Actually, I think this was from 9th Grade, but still funny. A friend and I were up to no good one evening when we had this brilliant idea to heave an M-80 up on Sally Martin's front porch. Her father must have been right inside the front door because as soon as it went off he ran out and started chasing us. My friend went one way, and I went the other. I ran down between two houses and climbed a fence and jumped over, breathing a sigh of relief that I had escaped, just as I hung myself on a clothesline wire and practically broke my neck. I had a scar for weeks and never told anybody how I got it... Oh well, boys will be boys… sorry bout that Sally!
In the summer before my eight-grade year, 1958, my grandfather, trying to do me a favor, bought me a pair of shoes – butt-ugly shoes but more durable than iron as we shall see. My parents, being the frugal souls they were, told me I couldn’t have another pair until that pair wore out. These became the object of some heckling comments, some of them vicious.
I set about trying to put a little “extra” wear on those shoes so I could get some of the cool new Bostonian loafers. I rode my bicycle down a hill and dragged those shoes on the cement rather than use my brakes. I walked through water with them. I clubbed ‘em with a hammer. I even tried to set fire to them. All to no avail; they were indestructible.
Several months later, I finally bought my own shoes with my own money and threw those repulsive clodhoppers in the trash much to the displeasure of my parents. Somehow, in my mind, this made me cooler and, I suppose it did since I no longer could be the singled out by my classmates. This was important back in the eighth grade.
Today, there is probably some poor kid down in Mexico, wearing those same god-awful shoes, walking through water and beating them with a hammer, looking for matches, and asking his parents why he can’t have a cool pair of shoes like all his buddies.
