In which our teacher dresses like a clown...and loses her shit.

Devil’s night! Mischief night! The excitement is palpable and I’m coming out of my skin!

Photo from my beloved bottle of Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab's Devil's Night.

                                                      

I have one last day of work here at school before Halloween, my most favorite day of the year! Added to this ado is the fact that teachers and students alike are parading around in costumes! While I was walking through the courtyard on my way to lunch, relishing the chill October air, my strange heart swelled to see the least lame of the student body and faculty donning witches’ hats and vampiric capes. It was all so magical!

I was lost in the excitement of it all when I caught a little something nagging at my brain: Costumes!? Teachers!? R’uh R’oh!

Yes, with such excitement and well-mannered frivolity* comes a grave, grave potential for disaster. Let me start by saying that teachers in costumes are normally the best! It’s so jarring, yet delightful to see your duteous pedagogue set so firmly outside his or her normal role and setting. However, teachers in costumes could also go very, very wrong. Back in the seventh grade, I suffered through a costumed teacher experience so ignominious, so abhorrent, that my blood runs cold to this day expecting its return.  

The main player in this seventh-grade living nightmare was my math teacher, Mrs. Stoddart. Ole Stoddart was a tiny old math teacher, but she surely packed an acerbic punch. Mrs. Stoddart was the type of teacher you simply didn’t mess with, despite her little old lady stature. She could silence a classroom with a mere look – a piercing gaze magnified by thick, outdated glasses and severe, angry eyebrows.

Mrs. Stoddart ruled over her 8^th grade pre-algebra class with an iron, yet arthritic, fist. She governed from atop the towering stool that eternally stood next to her beloved overhead projector on its raised cart.

I can’t remember Mrs. Stoddart not sitting on that stool, effecting the fancy that the overhead projector had grown out the side of her torso. But this anomaly pales in comparison to my most remarkable memory of Mrs.  Stoddart - the most vivid memory of my entire middle school experience, which has been inexorably burned into my consciousness.

It happened on Halloween.

The day dawned with Excitement! Thrill! Costumes! Nowadays, my district bans masks, weapons, and anything remotely creative, scary, tactless, thought provoking, or that may have shared a room with a peanut in its entire existence.* But back in the good ole 90s, such overcautious safeguards were not yet imagined. And so, my middle-school hallway boasted a real knife-wielding Michael Meyers, a Grim Reaper with a scythe that glinted with edge, and countless extremely vulgar President Bush masks.

As I maneuvered from English class to Math class, my 13-year-old self rejoiced in all of the creativity and celebration cramming the hallways. As I walked into Mrs. Stoddart’s room, I wasn’t particularly thinking about her, or math, or whether she might be wearing a costume. I walked in, lost in the delight of the day, and skidded to a stop when I saw a clown crouched on that infernal stool alongside the overhead projector.  

For a reason that mystifies me to this day, Mrs. Stoddart had chosen to dress as a repulsive clown for her middle-school math class in celebration of Halloween. And I don't do so well with clowns.

Ole’ Stoddart hadn’t opted for some half-assed wig and cheap, foam red nose either. No, no - Mrs. Stoddart had procured full-on Barnum-and-Bailey quality clown regalia here: a thick, hefty frizzy rainbowed wig; an indecent plastic, devil-red nose; and offensively large shoes, the color of mustard. Garish discolored pom-poms stood in a column down her torso atop the blue, white and yellow striped jumpsuit that clothed her body. My brain won't even let me recall the details of that ruffled collar, which rivaled that of 17th century royalty.

And the makeup. A full face of impenetrable greasepaint. White cream as thick as the cholesterol in my arteries clouded any semblance of Mrs. Stoddart I could detect. Her mouth was outlined, in an exaggerated and twisted manner, in the forgery of a smile, blood red filling the interior. And her eyebrows! She actually thought it necessary to exaggerate her already severe eyebrows further with pitch-black grease pencil formed into hulking pointed tee-pee shapes.

It was terrifying, and became more so when a smile emerged from under the mask of makeup. Mrs. Stoddart didn’t smile. This was surely evil incarnate.

