Freddogg Off The Chain

"Go back out there to your math and English classes and just tell that smartass that you hate him and so does everyone else. You know,I used to be fat as well."
"What a coincidence becuase we used to be black."

Clark bar the door of repressed memories! Two years ago an email message arrived on my school computer. The subject was “bad news.”

The news was that Bishop Egan's beloved high school English teacher, Fred Clark, a veteran of 40 years in the classroom,had passed away. I was shocked on several levels.

The first was how in the hell did Bishop Egan find me to deliver this bad news? The other is how did a guy who was 400 pounds at age 22 live and survive to teach 40 years? And lastly, this guy Fred Clark hated me and went public with his hatred and kept his job which doesn’t seem right, I mean how hateful could I have been? And how strange that plenty of teachers from my high school had passed away over 40 years, so how come a eulogy on the one who hated me arrived on my desktop in Lewes Delaware 40 years later?

I realize people change, I have certainly changed and I’m not one to hold a grudge, but fuck Fred Clark for saying I was the worse human being he had ever met in his life and for saying it in front of a class of 50 boys, who all seized the opportunity to agree with him.

Clark had lost it in a class gone wild and roared like a Lion who couldn’t get up because he had eaten the entire impala in 20 minutes. Shut up! Everybody just shut up! Fredricks, I hate you. Hate you!” His entire fat boy swallowed aggression and eating depression self was suddenly being taken out on me.

‘Don’t play this game with me, ”I warned him. ‘You are no match, just back off. “ But he didn’t. And he hardly moved a muscle because he couldn’t, just this slow and nasty delivery and there were so many ways I could have laid him out—so many openings I let pass-- I just let it happen and keep happening. I was a bit quizzical about my own identity. How did I drive this bread truck to the point of hating me so much?

Later in the day the coaches had heard that Clark lost it and went after Fredricks, as they called me, but they were completely shocked that I didn’t retaliate because on the football field or basketball court I’d retaliate physically against anyone and I was the best at getting inside the heads of opponents before anyone ever heard of trash talk of “selling wolf tickets.”

As a teacher I was loved for the same reasons I was hated as a student. Makes no sense to me!

Freddogg