How I Learned To Start Worrying...

Mrs. Schick was a matron, a rotund woman with a tight grey bun - a sort of Aunt Bea on steroids. She walked with a bustle and often retained a gaze of disapproval. She liked doilies and went to church and regularly shook us down of our lunch money for her fund to feed starving children in Asia. And to complete the picture, she was a devoted supporter of Richard Nixon. She liked Agnew too. Ewww.

She was my sixth grade teacher in 1970. I remember the year because the Beatles broke up, Sweet Baby James was released, Bobby Sherman was God. The Vietnam war raged. Watergate was around the corner.

"You're taking him where?"

My friend Jimmy and I were savages. Every Halloween we bought bundles of toilet paper, more than people bought during the pandemic, and bars of soap. At night we crept quietly through the night to Mrs. Schick's house and papered her trees until they resembled the white wigs of mad queens. Then we soaped the windows until the glass surfaces achieved a creamy white covering like the desserts you saw in fancy women's magazines.

It was illicit. It was delicious. It was fun.

Years later, I glance backward and seek pennance for my Halloween horrors. I'd cut off a toe if I could decide on one. Mrs Schick, unappreciated at the time, taught me about Whitman, Poe and Robert Louis Stevenson. She raved about Mary Shelley and Emily Dickinson. She was shoveling us some good shit. Most of us just wanted to go home and watch Green Acres. What is Leaves of Grass to a sixth grader? A giant bore. It was to me. I was still at least two years away from beginning to appreciate such illumanaries as allies in the war against ennui.

At the same time, my father was educating me in history as it happened live and in living color, in nearby venues and colleges. I didn't realize this at the time, it was so close up, but looking back, as I did with Mrs. Schick's posse of wayward pen pushers, I see now that I had a collage of the best history had to offer.

One afternoon my father was standing in the doorway to my classroom. Mrs. Schick met him in the hallway and I could hear them talking. When Mrs. Schick returned she informed me my father was here to "collect me." My classmates were jealous. I got to scram. I quickly gathered my books and fled. My father had already wrestled with the principal to allow me to be yanked from class. He made his way through the crumbling middle school hallways to my classroom and sprung me and then, in a burst of liberation, we were on our way to see Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden pounce on the Vietnam war at a nearby college. As far as Mrs. Schick was concerned, we might as well have been loading babies in a dump truck using a pitchfork.

Hanoi Jane comes to town.

Jane and Tom did not disappoint. Vietnam was not a good thing. Bombs disguised as toys, blowing the hands off children and whatnot. Everyone within our radius was against the war and when we left, we were even more against it. Outraged. Thus began my life of outrage.

My singular outrage was not a force but collective outrage could move mountains. In this case I believe it helped end the Vietnam war and precipitated the demise of Richard Nixon.

As I sat and listened to Jane and Tom, I wondered what Mrs. Schick’s blood pressure was like. I hoped this wouldn't kill her. In case you were wondering, she survived but I sensed the Evil Eye for the rest of the year. Education can come with a cost.

My education continued. My father took me to see Alger Hiss and the next week, Roy Cohn (ewwww). We shook hands with Gore Vidal. Buckminster Fuller confused us both. Fred Graham chatted with us (remember Fred?). We saw Phyliss Schlafly even, at the Nazarene College (my mother refused to go on this adventure, she hated the woman). I think the last chapter in this curated history epic was in 1975 when my brother, father and I went to see Hunter S. Thompson and Frank Mankiwiecz (extra points if you remember Frank). I wondered if Mrs Schick ever read Hunter.

Doubtful.

Throughout these episodes, my father never told me what to think. He merely presented them as if to say, this is your world and welcome to it. It was a lot to chew on.

Thanks dad, wherever you are, for the bad craziness. You taught your children well.

Dedicated to the memory of Mrs. Schick.