STEWART R. FLINK

Back in the 60’s around the time of Woodstock and the Vietnam War, I was a wiry, somewhat naïve sixth grader with my fair share of acne, living comfortably in a 3-bedroom house in a suburb of Chicago.  It was an insular existence, and my only sibling was an older brother, then a freshman in high school.

It was a typical weekday morning, and there I was by myself quietly in the moment, reading the sports section and eating a bowl of Life cereal. It was around 7:30 am on an unusually warm spring day in April. I was about halfway through the soggy contents of the bowl of Life cereal, readying myself to head for the bus stop when suddenly a jarring thought sliced like a guillotine through my brain. I gasped, inhaling and choking on a spoonful of cereal that was heading down the wrong pipe. “Crap!” came out of my mouth so fast that it included bits and pieces which I had yet to swallow. I had forgotten about an assignment for English class due that morning. Searching frantically through my backpack, I vaguely recalled something about writing an unrhymed poem.

This was atypical behavior for a conscientious junior high student. Up until that moment, I was on top of my schoolwork and hadn’t missed an assignment. As the punishing laws of misfortune would have it, English class was the first period. Reality had set in. I’d be turning in this yet to be written unrhymed poem in a less than one hour. Compounding the problem was that prickly Mr. Landsman, who didn’t allow extensions unless you were sick and had an excused absence, was my teacher. ‘I can’t get my first F ever for not turning in a stupid poem,’ the voice echoed inside my 11-year old head.

Quickly, I yanked a piece of paper from my notebook, and began to write with pen in hand. There would be no computers in sight for another two decades, and I was taking the risk of starting over by not doing it in pencil first. Time was not on my side, and one false move would result in a choice having to re-write something I had not even thought about or missing the bus that was already in route, thereby handing it in late. In Mr. Landsman’s narrow world, late was the same result as not handing it in at all.  An inexplicable inner calm washed over me, and I forged ahead as words began to flow onto the blank page resting on the turquoise kitchen table.  It never entered my mind that I wouldn’t finish right then and there. I just wrote and paused, waiting for the next stanza to bubble up, and then wrote some more. Less than fifteen minutes later staring hastily at 14 lines of unrhymed poetry produced, I dotted the last period, folded it in half, and then stuffed the paper neatly into my Chicago Cubs backpack.

Opening the refrigerator, I grabbed the lunch bag with my name on it. “Bye Mom,” I yelled at the foot of the stairs, as I raced out the back, hearing the screen door slam behind me. Glancing down at my Mickey Mouse watch, I was keenly aware that the bus was due at the corner in seven minutes. It was a 5-minute walk at a brisk pace, so I high-tailed it down the street, leaving nothing to chance. My lungs heaving, I met three of my friends at the bus stop just as the yellow vehicle pulled up to the corner, jammed with chatty 11 to 13-year olds. The red lights were flashing, and the little stop sign was out, vertically positioned on both sides of the bus.

I lunged up the three steep stairs, walked about ten feet to the middle of the bus, and slumped into an empty seat next to a girl I knew.  She was in the eighth grade, and I was consciously violating social protocol by hanging out with an ‘older’ woman. Funny how it was perfectly acceptable for a guy to go out with a younger girl, but the other way around was taboo.

“Hi,” I nodded, placing my backpack between my legs on the floor. I turned around and began talking to my best friend Geoff, seated right behind me.  He was a bright boy with a quick wit, and everyone called him by his last name, which was Hanson, which included our teachers.  It never dawned on me to proof-read the poem. It was now out of sight, out of mind, figuring the worst I could get was a C.  From my perspective, it was a major victory that I was even handing in the assignment on time. It was beyond a last-minute attempt, a hail Mary.

Before I knew it, the bus jerked to a stop at the front entrance of the junior high, and we were descending the black rubber steps single file, backpacks in tow. I hightailed it to my locker, pulled out my blue vinyl notebook, made sure I had the half-assed poem, and nervously headed to Landsman’s class.  Upon entering Room 106, I noticed Landsman donned his usual attire. Khakis and an argyle sweater vest that covered his tightly-pressed white shirts, arms crossed. His brown-framed glasses were hanging at the tip of his nose, hazel eyes gazing like laser beams at us as we filed into class. We all marched by his brown-varnished desk as we handed in our poems one by one, placing them into the in-box on the top right-hand corner of Landsman’s domain. Mine landed somewhere in the middle of the pack. “Just as well,” mumbling as I stayed right behind Hanson. We congregated to the back row, as far away from Landsman as we could be.

