Slobberpalooza '76

A recap of another event that explains why I’ve never been on the cover of People magazine.

There are many embarrassing things that can happen to a person. Fortunately for you most of them have happened to me. Of course, most of these happened in high school, a time which you are keenly aware of being embarrassed.

It was the spring of my junior year, 1976, at Wheeler High School. At that time in history, this was THE school in Cobb County, mainly because we didn’t have a Bass Fishing team. We were called names by all of the other high schools, but we didn’t care. We were special and we knew it.

My friend Moody (see Humor Me: Bogus Bells 6/8/11) and I had two classes together. The first was a tennis class taught by the inappropriately named Coach Ham. Coach Ham may have been 4’9” and may have weighed 90 pounds. This class had a bunch of other goofballs in it. Needless to say, she lost control of this class quickly and spent the valuable class time running around telling us to “Quit it!”

One of the things she wanted us to quit was an awful habit we had of throwing a tennis ball at the gut (or the area below the gut) of whichever friend was beginning to serve to his opponent. Pretty low brow stuff and it was fun, as we used to say back then, as all get out.

The class after tennis was American History (1932-present) taught by the lovely Kitty Love.

Miss Love ( sounds like the name of one of those detective movies of the 70’s) was a hip young teacher. She seemed to like and enjoy the students, although I remember her saying “Ya’ll are just awful, just awful” almost every day of the class.

In one of those modern education moves, she assigned us an “Oral Book Report”. We had to actually READ A BOOK and then stand in front of the class and report about it.

I remember my book: The Breech of Faith: The Fall of Richard Nixon by Theodore H. White. It wasn’t one of Theodore’s best efforts. White wrote a dull and dry book because for all of its importance, Watergate did not have any sex, drugs, or rock and roll. It had some cuss words, but that was about it.

However, everyone else in the class read the book The Day of The Jackal which was about a guy that was trying to assassinate Charles de Gaulle, who I can guarantee you that most of the people in the class thought was the bassist for Uriah Heep.

One day, after an incredible Tennis class in which we did something closely resembling the sport, I sat in Miss Love’s American History class prepared for another round of oral book reports on the The Day Of The Jackal. This particular class room was on the western side of the building and was, at this time of day, nice and toasty.

There are conflicting opinions as to whose The Day Of The Jackal report I fell asleep in. I had contracted a terrible case of adolescent narcolepsy. Then I did the second most embarrassing thing you can do while asleep: I drooled.

(To this day, I wonder what that poor student was thinking, while giving an oral book report, seeing another student asleep, mouth open and slobbering)

When I awoke up, I looked down at my desk there was a literal pool of saliva (Pool of Saliva sounds like a good name for a band). In 70’s lingo, I freaked out.

One of the pleasant aspects of my high school career is that most of my class was not your stereotypical high schoolers. The Jocks got along with the Nerds and everybody loved the Stoners. With the exception of one person: the girl who sat in the desk across from mine. This young lady based a young man’s worth by his position on the Football team. It wasn’t good enough to be second string for her. For some reason, a boy that was short, thin, with Coke bottle glasses, greasy hair, bad teeth, pimples and the quaff of B.O. didn’t turn her on (Go figure). If she saw “Lake Manis” as it came to be known, she would make a scene like no other and I would probably never get to kiss a girl.

Quietly I got out a couple of pieces of notebook paper and wiped up the pool of DNA. I thought I had gotten away with the crime until I heard Moody say, “Good Job”.

It turns out Moody was basically the only person that noticed my drooling and my life was not ruined by embarrassment. I’m still short, but wear contacts lenses and a good bit of cologne. For some reason, I still have pimples. By the way, I have kissed a girl-Yeah come on!

All that remains is this: to whoever was giving the book report on The Day of The Jackal that day, it was not you. I’m sure you worked hard on the report and I hope you got a good grade. I feel awful about it, just awful.