"Senior Slump"

(in which Joe Orland steals a very heavy bell.)

I had been working on an essay that I thought would alienate a large swath of my readership, something to do with how we left-wingers share some responsibility for the current political and cultural polarization that is plaguing our country. But it appears that many, many other writers have beaten me to the punch. So instead, let me give you a little gift (it’s my birthday today, but I’ll use it to give y’all something). It’s the beginning of a recent short story of mine, “Senior Slump,” and I’d love to know if any of you out there want to keep reading after you’ve finished with the first few pages. So…thumbs up or down? constructive thoughts? Looking forward to hearing from you…

“Keep it up, Otland, it’s gonna be a Bad Day at Black Rock.”

Another weird morning--weren’t they all?--at Moronic High School. Joe Otland had weathered his near-daily threat from McNally.  He’d never seen the 1950’s movie that was his high school principal’s go-to warning, but it made Joe laugh to see McNally’s Ichabod-Crane frame attempt to deliver an edgy, authoritative tone with a nasal voice radiating all the menace of a pillow fight.

Minor squalls had thrown Joe off course several times that month.  Once he and Stevie crossed paths with Claremont County police.  The cop was cruising down an up-only row at the local mall parking lot, when Joe’s “Citizens’ arrest!” provided a welcome opportunity to flash his lights and siren.  He pulled the punk teenagers over, checked Stevie’s license and registration, glaring at them through his new metal-framed sunglasses.

Realizing he actually had nothing to charge them with, he opted for ratting on them to Chuckles McNally, who gave them each a week’s detention and issued a sermon to their parents on the topic of “respect for authority.”

Joe’s parents didn’t appreciate the lecture and piled on, grounding him for a week.

Joe had already been busted drinking at Gino’s using a fake ID, never mind that Angel the bartender knew he was underage and had been serving him beers and the occasional Jaegermeister since he was 15.  Demoted to Town Hall Pharmacy, he surrendered to after-school burgers and cokes seated next to acne-burdened ninth-grade girls who’d giggle inanely whenever his eyes drifted in their direction.

By early April, senior slump had anesthetized most of his classmates.  Joe had played on the varsity lacrosse team sophomore and junior years, but for senior year, he concluded that stealing the school bell would supply more fun and fewer head injuries.

Now, all high schools have a mascot.  There are Tigers, Panthers, Trojans, Sooners and Bulldogs, and in those days lots and lots of Indians--emblems of masculinity to trot out for every athletic competition throughout the school year.  Some older high schools, like MHS, ivy-strewn hulks of tradition, sported talismans hanging in glass cases along marbled hallways, quietly indoctrinating students with school pride to keep their lockers pure and avoid littering.

The school bell was such a token.  A brass monstrosity that had probably once rung for some local church, it now rested on a three-foot high oak pedestal just outside the MHS principal’s office.  Other than its dubious aesthetic value, the bell’s only use consisted of one annual schlepp onto the top steps of the school to be rung as the final circus act of commencement, a nostalgic kiss-off from the school to its adrenalin-fueled graduates.

Five years ago, when Joe’s older brother Brad was a senior, the annual theft of the bell by anonymous members of the senior class stood as a time-honored prank, the object of lunchtime gossip by students and amused conjecture by faculty.  Although officially frowned upon, there was general admiration for the feat, not merely for its proximity to the principal’s office, but for its formidable heft.  The underlying innocence of the tradition depended upon its return to the hallowed halls in time for graduation day.

That all changed three years prior to Joe’s class, when a few stupefied seniors deduced that the bell could be sold for its dubious value; word was the culprits were negotiating to barter the hulking object for three cases of beer. Fortunately the town fathers discovered the plot when the scrap metal dealer, himself an alumnus of the high school, informed on the juvenile delinquents.  After a lengthy and scandalous investigation, which the town newspaper reported as the most notorious local crime of the decade, the felons pleaded no contest and were sentenced to pick up garbage along the highway for 90 days, eviscerating whatever summer plans they’d had.

The prospect of being locked up in the county jail, or trolling for soda cans in 90-degree weather, had deterred subsequent graduating seniors from resuming the lofty tradition.

(more to come)