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The Syracuse City School District referred to grades 7 through 9 as junior high school. The feeble term “middle school” was reserved for those milquetoast suburban kids whose districts had sleek, modern buildings and full-fledged orchestras featuring fierce battles over who was going to get first chair. My desegregated and gritty junior high school was a scary, Hogwarts-looking building also featuring pitched battles over who was going to get first chair – at the lunch table. Heck, some 9^th graders were actually driving cars to school, but only because they were 17 and should’ve been in 11^th grade.

 

Eastwood Junior High School was more tightly structured than elementary school. In fact, Eastwood was more closely structured to a high school, but like a smaller version of a high school – more like a “junior” high school. Hmmm…I wonder if that’s how it got its name.

 

My 8^th grade school day ran from 8:15 to 2:06 and the lunch period was shoehorned into the day from 10:50-11:18. This left us ravenous and hormonal lunchers a mere 28 minutes to nosh and dash. But since school administrators had to squeeze 2 lunches into 6 educational periods, frittering away time was not on the menu.

 

In addition to truncated lunches, we were allotted only 3 miserly minutes between classes. Take more than 180 seconds to get to your next class and your tardiness would become part of your permanent record – egad, no, not the dreaded permanent record! The in-between-classes time was marked off for us in colorfully stark indicators. First the green light came on meaning that class was over and you had 2 minutes till the red light alerted you that you now had only one minute to be seated and ready to go in your next class.

 

This was not an easy task. Especially if you had to trek from gym class in the basement all the way to health class on the 2^nd floor on the opposite side of the building – all without benefit of GPS. Throw in a visit to your locker and a pee pitstop and you might not beat the countdown of the red light flicking off. When you arrived at health class, the door could be shut and you’d be a marooned studenaut floating freely out in the empty corridors of space – a truant teenager in no man’s land without the protection of a get-out-of-jail-free Hall Pass.

 

Maybe an understanding teacher would grant you entrance knowing how hard it is to organize your books, stop at your locker, get a drink or take a wiz and then double time it to your next class. And you can forget about pinching a loaf – there was no time for such necessary evacuations. Meeting this shipshape timetable was a big ask (a pain in the ask), but we complied and it generally worked out. From the school’s point of view, providing a scant 3 minutes between classes allowed little time for mischief like drawing a moustache on the Donnie Osmond picture taped to Kathy Kraushaar’s locker (“Crow” to her intimates).

 

In addition to these exacting time parameters, there was a cardinal rule that students were prohibited from dining off campus or from leaving the building during school hours. While that rule was binding on all the civilian students, it did not apply to me since I didn’t regard myself as a civilian. I saw myself more as a foreign exchange student visiting from Rigel-7. Furthermore, however well understood or well-meaning this rule might be, it was at odds with my own creed of circumventing ill-conceived regulations. And this regulation was illing me.

 

I was always scheming to make my time my own. So, by employing at least 6 of my limbic system brain cells, I decided to take the miserly 28 minutes administrators allotted for midday num-num and make a jail break for the cozy confines of my comfortable crib located a scant 2 blocks away.

 

By attempting such risky self-care and flouting the territorial strictures of scholastic mandarins, I’d replace a noisy lunch period in the godlessly chirpy cafeteria with a serene and restorative mini-spa day back at my personal ground zero. So when the green light flashed “Go Time” at 10:47, I bolted from Miss Patrick’s 4^th period algebra class and dashed home like a border collie with the zoomies. By 10:51 I had unlocked the kitchen door using the key hidden in the Batman box up in the green cabinet and entered my personal Shangri-la.

 

Once ensconced behind the walls of Fortress Hardiman, I’d thrill to the pleasure of bilocation whereby for all intents I was in 2 places at once. That is, I was at school (at least by dint of roster assignment and supposed residency), but simultaneously I was also at home (by dint of being at home). This magical ability to be two places at once, wasn’t an act of David Hardiman. Nope. This was more an act of David Copperfield’s. My God. What kind of mad funhouse did I live in? Damn I was good company.

 

I reveled in the temporal alchemy of taking worthless school district time, and converting it into valuable personal time to spend as I saw fit – and I spent it like a drunken neurotic. I was like a teenage sorcerer converting ordinary school district moments into Dave’s personally treasured time, and I measured these enriched units of time in Hardiminutes and Nanodaves. Maybe in zooming home from Miss Patrick’s class, I had warped the time space continuum and had become a critical mass. A critical mass of what, I’ll leave to the reader to decide.  

