Seven Ways From Schoolday

Looky here! I got me an award, by cracky!



Val is a VIB, people! A VIB! See for yourself. That stands for Very Insipid Inspiring Blogger. I'll take it and let Hick frame it and display it in his Little Barbershop of Horrors. He likes awards. Even if they're not his. He's the kind of guy who buys stacks of hardback books at an auction, not because he reads, but because he thinks the covers are pretty.

Thank you to blog buddy Sioux, who bestowed this award upon me. She is a very inspiring blogger herself, even if she doesn't devote every post to Seinfeld references, lacks that preposition-ending sentence flair, and is a little behind on her weekly allotment of ellipses.

So here's the deal. This major award, unlike the leg lamp from A Christmas Story, has strings attached. I can't just uncrate it from the wooden box marked FRAGILE (we all know that spells "frah-jee-lay"), dust off the straw, and put it in the front window for passersby to admire. Nope. Like taking care of a Mogwai, with it comes much responsibility. Not the same responsibilities, though. I can put it in bright light. I can get it wet. I can even feed it after midnight.

The Very Inspiring Blogger Award rules are:
• Display the award on your blog
• Link back to the person who nominated you
• State 7 things about yourself
• Nominate 15 bloggers, link to them, and notify them about their nominations.

You might think Val is a card-carrying rule-follower. You would be wrong. Val picks and chooses the rules as they suit her.

DISPLAY? You betcha! Val is all about showing off her awards. So here it is, in all its glory.

LINK? Sure thing. No skin off my nose. I'll even double this one: go visit Sioux.

STATE STUFF ABOUT MYSELF? This is right up my alley!

NOMINATE? Reeeeeee! That's the sound of the needled skipping across the vinyl grooves on my Best of Bread album, specifically, "It Don't Matter to Me." I can't nominate 15 people! I don't even KNOW 15 people! Besides, the ones I do know are much too hoity-toity to do the award circuit. They're too cool for school. But like Sioux, (there's a trifecta for you, buddy), I, myself, am not.

In fact, Val was not too cool in school. And because by now, you already know everything there is to know about Val, she not cut from the ladylike reveal-nothing cloth. Her 7 things will take you back to yesteryear, when she was just a li'l Val attending elementary school, when she didn't even know the meaning of the word valedictorian. Oh, who are we foolin'? Of course she knew the meaning of the word valedictorian! She was merely young, not fresh out of the wilderness, raised by wolves without dictionaries!

* Li'l Val had herself a mean streak half a mile wide. Not so much a mean streak as a mad as not-heaven and not gonna take it anymore streak. When a neighbor boy from two houses down kept riding by on his bike and hollering insults at Li'l Val and her friends, playing peacefully at the end of her grandpa's driveway, at the end of a long day at school, Li'l Val picked up a handful of pea gravel and threw it at him as he rode by. That gravel must have nicked an artery in Jean Dale's forehead, because he started spouting blood like a stuck pig, and rode home wailing about Li'l Val being a bully. Hmpf! It's not like she chucked a slab of granite at him. It was PEA GRAVEL, the kind that hurts your feet when you try to walk across the end of the paved driveway and out on the road. Crybaby. He should have had his bike taken away, not Li'l Val. We all know how much a facial wound bleeds...don't we?

* Li'l Val was a prankster. Shortly after her 3rd Grade class moved into the new elementary building, she decided the girls' bathroom was a good pranking place. The door opened in, and there was a concrete block wall to navigate before getting into the restroom proper, with its half-circle shower-spraying sink operated by a hose-looking semi-circular foot pedal. Li'l Val was not one to lock the door of the toilet stalls and crawl out under the door, necessitating would-be users to crawl under to get to the toilet. Not her style. She was into the big surprise. So she waited, behind the main door, in that alcove behind where it would open, and then jumped out and yelled "BOO!" as the door swung closed. Her 3rd Grade teacher did not find that funny when she came in to hurry the girls along. Who knew Mrs. Elvins would be so jumpy? And lacking of a sense of humor?

* Li'l Val loved the ham salad half-sandwich triangles served on chili or soup day. That's right. Not only did we have both cooked on the very same day, with a choice, but we also had half a ham salad and half a peanut butter with Karo syrup sandwich on our tray. Li'l Val always took the chili, because vegetable soup reminded her of a big pot of simmering garbage, and she always traded her peanut butter with Karo syrup for a ham salad. Kids back then just didn't know what was good.

* Li'l Val was a latchkey kid. Except she didn't have a key. Her dad worked for Southwestern Bell, strapping on metal spikes with leather straps over his jeans, and climbing telephone poles to work on wires. Her mom drove two hours to college with a gaggle of other mothers, taking classes to become a teacher. She was not home every day when Li'l Val and her sister got off the school bus. So Li'l Val had to let herself in. Which was not really a problem, since nobody locked their doors. Besides, Li'l Val lived in a house trailer on a lot next to her grandpa and grandma, one of which was always home, what with working mine shifts and post office shifts. So Li'l Val had only to slide back the metal square at the handle of her trailer's screen door, reach her arm up inside, and unhook the hook that held it closed. Then she could open the regular door and let herself and her li'l sis, the future ex-mayor's wife, inside. This worked out well until the day Li'l Val was working on one of her self-proclaimed sculpting projects, using a flat razor blade to cut the legs off a miniature plastic horse, and jammed that razor-sharp razor into her left index finger. We all know how finger wounds bleed, don't we? Li'l Val ran up the hill to tell her grandma, who took her to the bathroom sink and let the blood flow under the cold water faucet, saying that would cleanse the wound. These days several stitches would have been used to close that wound, but back then Li'l Val just had to lay off the sculpting for a week or two.