To this day, I still don’t know if her intent was to delight or terrify us; I chose to be terrified. Being a good student, however, I just smiled, mumbled “Happy Halloween” and shakily scurried to my seat, skirting the circumference I thought her arms could reach lest she decide to reach out, grab me, and drag me back to the putrid Pagliacci-filled pit from whence she must have emerged.

I soon discovered that being taught algebra by a clown is very unnerving. 

Understandably, we reacted badly to the whole scenario. Instead of using the period for muted Halloween festivities as most teachers did that day, Mrs. Stoddart actually chose to teach algebra like it wasn’t even a holiday. Like she wasn’t even dressed like a clown. Everything was weird and off-kilter. And thus, the class became uncharacteristically ill-behaved. Our uncomfortable chattering and horseplay was like the rising tide. Mrs. Stoddart’s constant yelling* at us to “pipe down” failed. While her admonitions temporarily stalled the flow, our rebellious, uncomfortable reaction eventually became unstoppable, what with it being the only way we had to fight back this living horror.

And then...

I don’t remember exactly what the straw was that broke the camel’s back, but I do remember that Brian Mangus finally did something to elicit the full force of that ever-simmering teacher ire.

And, so, Mrs. Stoddart reamed us the hell out. Dressed like a clown.

She slammed her wet-erase marker down onto the projector’s glass surface, startling us out of our mesmerism. Then Mrs. Stoddart did the unthinkable. She detached from the overhead projector, climbed down off the stool that I was sure, until that moment, was fused to her ass, and walked over to more closely address the main offender.

I stifled a gasp at this surprising turn of events and watched as her giant yellow shoes impeded any sense of dignity she might have left. My compassion poured out to our poor, now mute class comedian. We all looked away, sympathetic, yet privately thanking the heavens it wasn’t us who found themselves now so very intimate with a clown.

Breathing a sigh of relief when her flow of vitriol ebbed, I thought the show was over and we could all get on with the rest of our lives. But, there was no stopping Mrs. Stoddart. She was on a roll. Ole' Stoddart toddled back to her overhead pulpit, clambered onto her throne, and revived her fervor to ensure we knew we were all to blame for this tantrum.

Her red nose bobbed as that enlarged, gruesomely painted pie-hole distinctly formed each word detailing how terrible we were behaving. How we were the worst class she ever taught. How we were bad at math! We sat silent, shell-shocked, mouths agape. Now that her fury wasn’t directed solely at Brian Mangus, now that the clown’s ire fanned out like confetti from a cannon to all of us, I felt shamed. I was mortified that I had helped to make this clown so angry. What kind of person makes a clown angry?   

The whole time as I listened to words like “failure,” “disappointment” and “recreants,” I wondered Why did this have to happen today? Mrs. Stoddart, while stern, never really blew up before. It would have been easier to swallow on any other day. But why today? Why such intensity? Why in that outfit?

She wasn’t even coming up for air when the bell rang. We dismissed ourselves, too wary to wait for a formal dismissal from this angry, accursed clown. I’ve never seen 30 teenagers move so quickly, faces ashes, mouths silent.

It was all so terrible. And so delightful. An angry clown yelling at you, in a profoundly sincere manner, is probably the worst indignity in life anyone could ever suffer.

That day really was the worst of my life. And although countless teachers have inspired me to get into the profession - including the non-clowned Mrs. Stoddart herself – I have surely developed a complex about being too festive in the “costume” department on Halloween at school. I live with the fear that history may repeat and I may find myself losing my shit and berating a class while dressed as Beetleguise, a sexy banana, or Madonna.

And there’s just no recovering from that; that’s just the type of shit that could give somebody a serious complex. 

Post Script (after the jump):

Costume-phobic

Costumes are the thing I love most about Halloween*. Inexplicably, most people have some sort of pathological hang-up about dressing in costumes on non-Halloween days of the year. 

I certainly don’t have any hang-ups about it, what with being a re-enactor, a frequenter of fairy conventions and renaissance fairs, and a generally eccentric dresser who prefers black and unnatural hair colors. Although usually self-conscious, I even sometimes get a kick out walking into the convenience store in full Revolutionary War soldier garb before or after an event and perusing the chips aisle and snagging a Diet Snapple. 

