Freddogg Off The Chain

I am the monster masher of the “now generation”. A few years ago suffering through Friday homecoming at the high school, hallways filled with balloons, percolating cheerleaders spreading glitter like fairy dust and face painters, I acquiesced to have my mug modified to show my school spirit.
A senior girl said, “It will be 19 on one cheek and 99 on the other, is that o.k. Fredman?” “No it’s not o.k. I’m not graduating from high school this year. I want the year of my high school graduation.”
“O.K,” said Poke Salad Annie got your Granny” which reminds me of the time a girl named Brooke asked me if I knew her grandmother? “No, I don’t,”I answered. “What makes you think I may know her?”
“She’s a real slut. I just figured you may know her?”
I had the year 1964 painted on my face and the high school girl sat back like she suddenly discovered an arm extension.
All day long kids were coming up and asking,”Fredman, why is that year on your face?”
“It’s the year I graduated from high school,” I said, and the response was always the same, ”Ew! Yuk! And they would back up like I was too old to brush by in a crowded Junior hallway whose theme “Rumble in the Jungle” was ordered taken down by the clueless Vice Principal because it may offend black people.
“Fredman isn’t that racist, thinking black people would be offended by a jungle reference,” an astute Afro American girl asked me. ‘What, are we all supposed to live in Jungles? Have you seen my spirit spear?” By the way, what’s that number on your face?”
“It’s the year I graduated from high school.”
“That’s cool, she said! “My grandfather graduated that same year from a segregated school in Georgetown.”
“Hey what’s the theme in the sophomore hallway deemed politically and socially acceptable,”I asked her!”
“Pluck the Bluejays!” she said, and I added, "And while we’re at it, “Pluck Everybody!”

Freddogg