Sick Joke

I do not know if I speak for anyone, but I personally do not appreciate the dirty dog Baptist Bells trying to turn my personal faith into some kind of sick joke, and all of this for their own personal glory at my expense. We all know that Bruce Bell was just a backslidden party guy with no brains in his empty head. He probably still wishes that he had kissed Dawn. To each his own.

And Who Is Calling Who A Snake Anyway?

The pot calling the kettle black? Oh, ha ha ha!
Gimme a break, you hideous witch!
Do you think I am the only person in this place who understands the English language?

Farewell To All Of You

Farewell to all of you. These are the words that are spoken in the name of all seniors by the author of the unattributed blurb on the back page of the Senior Issue of the Trojan Times, 1976.

OK, so maybe it is a stretch to assume representation of the entire senior class with all of its hoodlums and slutty witches of whose personal lives I am mostly unaware outside of the classroom. I would not want their judgments raining down upon my head. For example, I have no idea what our lady of ill repute does in her spare time. I would not want to even guess.

But obviously the only thing we were saying was farewell, goodbye, so long, etc. Well, perhaps there are a few of people still there at Escuela Americana still trying to complete high school requirements, still riding the school bus every morning or being driven by their parents or chauffeur to the school facilities where they are greeted at the gate by that guy, and then exit at the circle and make their way to homeroom, stash your lunchbox and books in your locker, etc. etc. etc., still worried about being late for class, etc. You must speak for yourself.

We were not talking about you. We were only talking about ourselves, us, the senior class, those of us who graduated and left and never went back. We were "The Spirit of '76." Er, that is, 1976.

Sure, one or two students might still be there now in the capacity of teacher but never again will we be high school students. After all, high school is only temporary, just a season of life that is far behind us now and there is no reason to make it so complicated.

Complications

P.S. to Men: Don't invite me out for sodas, your sister and me, and drive us to the restaurant and then pretend later, after the check comes, that I should have paid for my soda even though you never said so and you are paying for hers and only a chilly coldness later gives me the impression that I should have paid for my own soda. That makes you a cheapskate. If you invite a couple of high school girls to the restaurant and tell your sister's friend upfront that she will have to pay for her own soda, then that makes you rude. But unfortunately, you cannot have it both ways. You have to be rude upfront if you do not want to pay thus giving your spare tire guest the opportunity to graciously decline your unacceptable offer that is being extended so unwillingly and under false pretenses with the sole purpose of making yourself sound like a gracious host even when you really are not.

Thanksgiving

Yes, I now have less respect than ever for the little third grade boy who left the "s" out of Thanksgiving and thus lost the elementary school spelling bee to me, a second grade girl. Sore losers just don't deserve any respect. After all, Thanksgiving is a plurality. It is not just all about one person, him. Neither is it about me alone. It is about all of us. We have many things to be thankful for and there are many of us who have cause to give thanks to God. And why would my parents not be proud of me or expect me to hand the trophy that I rightfully won over to him? No, I will keep my trophy sitting on my shelf because it meant something to me even if it is only a little piece of wood and metal, or maybe plastic with metallic paint.

The story is not all about boys. Even our high school valedictorian Leland Bement had to graciously share the platform with co-winning valedictorian Huei Nin-Liu because apparently their gpa's were identical. We do not want to hear any nonsense about our salutatorian Amadeo gunning down either of them. What's fair is fair.

That said, what's fair is fair. Kathy and I should have left The Rover column alone to avoid all this confusion as to who said what. In reviewing it I see there are plenty of typos in there anyway so what was the big deal? Just some nonsense about how we singers should not reach too high or we will get "fly away," which in Spanglish might have been "volado." Whatever. "Volado" is no big deal either, just a slangy use of what should be a verb. Used in the slangy sense as an adverb, the word "volado" does not really mean to fly away. It only means, sort of, "to feel as if one is flying."

So, no, she is not saying that we are going to take flight. She is only saying that we might be tossed aside once we have slipped and fallen. In the thesaurus, this might also be interpreted as getting dumped or set aside.

In a previous column we see this term "sliding away." That also might have been a mistranslation but I don't remember. Was she saying they would end up "volados"? The column was talking about people stepping in a puddle of water and sliding forward as if skating or flying, something that was perhaps done by some people when rain left lots of water on the hall floors but it is very dangerous because you could slip and fall and end up landing on your butt on the wet floor. I think that is what she was talking about although I really do not remember. But if the word "volado" was used, she would have been referring to the feeling of exhilaration that one gets when one is sliding at an accelerated speed on the wet floors.

Did I do that? I do not really remember. I only remember that her Spanglish slangy terms sometimes got removed by us. I'm not sure why. Looking back, it does not seem like such a big deal. It was just that if we made mistakes in our editing she was most unforgiving in going over our heads to complain to Beth and others but that really does not excuse us from compounding the situation with more dirty tricks. Anyway, she got me banned from editing her stuff. I think Kathy might have made the final changes. Kathy hid the original copy somewhere. I really don't remember anything specific. You could always ask Kathy.

Bomb?

My mother always did own an electric vibrator. It is an electric device that vibrates and is used to scratch one's back. Well, you could do it the manual way using any old stick or purchase one of those doohickeys that some people once showed me that has a sort of claw on the end of it and you hoist it over your shoulder. Persons who are extremely overweight often use these back-scratchers because their arms cannot reach that point right in the middle of the back that so often needs to be scratched. Anyway, what else could it be, you dummies? Did you actually think it was a bomb? Really. Did your mother never teach you anything?

Choir

As a senior in high school I performed in a musical play, "The Visitor," presented by the choir. Upon reviewing the school newspaper, "Trojan Times," I see that our columnist, "The Rover," did not fail to take a few swipes at us. I am not surprised as that was the tone of her writing most of the time. Carolina Gonzales says, "If my guess is right, the voices of the performers will go higher and higher and higher but be careful, if they go too high they might get fly away... "

Well, I was one of those voices, a soloist in fact, and her comment sounds almost like a warning that I should not set my aspirations too high. Sure, I must be realistic about my vocal prospects. Just one voice of criticism is not going to make me or break me but an avalanche of negativity certainly would derail any future career prospects in that field.

Nevertheless, it is also true that Carolina's column was characteristically negative about pretty much everything and, besides, people who live in glass houses should not be so eager to throw stones. Your writing voice is just as important as the written word and mightier than the sword, as some writers have said, and should be cultivated toward positive and constructive ends, not merely to shower with bitterness and resentment the ones you fear might outshine you.

To summarize: Your voice stinks.