I had to be at school in one hour. It took a little while to get there and I still wasn’t dressed. Today the English teacher was giving back our short story assignment and I was dreading the red correction marks that would be scrawled all over it; not to mention the grade that I was going to confront. I put on some pants and searched for the right shirt. In high school you had to be conscious of the way you acted, the comments you made, and of course the way you looked because if something was wrong you can bet that you would hear about it. If you wore a piece of clothing two days in a row, or if you wore a belt and missed a belt loop, or if you said something a little silly, or if you ate the GROSS thing at lunch that nobody else liked, you would be talked about until everybody knew what a stupid idiot you were. Well anyway, I had to get ready for school.
I was searching my closet for a shirt and they were all gone. I figured that my mom had forgotten to do the laundry and I ran down to the kitchen. Just off of the kitchen were the washer and dryer. I saw nothing there so I went down in the basement. Sometimes she kept clothes down there and would occasionally hang them up to dry from a wobbly clothes rack. I still saw nothing; but wait, there’s some clothes in a basket, maybe there mine. Sure enough they were mine but they were dirty. They were still a smashed up mess. What in the hell am I going to do, I thought? I had little time to spare, so I ran upstairs to my closet and franticly looked for anything; even if it wasn’t my second choice, it was going to be my only option. There it was, a brown shirt hidden in the shadows. It was a short sleeve “golf type” shirt with elastic arm bands and it was good enough. It was on a hanger, and I slid it into view. It had the texture of fuzzy cardboard and looked like it had suffered a slow and gruesome death. I shook it in order to try and throw some life back into it but it wasn’t responding; it had kind of stretched under its own weight and shriveled up around the hanger. It couldn’t be, I thought, she hung it up when it was completely wet and now look at it! This was horrific. I had told my mom never to do such a thing because I hated it. I tried to slide the hanger out from the neck, but the opening was too small. I coaxed it out from underneath and proceeded to pull this nightmare over my head. The shirt was getting better, and since it was the only thing left in my closet, it was going to be fine; it was going to be great! I hadn’t worn this shirt too many times and convinced myself that it was one of my favorites; I was only saving it for special occasions. Time was running short and I started to run down the stairs. I stopped and felt the top of my head. Wait, I need to look at myself in the mirror and make sure my hair wasn’t sticking up, like sticking straight up like a fool, I thought. I would probably have to comb it or wet it down in the back to get it just right. I ran into the bathroom and had a look at myself.
Confronting ones self in the mirror is not always a pleasant task, especially when you are sixteen, or at least it wasn’t for me. This time though the hair didn’t matter, the pimples didn’t matter, the glasses didn’t matter, only the extremely large hanger bumps indelibly left on the shoulders of my shirt. “What in the HELL did she do!’ I screamed. The ends of the hanger formed big dents in the fabric of my shirt right where my shoulders were. I told her not to hang my shirts up when they were still wet in order to avoid such things. I immediately pounded them back down with my fists and smashed them as hard as I could but they wouldn’t go away. I got them to go back down the other way; that wasn’t too bad, I thought, but the slightest movement caused them to pop back up. Anything would be better than this, I thought. I even wetted my shoulders down in hopes the bumps would clear up when everything dried, but even WET the bumps were recognizable. They reminded me of little horns. If these things were on my head, I’d look like the spawn of Satan. I ran down stairs and told my mother off. “Look at what you did!” I shouted, “Everybody is going to make fun of me and it’s your fault!” She said it wasn’t that noticeable and besides why didn’t I put on another shirt? I told her they were all dirty because SHE hadn’t done the laundry yet, and she told me I better start doing the laundry myself. I kept pressing them down. It wasn’t cold outside but I wore a coat anyway in hopes that it would smash them down long enough to help get rid of them, but it didn’t work.
I was walking around school with these little horns on my shoulders and I wondered what the kids would say. Nobody seemed to notice my disfigurement and I was kind of surprised. I was even talking to one of the students who I knew for sure would say something, but he didn’t say a thing. These bumps were making me so self-conscience and uncomfortable that I almost wished they would make fun of them. It would give me an opportunity to explain what they were and how I got them. This person still said nothing about them and my anxiety mounted. I needed to get this off my chest and I couldn’t take it anymore. “Isn’t this stupid?” I said. “What?” He said, “Don’t you see these stupid bumps on my shoulders?” I pointed them out to make sure he knew what I was talking about. He said, “What bumps?” “What do you mean what bumps, the ones here, right here on my shoulders; they are from a hanger my mom used to hang this shirt with when it was still wet, and these things piss me off!” He still didn’t know what I was talking about. I grabbed the bump and pulled it to make it even bigger so this moron would know what I was talking about. He then started to laugh and said, “Oh, I see what you are talking about; your right, those are stupid. Why didn’t you change your shirt before you came to school?” I told him that I didn’t have any more clean clothes to wear, and my mom hadn’t done the laundry in awhile. He said it sounded like my mom was stupid and I agreed, but then I started to get angry. He then told some people about my shirt and they were somewhat amused. They were starting to make fun of me, and at last I was getting the uncomfortable attention that I had expected. I was pissed at all of them and said, “Who in the hell cares what you think anyway!” They were a bunch of shallow jerks, I said to myself.