But man, other people. What is with them? What is with the neurosis and disdain for costumes? Take the rube I witnessed waddling through Halloween Adventure this year. Around her, the children's eyes were alight with possibilities! They skittered this way and that, delighted in the fact that, for one day of the year at least, they could be who they knew there were always meant to be: A ninja-witch. A vampiric Anne of Green Gables. An alien construction worker! 

And then there was the lady. The woman who, clearly, had no vitality left in her; her life essence depleted. This woman, lording over the group of tittering teenagers she was with, proclaimed loudly, in a voice sounding not unlike Droopy Dog, “Seems like a lot of work for one day.” Um, go back to perfecting that indent in your couch, lady. Let the creatives shine, will you? 

* I fib. I love everything about Halloween from the decorations, to the weather, to the candy, to the fact that it's the one day of the year on which you can roam your neighborhood at night and people think it's acceptable and that you're not strange or a creeper. 

Post Script:

I had another amusing encounter during this same trip to Halloween Adventure. I had snagged a half-priced foam wall hanging that looked like a stone cemetery-gate plaque from Dante's Inferno. A gargoyle extends its batwings, creating a gorgeous arch under which the words "Abandon all hope ye who enter here" are inscribed. 

The robotic cashier serving me was shaken out of his routine long enough to look at the item he was scanning and exclaim "Hey! This is pretty cool!" I have a habit of being too open with people, so I instinctively told him the plan I had formulated for it. "I plan to hang it over the bathroom door all year long." 

He looked at me blankly, reverted back to his robotic movements, and began to bag the item. About twenty seconds later, a smile exploded onto his face, he chuckled audibly, and said "Hey! That's funny!" 

A Love Letter to Rebel Hill

I live on Rebel Hill, which rises above Gulph Mills, Pennsylvania, a quiet village just off the Main Line. The hill is one of twin hills - foothills really, topping out at about 230 feet – with a deep cleft in between known as “The Gulph.” A determined creek took hundreds of thousands of years to cut that defile into the rock; a rebellious creek, indeed.

The place is bewitching – an air of history pervades the natural landscape, all nestled in the armpit of the intersection of three major area highways. Rebels of all sorts have been lured by its charms for centuries. In fact, during the American Revolution, most of the hill’s residents were patriots, or “rebels”, ready to cut ties with King George. Thus the colloquial moniker “Rebel Hill” eventually replaced “Mount Joy Manor” on the map and found its way onto real estate deeds.

The hill truly is unique. In the 18^th century, a single U-shaped dirt path climbed up three-quarters of one end, cut across the hill, and made its way down the other side. A few sequestered homes and farms stood proudly along this path. Since then, other roads have branched off this main path, carving up the original few large tracts of land and providing countless plots for additional endless ramshackle, ununiformed houses. The abodes cling to the hillside, multiplying in size with sprawling additions that were added willy-nilly and employ varied façade material including stucco, wood, vinyl siding or stone. These, indeed, are the houses of rebels. And ever since those 18^th century rebels first inhabited the hill, decidedly crusty, hard-working, not-so-affluent folk have continued to populate this hill with ensuing generations.

The complexion of the hill suddenly changed in the 1980’s, however, when inflated and vainglorious developer Ed Doran thought it a grand idea to turn Rebel Hill into a posh residential appendage to the Main Line. Prior to Doran’s machinations, the hill’s elevation seemed to segregate the rebel residents from the Main Line’s swank elite spread at its feet. Doran’s pet housing project eventually succeeded, after several false starts and developer changes, and created an elite upper echelon atop the hill and above the original road. The townhouse development resulted in the two distinctly different classes of people who presently reside on the hill: the A-holes who bought Doran’s half-million dollar, uniform, squished together townhomes, which offer only a 10x10 balcony of outdoor living space and are perched upon the hill’s previously natural summit like some damned,  pre-fabricated Mount Olympus; and those of us old, crusty, not-so-prosperous rebels with houses and spirits that have been clinging to this hillside on rambling plots filled with brambles and oak trees since the birth of our country.