The day almost ended uneventfully. That is, until Hanson started cracking jokes about Landsman picking his nose. Then good ‘ol Geoff let fly with an audible fart. He ripped one so loud that everyone in our row and the row in front of us heard it, and that was all she wrote. He started laughing, and before I knew it, I was laughing with him, both of us rapidly spinning out of control. Then, the boys in our row and the one in front of us followed suit. Somehow the girls failed to see the humor and thought it was downright disgusting, but then again, our sense of humor was altogether different.

Hanson and I were feeding off each other, trying desperately to cover our mouths to muffle the sounds of laughter. As a last resort, we tried ducking our heads sideways under our desks hoping and praying it would subside before Landsman caught on to us. No such luck. Watching Hanson crack up as he hit his head on the underside of his desk just made me laugh even harder.

Finally, I looked up and the entire class was staring at us. That prick of a teacher had come out from behind his desk, standing in front the class.  Landsman pointed to Geoff and me, then toward the door, and said, “Hanson, Flink! Out. Now!” his baritone voice reverberating off the walls. “I don’t know what’s so funny, but you can tell the principal. And don’t bother coming back until lunch is over when you’ve calmed down!”

For a split second, I froze, mortified. I’d never been thrown out of class for anything. Not even close. I was dreading the call to my mother to pick me up after school because detention would cause me to miss the bus home. She would be furious, as I would be late for tennis class. Not a good combination.

True to form, Hanson who had earned the respect of much of our class, did the opposite of what anyone would expect, and it just pissed off Landsman to no end. Instead of feeling ashamed or embarrassed, or both, he was now laughing out loud so hard that he could barely walk out along the back wall of the class toward the door. I was right behind him, bewildered and starting to feel remorse. But Hanson’s laughter carried the day. A split second later, I burst out laughing as we hit the door, practically collapsing onto the hall floor. We were like a couple of drunken sailors as I fell on top of Hansen roaring.

After a few minutes, we stood up and caught our collective breaths, tears rolling down our cheeks, our chests heaving up and down because we were oxygen depleted. For a moment, silence enveloped us. That is, until we looked at each other, and the out of control laughter began again. We wouldn’t get to the principal’s office for another ten minutes. The last thing we wanted to do was sit in the principal’s office and risk laughing in his face. Surely, that would compound our punishment and pile on more detention.

That afternoon, the teacher overseeing detention left the room for about twenty minutes, and we spent most of the unsupervised time reminiscing how funny the whole thing was. “Landsman, he’s just angry because his dick is so small,” Hanson whispered, exuding the aura of a stand-up comic and catching me off guard.  Again, tears formed in my eyes, as I burst out laughing, checking intermittently to see if the teacher was approaching the door of the classroom. I swear to God, every time I looked at Hanson for the next three days, I started to crack up.

However, it was the next day that will live in infamy, at least for me. Geoff and I walked in the room the following morning as our beloved teacher chirped, “Larsen you sit there, pointing to an empty seat in the back row. “Flink,” you can sit right here in the front row,’ which happened to be smack center in front of his desk. We were about as far away from each other as physically possible in Room 106. A wise move indeed, for all our sakes.

Landsman had his game face on, having read all the poems the night before. In his infinite ignorance, he decided that each of us would read our poems aloud to the class, one at a time.  It got worse. After each student read their respective poem, he would ask the class to grade our work. “How many people think he deserves a C? Raise your hands.”  A few people would put up their right hands. “How many for a B grade?”  Most hands went up. “Who would give this poem an A?” And so on and so forth.

After a handful of classmates read their poems, Landsman declared “OK Flink, you’re next.”

“Great,” I thought, ‘the ahole’ was going to embarrass me in front of the whole class as punishment.”    Cringing, I walked gingerly up to the front of the room, the fear of failure welling up inside me. He handed me my poem inscribed with my blue pen. I noticed there were no markings on it, which struck me as unusual. Was it that bad? Did he even read it? I silently wondered. My hands trembled slightly as I began to recite verse after verse.

