Read Online King of the Mild Frontier by Chris Crutcher - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Chris Crutcher
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donât even notice most of the time, until we try to use them in someway for which theyâre not designed. Like BACKWARD!!! Raw oysters are bad enough, but raw oysters on the way back up tickle the very edges of the imagination.
You couldnât send a Mars probe to the edges of my imagination from where we go next: the Olive Race.
Seven naked letterboys line up across one end of the gym on their hands and knees next to seven naked letterboysâ shoes, staring downcourt at seven black, unpitted olives. At the sound of the cap pistol, we crawl to the other end, sit on the olives and pick them up!!!!!!!!!, stand and run, cheeks tight, back the length of the gym, to drop the olives into the shoes.
And the last guy has to eat one of the olives, selected at random.
Up until this point in my life I have choked a number of times in spectacular fashion, from the Fourth of July bike race to kissing a baseball bat in lieu of kissing Paula Whitson, but if I choke now I choke twice, once in the race and once on the olive, and thanks to my grandfather Glen and my mother, Iâm running dead last.
Neither my grandfather nor my mother has a butt, and their posterioral DNA ran straight down the generational pike to me. To put it crudely: For those of us in that strain of the family, our butt cracks are simply the vortex of ourlegs. There is none of the cushy excess essential to picking up an olive. I watch in dismay as one after another olive disappears into these lard asses, and Iâm getting almost zero purchase. Iâm half the basketball court behind when I finally get a good grip and begin waddling toward my shoe, watching my conquerors squat carefully and drop those little black nuggets one by one into their waiting footwear. Only Leonard Irwin hasnât finished, and heâs squatting as I cross the free-throw line. He releases as I reach my shoe and smiles up at me as if to say, âCrutcher, you poor buttless bastard.â Only there is a God and He is a wrathful God and Leonard Irwin has done something way worse in his life than I have, because Leonard Irwin misses his shoe.
My father was a World War II B-17 bomber pilot, noted for requiring pinpoint accuracy from his bombardier, and some of that DNA must have also come my way down the pike. For once someone else can be the bawlbaby, because I hear that olive drop directly onto the inside heel of my Chuck Taylor Converse All Star tennis shoe and roll toward the toe, and I know Leonard Irwin, and not I, has a one-way ticket for Gag City.
The rest of the initiation consists of events that, were I to describe them, could keep me high on the banned-books list for years to come. Suffice it to say that we learn two newgames, Choo-Choo I and Choo-Choo II, and another very inventive activity involving a bucket of bolts, a string, and an appendage that is not an arm or a leg. By the end of the festivities, I have only budding tufts of hair on my head (having visited the C Club barber shop) and budding blisters on my butt. The final humiliation includes the substitution of Tabasco sauce for Preparation H.
When we are showered and back in our street clothes, we sit in the bleachers, strangely euphoric for having survived. President Hall again brings out our signed confidentiality oaths and impresses upon us the importance of keeping this sacred coming-of-age ritual private.
That was 1962. I believe I am the first to squeal.
E Equals MC Squared
6
IN THIRD GRADE I TOLD MY classmates that our coal furnace wasnât hot, that you could crawl inside when it was burning full blast and freeze. Because I wouldnât give it up, I got a bloody nose and a trip to the office, where they stuffed cotton into my nostrils and asked where Iâd gotten such an interesting notion. It wasnât a notion, I said back, ready to defend my truth if need be; my dad told me.
My dad was a guy you believed. He was nearly six feet, five inches tall and weighed around 230. His
You couldnât send a Mars probe to the edges of my imagination from where we go next: the Olive Race.
Seven naked letterboys line up across one end of the gym on their hands and knees next to seven naked letterboysâ shoes, staring downcourt at seven black, unpitted olives. At the sound of the cap pistol, we crawl to the other end, sit on the olives and pick them up!!!!!!!!!, stand and run, cheeks tight, back the length of the gym, to drop the olives into the shoes.
And the last guy has to eat one of the olives, selected at random.
Up until this point in my life I have choked a number of times in spectacular fashion, from the Fourth of July bike race to kissing a baseball bat in lieu of kissing Paula Whitson, but if I choke now I choke twice, once in the race and once on the olive, and thanks to my grandfather Glen and my mother, Iâm running dead last.
Neither my grandfather nor my mother has a butt, and their posterioral DNA ran straight down the generational pike to me. To put it crudely: For those of us in that strain of the family, our butt cracks are simply the vortex of ourlegs. There is none of the cushy excess essential to picking up an olive. I watch in dismay as one after another olive disappears into these lard asses, and Iâm getting almost zero purchase. Iâm half the basketball court behind when I finally get a good grip and begin waddling toward my shoe, watching my conquerors squat carefully and drop those little black nuggets one by one into their waiting footwear. Only Leonard Irwin hasnât finished, and heâs squatting as I cross the free-throw line. He releases as I reach my shoe and smiles up at me as if to say, âCrutcher, you poor buttless bastard.â Only there is a God and He is a wrathful God and Leonard Irwin has done something way worse in his life than I have, because Leonard Irwin misses his shoe.
My father was a World War II B-17 bomber pilot, noted for requiring pinpoint accuracy from his bombardier, and some of that DNA must have also come my way down the pike. For once someone else can be the bawlbaby, because I hear that olive drop directly onto the inside heel of my Chuck Taylor Converse All Star tennis shoe and roll toward the toe, and I know Leonard Irwin, and not I, has a one-way ticket for Gag City.
The rest of the initiation consists of events that, were I to describe them, could keep me high on the banned-books list for years to come. Suffice it to say that we learn two newgames, Choo-Choo I and Choo-Choo II, and another very inventive activity involving a bucket of bolts, a string, and an appendage that is not an arm or a leg. By the end of the festivities, I have only budding tufts of hair on my head (having visited the C Club barber shop) and budding blisters on my butt. The final humiliation includes the substitution of Tabasco sauce for Preparation H.
When we are showered and back in our street clothes, we sit in the bleachers, strangely euphoric for having survived. President Hall again brings out our signed confidentiality oaths and impresses upon us the importance of keeping this sacred coming-of-age ritual private.
That was 1962. I believe I am the first to squeal.
E Equals MC Squared
6
IN THIRD GRADE I TOLD MY classmates that our coal furnace wasnât hot, that you could crawl inside when it was burning full blast and freeze. Because I wouldnât give it up, I got a bloody nose and a trip to the office, where they stuffed cotton into my nostrils and asked where Iâd gotten such an interesting notion. It wasnât a notion, I said back, ready to defend my truth if need be; my dad told me.
My dad was a guy you believed. He was nearly six feet, five inches tall and weighed around 230. His
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