In 2012, the bluff’s rebellious spirit lured Michael and I to become residents of the hill.  We bought a rebel’s house whose frame is an old log cabin. The county registrar misplaced the home’s deed prior to the last one I could track down dated 1865, so we don’t know how old the house really is. However, as a testament to its age, one can observe the huge, gnarled logs that were its original walls when taking a peek under the thick attic insulation. At some point after the cabin’s initial construction, an addition was built and stucco was applied to the logs, resulting in warped-looking exterior walls that make our humble abode look like the Crooked Old Man’s crooked old house.

Our house has but four rooms - the only four rooms we would ever use in a home even three time its size: living room, kitchen, bedroom, office/guestroom. Visitors and friends may scoff at our lack of dining room, but the dozens of partygoers who frequent our home during our annual Christmas party never seem to complain as they pile into the oversized kitchen, which could accommodate up to 30. Instead of a fancy-schmancy formal dining room or “media room”, these four room are complemented by the history, stories and neighborhood legends that envelop our home. For example, an older neighbor once told us that during her childhood, the neighborhood children considered our home “the haunted one.” After all, it stands by itself on one side of the road and is perched higher than all the rest of the homes on the other side of street, which adds to its singular appearance. Another neighbor told us the house boasted a huge walk-in hearth and dirt floor prior to its 2008 renovation. We’ve heard tell of a loyalist hanging that took place at the bottom of the hill, as well of a quelling of a mutiny in which 22-year-old then-general Aaron Burr chopped off a mutineer’s hand with one determined swoop of his sabre. Another neighbor claimed that Aaron Burr lodged in our home when the Continental Army encamped upon on the hill in December 1777. I can believe in hangings and hauntings and hearths, but this last one was hard to swallow; I doubted a general would submit to lodging in a log cabin when there was a more formal homestead, the Rees home, on the hill.

Forget Aaron Burr and his posh lodgings, however, - our home is built into the very hill itself, not unlike a hobbit house! A door in the upstairs bedroom actually leads out to the backyard on level ground – a situation that confuses many guests when on the grand tour. I’ve heard “Escher” or “witchcraft” muttered more than once after opening the door and ushering guests out into the backyard after just having them climb the interior steps of the house.

Aside from all of these charms of the house and the neighborhood, however, my favorite facet about the whole enchanting situation might just be the nearby graveyard – the huge Calvary graveyard nestled in the bosom of our hill and the hill across the way.

This graveyard is so giant it’s a regional landmark.

“Where do you live?” good intentioned busy-bodies ask.

“Gulph Mills.” 

The usual response is something to the effect of “I don’t understand the words that are coming out your mouth.”

My comeback is nearly automatic at this point: “Do you know the giant graveyard on the hill with …”

“With the giant illuminated cross?” they exclaim excitedly. “I know exactly where Gulph Mills is.”

The graveyard is also very helpful when guiding fast-food delivery drivers to our home.

“Turn right at the giant graveyard? Your Crab Rangoon will be there in 20 minutes.”

Many visitors think it morbid or dreary that a sprawling graveyard is the crowning jewel of the beautiful landscape we revel in from our porch and through our bedroom windows. I, however, love it. The view of the sloping adjacent hill just past the neighbor’s massive apple tree, and the graveyard creeping up that slope is comforting. I get to witness an entire legion of folk at eternal rest amid rolling hills and stately pines. I tell myself that if they’re not the sedate type to enjoy a peaceful eternal life, well then they always have the chance to stir up a little ruckus come Halloween. Seems like a pleasant life –afterlife, really - to me. Perhaps if I eventually become a resident of that yard, I too can spend my afterlife looking back at the lovely log cottage perched midway up Rebel Hill and remember that it once  brimmed full with celebrations, friends, family, cats and a life contentedly lived.

Yes, Michael and I certainly are lucky to have found this haven. In fact, when considering whether to buy the house back in 2012, most friends and family advised us that “This house is weird. It only has four rooms. Your view is a graveyard! Why is that cross so illuminated? Your backyard is a hill!” But my dad summed Michael and I up best when he said “I wouldn’t buy it for myself, but I know it would be perfect for your two.”

