Monday, May 28, 2007

Dreams

I wrote this one a few days ago.

Mrs. Perlman came to Palm Valley School in 1985 with all the idealism and none of the juevos needed to teach seventh grade. She told us it was her first day teaching and asked us to help fulfil her dream of a teaching career. Danny Vail responded the next day with a fart through the PE teacher’s powered megaphone that he blamed on her. ‘In Spanish’ was her only reply. By D-Day Plus Four we all openly cursed (in Spanish) like a constipated drunk at the Alamo. Señora Perlman earned all the attention of a stripclub at the Braille Institute. Danny spent his lunch money on stinkbombs and little plastic eggs full of slime for 25 cents from a vending machine at Safeway. One day he was sitting to my right (by choice, not fiat) and was cracking his third plastic egg when Curry Love the Assistant Headmaster walked in. He saw the egg and started hauling Danny out of the room. The kid in front of him, Josh Homme, said wait, it just fell out of my pocket and he was handing it to me. Love left without a word. Within a minute the fourth slimeblob was sliding down the chalkboard erasing preterit conjugations of the weak irregular verb soñar. Danny’s grandparents were rich even by Palm Springs standards and he could never be expelled. Mrs. Perlman was quietly replaced. Over the next fifteen years Danny swallowed more weird shit than a gutter on Bourbon Street. Josh Homme is now the lead singer of the deservedly successful band Queens of the Stone Age.

I don't remember the actual verb that was erased by Danny's slime, though I will never forget the image of them sliding down the chalkboard. That was just chosen for poetic license; past tense of dream. Otherwise, this story is entirely true.

1 comment:

SpikedPunchVictim said...

I have never heard this story before, and I know all the characters involved. I'm glad you got your blog up and running. Now, if you could just add a Bremen/Euro photo with each entry...

~William