The Curious Expressions that define my life….
A one horse town
To jump out of the frying pan into the fire
To have one’s heart in one’s shoes
The Amen Corner
A month of Sundays
To stew in one’s own juice
A rope of sand
To upset the apple cart
As poor as Job’s turkey
Taking a French leave
To pay through the nose
A fly in the ointment
Neither fish nor flesh
I have this wonderful treasure-of-a-book called A Hog on Ice and Other Curious Expressions by Charles Funk, the dictionary guy. It was a Liberty High School discard back when I was 12 or 13. There were two distinct advantages to being a teacher’s kid, I found out. The first was locker cleaning day on the high school’s last day. All the students were told that anything left in the lockers was to be thrown out without remorse. This was only partially true. Usually around 4 or 5 of us teacher’s kids would have a field day with the empty and not-so-empty lockers. We found all sorts of discarded treasures. Pens and pencils galore, Trapper Keepers, key chains, scissors, comic books, calculator watches. You never knew what you’d find. Once Shosha and I found this really nice drawing set, and several times we found exacto-knife sets, back when we were in elementary school, before we worried about things like school shootings. (Except—I almost forgot this—when Brad Lay brought a loaded gun to the third grade. He was expelled and then he came back in 5th grade and I was scared shitless.)
The second (and perhaps the better benefit of the two) was library discard day during the week of in-service before school started. I just could not fathom why you would give away perfectly good books. I was in heaven. Mary Dusenberry would have this big stack of discards just sitting there like hot brownies on a platter. Shit! Free Books! I think most of the books have now been discarded from our home, but I still have two that I know of…A Hog on Ice and Children Without Childhood. I did have a copy of Thomas Wolff’s (is that the right wolf?) Look Homeward Angel, which I took home in the 7th grade because I liked the title. I remember reading the first chapter and being like “What the hell?” I still don’t think I am ready for Look Homeward Angel. My 12 year old self didn’t know what to think.
I have fond memories of the Liberty High Library. I spent a good deal of my first 2 years of high school in there, hiding away. I think I read every book on the great wall of fiction. For every 10 god-awful books, there was one really good one. On the last day of school, Shosha, Mama, and I would fill up boxes full of summer-reading. It was exhilarating.
And then there was my year as a “media research assistant” which was possibly the most enjoyable class of my Liberty career. Aside from shelving books, dusting tables, learning how to make web pages, and checking people’s books in and out, Ms. Dusenberry took advantage of my unstylish book fancy. She let me order books and Accelerated Reader tests for the system. Small wonder I had about 4,000 AR points before I left Liberty. I’d just order the tests for all the books I’d read and take them as soon as they were loaded into the system. I think my average in English III, where you got extra-credit for AR points over the required 50 per nine weeks, was a 112. Too bad they didn’t take AR for extra-credit in Chemistry or Comprehensive Health.
I made the only C of my entire life in Health. It was a nine-week ¼ credit course in Sex Ed where Coach Worley taught us about menstrual cycles, the physiology of the erection, the endless benefits of abstinence, and all the horrible STDs you could get if you did have sex. This was my downfall. The whole grade in the class was based on this multiple choice exam where you had to tell the difference between all the STDs. And of course, I didn’t study. The only things I studied for (in my entire high school career) was Biology, Chemistry, and my math classes. So when Coach Worley (or whatever book he took the exam out of) put this matching section where you had to pair the STD with the symptom, I missed everything on them. I didn’t know the difference between Gonorrhea and Chlamydia. They both itch and ooze right?
It wasn’t my fault though. They certainly didn’t teach us anything practical about STD prevention. I didn’t even know what a diaphragm or cervical cap was until they handed us this book called “Sexual Etiquette 101” at Bard orientation. I actually still have it. It’s right there next to my Modern English Usage and A Short Guide to Writing About History. Honestly…
Wow, this post went in a kind of strange direction.
