the wrong side of the bed
Tuesday, June 15, 2004
we were young like the future*
in preparation for my planned longer post on teachers, i was thinking about elementary school while showering moments ago. what i was remembering was mostly not about teachers, but rather about some of my classmates. i think that this story deserves it's own post.
when i was in kindergarten, there were two boys named jeremy in my class. one, jeremy sawden, was my best friend. the other, jeremy gray, tormented me regularly. jeremy sawden was my best friend mostly because our mothers were friends. he only went to my elementary school for a short time, and i don't remember much about him. he was very quiet and plain. the most notable thing about him was that he was always absent from school because of pink eye. he came from a family with five or six children and they never really managed to get rid of pink eye. it just rotated from child to child. the other kids didn't like jeremy sawden much because he was sickly and silent. there just wasn't much to him except for the possiblity of infection.
jeremy gray, on the other hand, was memorable. i remember him quite well because he used to call me "fat cow" all of the time. he also made fun of my for being shy and well behaved, but mostly he called me fat and moo-ed at me. once, mrs. tucker, my kindergarten teacher, was reading to us. we were all sitting on the floor in a circle around her. at the end of the book, she asked that we return to our desks, and so i did. jeremy gray, being an ill-mannered twit, never immediately did anything that a teacher asked. i was walking back to my desk while he was still sitting on the floor, cross legged, with his hands behind him. as i passed, he called me a cow. his hand was extended into the path that i would take back to my desk. i decided, in that moment, to step on his hand and grind it into the ground with all of my 5-year-old weight. of course he yowled in pain. mrs. tucker took us aside to find out what had happened. jeremy said i stepped on his hand. i said that i hadn't noticed and that i hadn't even felt his hand beneath my foot. because i was such a good kid, she believed me. i ended up feeling quite guilty about having gotten away with it for some years afterwards. i don't feel bad about it anymore.
* the title of this post, like the title of many of my posts, is a song lyric. normally i just steal and do not credit. because jeremy freese has posted about stephen merritt reccently, i believe that i will credit this song. it is called "jeremy" and it is by the Magnetic Fields.
update** 11:35pm: i suppose that i should give credit to jeremy for having a blog to begin with because i wouldn't have started one if not for his. i wouldn't want to have the arkanow chant thing-y happening here. also, thanks for pointing out my spelling mistake. i actually went back and fixed the spelling of stephin merritt from my earlier post, but maybe it didn't "take" or something. i make a tremendous number of spelling mistakes, etc. in my posts. if anyone ever spots any, please feel free to let me know. thanks.
** yes, i stole the update thing from jeremy, too.
update II, a little less than an hour later: jeremy suspects that my link is broken as the above text is all part of the link. i actually intended this. i know it isn't exactly done to have so much text as part of a link, but i wanted to emphasize just how much i owe jeremy!
when i was in kindergarten, there were two boys named jeremy in my class. one, jeremy sawden, was my best friend. the other, jeremy gray, tormented me regularly. jeremy sawden was my best friend mostly because our mothers were friends. he only went to my elementary school for a short time, and i don't remember much about him. he was very quiet and plain. the most notable thing about him was that he was always absent from school because of pink eye. he came from a family with five or six children and they never really managed to get rid of pink eye. it just rotated from child to child. the other kids didn't like jeremy sawden much because he was sickly and silent. there just wasn't much to him except for the possiblity of infection.
jeremy gray, on the other hand, was memorable. i remember him quite well because he used to call me "fat cow" all of the time. he also made fun of my for being shy and well behaved, but mostly he called me fat and moo-ed at me. once, mrs. tucker, my kindergarten teacher, was reading to us. we were all sitting on the floor in a circle around her. at the end of the book, she asked that we return to our desks, and so i did. jeremy gray, being an ill-mannered twit, never immediately did anything that a teacher asked. i was walking back to my desk while he was still sitting on the floor, cross legged, with his hands behind him. as i passed, he called me a cow. his hand was extended into the path that i would take back to my desk. i decided, in that moment, to step on his hand and grind it into the ground with all of my 5-year-old weight. of course he yowled in pain. mrs. tucker took us aside to find out what had happened. jeremy said i stepped on his hand. i said that i hadn't noticed and that i hadn't even felt his hand beneath my foot. because i was such a good kid, she believed me. i ended up feeling quite guilty about having gotten away with it for some years afterwards. i don't feel bad about it anymore.
* the title of this post, like the title of many of my posts, is a song lyric. normally i just steal and do not credit. because jeremy freese has posted about stephen merritt reccently, i believe that i will credit this song. it is called "jeremy" and it is by the Magnetic Fields.
update** 11:35pm: i suppose that i should give credit to jeremy for having a blog to begin with because i wouldn't have started one if not for his. i wouldn't want to have the arkanow chant thing-y happening here. also, thanks for pointing out my spelling mistake. i actually went back and fixed the spelling of stephin merritt from my earlier post, but maybe it didn't "take" or something. i make a tremendous number of spelling mistakes, etc. in my posts. if anyone ever spots any, please feel free to let me know. thanks.
** yes, i stole the update thing from jeremy, too.
update II, a little less than an hour later: jeremy suspects that my link is broken as the above text is all part of the link. i actually intended this. i know it isn't exactly done to have so much text as part of a link, but i wanted to emphasize just how much i owe jeremy!
10:59 AM
