by Tom
Hey! I recently became part of the Rockstar Storytellers here in Minneapolis. Here's the first story I told last Sunday at the Rockstars "Snow Emergency" show:
It was sixth grade. I was fresh off of Mr. Grenz’s 5th grade class where I did a presentation about Muhammad Ali and learned that it’s NOT ok for me to paint my face black to more authentically pretend to be Muhammad Ali. “No,” my mom had to say, “Not even ‘just a little brown paint.’” This really pissed off 5th grade Tom. It was going to ruin the artistic integrity of the whole thing! Completely unrealistic! Never mind that I was 11 years old and scrawny and long-haired enough to be routinely mistaken for an anorexic girl.
This was the age where I started learning the hard realities of life. The truth. Santa Claus was dead. Babies came from vaginas. And men had the hots for blondes.
Ms. Smith was blond.
Ms. Smith was a goddess… at least according to an older boy who was ecstatic for me when he learned that Ms. Smith would be my sixth grade teacher. She was really nice and cool and had been cursed with the combination of the desire to be a 6th grade teacher and looking like she had been created by a 6th grade boy.
She was too tall, too blond, too much eye make up with breasts of back pain-inducing size. That’s right, so big, they put her spine out of place. Rowr. I knew I was supposed to be impressed by that, but my upbringing by a vehemently feminist mother made me suspicious of anyone that pretty. I soon got over my suspicions. I reasoned that the “Ms.” in Ms. Smith made up for her absurdly bodacious body. We all knew she wasn’t married – she was totally a “miss” – but she was modern, progressive, she wasn’t going to just wear her marital status on her sleeve like it defined her. She was so cool.
Plus, I was terrified of the girls my age for good reason- ms. or no ms., boobs or no boobs.
Christie, for example, had no boobs. I knew this because one day after school I was wrestling with her on the playground (she was probably winning) and I accidentally caught a glimpse down Christie’s shirt. There was nothing there to be seen. Previewing dozens of interactions with women to come, I gracefully handled a social misstep. I shouted, “I saw your boobs!” I was a classy 6th grader, as all sixth graders are. Problem was, Christie had a boyfriend - Mario Borrego. Mario was a grade A bully.
This was back before anti-bullying legislation and PTA uproars and "it gets better." As far as I could tell, it only got worse. And then, it got worse-er. I remember the school had a zero tolerance policy for gangs, drugs and guns, so as long as you beat someone up the old fashioned way – sober, no gun and “one at a time, please” – you were in the clear!
Mario heard about the whole “I saw your boobs!” situation with Christie and confronted me. Expertly, I backpedaled, “Hey, calm down, there was nothing to see anyway.” His response was to punch me in the mouth. It loosened one of my baby teeth enough that it came out. “Thanks for loosening my tooth Mario!” I remember yelling later in a terribly ineffective attempt to save face. “You might have thought you were just punching me in the face, but really, you were doing me a favor!” Ha! That’ll teach him to punch me in the face like I don’t like it or something.
But Ms. Smith – she didn’t have a jealous boyfriend as far as I knew. She was super attentive and seemed like she kind of “got” us. She was barely 10 years older than us, which helped, but I also think she was a legitimately good teacher. She came off as empathetic, but tough when she needed to be – like when she reported me to the disciplinarian for drawing scenes from the video game Mortal Kombat in my notebooks. In case you weren’t also an 11 year-old boy in 1993, Mortal Kombat is a fighting game that prompts you to “Finish Him!” when you’ve beaten your opponent. You do this by launching the opponent’s semi-conscious body into spikes or by ripping out their spine, or you know, other stuff 12 year-olds should be exposed to by their after school program. Let’s just say, my drawings involved a little more red colored pencil than seemed healthy to Ms. Smith.
And she was right; it was a pretty dark time for little Tom Reed. My parents had divorced. My mom, my little sister and I moved from Moorhead, Minnesota to Fort Collins, Colorado so my mom could go to grad school. The weather was nice and the scenery was beautiful, but I was setting way too many fires in our kitchen sink to be considered “well adjusted.” I didn’t have friends unless you count the radio DJs that I called way too often. In hindsight I feel really bad because I now know that if you’re a DJ in the Fort Collins, CO market there is no way you’re making enough money to play therapist to some lonely superfan kid.
