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writings


School


My father always took me to school. Not the place where I went to school, but the place where he worked. He was a junior high industrial arts teacher you sure as hell better call it industrial arts because using the title shop teacher would get you in trouble. Shop teacher doesn’t sound so good, and he thought of himself as much more than that. Well I suppose he was right, after all he coached all kinds of sports and was involved in many other activities. The types of things he and the students would make in his industrial arts class seamed very complex and time consuming; you didn’t just hammer an ear of corn on a board and call it a squirrel feeder, this place was serious, at least I thought so.


Sometimes he would pick me up on Saturday morning. Occasionally I got the feeling that he had been up to no good the Friday night before, but he always tried to be in a good mood even if he wasn’t. One of the big problems was picking me up on time. Never except one time can I remember him picking me up when he said he was going to. If he was fifteen minutes late that would have been o.k., but that turned into thirty and then forty-five and then an hour and so on, and so on. I would get so angry at him and call his house until I figured the phone company would interrupt and tell me to knock it off.


I thought I would wear out the ringer on his phone and use up all the phone time legally set aside for my phone, kind of like one coupon per customer sort of thing. I would call every five minutes and let the phone ring fifty or sixty times. I was always disappointed and wasted so much time and energy. I could have been hanging out with friends or messing around in the back yard, but no, I had to sit and stew by the phone. It was normal for me to tell my friends I couldn’t play on the weekends because I was always waiting to see if somebody was going to call and at least acknowledge the fact that they were late. This phenomenon wasn’t just isolated to my dad; it was shared by anybody that was supposed to come get me. If somebody said they’d get me at ten in the morning, it would be another two to six hours before anybody would arrive. My mom’s boyfriend was one of the worst, but at least I had a hell of a lot a fun after he’d eventually show up. My dad couldn’t compete in that category and I tried not mentioning him too much.


After my dad would arrive I’d ask him what we were going to do. When you are a kid you obviously like doing fun things, but I was always prepared for the worst. I asked him if he had to go to any store; stores were fun, or if there was any good movies playing and he always said we’d worry about it later. As we went on our way I could always tell where we were headed. “Oh dad, do we have to go to your school?” I would always moan, and he would always reply, “Yes, I have too much work to do and I must grade papers for Monday.” I would ask why he had to do that stuff now and not later, maybe after he’d drop me off back home, but I never got a straight answer.


As we approached school, we’d always park way around the back in a secluded area by one of the big dumpsters. The side door to his classroom was back there along with a loading dock for moving large equipment and shipments of lumber. He always carried all sorts of keys around and had to search for the right key to unlock the door. This place was a bit scary because the lights were always off and you were greeted by a rush of cold air and dead silence. The room had very high ceilings and was filled with industrial power tools that were either a dirty gray or a pee green. They looked like sleeping robots that were about to waken.


I, of course, wasn’t allowed to touch any of this stuff and I sure as hell didn’t really want to. These machines took up about half the classroom and the other half was filled with massive woodworking tables with vises built on the sides. My dad had a small office space a few feet away and would sit in there and grade papers. His office ceiling was tall enough to accommodate a loft above and it was used to store supplies and examples of things the kids were expected to built during the school year. His office was very dark and he would work under adjustable reading lamps that he could position directly over his desk. I would sit on a metal stool at one of the work tables out in the classroom and he would always test my patients.


The floors and tables were swept regularly because of all the saw dust that would accumulate, and scrap pieces of wood were thrown into large barrels that sat amongst the machinery. To waste time I might grab a little piece of wood and stick it into one of the table vises and tighten it as hard as I could. Then I’d try to pull it out, and if upon realizing it wasn’t going to budge, I’d loosen the vise a little and try it again. If I couldn’t pull it out I’d try rocking it back and forth to see if I could inch it out a little at a time. After doing that, I realized it was about the most worthless way to spend my day and I would pester my dad about finishing his stupid paper work. He inevitably would say that he hadn’t even started it yet and he had only been reading reports or something that one of the other staff members had written and passed around. In my brain I was screaming bloody murder and thought why in the hell did he pick me up in the first place! My mind was starting to meander in other directions.


These intimidating table saws, planers, and drill presses, were starting to call me. They were sirens and I had been out to sea long enough. I had waited and waited for my dad to pick me up and now I was waiting again. I walked up and down amongst these metal giants and felt as if I was in a museum standing amongst things that were much more than I could ever be. I was awestruck at their minimal appearance and could feel the wrath within that was waiting to lash out at any moment. All you had to do was push a button, I said to myself, and all hell would break loose. I was so tempted. My dad always said if I touched any of this stuff, it would instantly cut my fingers off or even my whole hand and I sure as hell didn’t want to do that, but still, I felt that maybe, just maybe, they would come alive and instead of hurting me maybe they would protect me. Maybe they would go attack my dad and tell him to straighten up and listen to his son once in awhile, or maybe they would just beat him up and sit there and laugh. Well anyway, turning one of these bastards on would sure as hell get his attention, but the more I thought about it the more I just wanted out of there.


After an hour or two of saying, “I’m almost finished,” he would close up his office and we would go over to the gymnasium to play basketball or kick a soccer ball around and it was like a maze, walking down all the different hallways. You had to open this door, and lock that door, and prop one open that you couldn’t shut because you would get locked in, and on and on until you were there. The gym was pretty amazing because it had a doom shaped ceiling that was supported by arched wooden beams. Usually ceilings of this nature were made of steel and my dad said this gym was a one of a kind. I always stood there and looked at the ceiling like I was seeing it for the first time because my dad loved the fact that I respected its beauty and craftsmanship. The gymnasium lights were some special high efficiency kind and they took a full eight minutes to reach their full lighting potential. Once again I was doing the waiting game and I started to loath the dumb things. My dad loved the lights and would always say it was worth the wait because they were so economical to run. He was always proud of things that saved money, and even though he wasn’t financially benefiting from these lights, he looked at them like a proud papa.


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