A Smart Mouth Isn’t Smart
You may have to read this right away, instead of saving it for later, as the thought police have their sights on me and my honest, but not PC, writings. I have a tendency to write things that half the people find thought provoking while the other half find them crass. Perhaps less than half find them thought-provoking.
PC stands for “politically correct” but I know that I really mean SC, as in “socially correct”. I feel I’m SC but occasionally find out later that some people disagree. My personal three-second delay has rarely worked, so broadcasts go out without editing.
When I was in junior high school, which is middle school to those of you who didn’t have a junior high school system, I made the mistake of using creative writing in an English class. The assignment was to write short fiction, so I guess one could say that I made the mistake of being too creative when assigned a creative writing assignment. There were no boundaries placed on the assignment and being a pre-pubescent teen, it’s questionable that I had learned mine.
It’s important to note that this class was mixed-race and I’m not. Back then, in the 70s, I was Caucasian. Now I’m White. The class was not mixed intellect, on the other hand, as most public schools are. I was in a gifted program in a public school, one of the first magnet schools in the country. The gifted program was not, as they are today, in a gifted school on a gifted campus. It was an onion ring in an inner-city box of fries. Our teachers were chosen for their abilities to work with us. The English teacher, Miss Perrin, was kind yet firm, no rod necessary. With me being first chair flute in the all-school band and one of the apparently gifted at this otherwise ordinary low-income school, the principal thought he would see our program students seldom and me never.
Furthermore, I was thin. I was so thin that people commented to me and my family, much like people do when they see a child with very blonde hair (“wow, your son has beautiful, blonde hair”), very tall stature (“wow, your son is very tall for his age”) or perfect teeth (“wow, your daughter has a gorgeous smile”), except it came out more like “wow, your son is incredibly skinny”. This leads me back to the reason that my classmates picked on me — because they could and I was unlikely to do much about it. Lucky for me, we didn’t have to worry about bullying back then because bullying didn’t become a really bad thing until the 21st century.
The class set up was tables of five or six instead of individual desks and mine had two particularly feisty Black boys along with others that I truly don’t recall. Ray was abnormally big and strong, as he had already hit puberty like Joe Frazier, and Michael was abnormally small, still hiding from puberty. Michael bullied me despite his size disadvantage both because he could probably win in a fight of small versus skinny and because Ray did not have a size disadvantage. In other words, Michael had Ray and I had a smart mouth.
Tired of being picked on and made fun of with impunity, the writing assignment allowed me the forum to exact a small amount of revenge without throwing a punch. I spent a lot of time crafting my piece, making sure that I used all of the elements Ms. Perrin had taught, especially structure, grammar, spelling and imagination. Fortunately, there were no pictures or drawings included.
Scatological jokes and references are not just popular with younger boys. Women know that grown men find fart jokes funny. Writing that sentence even made me chuckle. I could claim that I thought I would become popular, handsome or treasured if I were to write a scatological story my teacher and class found hilarious. I would be lying if I claimed I thought about any consequences of turning in my story. I thought of only one thing. I thought only of sticking it to Michael.
I wrote of a dream I had in which my sweet, kind teacher went through a lot of pain to relieve herself of Michael. Relieve is a nice way to say, well, you know what it means. My simple narrative contained all of the required elements, including a thoughtful opening paragraph, similes, varied word choices and even a neat ending. It was worthy of a very high grade had it been graded on a sliding scale. Ms. Perrin might have enjoyed the story more had she not been the supporting character in it.
My mother was as surprised to hear from the principal as I was. Our family only saw principals at the opening of a school year, to shake a hand, to put a face with the name, to forget until it was time to collect awards at the end of the year. I was also surprised to hear from my mother about a problem at school since I hadn’t heard of any problems at school. No guns, no drugs, no problems of any kind at our school, glad to report. Did I dislike Ms. Perrin? (No, I liked her so much I made her a protagonist.) Did I have anger issues? (Shouldn’t this psychologist know the answer to this?) Why would you write such a thing? (Did you see how well I wrote it?)
That school was a pantheon of middle school education at a time when getting every child into an average school, instead of rich or poor, was still a distant goal. It prepared 12-year-old children from various income groups, races, religions and origins serious math concepts, literature, composition, history and social studies at a pace 50% higher than standard schools. It was in college that I understood what I learned in junior high.
A very close college friend of mine taught me that the Jewish religion had many rules that governed what to eat. I asked why it was important to avoid trafe (pork products) entirely when all that was necessary was to properly prepare foods so that they were safe. His answer was true of trafe, crime, infidelity and many other things: if one stays clear of the outer boundaries of a gray area surrounding a line, one never has to worry about crossing the solid line that will truly get one in trouble.
The magnet school taught me many things about math, English and curriculum subjects as well as many things about getting along with others. It also taught me that there isn’t always a clear solid line drawn between what is acceptable to say or write and what is not, but there very well might be a blurry gray area that one shouldn’t even approach, never mind cross, just in case you cross the solid line accidentally. If you cross that line while meandering in the blur, the guillotine drops the blade, your head rolls into the muck, authorities pick it up and your mother asks whether you need that head examined.
Before I turned in my piece, I thought it was incredibly funny and would be appreciated for taking a swipe at my cohort without an altercation. Audiences today pay dearly for a seat at a show with dark references. Now I realize my mistake wasn’t that I used creative writing in an English class. It was clearly that I chose the wrong audience.