* Li'l Val was an outside-the-box thinker. She particularly loved that powdered pink soap in the girls' bathroom in the new building, and regretted that she could not have some around to play with whenever the mood struck her. She had nothing like that at home, just regular Ivory bar soap, which was interesting enough, floating in the tub, or that Sinclair gas station green dinosaur soap that she kept in its box and never got wet, or that can of GOOP that her dad used to clean his greasy hands after working on his truck. The powdered pink soap was pretty, it was good-smelling, and it turned from powder to a squeezy solid if you put just the right amount of water in it. Forget about washing your hands. The pink soap was too good for that. So Li'l Val concocted a plan to bring some back to class with her. Each trip to the bathroom, Li'l Val took just the right amount of water, and just the right amount of soap, and rolled it into a sphere the size of a jawbreaker. Then she concealed it in her hand until back in the classroom, where she set it gently inside her brown metal desk with the wooden flip top, in the pencil tray beside the others. Li'l Val had nigh onto seven soap balls when she got caught. Who knew the 4th Grade teacher, Mrs. Burns, did desk inspections while kids were at recess? Certainly not Li'l Val. Though she did hope, to herself while suppressing a smile, that Mrs. Burns had thought initially, "Oh! Gumballs! I'll just try one..."

* Li'l Val was a champion of the underdog. Li'l Val sat behind poor Patty in second grade, in the very old school building with its creaky dark wooden floors, hissing gray radiators, and wet-mitten-yellow-raincoat-smelling cloakrooms. Some days, poor Patty had a nervous stomach and upchucked all over the hardwood, which meant that Li'l Val had to hold her nose and breathe through her mouth so she didn't also upchuck while waiting for the janitor to show up with that magic sawdust to sprinkle on poor Patty's refunded breakfast. But that was nothing compared to the day poor Patty was too timid to make a scene when Mrs. Thompson did not see that her hand was raised with one finger up in a request to go pee. Poor Patty held it as long as she could, which was not long enough to make it to bathroom break. Li'l Val's first clue was the sound of water dripping, then the splash of droplets on her bare legs swinging from her wooden chair attached to her brown metal desk. The final clue was the gasp of the kids seated around her and poor Patty, as their eyes grew as wide as the puddle spreading around poor Patty's desk. Still. Li'l Val walked home with poor Patty every day (it was on the way, really) and even asked permission to stop and play one day. It made no nevermind to Li'l Val that the other kids were wont to exclaim, "I wouldn't touch Patty with a ten-foot pole!" Poor Patty was a nice enough gal. She didn't upchuck or pee herself outside of class. "My mom says just ignore them, Patty, and they'll get tired and shut up."

* Li'l Val has never been a fan of milk. The times Li'l Val got in trouble at school were few and far between. Even the Great Bathroom Boo Debacle only resulted in an admonition from Mrs. Elvins: "You know you are supposed to use the bathroom, wash your hands, and come out to the hall to line up, don't you?" Which cut Li'l Val's heart to the quick. But years before, Li'l Val almost found herself in hot water over Milk Break and Nap Time. Li'l Val was not one for laying down in a group of annoying kids and falling asleep. Even though she had a wonderful purple piece of carpet remnant for that purpose. So she merely laid down and closed her eyes with no intention of sleeping. And got away with it. It was the milk that tripped her up. Kindergarten kids were given two cookies of whatever kind happened to be stowed away in the bottom cabinet. Usually they were not at all tasty, something like vanilla sandwich cookies, or vanilla wafers. Each student was also given a half-pint of milk, Foremost brand, in the orange and white squatty square carton. The teacher walked around the room through the tiny tables, opening the carton for each kid. Then they could put their paper straw in the spout to drink. Li'l Val tried to drink the milk. She liked the idea of the straw in the spout. But that milk tasted like white nothing. Cold. Not quenching. Bland. Blech! So Li'l Val did not drink her milk. The teacher, Mrs. Newcomer (old Mrs. Cucumber), noticed. She gave Li'l Val the stinkeye, and told her to drink the milk. Li'l Val was nearly shaking in her patent-leather buckle-strap shoes with her lacy fold-down socks. What to do, what to do? So Li'l Val, from that day forward, put her straw in her milk carton and sucked that milk up to her lips, but not into her mouth. So old Mrs. Cucumber could see that Li'l Val was "drinking" her milk. At clean-up time, Li'l Val had only to carry her "empty" carton to the trash can. Nobody the wiser. Li'l Val...already learning the con.

Whew! I'm exhausted from those 7 reveals. As I'm sure you are, as well. Blame Sioux. She perpetuated this monster.