CONFESSIONS of a Background Student

We all want to be noticed in life, especially in high school. See how one “wannabe” handles it.

True or False: 4-yr Olds can take Care of Themselves

“Dean Whitacker, hurry!” The nurse was frantic. She was checking the eyes of the two little boys the horticultural students had brought in, then listened to their lungs with her stethoscope.

“We didn’t know what to do, or where to take them, Dean.” The two students were shaking; they kept looking at each other. “They were eating green—test apples.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad. How do you boys feel?” The Dean smiled at me and my friend Mikey. He turned to the students. “How did they get in the fields anyway?”

“Somebody saw them sneaking in through the greenhouse. We thought they were just playing around the raised flower beds.” The student was talking faster. “We were finishing up with loading the pesticide sprayers … lost track of them… probably from the married student housing barracks … far side of our test fields.”

As an agriculture and mechanical engineering school in the 1950’s, South Dakota State College catered to returning vets. The college specialized in husband and wife teams, where both parents were using the GI Bill. Families were encouraged as it helped defuse the craziness that came with the normal, 18-yr old’s antics and pranks.

The boys were crying. “Can’t you quiet them, nurse? You were in combat in Normandy; surely, you know how to handle two kid’s tummy-aches.”

“We never had any—,” the Nurse paused and slowly spelled out P O I S O N I N G S, “or curious 5-yr olds.”

The Agricultural side of the college managed several large horticultural test beds that were used for developing new pesticides for flowers, vegetables, and various varieties of fruit.

“They had four or five apples each, of several varieties, in their shirts. We found half-eaten pears, and plums, in the orchard too, Dean.”

The Dean’s secretary stuck her head around the door. “The ambulance is busy with a heart attack victim. They said to just watch the kids. If they start swelling up, or turning blue, get their parents to bring them to the hospital right away.”

The Dean shot back. “Call the pharmaceutical school. See if they can recommend anything to make them throw up—Ipecac? Something?”

It was quiet for a long while. The horticulture student asked if they, he nodded our way, would… He drew a line across his throat with his finger.

“No,” the Dean winked at us. “We’ll just watch them till their folks get here.” He swallowed hard and tried to smile.

Get the Parents

The nurse was writing something on a chart and thumbing through a huge medical book.

Mikey quit crying, rubbed his eyes with the side of his shirt, and pulled me over by him. “I heard them call your mom. We gotta run!”

He was right. Mom already knew the Dean, on a first name basis, from previous encounters. He seemed to go on and on, the last time, about how far and wide a child my age should roam. He really seemed to get into my adventures. I agreed; a college was a great place to explore.

Mom studied Home Economics and dad was 2nd in his mechanical engineering class. That kept them busy.

To help them study in peace—to get out of their hair—I chose to explore more and more. It was my service to their careers.

The more I explored, the more I realized my skills would come in handy one day, and that I should explore more, now, to be ready, then. I would probably have to rescue my folks from a major disaster. My skills of squeezing under, into, and through tight spaces would surely save them some day—if I didn’t get stuck first myself and need to be rescued.

Mom and dad didn’t believe it was a skill nor that I had ever used it to save someone. They felt I tended to streeeetch my stories. “Blank air needs filling;” that was my motto.

Some things I shared with them; others I felt required me to plead the fifth, immediately upon entering the front door.

For example, I once crawled 20 feet through a small heat duct, to get to a loose vent cover, that granted indirect access, to a little piece of heaven, in the basement of the campus ROTC building—the LINK Trainer Center. My buddies and I had watched Army Reserve cadets scramble into 5′ long, blue and yellow, bumble bee looking aircraft simulators that taught them how to fly in total darkness, using only instruments to navigate.

We weren’t allowed in the simulator area. We were told they were expensive and we couldn’t even touch them. They were delicate instrument—not toys.

From the huge window that separated the ROTC machine shop and the simulator room, we watched, and learned. We were enthralled. We added machine gun sounds, on our side of the glass, as cadets dipped and tilted their night-flying beauties. To us, the units weren’t quite full grown planes, but we guessed they were probably some new secret weapon the Army was going to drop, by the hundreds, to buzz bomb into bad guy’s hiding places. We had to try them.

We waited till late afternoon when the room was empty. I had done a test crawl the day before in the connecting duct and had cleaned out all the spider webs and vent dust.

Jimmy helped me unscrew the vertical grate on the machine shop side and I scrambled in. Nobody else wanted to follow me through enemy lines, so I pushed on alone. That’s what heroes do. Moments later, I eased the Link Trainer vent grate aside—I was in!

My fellow combatants rushed the door when they heard it unlock. There were more than enough trainers for all five of us, but Jimmy chickened out. His dad was the flight instructor doing the training in the room and Jimmy couldn’t afford to get caught. He’d done his part loosening the screws that held the grate cover the day before, so we gave him a pass.

We had watched and learned the cadet routine with our noses pressed against the machine shop window. Each student had been given a flashlight, an air map, and instructions on how to climb in and out. A moment later we watched 15 lids close, and the stubby bees came alive. Within minutes of watching, we had thoroughly learned how to get the crafts into the proper flight attitude.

