CHAPTER FIFTEEN

in which I continue to confound my enemies and amaze my friends

 

So here I was, a hardened criminal at the age of fifteen, and my Driver’s Ed teacher, Mr. Koldoff, found himself in control of my life, since as a member of our church he knew that my Daddy had been telling me for two years now that, in order to be the kind of son I needed to be, it would be necessary for me to take Driver’s Ed in school so that he could get good rates on my car insurance.  So Mr. Koldoff knew that if he could only just manage somehow to make me get less than a B in Driver’s Ed, then all my Daddy’s best efforts as a father for the past fifteen years would have come to naught, and that would be a definite feather in Mr. Koldoff’s cap, since he was the second creepiest teacher in the whole school.

The first day of Driver’s Ed, we learned that there were certain things that were not allowed.  We were not allowed to wear hoods or hats while driving.  We were not allowed to chew gum while we were driving.  And we were not allowed to have sideburns or any other facial hair below our earlobes.

Now I could understand the part about not wearing hoods, because what if you turned your head and found yourself looking at the inside of your hood, and some little old lady stepped in front of the car and you mashed her all over the pavement?  That would never do.  And the anti-chewing gum thing was self-explanatory, being the number one rule of all time ever since the first day of kindergarten.  But sideburns below the earlobe?  What did that have to do with anything?  What were they gonna do, get in your eyes?

So I assumed that Mr. Koldoff had been joking, and I declined to deface myself for his sake, because the peachfuzz that sprouted from my cheeks and chin were part of my trademark as an artist, a rebel, a thinking person, and as a cohort of Moonshadow, who had the most awesome goatee you ever saw on a fourteen-year-old.  Besides, this was 1971, and the debates that were raging across the countryside had gone beyond sideburns some time ago.

While Mr. Koldoff was at the front of the class explaining what we could do if we wanted to fail his class, his assistant Uncle Gene—of Rary Bird joke fame—stood behind him rolling his eyes, looking at his watch, and yawning.  It turned out that Uncle Gene and Mr. Koldoff didn’t actually have much close contact, since they would be taking turns at the two distinct and separate parts of their job, one of which was to take us out in the automobile and to be ready to stomp on their own special brake pedal that they had over on the passenger side of the car, and the other was to stay in the classroom and stand guard over those of us who didn’t fit in the car as we pretended to read our textbooks.  I was fortunate that my first two driving sessions came around on Uncle Gene’s shift, because he was a gentle and down-to-earth man, a bona-fide bachelor, and he would serenade the girls while they tried to drive, with such top 40 favorites as, “I want to sleep with you in the desert tonight,” and so on.  This was way back during the sexual revolution, before political correctness, and it was still permissible, up to a certain point, for a man to joke around a little at work without getting fired and put on the front page of the newspaper.

But it was inevitable that my first driving session with Mr. Koldoff would eventually come around, and I couldn’t ward it off forever, so when that day came, I got in the Driver’s seat and proceeded to demonstrate that I could operate a motor vehicle even under the severe handicap of sideburns growing halfway down my neck.  As I eased off down the long driveway that circled the school, Mr. Koldoff mumbled something about oil companies that I didn’t quite catch, since I was concentrating on not running into the side of the building, but after I showed him how I could do a three point turn and start back up in the opposite direction, I found that there was something wrong with the car.  It was barely moving, and I started to panic, thinking I’d broken it, and I kept pushing harder and harder on the gas pedal, but nothing happened.  Finally, I looked at my teacher in desperation, only to discover that he was practically standing on his special Driver’s Ed teacher brake pedal that he had over there on the passenger’s side in case of emergencies, and his lips were drawn back over clenched teeth, and his iron-gray hair was standing straight up off his bald spot.

I quickly removed my foot from the gas pedal, afraid that my teacher was having a charlie horse or had to get out to take a dump real bad or something, and the car lurched to a stop.  Mr. Koldoff removed his foot from the special brake pedal he had over there on his side, smoothed his hair back down over his bald spot, and turned to me, and speaking from the wisdom of his greater experience, he said, “I guess your Daddy must own an oil company.”