My constant radio listening paid off though because one time I was the “10th Caller” and I won two free lift tickets for Winter Park Ski Resort. It felt like winning the lottery! I’d never known anyone who’d won a radio contest before. I thought, “Is this what Michael Jordan feels like when he hoists a big chunk of gold over his head as people douse him with champagne? Yes. This is exactly how that feels!”
The only problem was that I was the only one in my family who skied, so there was no one to take me.
Oh. But wait. It was common knowledge that Ms. Smith was an avid skier. She talked about it in class – so it must be true and important and soooo beautiful. That was it. I would ask her to take me skiing. You know, kind of like a normal student/teacher, drive alone up into the mountains and go skiing for a whole day, just the two of you, kind of thing. It was your standard 6th grader/6th grade teacher ski date.
Somehow my mom OKed this idea. Somehow Ms. Smith said “yes.” Probably because she was a broke teacher and this was free skiing, but I hoped she had the secret hots for me. Did I mention I had stringy long red hair and a physique like a broom handle? This was going to be our magic moment.
I’d start off by wooing her with my smarts, “Oh yeah, I did pretty well on the Iowa Basics.” And then I’d seal the deal with a flip of my ragged hair that was styled in a way that said “I haven’t had a hair cut in years.”
I had the whole day planned out: a romantic winter journey up into the Rockies where we’d carve down the hill in parallel - swoosh, swoosh, (flirty giggle) swoosh. She’d say, “Wow, Tom, you’re so good, maybe we should try something other than the bunny hill.” Flirty snowball fight? Not out of the question. All topped off with some ski lodge hot chocolate, “Don’t worry, Ms. Smith, I got this. I’ve been saving up my… allowance (wink).” Then we’d wind our way back down the mountain casually chatting about marriage, children, the X-men – whatever she wanted. This ski trip was going to be the moment she realized we’d grow old together. I could feel it.
It’s worth noting that this was all long before the giant scandals of young-ish female teachers sleeping with way underage boys. I get why that freaks everyone out, but I can tell you – at the time, being taken advantage of would have been a dream come true. I wanted nothing more than to get statutory with Ms. Smith.
The day FINALLY arrived. We drove up the mountains and as planned, I regaled her with rousing conversation… for a few minutes before my 11 year-old body succumbed to a nap for the rest of the ride. It was better that way though. The windy roads up into the mountains made me carsick – sleeping me was much more charming that puking me.
We got to Winter Park and it was ski time. I’d been skiing a few times, and while I was no “Ms. Smith,” I was proficient. We went down a few runs and I managed not to fall off any of the very real cliffs that are present at proper mountain ski resorts - for those of you who’ve never skied west of Andes Hills in Alexandria, MN.
Everything was going great... until I fell. Hard. I hit a patch of ice, my skis went flying one way, my poles another and my head went flying into the ice. Crack. I wasn’t dead, but I wasn’t good either. I limped down the rest of the run, but I was nauseous and felt awful and was definitely done skiing for the day. Ms. Smith was really cool about it. She helped me get my gear off and return it to the rental place. She walked me to the car and buckled me in. Then, she left me there while she skied for the rest of the day.
I sat there, 11 years old.
Alone.
In a car.
In winter.
Hours from a hospital.
With a concussion.
Luckily, nothing happened. Whenever she tired of endangering my life so she could ski, Ms. Smith returned. We drove home and didn’t get married. The next time I saw her, she was back to being my teacher.
While she probably shouldn’t have abandoned me with a head injury, and maybe the whole thing just reeks of weird, the fact is, Ms. Smith made me feel cool for a day. She went way above the call of duty. For 12 hours, I was one on one with the hottest girl at my school. Yeah, she was older and totally inaccessible, and we were at that ski resort for very different reasons, but it was fun while it lasted and a pretty good preview of many dates to come for me:
1. At least one person didn’t know it was a date.
2. There was free stuff as an incentive.
3. There was a potentially life threatening head injury.
4. Sitting in a car for a long time lead to absolutely nothing.