We decided our mission would take us from New York to Delaware, because it sounded like underwear. Good enough; a pilot had to be flexible. You never knew where you might be dropped from the mother plane. It could be a short plunge, or a long glide, but we’d be ready.

The circuit breaker on the wall was the key to powering the mini-planes. Jimmy agreed to throw it, then leave. His finger prints were all over the room anyway, since his dad ran the place, and his dad regularly let him throw it on before class. If any spies checked out the area, there would be no problem with Jimmy’s finger prints. Everybody else was on their own.

We followed procedure and boarded our crafts. It was amazing. We were bursting with excitement. We knew how proud our parents would be, of all of us, because we had learned to fly, all on our own—in case some of the cadets got sick the day of the big drop.

We were novices no more. We were fliers. We all climbed in, closed our respective cockpit covers and started our mission. One of the kids started to cry because it was so dark. We all hollered at him to shut up, so we wouldn’t get caught, and told him to turn on his flashlight. It was quite noisy for a while as lids opened and closed to let us see what the others guys looked like flying their planes. As we got used to our controls, things settled down, and we got into serious cross-country flying.

Those yellow and blue cockpits had never seen such acrobatics. We cranked them violently from side to side, and up and down. We dodged commercial aircraft, went swirling around thunderstorms, and outwitted enemy flack—a pilot had to know his machine, how much it could take.

That’s when we heard talking. Wow! Were we gonna get caught? We all scrambled out of our flying machines and headed for the door. Too late. We heard Jimmy’s dad, and somebody else, coming down the hall. I locked the door and ran for cover. We all crammed in behind the instructors desk and held our breath—oh, the pressures of combat.

“Dang. Looks like I left the main circuit breaker on.” He rattled the door handle—locked. “I’ll go get my key and take care of it. See you in class tomorrow, John.”

We waited till the footsteps quieted then ran for the door, again. We weren’t fast enough. Jimmy’s dad was on his way back. Could the heating duct hold all of us?
As the lock turned, I pushed Tubby further in, pulled my legs up behind him, and pinched the grate in the corners to hold it on without my fingers showing. My tips ached and I dropped one side of the vent cover. It made a clang; everybody froze.

“Is somebody there?”

“No.” A small voice echoed in our tin escape tunnel.

The jig was up. We’d probably be sent to a reformatory for uncaring kids. Our parents would be drug out of our barracks home, clamped in irons and thrown out of college. Even our grandparents would be asked to leave the state. My Grampa regularly told my dad what a problem child I was; now I was proving him right.

Jimmy’s dad jerked around. “Who’s there?”

I prayed nobody would say anything stupid, again. Our futures were on the line.

“Oh. Hi, Jimmy. I didn’t see you come in. You ready to go home?”

Jimmy had saved us and unknowingly created our no-man-left-behind policy that day—still the creed of kids, everywhere.

I was reminded of our creed as Mikey watched the Dean’s office door from his private bathroom. I managed to wiggle out the window and then drug Mikey through, after me.

Jimmy’s motto was good in general, but we learned it was really intended to ensure nobody could be caught and be made to squeal on their life-long buddies. It was also why we rarely allowed any girls to run with us. If anything bad happened, they would cry, point our way, and turn us in for immediate prosecution—no matter what had really happened, nor were we given consideration for how we had pushed and pulled the story to get it to come out our way.

Once on the ground, Mikey figured the fastest way home was still through the greenhouse. No one would think we’d try it again, and we hoped that arriving home before mom and dad would give us enough time to concoct some story that would save us.

“I’m Mrs. Josephine Miller. Is my boy here? How is he? Will he be… okay?” Her voice cracked. She pushed past the Dean’s secretary.

The Dean opened to door to his private office to escort mom in, but it was empty. He turned to mom, “I’m sorry, he’s gone.”

The blood drained from my mother’s face.

The Dean gave a nervous laugh. “No, no. He’s okay! He and his friend just escaped through my bathroom window when they heard we’d contacted you.”

“And the poison?”

“Nothing to worry about. They rubbed the apples and fruit on their shirts before eating any. They hardly got any pesticide in them at all—at most the bare minimum—no harm done. Maybe a little tummy ache.”

My mother sunk into a chair in the deans office and apologized again. She said it was hard to keep track of me as she and dad were studying for mid-summer class finals.

“Jo, have you considered kindergarten?”

Mom’s head dropped. “He won’t be five until after school starts in September—the 10th. I’ve talked to the school.”

Dean Whitacker smiled, “Close enough to five, if he was in say, the uh—gifted child area. They want new students. They love a challenge; it’s all in the way you present it.”

Everyone in the Dean’s office smiled.

In September of that year, the Brookings, South Dakota public school system accepted their first gifted/troubled child applicant. History was about to be made.

Interested in more fun posts? Check out Terry Miller’s blogs: Over 65, but Under 100, at terrymillerohio.wordpress.com , or You Might as Well Laugh, at alaughforyou.wordpress.com.