 

So what does a wizardly time-junkie do in 27 cherished Hardiminutes to intensify his temporal larceny? Well I might start by removing my chicken loaf sandwich from the refrigerator. The sandwich I strategically assembled the previous night in preparation for this off the reservation event. I’d allow the sandwich to breathe – that is, to come to room temperature in the manner of decanting a fine wine. But instead of softening bitter tannins or developing a pleasing bouquet, I’d be enhancing the processed tang of compressed chicken loaf and intensifying the flavorless savor of Hellman’s Mayonnaise. Turns out I was doing sous vide before that cooking technique had even crossed the pond.

 

By adroitly structuring my time I’d synergize the moment and telescope the event. More prosaically, I might then proceed to the familiar family oval (the toilet) and decant something of a personal nature right through the oval and into the waiting waters of the family throne – there’s your original streaming service right there. This would be followed by various ablutions: a hot washcloth luxuriantly applied to the face followed by a warm wipe of the neck and hands. And because I was aware the hot water heater was directly below the sink, I knew there’d be a very short wait for the hot water to stream from the faucet. Understanding my domicile’s intimate infrastructure made me feel I had the advantage over my enemies – even though I really didn’t have any enemies and even though no advantage was gained. Maybe this whole thing was just happening in my head. Well, that was good enough for me. By now my Wonder Bread “chicken” sandwich had been properly decanted. It had lost all its chill and was ready for onboarding.

 

So I tossed my amalgamated chicken parts sandwich onto a plate with some pretzels, poured a tall glass of milk into my favorite ARCO gas station mug (the one with the handle and the New York Giants logo etching) and, lap towel in hand, brought it all into the living room where I turn on the TV and watch the last 5 minutes of Tattletales (which by 10:56 was mostly credits and commercials). At 11 I was happy to start a Let’s Make a Deal. By now I’m deep into the experience, very far away and completely immersed in my own private Idaho. My junior high school might as well be in Boise right now.

 

I finish lunch and watch as Monty Hall asks a lady dressed as a pickle if she’d like to take the curtain superintended by slim Carol Merril or the small box presented by chunky Jay Stewart. The pickle lady opts for the box and is rewarded with a $300 gift certificate to Spiegel Catalogue. Monty reminds us of the company’s location, “Spiegel, Chicago 6-oh-6-oh-9.” She chose wisely because behind the curtain was a gag gift of a rickety Beverly Hillbillies-looking jalopy.

 

It’s now 11:07 and I’m very deep into the experience and far removed from algebra class. I wonder if I can even make it back to the civilians students awaiting me at some place called Eastwood Junior High School. Where was that again? This mini-spa day in my hometown oasis had projected me out of this world. I’d become a studenaut – tethered to this world only by the knowledge that I had to be back at school by 11:21 or I’d besmirch my permanent record.

 

Taking a quick catnap crosses my mind, but I decide against anything remotely feline for fear of waking up in a no-kill shelter. No, there was only one honorable thing to do: return to Spaceship Earth and get my ass back to school. So I activated my heat shields and began reentry. I didn’t want to be late for Miss Patrick’s class and have this youthful blunder give prospective employers pause for hiring me in the years to come – “Mr. Hardiman we’d really like to hire you, but it appears you returned 3 minutes late to an algebra class in 1974. How do you account for this?” I couldn’t risk that. Besides, stern Miss Patrick would be expecting me since her class bookended the lunch period.

 

At 11:10 I lay me down on the bed and pretend to meditate (which is the same as actually meditating). By 11:11 I had put in almost a complete 1 minute of intermittent meditation and I was either enlightened or unchanged – I couldn’t tell the difference. So I cleaned up the lunch dishes and hoped the phone wouldn’t ring with Principal Dolan or more likely, his nosey secretary Mrs. DeSantis wondering why I’m not at school. I grab a Chips Ahoy! cookie as I enter earth’s atmosphere and stealthily make my way back to school, unseen by administrative patrols. At 11:20 Miss Patrick’s door is thankfully still open and I settle in to my seat at 11:21 ready to go and fully restored from my larcenous escapade. Before cracking open my algebra book I think to myself, “Damn, I am good company and I’m glad to have made my acquaintance.”  

 

So yeah, maybe this stitch in time wasn’t exactly Ferris Bueller’s day off, but it was a gratifying, time bending and swashbuckling caper. And as Miss Patrick began discussing binomial expressions, I wondered if any of the civilian students could sense that my buckle had been recently swashed. As things stood, there’d be no post-prandial regret from this erstwhile extra-terrestrial, non-civilian pupil. As the teachers’ would say to each other about my behavior, “I think we better keep an eye on that pupil.” 

 

 

The Punny Bonus

 

Because I dined at home and didn’t have to pay for a cafeteria lunch, I fulfilled another goal of mine – to Buy No Meal if I could avoid it. Which, if you think about it, is just a fittingly algebraic way of solving a binomial expression – also known as a “Buy No Meal” expression.   

