 |
| Screen Capture from an old Ajax commercial. |
In those days we didn't have lockers, but a long row of shelves in a main hallway. When it reached a point of unbearable disarray, and after frequent warnings, the White Tornado swept through that hallway with her arm out, knocking everything off every shelf.
Each time, we all grumbled, picked up our things and returned them neatly, but the damage was very real - books with broken bindings, mashed lunches and projects, etc.
We eventually did get lockers. Mine contained an interesting bundle of metal plates with numbers, tied with a twistie. I thought, That's cool, I'll take that home, and I did, and when Mr B asked if anyone saw the numbers intended for the lockers, I didn't make a peep, kept them at home in the top drawer of my dresser, where they stayed for years among Charlie's Angels trading cards, socks, hunting knives, .22 shells, and keepsakes.
(I was always fond of keeping mementos, ever since I was a little boy. My first recollection of this is a small porcelain huskie purchased at a Toronto museum of natural history, which I still have to this day. I keep many little things around from my past. I don't catalog them, except here, perhaps, so maybe someday they'll be scattered like the knick-knacks you see at garage sales.)
I don't know why I kept those locker plates. I suppose Mr B had been especially uncooperative around that time and I felt like making trouble, or I felt too guilty to return them.
Ajax "White Tornado" commercial 1970
c0
Some folks thought I looked like a girl in those days, and one said so in a poem, read allowed in front of the class, during which I cringed and slunk in my chair, but there was no escape. Our English teacher paused dramatically to allow the class to breathe a little and attain a more full-bodied laughter that would leave a piquant and indelible aftertaste.
[2014-11-27]
c0
No comments:
Post a Comment