"When the Going Gets Weird, the Weird Turn Pro," Hunter S. Thompson

Yeah I read Fear and Loathing in High School

When in Doubt, Blame the Aliens

Every day offers us at least one lesson. In the space of a moment, we may learn the real grammar of life in an immense world. On other occasions, an intimate conversation could take a turn, and suddenly, we absorb a master class in the nuances of emotional subtext. These lessons are there, and we have the choice whether to listen or not.

It was in the fall of 1973 that I learned one of my life's greatest lessons. Living takes pluck, stones if you like, and a sense of the absurd. Sometimes, when faced with an inevitable judgment in which you will be found wanting, sheer audacity can save the day. If necessity that great mother had not taught me well, my life might have followed a much more serene and stable course.

The 1973 day in question was a school day, and a rainy one at that. Rain fell steadily, and sometimes it was blowing. Wet days usually put me in a good mood. I don't know why, but I have always loved a day of nice rain. Maybe it is the smell. Maybe it is because I am allergic to anything green and growing. The cleansing of the atmosphere left my body in a healthier and inherently more upbeat state. Or perhaps a wet school day was when the playing field was mine. I wasn't athletic, and there was no outdoor PE. In a classroom, I was competitive, although my grades didn't show it. Grades really didn't mean that much to me.

While the day in question was a wet school day, it was far from perfect. It fell during my senior year of high school, and that year, I had drawn Ms. Powell as my English teacher. Ms. Powell was Southern, sixty-ish, austere, and demanding. She wore thick-rimmed glasses popular a decade earlier. The only saving grace of her spectacles was that they weren't black horn rims. Her standards were rigorous. Attendance was taken and reported, and papers were due when due. A day late was a dollar short for Mrs. Powell.

On the day of insight, I was caught in a conflict between three competing forces. In addition to the three-page paper Mrs. Powell had assigned on a hoary old section of a Dickens novel, 'Oh Pip, Oh Ms. Haversham….oh etc', I had a history paper due on some Russian-Japanese conflict in the early twentieth century. That paper was to be 10 pages long and required footnotes and a bibliography. I am not making this stuff up; it was 10 hard pages on the relatively obscure Russo-Japanese War (1904-05). This, for the uniformed, was a military conflict wherein a victorious Japan forced Russia to abandon its expansionist policy in the Far East. The war was significant because Japan was the first Asian power to defeat a European power. It was a key element in setting the political mood in Japan that eventually led to its role in the Second World War.

Understand this: the history paper was hard, hard, hard. In 1973, there was no Google! I had to work to find stuff about something this obscure, and it ate up my time. Balanced against the rest of my life then, something had to give. If I was to do a good job on both papers, I would have to give up on the third time demand then facing me. How could I complete both papers and still slip out in the evening to drink beer, smoke dope, and sit on the street corner and engage in all the what-if-ing of all life's questions with the local gang? I needed this social interaction to make me a well-rounded human being.

In my little town, if you weren't on the corner, there wasn't going to be any fun. Hard, hard, hard, I tell you, and my paper on Dickens (the creator of our modern image of Christmas) lost out. On that rainy day, there was no doubt that my miserable allocation of time would be discovered. I had no uncertainty about how this scenario would play out. In heading into the third period, I would be measured in the balance and found wanting. I had no plan. Nothing. Nada. Judgement was coming, and despite my slightly unbalanced values that had led to this situation, I didn't want to face what was bound to be unpleasantness.

Ms. Powell had a special way of collecting papers. When she gathered those pearls of prose created by the best and brightest of the dazed and confused generation, she would walk up one row of desks and down another until all the papers were under her control. Her hand would extend out as she reached our desks, and she would in a clear voice state our names.

The first desk would be reached, the hand palm up and open would extend and in a demanding, not in questioning way. She would then state to the occupant of that seat, "Kathy." A diminutive pale feminine hand would place on Ms. Powell's palm five pages in micro fine handwriting of insightful literary analysis. Kathy was a good writer and knew how to effectively suck up. A few more steps and then came the calling of the name. "Gary." Soiled crumpled sheets of lined paper were offered up, but the process continued. And then came two more steps and "Jay."

Seconds can feel like hours when you have nothing to fill them with. Thus when the palm pressed forward a little more forward toward me and the voice again repeated my name but this time with an air of a perturbed question/demand, "Jay?" I had run through every possible response I had ever used. Vomiting and feigning illness, while an emotionally attractive option, was really not going to work. I didn't look ill and hadn't vomited since I was a kid. When the inevitable "Where is your paper" in all its iciness came and I had nothing.

Claiming a work conflict with Mrs. Powell did not cut it. This was the 1970s and almost none of us had after-school obligations or jobs, especially during the fall semester. With proper planning and appropriate application, two papers for a senior in the college preparatory track shouldn't be a problem. Saying that the paper was at home on the kitchen table would not work either. Tipping my head back and drawing myself up I stared head-on into those cold, irked gray eyes. It was then that I just decided to go for it.

The conversation went like this....

Me. "Mrs. Powell, I don't have your paper with me, but I did it. There is a story behind why it is not here and I can explain what happened. As you may remember, due to some of my recent peccadillos, Mr. Feldman, our fine disciplinary Vice Principal, has urged me to show more personal responsibility and school spirit.

Really, he has been quite forceful in communicating those points to me in our many recent meetings.

Mrs. P.: "Jay, where is this going?"

