That Time the Elephant Walked Down the OFA Hall

Clark (name changed to protect the guilty) and I would roam the halls of OFA on our free periods like rats in a maze. We’d dodge teachers coming down an adjacent hall as deftly as we did basketballs while playing dodgeball in gym class (W𝘦 𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘥𝘪𝘥 𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘣𝘢𝘴𝘬𝘦𝘵𝘣𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘴 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘢𝘥𝘥𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘴𝘦 𝘪𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘪𝘤 𝘳𝘶𝘣𝘣𝘦𝘳 𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘴), but when we’d get caught, we’d be questioned like spies in a war; admitting nothing, and ready to face the firing squad of being sent to see Mr. Lynch (an awesome name for a principal).

     We’d just mostly talk and fool around, seeing what mischief we could get into - getting into the auditorium and trying to operate the curtains or lights, or going to develop some photos in the school darkroom. One time, we were both blown away to see an elephant - yes, an actual elephant - come down the first-floor hall. If memory serves, it was for the Harry Blackstone Jr traveling magic show, and the guy was exercising the animal inside due to bad weather.

     We were quite a pair, well-known to teachers and other kids alike. If we were alone, we were often asked where the other one was, as if one half of a Siamese twin was missing.

     Teachers would often make a preemptive strike on us being together in class, splitting us apart immediately upon sitting together because of our incessant need to fool around and talk. If I was nitroglycerin, Clark was an earthquake. Mr Besaw, the library Reich’s Chancellor, would come over in his wheelchair and say, “Oh no, you two are DEFINITELY not sitting together!” and make one of us move. Clark would usually volunteer to go to another table to talk to someone he knew. He was a yapper and could talk to anyone. I’d start to do my homework or look at Boy’s Life magazine, feigning interest in rock climbing or HAM radio operation.

     Life could be tough in school, especially in the hallways, where your enemies had free reign to assault you - physically and/or emotionally if you were at your locker or just happened to be walking to class. God, it was like a prison’s rec yard some days, wondering if you would get shanked when you left your “cell” of a classroom.More than once, I was involved in a brawl in the hall or the gym locker room. I had my bullies, so did Clark, as did lots of poor kids. Seems like you were either a bully or the bullied, with some kids just able to stay on the outskirts of this fray. We guys, while we’d punch each other or attempt to throw each other off a height of some sort to kill the other guy, girls had it just as bad, but more in the mental game arena. Oh, we saw examples of it, hearing it from our girlfriends or seeing it in action. While boys swung fists, girls would swing emotionally damaging battle axes to slay their prey in an attempt to climb to the top of their circle; their words and exclusive friendships would wound just as badly - probably worse - than an unseen punch. Sometimes, slipping it into a conversation underhandedly, like a spy slipping another spy a dose of poison in their drink. Remarks like “Oh, you’re going to wear 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 to the dance?” or “You’re welcome to borrow any top of mine you can squeeze into” - crappy little comments like that, designed to give the intended target reasons to question everything she knew…or an eating disorder. Whatever viciousness we boys could come up with in the physical world, the girls could give just as well in the emotional world.

     Of course, the most significant topic was who was “dating” whom. We guys traded our stories like baseball cards, eager to share how we were with this one or that one. Of course, I had a very meager hand to play, having less material to work with than a vegan at a barbecue, while other guys had more dates than a calendar. It was the usual suspects, the jocks, the richer guys, the guys with the pretty faces. I, being on the shyer side, and having the appearance of a lumpy redneck, got about as much action as a husband that forgot his anniversary. Oh, but I could dream when this one or that one walked by. I suppose pretty much all of us were like that, looking at - but not looking at - an object of teenage lust as they walked by.

     Guys with a car - especially ones with bench seats in the front - and not bucket seats - were favored in the pecking order. You’d know a guy and his girl were serious when you’d see them driving down Ford St, him steering, and she being right next to him (practically in his lap) as they drove around aimlessly, waiting for the cover of night hide what you knew was going on. Talk about shifting gears.

     The years at OFA were memorable for everyone, I’d venture. For some kids, it was hell, with ceaseless teasing and exclusion, and the last day of being there was not so much a graduation as an emancipation. For others, it was their glory days, and once they left their warm social blanket of friends that revered them, that thought they were cool, “hot”, - just plain popular…well, a lot of them fell flat once they got out into the world.

     Life has a way of balancing things out like that.