Freddogg Off The Chain

I grew up surrounded by sickness, disease, depression and terminal illnesses and those were just the pets.
The point is when you have experienced life and lives lost and have watched those close to you get dealt bad cards they can’t throw away to the dealer you develop a certain insulating arrogance from what others deem important, especially as it relates to money and jobs.
“Pay attention because this is important!” may be a quote form a concerned employer or boss looking threateningly into your face but if a shrug of the shoulders is all you can summon it may be concluded that it is not earth shattering important to you.
Back in 1975 I took a Special Education teaching job at Cape Henlopen in off road Lower Delaware by the sea and was appointed Head Track Coach. The school had won four state titles in five years and there was no where for me to go but down but my special job gave me control over several special athletes so I could keep an eye on them get them stronger and pretty much guarantee thier eligiblity.
I’m from Philly and talked funny, a conflicting contrast with the lower Delaware accent-sing-song, back of the throat, hillbilly he-haw, except for the black people who sounded like the black people I knew in Philadelphia.
I remember a quote for Red Foxx at a Howard Cosell Roast: ”When I look at Howard it makes me glad all black people look alike.” I think there is a language lesson imbedded in that joke because it is just near to impossible to find a home grown black hick in America.
My class load involved the same 20 kids in and out of my room all day long and 19 of them were black and many of them were quicker and smarter than me-except for the other white guy-and I knew these characters were stashed in special class because they were a social pain in the ass in mainstream classes.
Every one of them loved my class “Fractions and Fitness” which started off with disposal of multiplication and division of fractions and ended with circuit training around a Universal weight machine stashed in a big empty room no one ever used next to the school cafeteria.
My students were buff and brazen and quick with percentages of small numbers. We ran the school store out of my classroom just pulling a glass counter case across the doorway during lunches.
The kids did all the purchasing, selling and loan sharking. The school administration was astounded at the great job I was doing and the reported store profits which were meager compared with the money siphoned off the top and I didn’t know how they did it and didn’t care. These kids didn’t ask to be Special People and run some dopey assed store and be marginalized inside their own school so suddenly they were idealized and envied and everyone wanted to take Fractions and Fitness along with making pocket change for out of pocket expenses.
A substitute came to my classroom doorway on a midweek November morning as I was summoned to the school office. There in a conference room and sitting around a table was every administrator employed by the district from superintendent to director of special programs and my principal. I sat down and they all starred at me. I was never so happy not to be guilty of anything unlawful so I didn’t know what their problem was and didn’t care.
Big Mike the blue collar principal with meaty hands and dirty fingernails was two fisting a pencil and tapping it on the table. He looked at me over the top of his glasses.
“Mr. Frederick, we have what you call a situation here, which is why you are here because of the situation here and….what do you know about pencils?’
Ten years earlier an inquisition of catholic priests sat around a table at my high school and asked me “what do you know about the devil” because a caucused opinion based on an essay I wrote in detention concluded that I was possibly possessed by demonic literary characters.
“I know more about pencils than anyone at this table,”I said. “If you hand me that pencil and ask me to go into your best class and talk about it I could teach an entire unit because it’s just what I do.”
“What do you know about tractor trailers?”
“I can teach a semester course on tractor trailers. I used to work at a trailer factory. I know about kingpins, fifth wheels, struts, rivets and mud flaps. I know that Jane Mansfield was decapitated when she skidded into the back of a Fruehauf trailer.”
The Superintendent had a wry smile on his face. I knew he liked me which he should have because at least I wasn’t a boring teacher or fearful in the face of overwhelming oddballs.
Mr. Mercer had a pink piece of paper in his hand.
“Fredman. Is that what they call you?”
“Fredman’s Fractions and Fitness. That’s me Sir. “
“Well Fredman, maybe you can tell us why a tractor trailer load of pencils is parked behind the school. There are boxes of blue pencils with gold lettering and gold pencils with blue lettering all inscribed ‘Cape Henlopen School District.’”
“I have no idea about any of that. Why am I being matched up with this odd occurrence?”
Mercer slid a purchase order across the table at me.
“Is that your signature?’
There was my signature next to a crooked number large enough to bring a tractor trailer load of pencils to the high school parking lot.
“I have no recollection of signing that but it’s most likely a slight of hand hoax perpetrated by the oligarchy that runs the school store,”I said.
Mercer sat back and said,”That’s enough pencils for every person in the school district to have five pencils for the next three generations.”
I was sent back to class, the substitute came flying out of the room only partially under his own power.
Big strong students surrounded me with affection. They looked into my possessed soul and I looked back into theirs. We were eternally bonded.
“Fredman is crazy, ordering trailers filled with pencils,”Blue said.
I looked out the window and the trailer was closed.
“How do you know that trailer is filled with pencils?”
The rest of them laughed. “You got him Fredman!”
Fifteen years later I asked for two boxes of pencils, one blue and the other gold, but was told they were being hoarded at the district office in a closet because there were only 10 boxes left and no one could have them. The pencils had become keepsakes of school district history.
Oddly and ironically enough we are all penciled in here on planet earth but for a fraction of time. Stay fit!