Kicking Maynard

Fifth grade was a monumental transition for me. After four years of attending a private Lutheran school with only five other kids in my class, I moved to our neighborhood public school. I suppose calling it a neighborhood school is pretty deceiving, given that there was no neighborhood. We lived in the middle of the country in rural Michigan, and said neighborhood public school was a few miles away in a different middle of the same country. Our neighbors were soy beans and corn fields, not much else.

Luckily I'd gone to public school kindergarten, so I knew some of the kids in my new school. Chris, Randall, Cory, Tim... they welcomed me back into the fold pretty quickly. In this tribe of renegades I became Kosmo the Funny, never backing down from a challenge to make someone laugh. Typically my humor was sophomoric and harmless, consisting of a repertoire of characters each with their own distinctive contortion of voice and face. Sometimes, however, when one of my characters seemed to be letting me down, I'd shift to a crueler brand of humor at the expense of certain classmates. It's not something I'm proud of, and those memories have certainly molded me into an adult who shies away from insult comedy, believing it not only to be cruel, but to be a complete cop-out; it's an escape hatch from a lack of good ideas. Don't get me wrong; some people are just plain douche bags and they get what they deserve. But the rest of you are relatively safe from me.

When you're 11 years old, however, you're far from enlightened. So The Boy With Lice and The Girl Who Smelled Like Pee were easy targets. Especially The Girl Who Smelled Like Pee, because she smelled like pee. All the time, she smelled like pee. Contrary to what you might be thinking, this wasn't an "I just peed in my pants" pee smell. This was a "someone just peed on me" smell. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about; every school had one. I'd say things like, "I'm hungry for a snack. Who wants some peeeeeee-nuts?" The gang would laugh. "What's your favorite bird? A peeeeeee-cock?" That got a huge laugh, and it was worth double points because I said "cock" as well.

Like I said, I'm not proud of it.

There was another kid in our class by the name of Maynard. Maynard was the quintessential farm boy. When he got to school he'd already been up for a good four hours milking cows or feeding pigs or slaughtering chickens. We knew this because he didn't bother to really clean up afterward; he just came to school in his bib overalls and torn flannel shirt.

One quick side point: It's not like the rest of us were high-class richies. We were all country kids well below the middle-class line. Which goes to show that any society will develop a class system, regardless of how close those within it really are to each other.

Back to Maynard. He was a pretty big kid. Not big as in fat, but tall and solid. Like I said, he was a farm boy. His most distinctive feature by far, however, was his feet. They were enormous. At 11 years old Maynard's feet were probably a size 13, all the more accentuated by the fact that he wore big steel-toed shit-kickin' boots every day. He had a slow, lumbering walk, and his movements resembled what I imagine a dump truck would look like if it drove with triangular wheels.

Thus the game Kicking Maynard was born. The object was to sneak up behind Maynard during recess and kick him in the ass with the side of your shoe (using the point of your shoe was forbidden, as that would have been cruel). The kicking itself wasn't really the fun part; no, it was the ensuing chase. Maynard would turn around and take off after whoever kicked him, stringing together curse words only a true farm boy would know how to combine properly. The combination of huge feet and huger boots made for a ridiculous sight, a dump truck with triangular wheels trying to chase a Firebird with positraction. When Maynard got tired and gave up, someone else would sneak up and kick him, starting the farce all over again.

It was glorious fun.

One particularly balmy spring day we'd been playing Kicking Maynard for a good 15 minutes. Our stomachs were hurting from the spectacle, he was to the point of repeating curse words he'd used earlier, and the bell signifying the end of recess was just about to ring. Always needing to get the last laugh, I decided that one more kick was needed to cap off the game. I crept up behind him and WHAM! I got him good. Now one thing about Kicking Maynard is that when you're the kicker, you don't get to see his initial reaction because you're turning on a dime and hightailing it out of there. On this occasion, I wanted to see his reaction up close. So I stood there a fraction of a second longer, watching. He was exhausted, so his turn was slow. "Fuck you, fucker dick!" he yelled as he turned. His face was red, his eyes were open wide, and his bottom jaw jutted out so that his lower teeth practically covered his upper lip. That was my cue, so I turned and took off. Being one of the fastest boys in school, I knew I could afford that extra moment. Laughing hysterically, I began my sprint. Catching me was out of the question.

Unless I tripped.

I tried my hardest to pull out of the tailspin. I didn't go down right away, stumbling along, my legs trying to catch up with my tumbling upper body. But my feet crashed into each other and onto my knees I went.

Pain. The sharpest pain I could imagine exploded directly on my tail bone. I screamed and fell on my side. Again, the pain, this time in my ass crack. Tears poured from my eyes. I could see my friends staring in horror. There was nothing they could do. Maynard had pounced on me like a wolf on a rabbit, bringing his leg as far back as his quad muscles would allow and driving the tip of his steel-toed boot into my rear end like a psychotic construction worker behind the controls of a wrecking ball.

I'm not sure how many times Maynard's boot connected with my ass before the playground attendants pulled him off me. I do know, however, that it was more than a week before I could sit without feeling like my seat was a large hot coal.

That was the last time Kicking Maynard was ever played. I didn't even pick on The Boy With Lice anymore. It was a life-changing experience, I guess.

