Opposable Thumbs
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"I want to be an eagle," is how I replied. Well, not at first.
Science class, seventh grade, and so close to summer break, we could all taste it. And although she had worked us like galley slaves that school year (sort of like today’s “Amazon Warehouse Team Members”), our illustrious teacher seemed just as unenthusiastic, academically speaking, that late afternoon as well. Maybe she had finished the semester's course load and was simply lost without a study guide. More likely, Mrs., pardon me, Ms., Hogan, was frustrated by the remaining two weeks of the school year forestalling the commencement of and subsequent engulfment with her summer garden she spoke of incessantly. "There's nothing more rewarding than eating vegetables from your own garden."
As any schoolmarm will attest to, a relatively effortless, tried and true method to kill twenty minutes in a classroom is to instruct the contemplative scholars to, individually and successively, answer aloud the same question, initiating the cerebral endeavor at the near corner of the room and proceeding to its opposite. Teachers may not know this, or don't care, depending on their individual horticultural interests, but this exercise is a classic and predictable method for instilling considerable anxiety within a seventh grader. More so for me since my traditional and unadventurous secondary school had the students seated according to alphabetical order, which placed me next to last, second only to Zorgkofsky, and by which time all of the good, read acceptable, answers had been exhausted. Incidentally, this always seemed to bother my younger self. Not only did I have to contend with my lack of extroversion, not to mention my lack of the then must-have Jordache jeans, but always being stuck in the back and always next to Zorgkofsky made it next to impossible to get to know the "cool" kids. And although apparently this seating arrangement did no harm to Facebook’s numero uno, throughout college, I always found myself in the front row.
Anyway, instilling great pressure and all. That day, Ms. Hogan, did indeed invoke the election. The particular time-killer posed by Ms. Green Thumb was the fairly unseemly and macabre "If you died, what animal would you like to come back as?" She had been complaining earlier that her cats, three, as I remember, hadn’t performed their jobs adequately the previous summer of preventing rabbits and other small rodents ("the little vermin") from desecrating her Garden of Eden. I imagined our tutelary instructor perhaps fantasizing, that some of her students, useless as students, would die, come back as housecats and keep vigil over her botanical sanctuary. I suspect now, if she was at all like my Grandmother, she very likely fed her clowder absurd quantities of soft cat food. Grams ritually employed her Rival, industrial-strength, Can-O-Matic electric can opener and knife sharpener to furnish her feline eminence the egregiously excessive provisions of an A&P brand, seemingly motor-oil-can-sized, gelatinous serving of savory nutriment, meaning horsemeat and bovine offal, thrice daily for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Three sixteen ounce bowlfuls for a twelve pound cat!? If I had shoveled into my maw and down my gullet daily thirty pounds of taurine deficient, beef flavored meaty morsels in jelly, I’d have been likewise immobile with my derelict lardass seated on the Chesterfield alongside Miffy’s!
On with the question. Having the foresight to being born into a family with a surname beginning with "A", Allison Anderson (boy, is that Anglo!!!) sat at the front desk in the first row of the class. Exceedingly predictably, Ms. Hogan began, "Let's start with you, Allison. (How many times had she said that before?!) “What kind of animal would you like to come back as?" Quickly and confidently, Allison, of course, supplied the best girl "if I were to come back as an animal" answer, a horse. Because they're pretty. Thank you Allison for that explanation, we all assumed it was because you've grown accustomed to the face of a horse by spending so much time in front of the mirror. Next, Jason (curse those Beckers) easily and smugly provided the perfect boy response, a tiger. Presumably because they're cool and they'll rip to shreds any other animal that comes near it, including a pretty horse. So on down the line it went: Bowden, Chester, Costello, Freidman, Gibbons, Hadley, Leonetti, etc. and their respectively desirable answers: lion, wolf, golden retriever, polar bear, kitty cat, shark, pony (ok, technically this answer had already been given by Milady, but the emcee for the event was staring into space, daydreaming of summer squash, tomatoes and string beans).
With the passing of each student, the list of available animals remaining, let alone cool animals remaining, was getting shorter. I thought to myself, between heart palpitations, what animal I genuinely would like to be reborn as, disregarding for the moment whether or not it was cool. I knew that most animals were a lot dumber than us, although Miffy seemed to have the Grams situation worked out pretty well, and I liked being human and thinking and reading and watching TV and walking upright and having hands instead of four much less useful feet. I thought Chimpanzee. They had hands and walked upright sometimes and were supposed to be smart and lived in groups and kind of looked like us, kind of.
David Torres struggled to come up with the stretching but ostensibly satisfactory, buffalo. Then me. Ms. Hogan asked, "Joe, how about you, what animal would you come back as?" Like she really cared, she was thinking zucchini. I answered, "A chimpanzee".
There was a moment of absolute stillness before the eruption of uncontrollable seventh grade laughter. I mean, banging on the table, mouth wide open cachinnation. Wow, it wasn't that funny, I thought. “Buffalo” must’ve primed everyone. Even our judicious instructor was chuckling - on taxpayer money no less. After milking this delay for another minute or so and at my expense, Ms. Hogan finally intervened, "Now, Joe, do you really want to be a chimpanzee?" As was expected, I replied contritely, "No, not really." After a moment, I then, surprisingly and fortuitously, pulled out of thin air and gratefully so at the time, "I want to be an eagle." The laughter slowly abated and this offering seemed to appease all, including teach.
Lastly and thankfully, this god awful task would end with Zorgkofsky's animal...
If you'd like to support the author, please purchase the PDF including the remaining 60 words. Thanks, Joe.