Me: "Mrs. Powell, I have taken Mr. Feldman's words to heart. I want to be a valued member of our Penns Grove Red Devils community. So as I walked to class today, I tried to act like I had pride in our school. As I turned into the hallway that leads to your class, I noticed one of the four doors outside was open. Mrs. Powell, rain blew in onto the recently cleaned floor. It was making it slippery and would wreck the recent wax job our fine janitorial staff had just put down.

I knew that other students were in serious danger of personal injury and knew also that it would be forever before the janitors waxed the hall again. Thus I decided to take responsibility and do something productive, something right. I put my paper, which is, if I might say so myself, one of the better ones I have ever written, did I ever tell you that I really love Dickens, on top of the trash can near the door. You see, I had decided to close the door and I didn't want to make your review of my paper any more difficult than it had to be. I was concerned the ink smearing, if my paper got wet, might make you have trouble deciphering it. I care for your comfort, Mrs. Powell, for I see that you like me to wear glasses."

Mrs. P.: “Again, Jay, while I appreciate your concern for my visual health, where is this heading?"

Me: "Okay, I know what I am about to tell you next is likely to be hard to believe, but you have got to believe me because it is all true. All of it. I swear it. Okay, okay, so when I got to discover what was actually going on with the door, I was absolutely flabbergasted. First off, when I went over to the door, I reached out not looking at the door because I didn't really want to get wet and gave a tug on the door handle. It didn't budge. I had to turn to see what was going on, and there he was, as real as sin…

Mrs. Powell, I know this will be hard to believe, but there was an honest-to-God alien holding the door open. He was short and covered in phosphorescent orange fur, but strong as a moose. However, thinking only of others' safety, I began to pull harder and actually got a bit of ground on him. But then he yanked on the door again and pulled it wider open. And all of a sudden, a whole bunch of these soaking wet orange critters came running through the door. Their fur was wet, and they were shaking like dogs do when they come in from the rain. Clearly, the hallway condition was getting worse for the safety of my student comrades. I was beside myself. The one goofy orange goober at the door smiled a huge, toothless grin. His mouth must have been two feet wide, but it had no teeth. I didn't know what to do, but I had to do something."

Mrs. P.: "So what did you do?"

Me. “Well, Mrs. Powell, I watched for my opportunity, and as fate would have it, most of the orange furry dudes had slick-soled feet. Having shaken their fur, they were slipping and sliding on the wet floor they had created. Quickly, I grabbed them by their coarse fur, and one by one, I forced them back outside. Here is where it all ties together for you. I had thought I had got them all. I mean, it was confusion, but I was sure I had gotten them. Well, truth be told, I had gottenall of them but one.

As fate would have it, the sole remaining alien was the big, toothless guy that had pulled the door open in the first place. As I pushed what I thought was the last one outside, I heard a noise behind me. I turned around to see the toothless bugger who had caused this commotion running by me toward the door, and I swear this is the truth, he had my paper in his weird tentacle-like hands. I yelled for him to stop as he ran for the exit. I tried to catch him but I slipped and skidded, and as I looked like Wiley Coyote, he hit the crash bar and headed out. I yelled I needed the paper, and he shouted back to me, and believe this if you can, he knew English. He, in a voice that was part howl, part torn bass speaker, yelled he was getting even with me because Mrs. Powell was one mean woman, and his revenge for having been dispossessed of entry into the school would be forcing me to face what he asserted was an unmerciful you without my paper.

Me. "Mrs. Powell, I stood up for you. I said you were kind and merciful, that you cared for your students, and that you would never punish me for the evil acts of a bunch of day-glo aliens."

By this point, the class had been stone silent for five minutes. No gum was being popped. The usual tap-tap-tap of the pencil tappers was still. Nobody was moving or adjusting their desks. It was the silence that precedes a car hurtling into the unknown off a cliff. It was the silence heard perhaps in the moments before the floor drops and the doomed man falls victim to hemp and gravity. It was a clarifying silence, cool and astringent, and I swear my testicles were so far into my chest at this point that it is amazing they ever came back down from that defensive move of evolution.

Me: "Mrs. Powell, I swear this is all true. You don't want to prove those evil aliens right, do you? I promise the paper, 'cause I am going to have to rewrite it all. It will be in your hands tomorrow."

Mrs. Powell, by this point, had the first couple of papers she had collected clutched to her breasts. For the longest time, it was impossible to tell if she was pissed off to the point that me and Mr. Feldman were going to have a much longer bonding period than usual or if I was about to be referred for some serious psych counseling. It was then I saw her smile ever so slightly, and I knew it was going to be okay.

Mrs. Powell: "Fine, tomorrow it is."

When Mrs. Powell moved on to the next desk, the routine was repeated. Hand outstretched, her voice inquired, "Don?" Don, looking down at his desk so as not to break up in laughter, began, "Mrs. Powell, I was following Jay down the hall, and you know he did put them out, but no sooner had he left than they ran back in, and I was faced with the same situation." At this point, Mrs. Powell just rocked her head back and said, "Okay, okay, I give up. The paper is due tomorrow." She then proceeded to hand back the papers she had collected so far.

So what did I learn? Well, I guess it comes down to this: when faced with no hope, no excuse, no shot, well, you just have to go long, go in your face with confidence, and go weird.

Shock and humor may save your hide when all the legal arguments in the world will do nothing but hang your ass out to dry. People love to be amused. So when in doubt, don't doubt, just drive on like Hunter S. Thompson and make the reality that dominates your reality and not theirs. And sometimes it just might work.