The time had come. I was sitting in English class and as usual felt nauseous. My mind went to mush when I walked through that door and I felt like I was going to be humiliated continually until the hour was over. The teacher’s name was Mrs. Jacobs. She was going to hand back our “short stories” assignment. She secretly entered our stories in a writer’s competition sort of thing and she was proud to announce that some of the kids in our class received awards. I couldn’t wait to get this crap over but at least it was a painless way to kill time. She said so and so got second place in the FANTASY division, and so and so got first in the INFORMATIVE division, and so and so got a ribbon in the CHILDREN’S STORY division. Oh my god, that last person she named was me for Christ sake, this was blowing my mind! I had written a silly little story about a spider that talked or something and I received an award for it; this was incredible. I knew that Mrs. Jacobs hated me, but at least some person from the outside could see that I wasn’t all bad. I was relishing the fact that TEACHER had to give me something other than a C or D because she would inevitably bow to the pressure of her peers and maybe jump on my band wagon so to speak. She was walking around and giving the papers back. Where was mine, I thought? She was taking her sweet time about it. I figured she was dragging her feet because she couldn’t stand giving me back a paper that was good, with a good grade on it. I was the last one. She walked over and kind of threw it at me with this look of defiance. I was getting nervous and slowly look at my paper. The first page was the entry form for the contest that she had filled out for us. A big ribbon was stuck to it and I tried to read through all the stuff to see what exactly I had won. When she called my name she said, “ribbon…” without any specifics. The thing said I had won first place! Wow, I can’t believe it. I continued to flip through the paper and I’ll be God damned if it wasn’t covered in red pen. I couldn’t even make out all the corrections and comments. It looked like a crazy person had gone wild and had a scribbling contest with themselves. The grades were always on the last page and I kind of made myself look; I was getting nauseous again. There it was; as naked as could be…. she gave me a freakin C-. I glared at her for all that it was worth. The worst grade a kid got, who also received a ribbon, was a B+. So why did I get a C-? I was going to do some investigating.
It was the last class of the day. Driver’s education was almost fun compared to some of the other things you had to take. Today we were staying in the class room and watching films and so forth and our break time was approaching. During this time we could walk around and converse with our fellow students and ask each other important questions, and have little group talks and so on and so on. We of course sat around and talked about how bored we were. I took the opportunity to confide in one of the other driver’s ed. teachers, who just happened to be doing some paper work in the adjoining office. I heard he was one of the kindest teachers at school and students regularly went to him with their problems and asked his advice. My officially appointed counselor was useless. I was going to him to talk about Mrs. Jacobs. His name coincidentally was Mr. Jacobs and they sure as hell were polar opposites. I told him my story. He looked at me with caring eyes and he couldn’t believe a teacher actually hated me because he thought I was a fine young man. I said, “But do you really know her; she’s really not a very nice woman.” He said, “Yes, I know her.” Then I assumed he obviously did because the teachers must get together at meetings once in awhile. He said she was actually very nice and all I had to do was talk with her after school or after class and tell her that I was having problems and needed help. “I did that already,” I said, “Nothing works with her, she doesn’t like me and gives me bad grades even when I do what I am suppose to do, she’s the meanest woman I have ever met.” Mr. Jacobs said, “Buddy, what’s the real problem?” I said, “I don’t know why she doesn’t like me, it’s not fair.” He then said, “I know it’s not fair, nothings fair buddy, but tell me the real problem.” I wasn’t sure what he was talking about and said, “Ask her, she always gives me those mean looks and even though I won that writing thing she still gave me a low grade. I am scared to see what my final grade is going to be.” He looked me dead in the eye and said, “You can tell me; life isn’t fair and some of us have to fight a little harder, and it’s O.K., I understand.” I then became confused because he was looking at me with such compassion and he was about to get very serious. He leaned over to me and said, “It must be difficult. “ What.” I said, “The brace, the brace, I bet it is very uncomfortable.” He was almost starting to whisper because he didn’t want to embarrass me in front of the others. His eyes were almost starting to fill up and I couldn’t take anymore of this. I said, “I honestly don’t know what you are talking about.” He said, “Don’t you have Polio?” I said not that I knew of. “Isn’t that a back brace you are wearing?” I looked all around and didn’t have a clue as to why he thought I was wearing a back brace, a brace for my back? He pointed his finger at the bumps on my shoulders and said, “Well, isn’t that it, under your shirt?” Good God, the hanger bumps were still haunting me! Talk about reinforcing hatred for my mother! I knew all along that I had reason to feel self-conscience about the bastards. I told him they were just bumps in my shirt from a damn hanger, and I didn’t know exactly what they should be called, but I had given them the name of “hanger bumps.” I asked him if I otherwise looked sickly or crippled; now I was really self-conscious. “No, but if not Polio, I thought you could of had some sort of spinal condition; it looked as if you had metal rods under your shirt.” I told him I had had a neck injury a few years ago and the coach wouldn’t let me try out for the football team, but that’s all I could come up with. I stood up as straight as I could to prove I was O.K., and I told him I lifted weights on a regular basis.
I went home to find my closet full of clean clothes. My shirts were all neatly hung up and I ripped them out and threw them on my bed. I folded each shirt and then stacked them up on a top of a wooden box by my window. The next day at school I told a friend about the embarrassing ordeal and they said I was playing with fire. I asked why and they informed me that Mrs. Jacobs and Mr. Jacobs were married and I was making things worse. How could I be so stupid and not have known they were married! I was trying to remember exactly what I said about Mrs. Jacobs and I was praying it wasn’t too horrendous. I prayed to God Almighty that Mr. Jacobs would at least tell her how much of a nice young man I was; after all, he’s the own who said it! Maybe while they were on the couch watching T.V. together he could say, “Honey, he’s a good kid, don’t give him a bad grade, give him a break… please dear.” I couldn’t remember sticking my foot in my mouth quite like that before. When I got my final report card my English grade wasn’t an A, B, or C…. it was a D. I’ve never seen either one of them since.