Well I never was the sort of person to get most jokes on the first telling, so I made him repeat himself, but after he did, I still couldn’t figure out what he was talking about, since I knew that Mr. Koldoff knew my Daddy from church, so he must have known that my Daddy worked for the government, and not for any oil company.

His quivering voice barely contained his indignancy as he explained to me, one word at a time, so I could keep up with his logic, that the way I was pushing down on that gas pedal, I had better hope my Daddy owns an oil company, because that’s what it’s gonna take to keep our family car in gasoline if I am going to be allowed to push down on the accelerator pedal in such a fashion.

Well shitfire and damnation, I was thinking to myself, as I tried desperately for the next few minutes to keep from going over two miles per hour, it’s only the third time I’ve ever driven a car, was I supposed to be born with this ability or what?  I was just getting it all sifted and sorted through my cerebellum when it became someone else’s turn to drive, so I traded places with red-headed Mary and was happy to not only be sitting in the back seat next to someone other than Mr. Koldoff, but also to be sitting on the warm spot that Mary had left for me on the back seat where her round little buns had been sitting only a moment before, and not only that, but now I could stare at the back of her red head while she tried to drive and make goo-goo eyes at her in the rear-view mirror.

It’s amazing what a little facial hair can do for a guy’s self-image.

When it was time to pile out of the car and return to the schoolhouse, Mr. Koldoff hauled me off to the side and informed me that, if I didn’t go home and shave off any and all hairs that were below my earlobes, I would never drive in his class again.

That night I told my Mama and my Daddy what he had said, and they thought there must be some kind of mistake or something, since the whole wide world had accepted sideburns some 350 years ago, and they knew better than to think I would ever shave off my peachfuzz for love or money, and they didn’t really see why I should have to, and they also didn’t understand who Lewis Koldoff might think he was, trying to usurp their parental authority which they generally knew better than to pull out on me anyway.  They said they would talk to somebody about this facial hair incident and get it all cleared up.

So I was all set to go out driving the next time my turn came around, hair and all, and when me and Mary and the others got out to the car and I was elected to drive first, I sat down behind the wheel and Mr. Koldoff followed us out and strutted right up to my Driver’s side door and told me to get out.

Did you shave? he wanted to know.

Well I thought that was a stupid question, because it should be obvious to anyone in possession of eyeballs that I hadn’t shaved since I was six years old when my Daddy let me play with his broken electric razor, so I just grunted and shrugged my shoulders.  Mr. Koldoff informed me that until I could take it upon myself to acquire the maturity to correct my attitude and my appearance, I would not be driving any automobile in his Driver’s Ed class.  He told red-haired Mary to get out of the back seat and take her place behind the wheel, and I stuck my nose up into the air, and floated back to class on a cloud of martyred regality.

For the next two weeks I sat in the classroom getting hairier by the minute, nailed to my seat like it was a cross, wearing my peachfuzz like a crown of thorns.  Uncle Gene kept giving me these sympathetic looks, and my Mama and my Daddy couldn’t believe that I was still not being allowed to drive.  Then one day after Mr. Koldoff had taken his victims out to the car and I was getting ready to pretend to re-read the Driver’s Ed textbook, which I’d already pretended to read once by now, Uncle Gene asked me to join him in the empty classroom across the hall, where he had taught my freshman science class and told us the Rary Bird joke, oh those many long months ago when I was a smooth-faced freshman.  He put his arm around my shoulders as we walked across the hall, and offered me a seat.  And this is what he said, in his deep, fatherly, gentle Kansas twang:

Now, Maxwell, don’t tell anyone that I said this, and what I’m about to say is strictly between you and me, but—strictly in confidence, you understand—Lewis Koldoff is, as you may have noticed by now, a harsh and unreasonable man.  But he is my boss, so I can only speak like this with the understanding that what I say here will not be repeated outside of these four walls.

