[I was too exhausted to post anything, so I’m making it up this morning evening…]
…sent to me…let’s see…”pipers piping”…(sigh)
Today brought out my darker side of anger, depression, and fear for my health. Or perhaps it’s a side effect from our beginning a Damp January (as opposed to Dry January which would actually less difficult than “dampness”). Regardless, when your really cool cat gets on your nerves simply because he is, after all, a cat–then you know you’re seeing some kind of stress bubbling out of the nearest weak point like magma seeks a weakness in the earth’s crust. I think many of us who blog have at least a small mental-health reason for doing so. I tell you things as I would a psychotherapist. In doing so I see myself, I discover things about myself, and it’s cheaper than engaging the real thing. (What do they do anyway? “How did this make you feel?” Really? I would like to think they’re like a baseball hitting coach: they say little of note except “attaboy” and “you really caught that one!” until with just one deft comment they say, “hey, are you dropping your lead shoulder a little more on purpose?”)
But to continue our theme: we are now one day behind and the pipers piping remind me of my days at Shadle Park High School in Spokane, WA. Our mascot was the Highlander. Our marching band wore kilts plus those cool tight jackets up top over white shirts and ties, and the drum majors (maybe the whole band?) wore sporrans which are those horsehair things that hang in front of the kilt and seemed designed to keep the front from flying up in the breeze. Our drum majors wore those incredibly tall, fuzzy hats on their heads. And we had bagpipers…piping.
I co-edited the newspaper in my senior year. I also edited one section of the yearbook, and when I couldn’t get a good [expletive] photo from the photography staff, I bought a 35mm and became a photographer myself. I had a period for each, which meant half my day was spent in the journalism room. Seniors only had two required classes anyway, a couple of social studies type classes spread over the two semesters, and English. Like many college-bound seniors, I took Senior Humanities which combined the Current World Problems/World Geography classes with English to give us a more challenging venue (and to earn us advanced credit in college which now has become common but back then was innovative). We rolled with the times. 1971 segued into 1972. We looked forward to graduating as we protested the Vietnam War (or not), indulged in the licentiousness of the times (or not), frequented the rather new thing called McDonald’s (everyone), went to dances, protested the ridiculous rules which are always foisted on high school students because, frankly, adults are afraid of near-adults, and we looked forward with eager anticipation to exercising a newly-won right as citizens: we were going to vote for a president in the fall. Nixon won. Figure it out.
This is a photo of my journalism teacher at the beginning of my junior year, except I don’t have permission to use his photograph, so you’ll have to imagine a guy that looks a bit like Dickie Smothers complete with a curly-ended handlebar mustache and a page-boy haircut. The photo was taken for some kind of promo thing for the yearbook company. He left us at the end of that academic year to go teach cinema studies in Edina, MN. I stayed, dithered, took journalism, veered to creative writing, and wound up doing neither when I went to college at the end of 1972. Ah well.
all the voices in my head 