He’s right, you know. This is the perfect house, and the perfect neighborhood, for these two rebels. 

                                                    

The Giggle Loop

While reading the Wikipedia entry for Weird Al's "The Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota," it was the verified, cited fact of "After working all year at Big Roy's Heating and Plumbing [the unnamed narrator] accumulates some vacation time" that made me almost do one of those laugh-screams while proctoring the deathly quiet testing center at school.Those types of laughs, the howls borne of the marriage of humor and surprise, are a killer.  But students were earnestly scratching away at their math quizzes, so I instinctively swallowed the laugh so as to not interrupt them - although my shoulders and torso were compelled to still perform the bodily motions that would have accompanied such a guffaw. I then realized the predicament I had caused a second too late – the results of swallowing a laugh can be VERY grave indeed. 

Laughter is like a butterfly - let it go and it flies free and loves you, or something like that. Swallow it, keep it imprisoned in your stomach, and it becomes a trapped, angry, manic moth that you didn't notice fly into your car as you madly opened the door and threw yourself in this morning - because, of course you were late - that you then only notice when it begins beating its giant wings against the back of your head terrified, and terrifying, and then flies straight for your eyes, blocking your vision and making you nearly swerve off the road and crash in the pre-dawn light. That's what laughter is like when you hold it in. 

And so, my stifled, swallowed laugh of surprise over Big Al’s Heating and Plumbing swelled bigger in my midsection. I felt the inevitable growing tidal wave of suppressed laughter - the persistence of energy bashing against membrane and stomach lining, building up within me. It threatened to  explode as I desperately tried to fight it. The British Comedy series Coupling deemed this uncomfortable phenomenon a “Giggle Loop.” It happens when you find yourself in a situation where you can not, MUST not laugh, usually when it is quiet: in a public bathroom stall; at a funeral; or when your spouse tries to dance in a manner to attract you. Something strikes you as funny, but it’s the mere fact that it's socially irresponsible to laugh that makes whatever it is so much funnier. You stifle the laugh, but then realize that stifling a laugh in this situation is funny. This very thought magnifies the trapped energy, and the whole thing grows exponentially. The more you think about the Giggle Loop, the stronger the tide becomes....until....the dam breaks, the giggle explodes and you wind up looking like a deranged imbecile. 

And thus, today, in the testing center. "Big Roy's Heating and Plumbing" was reverberating in my brain. It was all I could think of. "Big Roy" echoed endlessly. "Big ig ig....Roy oy oyyyyyyyyyy!" Airy, staccato laugh-breaths stuttered out my nose. Then I could feel the swallowed laugh bubble up with a vengeance; I felt my shoulders beginning to quake. The laugh welled up fiercely and broke like a wave, wooshing into the back of my throat; at least I had the faculties to manage this event by turning the laugh into one of those unconvincing fake cough things. But, despite that effort, the laugh didn’t fully dissipate. It still continued to grow, to swell, to fill my throat and spread to my fingers and toes - a shaking sort of tremor running through my frame.

I was gonna blow, so I immediately pulled out the only ammunition against the “Giggle Loop” that exists: I went through the “Things in Life that are Not Funny” list. I desperately searched for anything that wasn't funny. Old people? No. Work? Definitely not not funny. The laugh was pushing through; my body hunched over and my shoulders looked like I was jackhammering. Death! Death is not funny - no, actually that's pretty hilarious too. The guffaw was now billowing up past my diaphragm. Suffering animals! That’s it! Suffering animals are never funny! — just ask Sarah Mclachlan.

Mistreated animals, thankfully, quelled the tidal wave and snuffed out the Giggle Loop, and I was safe - aside from a few little tremors every now and again and a newly depressed constitution (poor animals!). Crisis averted.

This is going to be hard, what with most of my new job requiring me to sit in a quiet room with unfettered access to the internet, but not being allowed to laugh. To illustrate, on that very same day, I valiantly fought another Giggle Loop battle when I read an article about a 100 year old teacher named Mrs. Bumpass. 