© 2020 A. Joseph. All rights reserved.
Science class, seventh grade, and so close to summer break, we could all taste it. And although she had worked us like galley slaves that school year (sort of like today’s “Amazon Warehouse Team Members”), our illustrious teacher seemed just as unenthusiastic, academically speaking, that late afternoon as well. Maybe she had finished the semester's course load and was simply lost without a study guide. More likely, Mrs., pardon me, Ms., Hogan, was frustrated by the remaining two weeks of the school year forestalling the commencement of and subsequent engulfment with her summer garden she spoke of incessantly. "There's nothing more rewarding than eating vegetables from your own garden."
As any schoolmarm will attest to, a relatively effortless, tried and true method to kill twenty minutes in a classroom is to instruct the contemplative scholars to, individually and successively, answer aloud the same question, initiating the cerebral endeavor at the near corner of the room and proceeding to its opposite. Teachers may not know this, or don't care, depending on their individual horticultural interests, but this exercise is a classic and predictable method for instilling considerable anxiety within a seventh grader. More so for me since my traditional and unadventurous secondary school had the students seated according to alphabetical order, which placed me next to last, second only to Zorgkofsky, and by which time all of the good, read acceptable, answers had been exhausted. Incidentally, this always seemed to bother my younger self. Not only did I have to contend with my lack of extroversion, not to mention my lack of the then must-have Jordache jeans, but always being stuck in the back and always next to Zorgkofsky made it next to impossible to get to know the "cool" kids. And although apparently this seating arrangement did no harm to Facebook’s numero uno, throughout college, I always found myself in the front row.
Anyway, instilling great pressure and all. That day, Ms. Hogan, did indeed invoke the election. The particular time-killer posed by Ms. Green Thumb was the fairly unseemly and macabre "If you died, what animal would you like to come back as?" She had been complaining earlier that her cats, three, as I remember, hadn’t performed their jobs adequately the previous summer of preventing rabbits and other small rodents ("the little vermin") from desecrating her Garden of Eden. I imagined our tutelary instructor perhaps fantasizing, that some of her students, useless as students, would die, come back as housecats and keep vigil over her botanical sanctuary. I suspect now, if she was at all like my Grandmother, she very likely fed her clowder absurd quantities of soft cat food. Grams ritually employed her Rival, industrial-strength, Can-O-Matic electric can opener and knife sharpener to furnish her feline eminence the egregiously excessive provisions of an A&P brand, seemingly motor-oil-can-sized, gelatinous serving of savory nutriment, meaning horsemeat and bovine offal, thrice daily for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Three sixteen ounce bowlfuls for a twelve pound cat!? If I had shoveled into my maw and down my gullet daily thirty pounds of taurine deficient, beef flavored meaty morsels in jelly, I’d have been likewise immobile with my derelict lardass seated on the Chesterfield alongside Miffy’s!
On with the question. Having the foresight to being born into a family with a surname beginning with "A", Allison Anderson (boy, is that Anglo!!!) sat at the front desk in the first row of the class. Exceedingly predictably, Ms. Hogan began, "Let's start with you, Allison. (How many times had she said that before?!) “What kind of animal would you like to come back as?" Quickly and confidently, Allison, of course, supplied the best girl "if I were to come back as an animal" answer, a horse. Because they're pretty. Thank you Allison for that explanation, we all assumed it was because you've grown accustomed to the face of a horse by spending so much time in front of the mirror. Next, Jason (curse those Beckers) easily and smugly provided the perfect boy response, a tiger. Presumably because they're cool and they'll rip to shreds any other animal that comes near it, including a pretty horse. So on down the line it went: Bowden, Chester, Costello, Freidman, Gibbons, Hadley, Leonetti, etc. and their respectively desirable answers: lion, wolf, golden retriever, polar bear, kitty cat, shark, pony (ok, technically this answer had already been given by Milady, but the emcee for the event was staring into space, daydreaming of summer squash, tomatoes and string beans).
With the passing of each student, the list of available animals remaining, let alone cool animals remaining, was getting shorter. I thought to myself, between heart palpitations, what animal I genuinely would like to be reborn as, disregarding for the moment whether or not it was cool. I knew that most animals were a lot dumber than us, although Miffy seemed to have the Grams situation worked out pretty well, and I liked being human and thinking and reading and watching TV and walking upright and having hands instead of four much less useful feet. I thought Chimpanzee. They had hands and walked upright sometimes and were supposed to be smart and lived in groups and kind of looked like us, kind of.
David Torres struggled to come up with the stretching but ostensibly satisfactory, buffalo. Then me. Ms. Hogan asked, "Joe, how about you, what animal would you come back as?" Like she really cared, she was thinking zucchini. I answered, "A chimpanzee".
There was a moment of absolute stillness before the eruption of uncontrollable seventh grade laughter. I mean, banging on the table, mouth wide open cachinnation. Wow, it wasn't that funny, I thought. “Buffalo” must’ve primed everyone. Even our judicious instructor was chuckling - on taxpayer money no less. After milking this delay for another minute or so and at my expense, Ms. Hogan finally intervened, "Now, Joe, do you really want to be a chimpanzee?" As was expected, I replied contritely, "No, not really." After a moment, I then, surprisingly and fortuitously, pulled out of thin air and gratefully so at the time, "I want to be an eagle." The laughter slowly abated and this offering seemed to appease all, including teach.
Lastly and thankfully, this god awful task would end with Zorgkofsky's animal...
If you'd like to support the author, please purchase the PDF including the remaining 60 words. Thanks, Joe.
© 2020 A. Joseph. All rights reserved.