She So Funny

Did you have a classmate who seemed out of place in elementary school?  Someone who should have been on a construction site or lifting crates at a dock, and not your Catholic school 8^th   grade “reading buddy”?  My “reading buddy” megalith Edwina Preston*, wore a fringe of false hair tied around her near bald head.  Picture, if you will, a female Forest Whitaker as a brooding rogue monk.  

I’ll admit that when I sat BESIDE my “reading buddy” I felt quietly smug about my excellent comprehension scores.  Dear Reader, know I was very quietly smug because the rest of the day, every day, I sat IN FRONT of Edwina Preston, who saw before her a ready target; its bull’s eye, literally at her fingertips.   

We sat at wooden desks, their inkwells empty with the advent of the cartridge pen,

  

soon to be eclipsed by the ball point. 

I won’t say it was racism (could it have been alphabetical?) all the black students (three girls and three boys) in grade 8A were in the back two rows.  Last in my row Edwina Preston was just a dark blur in the peripheral vision of Sister John Capistrano**.  With an assist by her remote location, Edwina’s genius was the petty nature of her constant attacks.  A spit ball to the neck, a tug on my (Peter Pan collar) uniform blouse, or a quick kick to my shin once a week, could be an "accident" or overlooked.  But getting away with all three and more daily was just brilliant stealth harassment.  Of course Capistrano would only notice if I turned around to deliver my nemesis a retaliatory sneer or righteous scorn; my infrequent and laughingly ineffectual response to Edwina’s strikes against me.

So as the wussy I was, I took Preston’s petty blows day after day, until this particular day Edwina discovered I offered an additional well hidden point of attack, my ass.  The open area between my seat and my seat back left just enough of my rear end exposed to present the perfect (hidden) target for the pointy end of Preston’s protractor.

                         

  After protracted protractor jabs, I raised my hand and asked Capistrano if I could speak with her.  

In the hallway outside our classroom I explained the difficulty I was having and asked if I could change my seat.  Sister Capistrano’s response was, “What do you think this is a restaurant?”  As I walked back to my seat I don’t know who annoyed me more, Capistrano, Preston or myself for my impotence.  I sat down and immediately felt the point of Preston’s protractor. With no recourse, I was left annoyed, frustrated and pricked.  

No help would be forthcoming from Sister Capistrano, whose default response to any and all situations was to torture everyone.  Like the time, red faced and teary eyed, she castigated, fulminated and then sentenced the entire class to an hour with our hands clasped behind our heads.  During lesson she uttered the heretofore unheard term “Slavs”.  To the oblivious ear, it sounded like slobs.  The whole class, in a spontaneous collective and innocent display of ignorance, burst into laughter.  To Sister Capistrano our pre-teen hilarity resounded like a venomous and personal ethnic slur.  Who knew?

Edwina Preston my persistent in-class antagonist just happened to live directly across the street from me.  Somehow Edwina and I never crossed paths on Putnam Avenue, but clearly no good would come from goading that Forest Whitaker doppelgänger into switching her campaign of annoyance to the block.  I’m talking Vaseline on the face and razor blades hidden in the hair, down and dirty fighting.  Did I mention my advanced state of wussiness?  I did not even watch street fights.  At the first hint of neighborhood fisticuffs, I ran home and hid under an area rug.

Honestly, this month’s topic, hecklers, is enough to send me into a full-blown panic attack.  Truthfully, I haven’t really been heckled yet.  Well, let me rephrase.  A stranger has not heckled me. 

I’ve been heckled by acquaintances.   A friend of a friend. He died.  Not as a result of heckling me, but he died.  He was one of those fellas who thought that he was doing me a “favor” by “participating” during my little “skit” when I first ventured into the world of comedy.  You know.  One of those people who said the “c” word and then got offended when I didn't smile.  ”What?  You’re a comic.  You are offended by ‘c’?”

No, actually, I like to use the ‘c’ word, but I reserve it for special occasions like when my dog won’t poop and it’s raining and I’m late for work.  Get busy you lazy ‘c’.  And then he poops and then I feel bad for calling him lazy.  And a ‘c.’

Really.  I like the word.  Especially when aforementioned friend of a friend used it to describe the waitress who was too slow with the drinks because she was the only waitress on staff that Friday when the other waitress who was supposed to be training her quit!  Great word to shout during my set.  To me.  As if we’re friends.  Not just friends of friends.

Funny.  One of my friends is going to read this whole ‘c’ rant and think, “She’s full of crap.  She says ‘c’ all the time.”   Truthfully, she’s foreign and I only use it in front of her to make her think that I’m just another crass, rude American.  It’s quite funny.  Shock value betwixt friends.  She’s a ‘c.’

Allow me to return to my opening statement.  I am dreading the day that I’m heckled.  Here’s why.  It’s only taken me 28 years of therapy to blog freely about it.  I was bullied relentlessly in junior high.  The kind of stuff that they make movies about kind of bullied.  For three years.  And it’s had a major impact on my entire life.  So much so that had I not been bullied, it probably wouldn’t have taken me until I was 40 year old to begin doing stand-up comedy.  We’re talking a good 28 years to muster up the courage to just try.  

For a brief moment, every time I get on stage it’s like walking into Room 119 at Christopher Columbus Junior High*.  Will someone mock me while I’m trying to get through my little skit?  I have these visions of David B. yelling from the audience,  “Hey, You no-bra ‘C’!” in front of everyone even though all I did was like him that one summer when he first moved into my neighborhood.  Before junior high.  When he had no friends and he and I rode skateboards together in the park and talked about Mork and Mindy and latka from Taxi.

He’s dead now, too.  Not because he tortured me.  I’m pretty sure.

But I’m on stage and I’m praying that people enjoy my little skit, genuinely laugh at the jokes, and don’t humiliate my inner 12-year old child. 

Maybe I’m acting like an insecure ‘c’, but hey.  It’s all I’ve got on our topic of the month.

*I'm teaching summer school in that very room this summer.  Talk about facing some demons.