Gramps

It was the first day of school, and already there was a problem.

I had no choice. I had to walk on the right side of the hallway, and Mrs. McCormick was on her left!

I was walking backward to tell a joke to the gang of boys I was with when my head hit something soft. All hell broke loose.

“Joey!” Mrs. McCormick exclaimed, shaking her dripping hands in disbelief. Her shocked expression was so apropos of her coffee spilling everywhere. It was one of those nasty white Styrofoam cups of minuscule capacity, a percolator brew, piping hot.

“Sorry! Oh, so sorry, Mrs. McCormick! I should be more careful!” I said as I bent down to pick up the cup.

Never mind that all my friends laughed until they were blue in the face! Mrs. McCormick had to wear a gym top for the rest of the day, which broke teachers' professional attire rules.

“Go to the office! Immediately!” she screamed.

Sherry, the school secretary, greeted me. “Whaddya-do this time, hotshot?” she asked, looking up from her nails, which were so pristine and perfect, a stack of unfinished typing piled neatly nearby.

“Oh, just have a seat," she sighed when I didn't answer. "He’ll be along any moment. Don’t close the door! I have to watch you until he comes!”

I could hear what Sherry said through the half-closed door. It was like a motor starting, then blustering to full speed, a flourishing cacophony of possibilities.

McFax and McPrissy hurried in. “What’s up?” McFax asked.

“You know what Joey did this time? chortled Sherry. "He ran into McC! Do you know how short he is? And how tall she is! Imagine what his head hit!”

"I'd give anything for that!" sparked McFax while he nosed around his mailbox.

"Roger! Get your mind out of the gutter!" hissed McPrissy, her pretty face stifling a smile.

Every teacher in our school was a McSomething, at least in the nicknames we gave them. I could care less about the teachers, but caring less didn't work when you had a warlock like Principal McFear to contend with.

Everyone studied his slightest movements. You could get your fortune told for free.

He walked in with that slow swagger, fixing me with his eyes, like an exterminator sizing up an insect infestation. Settling into his enormous leather chair, he waited for what seemed forever, his eyes peering over his black hornrims.

“I've just been to see Mrs. McCormick. She wants a written apology. Do it now, at my desk!" demanded McFear. He practically threw a pen and pad at me.

“You’re so lucky we don’t use the strap anymore!” he snapped when I finished. Then he flipped a detention slip at me. What a horrible way to start the school year!

#

After that, I wanted my whole life to be separate from school. Small wonder. In class, Mrs. McCormick was constantly yelling at everyone. She would come up to within inches of your face and blast away. We'd make jokes about who was losing their hearing the fastest!

I'd get home and breathe a sigh of relief! Mom would make apple pie, and there'd be repeats of Star Trek on TV, the unique smell of cinnamon saturating our home.

Then, on weekends, Gramps and Nan would come by to make fudge and be with their grandchildren: brown sugar fudge, no chocolate. I wonder why we called it fudge. Maybe the word was used for anything sugary and sticky?

I was stuck in my life, feeling like a fly about to be swatted, I would complain about everything going wrong in my life ever so politely.

"You'll get through it. No matter," they'd say.

Was I suffering from PTSD? No one used that acronym back then. The only problem I couldn't tell them about was my nightly nightmares. I remember one so well:

You know when you want to jump from that impossibly high ski jump. How high? As high as you want! You get to the top, and what? You don't have a girlfriend to impress. Sorry, you! You might have made it, but now you will never know, your useless ski boots distending your hands, friends cutting up.

I dreamed of variations of this every night. In my dreams, I never got what I wanted.

Then, wouldn't you know it, that winter, the unforgivable happened? My gramps died. It was such a shock. He smoked half a deck daily, which he did only in his last years.

“To a McCormick salesman,” his former employer wrote on a tiny gilt card attached to this enormous box of chocolates—all of this at his funeral. How sweet! It brought a rueful smile to my Nan, tears streaming down her leathery face. She never was one for dramatic shows of emotion.

She knew what the McCormick company did to him—undercutting his orders and commission, causing all the heartache he never let on to his retail customers. I learned so many things only later.

But what did I care? I was stiff in that suit, made of pure wool, itchy, and hot as blazes. I only wore it once.

All joking aside, that was the best part. McCormick at the funeral. Sheesh! What next? A hospital named after them? Wasn't having the mayor of our town as part of their clan enough?

But hey! We were only there for my heart, which was so broken by Gramps's passing that to be like Nan was...well, it was like allowing the ocean to play at being tears.

We filed by his coffin, staring down death, bravado getting the best of everything.

So regrettable. My elders would joke, saying, "Youth is wasted on the young." How true that would be later, never being able to escape the memory of how I behaved that day, romping around, trying to impress my pretty cousins:

Oh, the makeup! He doesn't look like Gramps! And that suit that smells like mothballs! Couldn't we prop him up to socialize?

When all I wanted to do was hug him, hug him desperately!

Stumbling past endless aunts and uncles, their hugs squeezing me half to death, there was the final act in the evening's chicanery: the half-eaten chocolate pot at the end of the flowers—all gussied up, those drooping flowers, ready for an end-of-evening hospital run.

#

But where was I? That bittersweet moment was followed by even more sour screams in class for months. Looking back, what did they expect when they abolished the strap? Peace suddenly on earth? Teachers either screamed louder or tolerated kids talking in class!

But you know what? Imagination beats everything else. You die thousands of deaths in your mind, only to wake up and realize that the real thing only happens once.

How could that be? Every look from Mrs. McCormick wasn't death-dealing enough?

Mrs. McCormick, I get where you come from—some exotic landscape full of acquiescent bees who hum and work constantly. Everything was about you. It was never about me.

#

The best comic actors have encountered more than their share of absurd situations. Is that why they are funny? Something must be unhinged in them, even a little, to make such fun of life's quirks.

When Mrs. McCormick's husband left her, she had five kids, one of whom was in my best friend’s class. Lucky for me, they wouldn’t let him be in Mrs. McCormick's class! What would that be like?

Oh, it's more of the same, he might have said.

This made me think life is fairer than we realize. I forget his name, but I will always remember his last words.

“Joey! I know what this is about!”

You see? He's already spouting! After school, in our forest that he had stupidly blundered into! He was brave, even after we blocked him from returning to the school parking lot.

“If I tell you secrets, will you leave me alone?” he said, staring at me, trembling from head to toe.

A couple of sticks dropped, followed by a few more. “Go on!” I said.

“She has no friends. She didn't marry the man she was supposed to marry. Her family won't have anything to do with her!"

I laughed. "Yeah, no kidding. Go on!"

"We're poor! Even though the whole family is rich! A teacher's pay is never enough!"

I turned to look at all my buddies to orchestrate that one. "Get out of town!" we all said.

“She's so tired every night, she doesn’t make proper meals! We eat out of cans.”

“Oh, boo hoo!” my buddies said, eyeing all their fallen sticks.

“Wait! This one is the best.”

They were all ears even as I tried to get everyone's attention again. He was so composed and unafraid by now. I felt moved. I had such a weird thought. Could we be friends someday?

“You think she hates kids BUT…”

He drew it out, the suspense almost breaking. I was about to say something, to call it all off, but he beat me to it.

“She's right behind you,” he quietly said.

Then, he ran screaming at us, scattering everyone in his wake.

And that was, as they used to say, that.

They say time heals all wounds.

My grandfather was a retired candy salesman. When people still counted for something, he could make an honest living with a wink and a smile. No contracts were needed, and he always made everything right.