But The Girl Who Smelled Like Pee? Come on. She did smell like pee.

Spiders in the Culvert

In eighth grade I went to summer camp with my best buddy of the time, Chuck. One day we went on a day-long canoe trip from our lake, through a winding marsh, to a neighboring lake. It was a splendidly adventurous trip. At one point along the route, however, we arrived at a road that crossed the marsh we were paddling through. We had two options: get out, lift the canoe and carry it across the road, or canoe underneath the road through the culvert that allowed the water to continue flowing. We of course chose the culvert.

In order to get through the culvert, Chuck and I had to get up a head of steam, then duck down into the canoe so our heads weren't decapitated. Once we got into the culvert and looked up, we saw literally thousands and thousands of spiders all along the metal. At first glance, I thought it was pretty cool. Chuck, however, did not. He freaked out and started yelling and kicking -- yes, kicking -- the spiders. This generated two results, neither of which were positive. One, it slowed down our momentum, which, had he left well enough alone, would have carried us all the way to the end of the culvert. Two, it caused many of those thousands and thousands of spiders TO FALL RIGHT THE FUCK ON TOP OF ME. I was screaming at Chuck to stop kicking, he was screaming at the spiders, and the spiders were scurrying about on top of me.

Then, when we were maybe half the way through, the canoe bumped into the side of the culvert and stopped moving forward. Chuck stopped kicking, thank God, and I managed to swipe most of the spiders off of me, but we were stuck there. "Dude, what do we do?" he asked me. I suggested we use our paddles to push against the side of the culvert, propelling us to the end. It worked quite nicely. Until we got to the very end, that is.

With daylight taunting us, we stopped once again right at the mouth of the culvert. The top edge of the culvert was bent down toward the water, causing the front top of the canoe to catch and halt our movement. We tried pushing as hard as we could with our paddles, but to no avail. The only option was to push the canoe further down into the water, lowering the top below the bent culvert end and allowing us to exit. Keep in mind, there are still thousands and thousands of spiders on the inside of said culvert.

Chuck and I wiped at the spiders directly above us, causing them to fall into our boat and on top of us, then pushed hard against the top. As we did so, spiders immediately crawled along our hands and down our arms, but we pushed until the tip was low enough, then shove the canoe out of the culvert and into the lake on the other side. We both jumped out of the canoe without a word and frantically brushed at our bodies to get the spiders off. After visualizing the spiders getting into our clothes, we stripped down to our bare-assed nothingness, through our clothes into the canoe, and swam along side it the rest of the way to the beach.

Shape

Everything seemed so perfect until the tablecloth. That fucking vinyl red and white checked wipe-me-with-a-sponge-and-I'm-clean tablecloth, held to the picnic table with four rust-covered aluminum clamps.

"Sit down, Jay, quit being so polite."

"Yes Mrs. Timmerly," I said. I squeezed my legs in between the table and bench and sat down on the hard wood. I quickly took inventory of everything in front of me. Paper plates. Plastic fork, knife and spoon. Heinz ketchup (in a real glass bottle) and French's mustard (in a real glass jar). Hamburger buns, hot dog buns, Lay's potato chips, French onion dip. A six pack of Miller Light cans. Macaroni salad in a Tupperware bowl.

"Beer?"

"Sure Mr. Timmerly. Thank you." I took the can from him, cracked it open and drank.

"Jay just got a call-back for Six Feet Under, Mom," said Sandy. "He thinks he has a good shot at it, don't you, honey?"

I heard her, but not enough to register a response. I was staring at the can. I'd set it down on the table, on the tablecloth, but hadn't let go yet. One circle. Four squares. Four squares equal one square. One circle. One…

"Honey?"

"Oh, sorry. Yeah. I mean, my agent told me it's down to three of us, so I guess I've got a decent shot."

"Would this be a regular role or just one time?" asked Mrs. Timmerly.

It's not right. Not perfect. Too far down, too far right. How far? Two millimeters up, a centimeter to the left? Try it. Just scooch it a little. This fucking vinyl. Can't scooch.

"Jay?" I looked at Sandy. "Hello? You okay?"

"Yeah. Definitely. I'm just, uh, thinking about the audition, that's all."

"Jay's agent told him it would be for six episodes, isn't that cool?"

"You gonna buy us a new car when you're all rich and famous?" Mr. Timmerly asked.

"Sure." Pick up the can, move it, not too much, fuck, pick it up again, there it is, put it down. Perfect. One circle. Once square. Now the plate. No, fuck the plate. Fuck this. Move the can. Pick it up, set it down, don't look, don't care. Just set it down. There. Now relax.

"Ed, you better go check on those burgers," said Mrs. Timmerly.

"I know when the damn burgers need to be checked, and I'll check 'em then."

Mr. Timmerly sat for a couple seconds, then got up and went to the grill. I chuckled as he walked away, following him with my eyes. As I looked back to the table I caught a glimpse of my beer can sitting on the table. On the tablecloth.

"Who wants cheese?" Mr. Timmerly asked.

"I'd like some, please," I answered. The can was in my hand. Don't know how it got there. One circle. Four squares. Four squares equal one square. One circle. One square. How far off this time?