"I Got Plenty of Nothin'...

...and nothin's plenty for me!" Oh, the horror that was my middle
school music class! We had to sing show tunes for an entire year.
The King and I, Showboat, Oklahoma, State Fair, Porgy and Bess,
The Sound of Music, Fiddler on the Roof, Carousel, you name it,
we sung it. That might be why our music teacher mysteriously sat
on a tack one day.

I remember that day well. She was wearing her half-red, half-royal-
blue polyster dress. That really wasn't hard to remember. She wore
that dress every day we saw her: Tuesdays and Thursdays. It was
like that Seinfeld, when Jerry doesn't know if his girlfriend "Lois"
has a closetful of identical dresses, or if she wears the same one
every time they go out. Some little brat ran up and put that tack,
stolen from the bulletin board, on her piano bench just before she
sat down. You'd think that would have taught her to angle that
piano so she could see us while she played, but noooooo.

The worst part of it was that she didn't even feel the tack. What's
up with that? When she stood up, it was stuck in the back of her
dress. That was the most attention she had gotten from the class
all year. We watched closely to see how long it would cling, and
if she would sit on it again. An even bigger question was: what
was she doing teaching us backwoods hillbilly young 'uns to
sing show tunes? Did she think we were all prepping to be future
contestants on Jeopardy? We had no clue what we were singing.
But to this day, when I see Oklahoma, or State Fair, on TMC or
some such channel, I have to watch a few minutes and sing along.
Imagine my family's horror every spring when The Sound of Music
is on network TV.

Rumor amongst the kids was that 'Janice', our music teacher, and
'Nadine', the music teacher at our other middle school across town,
were "funny". I was in 7th grade, and did not know what this meant.
I didn't think Janice was very funny. She would starve if she tried
to take her comedy act on the road. The act that consisted of
frowning and yelling, "Stop that, or you're going to the office!"
Janice and Nadine were both butt-ugly, even by middle-school-
music-teacher standards. I think the rumor came about because
they shared a house. We only saw Nadine if she was on duty at the
other school when we went there for basketball games. She always
wore a black dress. Maybe they were just thrifty.

The other excitement that year was when Melinda got caught
reading "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex*
But Were Afraid to Ask" in Language class. Dumba$$. She
had a homemade book cover over it, such as the type that were
popular back then, a Peter Max design or something, and sat
at her desk with it propped up, reading away. I might add that
the book had made its rounds through the students before we
arrived in that afternoon class. Mainly, we looked at the pictures.
Artist's renderings, not photographs. When I think back, they
remind me of Will Farrell and Rachel Dratch as the 'Lovaaahs'
on Saturday Night Live. Anyhoo, our language teacher, who
was a neighbor of mine, walked around the room, up and down
the aisles, as we were reading silently. She stopped by Melinda,
and said, "Let me have that." She took it to her desk and glanced
through it. Melinda had to stay after class. I don't know what
happened. They probably made her parents come in and get
the book. Duh! Where did they think SHE got it?

And my last memory from those murky middle school years?
(Not only am I SO PRETTY, I am also SO OLD.) Our algebra
teacher bet us all a soda that by the time we graduated, the whole
United States would be using the metric system...on road signs,
car speedometers, cookbooks, etc. Many of us discussed going
back to claim our soda after we graduated, but I don't know of
anyone who actually did.

And there you have it, another post about nothing. Maybe I can
steal something from Rebecca's blog for tomorrow.