 

 

In Praise of Those I Didn’t Get Then, But Do Now

 

Fortyish-year old math teacher Miss Patrick was a very rational and exacting math teacher (maybe that’s why she gravitated to the very rational and exacting field of numbers). So steeped in algebra, she always seemed to have a binomial expression on her face. We kids weren’t quite sure what her sexual proclivities were, but the consensus was she probably spoke heterosexuality as a second language. Our revered Miss Patrick commanded respect. You just didn’t talk out of turn in her class like you did in every other class. You didn’t even want to. She was a next level caliber educator.

 

Yes she may have been a no nonsense teacher, but on St. Patrick’s Day she let down her close-cropped hair and transformed into a kind of Impish Irishwoman. On St. Patrick’s Day, instead of the usual orderly use of the black chalkboard with white chalk, Miss Patrick would turn her back to the students and begin writing a quadratic equation on the blackboard in green chalk. The usually silent class would begin to giggle. She’d then turn slowly around and deadpan to us students, “What’s the matter, haven’t you ever seen green chalk before,” to which we’d all bust out laughing like little leprechauns.  

1. 3 on 6 Basketball – Seems unfair and it is
2. Oh Give Me a Break Dancing – A counseling session where clear-eyed therapists try to persuade Break Dancers that, for God’s sake, Break Dancing is not a sport. I mean it’s a thing, it’s just not a sport
3. Blue Collar Fencing – Forget sabers, epées and rapiers. This fencing deals with stockade, picket and chain link.
4. Austrian Tossing – it’s no just for distance, accuracy matters too. Why toss Austrians? It’s easier than throwin’ Samoans.
5. Women’s Beach Volleyball Watching –This “sport” sees how long it takes a man to watch a women’s beach volleyball until he realizes they’re actually keeping score

 

Olympic Factoid:

Q. What nation is always first when the parade of countries marches out?

A. Greece. They began the whole Olympic idea way back when they wore laurel wreaths on their heads. The rest are alphabetic.

 

6. Naked and Catheterized – If you like this sport, urine luck. I mean, if you like this sport, you’re in luck.
7. Speed Hickies – Neck sucking has never been so popular. Not surprisingly the sport originated in Transylvania
8. Competitive Eating (aka Speed Eating) – In the hot dog eating event alone, Chowboys and Chowgirls will consume a 4-lifetime supply of pig polyps.
9. Snow Writing – A Winter Olympic favorite. After drinking 64 oz. of water and using only their “on board” apparatus, competitors must accurately write the phrase Winter Olympics in the snow. Early trials have shown that although men have better penmanship, women are better spellers. Heck, I’d pay to see that. Competitors must be careful not to run out of “ink.”  
10. Synchronized Snow Angels – Could be an excellent opportunity for The Vatican to finally field a team
11. 2-Person Mixed Bobsled Insemination – Another Winter Olympic event where a man and a woman desperately try to conceive a child as they frantically cling to one another while careening down the icy bobsled track. It’s hard to both steer and cohere, so they have to make their 3 minutes really count.

 

Olympic Factoid that is not true:

In the Popeye cartoon the Olympics were referred to as the Olive Oylimpics

 

Merry Xmas everyone and remember, some day it will be 10 yeas from now, so breathe easy (and I know I wrote “yeas” instead of “years”).

Q.   What do you call a southern guy who is a stickler for syntax?

A.   Grammar Cracker

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Compound Words

1. Something
2. Sostupid
3. Forreal

Tripound Words

1. Nonetheless
2. Novomitzone
3. Yesforreal

Fourpound Words

1. 64 oz. (get it – 4 pounds?)
2. Sheonefinebitch
3. Youstillreadingthis

1. 

   That’s my goyl

   Olive Oylimpics – Thin, lanky women compete to look like Shelly Duvall did

2. Very Senior Games – Enjoy such geriatric sports as Speed Blinking and Pill Grinding. I hear they’re adding a new wrinkle this year.
3. Very Señor Games – Very Mexican guys see how fast they can play Mariachi music
4. The Hungrier Games – Competitive eating at its wurst
5. Game Games – Watch as contestants try to surpass Sarah Palin’s time in field dressing an elk
6. The Bored Games – Contestants see how long they can withstand the tedium of Chinese Checkers…and other board games

1. The truth I can handle. Your breath is another story.
2. Houston, we have a polyp.
3. Now do you understand why there’s a Sawzall on my nightstand?
4. If they make Ferris Bueller’s Day Off 2 ” Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and do laundry once in a while, you could run out of pants.”
5. Doggone it! If you can’t lend me a hand, then how about a paw?
6. But I don’t need a third nostril.
7. If they make The Wizard of Oz in Alaska: “There’s no place like Nome. There’s no place like Nome.”
8. Now you’re telling me we’re out of toilet paper? It’s too late.
9. You’re an *sshole because every time we talk you manage to work in the word “rawdogging.”
10. Abner! Get away from that teat now. That milk is for baby ocelots, not for you.
11. You had me at, “I’m a millionaire.”