Edited with BlogPad Pro

Keurig: THE Coffee Maker

 I think most of us will agree that our mornings don’t start until after our first cup of coffee. For me, any kind of coffee is acceptable—as long as it is not burnt—and even that can be made acceptable by dunking a low-cal donut or cookie in it. 

Two years ago, I decided I was probably missing out on some new convenience I didn’t even know about—nor had ever missed—so I upgraded from a $19 automatic drip coffee maker to THE Keurig machine. 

I can’t even pronounce it, so it must be good. And it has turned out to be a boon for the coffee bean industry, as it converts us from just plain java drinkers to coffee Connoisseurs. Is it my imagination or do connoisseur and Keurig both have the very fancy “EU” in the middle of them? I wonder if that is because EU is the abbreviation for the European Union—the old world—where fancy-schmancy comes from.

I have to admit; I like this machine. The coffee, tea, and various latte formulas are all premixed in little, individual, disposable, plastic containers (K-cups). That’s all there is to it. Just drop a K-Cup into the unit with ease (no one refers to it as a coffee maker—it’s a machine or a unit). A minute later, you have coffee.

No bother or mess. No need to measure out coffee, dispose of grounds or fool with messy filters; just sit back and let that wonderful smell fill the air, while you enjoy your first cup in the morning. Simplicity and sophistication in one unit. And my status as a person gets upgraded, as well—to Connoisseur. 

With all this in mind, I must tell you of a devastating incident that started my morning.  In case things go badly, I am including a copy of the conversation for posterity, or the police, whichever comes first. This is all true—mostly.

There was a single loud knock the door. It shook the doorframe. I looked out the kitchen window and saw a plain, black Keurig delivery van in the driveway. A small K-Cup logo was discreetly etched into the glass on vehicle’s windscreen.

   “Morning sir, Keurig Special Agent Jethro Givbson here and this is Agent Anton DeSoto. May we come in? Take us to the machine.” He flashed some sort of official looking badge; a K-Cup was emblazoned in the middle.

   “Are you here to let me try some new special coffee or froo froo latte mix?” They pushed past and went on into the kitchen.

   “No, sir! We are here to check out the unit. It seems you have not registered it and there is an issue about abusing the machine.”

   “This is crazy! You can’t abuse a coffee maker.” I moved in front of my Keurig. 

   “Coffee maker? Is that how you refer to our unit, sir? Anton please write a chit fining this man $15 for derogatory coffee industry remarks? Normally, we just have you pop a fiver into our bad words can, but we’ve come a long way and couldn’t bring it with us on the plane.”

   “Long way— Where are you from?”

The tall one, in a pressed, grey jump suit, moved in close and whispered. “The EU, sir. I thought you could tell from our accent.”

With one large muscular arm, he moved me aside. “I’ll have to ask you to keep clear of the unit, sir. It knows we’re here and wants a check up.”

   “Are you kidding?”

   “We never kid, sir.” Givbson attached a set of long leads in the back of the unit and set up a miniature oscilloscope and recording device on the counter. Anton took pictures and asked lots of questions.

   “You always keep the machine on this messy counter? It’s pretty near your daily post. It could overheat the unit. Glue fumes from your mail could enter the brew cycle. You don’t expect us to be responsible for that do you, sir?”

   “Hey! This is my coffee mak— err, unit. I bought and paid for it, and I can do anything I want with it, and put it wherever.”

 From the bedroom my wife heard the commotion and wanted to know what was going on. “Nothing dear. Just a couple of guys from Keurig telling me where to put it.”

   “Best she doesn’t come out here, sir. We treat it like a crime scene.”

I groaned. “Crime scene? There is no such thing for a coffee pot.”

   “Coffee pot, really, sir? Apparently, you didn’t read all the Menu screens on your unit. Under terms and conditions screen eleven down and three over—”

   “Over? There are no “over” screens on that unit.”

   “If you hold your finger on the brew light and menu button simultaneously, then quickly push the small and large cup-size buttons at the same time, just once—the menu goes black. Then you can scroll it sideways. As described in the operating package that would have been sent to you, had you bothered to register, sir.”

   “Gee, I didn’t realize—”

   “They never do, eh Anton.”

   “My tests are done. It says you operate this unit often without a K-Cup in it. You just run hot water through it to make tea. Is that right, sir?” A disgusted look came over a weathered face. 

   “Well, I like tea sometimes, so I just throw a teaspoon in my cup—”

   “We sell tea K-Cups, you know! Are you like a cheapskate or something? Are you perverted?” He unplugged my machine and put it under his arm. Coffee spilled on the counter from the drip tray. “More…more violations. This unit is going back to the factory for a full check up.”

I followed him to the van. “What am I supposed to do for coffee? How will I get my unit back?”

As the van started, Anton snapped my picture one last time, rolled down the window, handed me a plain, blank, white business card and said, “I’m sorry, sir.”

As they drove away, I turned it over. On the back was a big circle with a wide red line across it like a Ghost Busters logo. Inside was one single word, in beautiful gold and black raised lettering—Connoisseur. 

 

 

 

>

Edited with BlogPad Pro