Freddogg Off The Chain

I spoke briefly to the sewers of the seeds of education yesterday and I quickly understood why the reapers of the rewards of imparted knowledge are at best selectively attentive and at worst comatose by 8:10 in the morning and are always on two hour fog delay.

Teachers don’t like to listen to anyone about anything mostly because they spend their days talking to an audience that is not remotely interested in what they are saying. I used to say that being a high school teacher is like being a beach lifeguard with no ocean or attending a Grateful Dead concert with no instruments. Teachers are the only professional class I know that will continue to talk, explain and give examples to individuals who are stoned, asleep or preoccupied with not being occupied with any active thought processes. I used to interject a sentence like “Forget Iraq! Let’s talk about your mothers for awhile.” It would take about seven seconds but finally someone, usually a girl, would say, ”My mother’s a slut and I don’t care if you talk about her.”

I presented the new high school principal with the fourth hubcap that will fit perfectly on the bare wheel of his used black Corolla he showed up with back in September replacing an outgoing black principal who drove a White Jaguar. In a room of 60 only about five got the joke which shows you how acutely and astutely perceptive the class of teachers rolls through the halls.

Speaking of rolling, back in 1977 I was on a yellow school bus leaving Widener University late at night after a five hour invitational coed track extravaganza. We were climbing a hill through a narrow Chester Street flanked by row houses on the way to I 95.
This short, overweight, but at least weak, white shot putter said, ”Hey Coach Fredman. “I think this is the street my grandmother lives on?”

“Really, what’s her name?”

“Georgia Gillettie,”she said.

“You are kidding me? Old Double G is your Triple G Grand mom? That’s incredible! When did she get out of jail?”

“Last year,” the girl said angrily. ‘But she never gave dirty magazines to those little kids. They were lying and everyone knows it! And another thing…”

“Stop! In the name of who cares, ”I said. “I never heard of your Grandmother. Why in the world would I have ever heard of Georgia Gillittie of Chester?”

“Cause she seems to be the kind of person you might know,”the girl said in all honesty if not accuracy.

Two hours later at 2 a.m.in the morning the bus pulled off the side of the highway next to the road leading into a community called Slaughter Neck. The interior lights went on.

“O.K. all you Neckers wake up and grab your stuff, ”I said.

Shot put girl shouted back, ”White people live here too!”

“I said Neckers girl! The black athletes grabbed their stuff, shook their heads in stupid white people disbelief, but made no move towards the front of the bus.

“And what are we waiting for, ”I asked.

“Coach you know that no black people are getting off this bus at 2 a.m.and walking down that dark road.”

“Don’t worry, a person would have to be crazy to be out in the dark at this hour, ”I joked. But they weren’t afraid of people but rather the dogs of the night that prowled and howled in fear that Quinton the Quixotic Psychotic dog driller was up to his old tricks and I don’t mean fetch.

Here’s Howling at you kid.

Freddogg