I finished reading in about 40 seconds and went to sit down. “Stay right there,” he boomed. Let’s take a vote. “How many would give Mr. Flink a C?” Two people raised their hands. “Who gives this poem a B?” The five or six hands went up. “Anyone give him an A?” Much to my surprise, about a dozen hands went up in the air. No one had a clue that I’d written the thing in one shot in less than fifteen minutes. Again, I went to sit down, somewhat relieved that I hadn’t flunked the damn assignment. Unless, that is, Landsman was going to give me a D or an F out of spite.

“Not so fast Flink,” as I crept back toward my chair. I froze. The silence was deafening, as all twenty pairs of eyes were upon me. It felt as if I was looking up at the rope hanging from the gallows. He motioned with his index finger to come back up. “What?” I responded with a tinge of defensiveness. I turned around and headed back toward the front. Reluctantly.

Landsman spoke methodically, without emotion, in what I can only describe as incredulous and unnerving.

Now directing his gaze at me, he queried: “Flink, how long did it take you to write this poem?”

I gulped. My response was sheepish at best. “An hour or so,” I white lied, starting to feel like I was on trial.

“And when did you complete this assignment?”

I winced. “Sunday. You know, the day before it was due.” I figured a little exaggeration could only help my cause.

“Why did you wait so long to write something that I assigned a week ago Wednesday.”

Bracing myself for a D grade at best, “I dunno. That’s when I do most of my assignments.”

There was silence as Landsman gazed out over the class. Then a sigh emerged from Landsman, who was now shaking his head side to side. “Well, I think this poem deserves an A+,” he uttered with an air of cynicism. My knees buckled, trying to hide the look of shock spread across my face.

“You’re kidding,” I mumbled under my breath. This couldn’t be happening. It was some sort of trick or something.

“What did you say?” Landman’s face a shade of red, blood pressure beginning to rise. He didn’t bother to wait for my answer. “Are you sure you didn’t copy it from somewhere? I’m almost certain you did.”

“What?” without flinching or hesitation. We locked eyes, almost like a staring contest to see who would flinch first. Later in life, I had learned that when someone looks down there’s a good chance they are lying, so lucky for me that I held my gaze.

I kid you not. Ol’ Landsman spent the next couple of months looking aimlessly through a myriad of poetry books, figuring he’d find where I copied it from. He even brought some of the books to class, sitting them atop his desk. I felt his skeptical energy channeled in my direction. He finally relented and gave up toward the end of the school year.

Too bad for Landsman that the internet or computers didn’t exist back then. It would have saved him a whole lotta trouble. Kind of glad it happened though. His false accusation of copying it? I didn’t even know what the word plagiarism meant back then. I took it as a backhanded compliment. Almost five decades have passed since that incident with Hanson and Landsman, and a smile forms upon my face each time my memory replays it.

Not sure I’ve laughed out loud since with that kind of uncontrolled, uninhibited volcanic emotion. For all that happened during that memorable day, it was Hanson who’d taught me some valuable life lessons. One, not to take myself too seriously. Two, to be able to see the humor in life. Third, it’s OK to push the limits and get in trouble occasionally. No sense getting down on yourself for a minor offense. Finally, authority figures are human beings, just like us kids. Just because they’re older doesn’t necessarily make them any better or for that matter, any wiser.

I’m almost sure that Larsen and Larsen (if he is still alive) ha long forgotten about that eventful day, when we howled with laughter until it hurt, and for more times than I could count. But that’s OK.  I survived a near death experience, and it was the genesis my writing career. Oh, I almost forgot.

 

Autumn Senses

The moist autumn leaves drifted from trees above
Radiant in their colors decorating the ground.

Orange, red, yellow of all shapes and sizes,
Sticking to sidewalks and driveways until raked away.

Burning, smoky clusters on a cool October morn
The smell unmistakable, soothing the soul.

Winter comes abruptly, erasing all traces and remnants
For winter had no smell as bare branches accumulated snowfall.

Melting, freezing, and melting again, the trees
Readying themselves to hatch tiny leaves again.

Sun beaming down, day growth, resting in moonlight
On the limbs of giant structures, covered in bark.

Multiple shades of green extensions hang firm
A sign that summer approaches beyond the spring horizon.