He looked around, and leaned toward me, and spoke in a near whisper:

Mr. Lewis Koldoff is such a pathetically unhappy and dissatisfied, broken-down mere shell of a human being, that, as unlikable and altogether wrong as he is, I can only pity him and wish that he could tell the difference between his petty little job and what he thinks his job is, because he obviously has gotten the idea somewhere along the way that it’s his responsibility to remake this big, wide, scary, wonderful world in his own wretched, shrunken little image.

He paused a second while I picked my jaw up off the floor, and continued:

Now, Maxwell, with that said, and I have no reason to expect any kind of substantial disagreement from you on those points, which are only my humble opinions, it is a sad but undeniable fact that you need a Driver’s license . . . how bad?  As bad as you need cake and ice cream on your birthday?  More than that?  Maybe as bad as you need summer vacation to roll around pretty soon?  More than that?  As bad as you need to get laid before you turn 18?  OK, not that bad, but I think you know what I’m trying to say.  How would it feel to know that when Saturday rolls around and the time comes to drive up to your date’s house in your Daddy’s car, it will not be your Daddy sitting behind that steering wheel, but you.  Like a real man, not like a little kid hiding behind your Mama’s skirts.

Now here’s what I suggest, Maxwell, and you just think about it, and don’t do what I want you to do, but think about it good and hard and weigh your options and do what you decide you most want to do, and do it for yourself, not for me, not for Mr. Koldoff, and not for your Mama or your Daddy.  Why don’t you let that poor, deluded individual who has gotten himself mistaken for the boss of your life just go ahead and fool himself into thinking that he is sitting on a throne of wisdom, and you can go right on knowing that he’s really just a poor emotionally constipated would-be who’s pissed off at himself for ending up teaching Driver’s Ed at the age of fifty-five when he should be sitting in a penthouse office downtown cracking his whip at a whole herd of secretaries, and laugh behind your hand at the poor miserable creature while you go home tonight and ask yourself what you, Maxwell Zdaemon, need more in life:  a Driver’s license, or hair on your face?

Uncle Gene smiled at me, stood up, put his arm around me and we went back to class.

When I got home from school, I said hello to my Mama and went straight into the bathroom, where I soaped up my face and shaved off every single whisker I could find, until I got up to my earlobes, which is where I had to draw the line.  While I was in there running the water, my Mama was saying through the door that she had something to tell me, so when I got done, I hollered, What was it you were gonna tell me, and she hollered back from the other end of the house, Your Daddy and I went to Reverend Racey at church and he never thought much of Lewis Koldoff anyway, so he went straight to the Principal at your high school and told him what was going on, and Reverend Racey says the Principal got so mad he called Lewis Koldoff on the phone right then and there and chewed Lewis Koldoff out right there on the phone in front of Reverend Racey, and told him it was not his job nor any of his business to tell anybody what to do with their hair.

I walked into the room where my Mama was, and she looked up from her needlepoint and saw my shiny red face and gasped, and then smiled, and said, Aw shucks, you look real nice, Maxwell!

I can’t say that my Mama and my Daddy never stuck up for me.

As I mentioned earlier, there was one other teacher in my life that year who was at least as stuck up his own asshole as Mr. Koldoff, and that was Mr. Guruntnik, my geometry teacher.

Before he could get started teaching us geometry, Mr. Guruntnik had to tell us what the rules were in his classroom.  There was to be no talking in class, and there was to be no passing notes, and there was to be no chewing gum, and most of all, what ticked him off worse than any other one thing, his very biggest pet peeve, was the abominable practice of getting to class even so much as two seconds late.