I can't with this and the no laughing. I am going to die. 

The Keyboard

I recently started monitoring the testing center at school. It's a small-scale classroom with plastic chairs, metal frames and laminate writing surfaces all cobbled together into desks, lined up in truncated rows. Students can visit here to make up their missed assessment if they miss a class exam due to a sickness or competing in a texting tournament, or whatever it is high school kids do these days. It's quiet in here – it must be: diligent students taking tests, and all. It’s very quiet. It’s so quiet, in fact that the mouth breathers sound like they’re snoring. I can hear breath rustling nose hairs like a storm blowing through a forest canopy and perspiration squeezing, then breaking through pores. 

It’s so quiet that I can hear the pencils scratching; can hear the fibers of the paper stretching under the force delivered by the pointed graphite as it tries to slice through the strands like the keel of an ocean tanker through water. I can hear as those tenacious fibers finally give up and jubilantly break – sounding like the plucking of violin strings. And I can hear as the tiny graphite particles spill into the newly formed furrows on the page. 

It's so quiet in this testing center that I can hear neurons firing - a sound not unlike that of the vague high pitched noise a television emits when it's on but is not receiving any input

Anyway, it's quiet and the students are conscientious. And everything is great. But where does that leave me? With some free time, that's where it leaves me. Either I can bore my eyes into the rows of tops of bent heads and hone my mind-control skills, or I can do something a bit more productive and write. I choose writing. However, on my first day as substitute proctor, I realized, with a heavy sinking feeling, the fault in my plan to write away these 43 minutes. In fact, I realized this problem the instant I typed but three words onto the open Notepad program displayed on my computer screen. The problem is this keyboard.

This keyboard at my desk... this keyboard has got to be the loudest keyboard in existence. The heavy, clunky keyboards from the 90's - with mile-high “action” requiring finger strength I imagine only Arnold Schwarzenegger to possess - are nothing compared to the noise created by this sleek, otherwise seemingly modern keyboard. I immediately froze and stopped typing due to the deafening, echoing percussion caused by my typing in the testing center. I looked up, with the expectation of seeing students writhing in pain, working to stem flumes of blood shooting out their ears caused by the rupturing of their not-yet fully developed eardrums. But, there they sat, heads bent, scratching away.

"Maybe it’s not as loud as I’m imaging,” I thought. “Maybe it’s all in my head," I consoled myself, thinking that I was just too new to this job and was overly sensitive to any noise I might make that distracts the students. But, no. The cacophony was not in my head. As I tentatively typed the letters "O" and "N" to accompany the abandoned "B-u-f-f-o-" glaring on the screen, a neighboring teacher banged on the adjoining wall, shouting in that perennial exasperated teacher voice to "Knock off that racket, or I'm calling the cops." This really is the world's loudest keyboard.

How can such a modern, innocuous thing cause such a racket? This keyboard is akin to a huge, hulking, rackety, old typewriter. And a giant’s old typewriter, at that. Each creaky, multi-tiered depression of a key sounds like it firstly requires the breaking of some sort of seal resulting in the explosive noise created when you first open a sealed carton of expired sour cream. The next tier of further screeching depression sounds like it serves to summon the hammer, which creakily raises that metal block with the letters embossed on it and heaves it onto the paper, smashing it in and making a depression, which icy, black ink then nosily slithers into. Boom. Creak. Heave. Smassssssh. Woooooosh. Time slows – seconds become milliseconds with each depression and the resulting amalgam of sound reverberates in the room. And this is a keyboard producing such a cacophony – not a typewriter! There's even a thundering echo.

I can’t continue like this. It’s putting me on edge and I tense like I’m expecting a punch in the face every time I’m poised to depress a key. Anyway, the moral of this story is – no writing for me as I monitor silent students taking their tests all day. I’m bummed. And how on earth, dear readers, will you get on without my witty prose?  

And I haven’t even mentioned the mouse yet! Each click, and God forbid double click, is louder than the percussion of 12 gauge double-barrel shotgun...

On Writing