and cause and effect. Mostly what I have learned from experience is that the very things I am good at are either illegal or least considered taboo in a highly developed culture. And of course to find out that you’re good at say “cheating and falsification of government documents along with assuming false identities (no way I’m your first cousin!) first you have to try those things out in real life. And then you learn that the straight and honest people, although not as creative, tend to be more successful and even happier. So why waste the talent and effort at being deceptive?My cousin Janet once cried out, ”Every time I look in the mirror I realize how ugly I am.”“”The don’t look in the mirror dog face!” It’s all I said. I didn’t need my father’s four older sisters hurling cheap lawn furniture at my head.“Why do you say those things, ”My brother asked, shaking his head?“Cause the bitch be needing it!” That’s why!”“I’m not feeding you anymore lines. I’m getting some potato salad.”The nuns who smacked me around in Grammar school before my antics drove them to the “Nunnery for Nut Cases” were right about one thing. “They were lesbian lovers of the night.” No, that’s my line. What they said was God would get me back with an endless series of people more crazy than I ever could have dreamed of becoming. As a “teacher” of the emotionally disturbed and character disordered I turned that prophecy around by modeling the behaviors of the socially maladjusted while remaining out of institutions and being gainfully employed.My personnel dossier says I’m occasionally abrasive, often passive-aggressive and a life long contrarian with oppositional-defiant disorder. My response: “What the freak do they know about anything?”People who don’t learn from experience can’t even find their car in the mall parking lot. They don’t know that shrimp are peeled before eaten. John Prine sang, ”I never will remember what I never did forget.”
I remembered that line because I think it’s clever. I remember lots of things almost all of them in the realm of what Bob Dylan called “useless and pointless” knowledge.
I remember at Kent State when Brooklyn Willie and I showed up in an a.m. English Lit class for the first time in four weeks. The professor and class were discussing Thoreau's "On Walden Pond"—big fucking deal!I always thought- and the guy asked, ”Can anyone tell me the philosophy explored and expounderd on by Thoreau n his book? “I believe Thoreau was expounding the philosophy of existential nihilism, ”Willie said.
“Very good Mr. ? Willie the name is Willie” Very good Mr. Willie. Now can you please tell the class what existential nihilism means?”
“I have no dam idea what it means, ”Willie said, receiving thunderous applause.
The professor was irate or Iranian or something foreign. “Tell me Mr. Willie why do you even bother to come here to this class? Why did you come here today?”
“The same reason you do, ”Willie said. “I can’t do anything else.”
Willie was kicked out and so was I and all I did was sit there and watch the academic repartee like a real student is supposed to. How did I get to be “Mr. Willie’s sorry assed friend.”
I have always made friends easily with crazy people. They like me and I don’t know why. I'm looking back on all my life experiences but I remain perplexed, befuddled and bewildered.
Peace Freddogg