Well, I had never been late to any class in my life, but his little speech had given me an idea.  Geometry class came right after PE class, and some of the guys from my PE class had lolly-gagged in the locker room two seconds longer than they should have, and as a result they had wandered into Mr. Guruntnik’s class two seconds late on the first day of school.  They were informed that such behavior would not be tolerated, and any future occurrences of this nature would be punished by their having to come in after school and sit at their desks for an extra fifteen minutes.  I don’t know where Mr. Guruntnik and other teachers like him ever got the idea that sitting in their classroom was “punishment,” but—well, on second thought, that’s the one thing they were right about.

The fun began when Mr. Guruntnik figured out who was friends with who, and made them sit on opposite sides of the classroom from each other, and when he took me and a couple of other guys who were slouching in our seats at the back of the class and made us sit up front where, if we wanted to perform, we could darn well perform for the whole class.  That suited me just fine, because I already had a plan hatching in my mind, and I couldn’t wait for tomorrow to come so I could set my plan into action.

When that day came, I hurried up and dried myself off after my shower in the locker room, and threw on my clothes and ran upstairs to my locker and got my geometry book and my notebook and my pencil and eraser and zoomed down the hall to the math department, and just before I got to Mr. Guruntnik’s geometry room, I stopped, and leaned up against the wall in the hallway, and waited patiently for the last bell to ring, because there was always a warning bell, which meant, Sit down and shut up, that rang two minutes before the final bell, which meant, You have already sat down and are sitting quietly at your desks with your hands folded.

But that day, when the final bell quit ringing, I was leaning against the wall out in the hallway and counting, one-thousand-one, one-thousand-two, the longest two seconds of my life, and then I proceeded to stroll up the middle aisle of Mr. Guruntnik’s geometry classroom to my seat at the very front row, where I sat down and awaited my sentencing.

This practice of purposely trying to get Mr. Guruntnik to spaz out in front of the whole class every single day became quite popular with some of the other guys like me, who felt that sitting in that chinless, unsmiling dweeb’s presence every day for 50 minutes was two seconds too long anyway.  Since I never came in to serve my time after school, I eventually had to go to the assistant principal, Mr. Blueyes, to be told that if I didn’t stop playing my silly game, I would be suspended from school.  When I objected that the twelve times I’d been two seconds late to class only added up to less than half a minute, and compared that to the endless minutes that Mr. Guruntnik had wasted in class reviling my indolence, Mr. Blueyes said, you can be right all you want, and all it’s gonna get you is kicked out of school.

So that was the end of that fun little game, but I was not going to give Mr. Guruntnik the satisfaction of thinking that he had defeated me altogether or completely stripped me of my will to live, so every day for the next few months I’d wait till everybody in geometry class was quietly pretending to study, and then I would turn around and look at my quiet and polite friend Dick Marr who sat two rows behind me, and I would call out, “Happy Birthday, Dick!”  and he would look up and grin and say back, “Happy Birthday, Maxwell!” and before Mr. Guruntnik could get up on his high horse, we’d both have our noses back in our geometry books.

That was me and Mr. Guruntnik’s happy little compromise.  I got to class on time every day, and me and Dick got to say happy birthday to each other every day, without anybody being punished for what they felt they must do.

Having gotten these stale insults off my chest, it is now my duty as a citizen to inform my reading audience that I secretly felt sorry for the poor dolts that I used to persecute from where I hung on my cross at the back of their classrooms, and if I could remember their real names I would write to them right now and tell them how different I feel today about smart-ass little pricks like I was at the age of fifteen, but since I can’t remember their real names, and they have probably died of ulcers by now or at least given up teaching and gotten into accounting or gotten themselves a 4:00 a.m. paper route or a job as an all-night security guard in a baloney warehouse, I don’t suppose it would be worth the effort to try and track them down.  But I include this passage in case they, or any other child-hating teachers like them, might read it and come to an understanding of their true situation, which is simply that they should get off their hemorrhoids right now and go find themselves some other job as far away from teenagers as they can get, and never look back, because nobody can be all things to all people, and it is a rare individual who can look at a bunch of teenagers and understand them, and be understood back.