I just hit 18,000 followers. Amazing that Facebook would let me create 17,852 fake accounts.

 

Found out the hard way:
There is no “eye of the avalanche“

 

Years ago, erotic records were played on pornographs. They were groovy. They had to be in order to be played.

 

Let’s all say wunderkind together. Ready? 1, 2, 3…WUNDERKIND!

 

I lost my eye protection again. I guess I’ll have to do a Goggle search.

 

Frog on frog violence is sometimes the result of Toad Rage

 

For the last time, strawberry traffic jam is not a flavor

 

Is there a difference between milquetoast, and milk toast?

1. Here are some of my favorite numbers:
Novocain, Lidocaine…
Before you continue, you should know the “b” in numbers is silent.

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2.  There are no recorded cases of Siamese twins playing Hide and Seek.
Or if there was, the game was over really fast.

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3.   Remember the Fonts from Happy Days?
He was a really cool type.

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4. A E
IOU
And sometimes.
Why?

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5. July is Leaf Blower Awareness month. So is Aug, Sept, Oct…

1. SMH – Shake My Head Industries. Helps people cope with all that’s happening around them.
2. STFU – Manufacturers of dog muzzles and gun silencers
3. LOL – A national bakery. They make clown pies that taste funny.
4. FAQ – How people in Boston say f*ck
5. YOLO – Publishes stories of Near Death Experiences. CEO says business is dead.
6. WTF – Makers of precision adult undergarments and medical supplies. Custom catheters, personalized pacemakers and digitized adult diapers.
7. ASAP – Makers of Speed Bumps and Stop Signs
8. FWIW – A Buffalo Springfield song
9. TBA – This company has big plans they hope to tell people about sometime in the future
10. DIY – An educational group for serial masturbaters
11. AKA – FYI, this company is known by many names
12. XOXO – Manufacturer of Huggies Diapers and Hershey’s Kisses

1. Remember, Jesus didn’t graduate high school either.
2. I had nothing to do with the Lindbergh baby kidnapping. Well, almost nothing.
3. I don’t like social media influencers. I’m more of an anti-social media influencer.
4. I’m at my best when I’m eating a grilled cheese sandwich.
5. I don’t care what the court order says, I wasn’t stalking Marlo Thomas, Marlo Thomas was stalking me.
6. I’m a little anal in the kitchen. I make Tidy Joe’s
7. Since it’ll come out anyway. Remember, the word “manslaughter” has many interpretations
8. Since it’ll come out anyway. I have to ask, “Does this job require more than 7 fingers.”
9. Since it’ll come out anyway. I’ve visited the grave of Regis Philbin 28 times, but (and I think this counts for a lot), I’ve only visited the grave of Charles Manson once.
10. I think Groundhog Day has become a shadow of its former self..
11. The eggs I’ve eaten are now just a shell of their former selves.
12. Crystal Meth is not all it’s cracked-up to be.
13. Since it’ll come out anyway. You should know upfront that, when I’m in one of my moods, I like to wear men’s underwear.
14. Since it’ll come out anyway. I hope my conjoined twin Henry (embedded deeply in my left clavicle) is neither distracting nor disqualifying. And don’t worry. I’ll pay him out of what you pay me. Being just an elfin head and one feeble hand, Henry pretty much goes along with everything I say. I mean what’s he gonna do, go on a hunger strike.
15. Since it’ll come out at some anyway I should just tell you upfront I like to watch women breast feed….and it’s not even a sexual thing. It’s more about nourishing and healing the planet. Yeah, that’s it. It’s about healing the planet.
16. Since it’ll come out anyway. I have pictures of every Cat Woman there’s ever been. I’ve even visited the grave of Julie Newmar….and she’s still alive. At least according to the drone I have circling her home. 
17. I don’t really possess tangible humor. I just have a sense of humor.
18. For both our sakes, I’ll ask you to please read this resumé carefully as some of my menu items have recently changed.
19.  Based on this resumé, and even though this is not a medical emergency, you should probably call 9-1-1 anyway

 

Bonus Thought:

If there were cell phones at the time of Christ, I believe the apostles would’ve done a lot less following, and a lot more face timing: “Check out this sermon Paul.”

“Yeah Luke, he’s like standing on a little rocky prominence saying some really cool sh*t. Anyway, we should play Words with Friends. There’s an app for it.”

“Oh Paul, you really put the app in apostle.”