Remember When Your School Got Its Own Tank?

I’m sure you’ve all heard by now of the school district that obtained an armored vehicle – actually, a Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle or MRAP if you want to impress someone – from the United States military through its Excess Property Program. The vehicle was free, and the district had to pay just the cost of transportation, which was $3.95 for regular ground, or $5,000 for 2-day express.

I remember when my school got its first tank, the graduating seniors’ class gift to the school they loved so much. At the dedication ceremony, the Class President, Class Vice President, and Class Risk Assessment Manager spray painted the sides of the tank with “Woo Hoo Class of Awesome! To Thine Own Self Be True!” There was an after-party, mainly for those three people, where they ate pizza and discussed what they were going to do with all their Barron’s review books.

Some concerned parents managed to have the tank classified as dangerous, so the school had to keep it under strict lock and key in the A/V room, along with the televisions on those tall skinny carts. The School Tank, as it came to be called, was taken out for special events like Homecoming, where the Homecoming King and Queen would ride atop the military vehicle, holding flowers and wearing their crowns, and waving to the crowds in the stands.

The following year, a neighboring school district, a rival in football, basketball, and Monopoly, got its own tank. It was larger and shinier than ours, and at the Memorial Day parade, at which all high schools in the region could march in whatever formation they liked as long as it met federal safety standards, their tank got more cheers from the crowds of parents and siblings.

Over the summer, the school diverted some funds earmarked for social studies books and ordered up another tank. This one was bigger and shinier than even the tank that our rival had obtained. Next to our first tank, it was a giant. We started calling them Big Tank and Little Tank. At lunchtime now, the school paraded the two tanks, sometimes Big leading, sometimes Little, around the track. All students could look out the window and see the two tanks parading. The tanks were driven by students, and for some reason this job attracted the same students who were in charge of the audio/visual technology.

At the Memorial Day Parade, Big Tank and Little Tank rolled down our town’s main thoroughfare in triumph. Parents and siblings cheered loudly and the day appeared to be ours. But then a sound…a buzzing chop-chop sound filled the air and all were quiet.

And then we saw it. A helicopter with a bad drawing of a wildcat – the mascot of our rival school – spray painted on the side. The tank was rolling on the street, directly underneath the helicopter, with balloons floating from the nozzle of the gun.

This was absolutely the last straw. Classes were cancelled for a week while school officials sold books and some desks where the chair and desk are fused together to get another military vehicle. As we sat at home and wished we could be back in English class reading Wuthering Heights, we speculated on what the new vehicle would be. What could be more impressive than a helicopter?

The Warren G. Harding High School Air Craft Carrier was delivered via overnight courier. Since our physical school building was not that near the water, we had to be relocated to a coastal town on the bay. It was a lot windier but we didn’t get as much snow.

One night our radar caught a few blips off the coast of Madagascar. Our commanding officer, who was also the official wearer of the school mascot costume at home football games, ordered our battleship and guided missile cruiser – gifts of the National Honor Society and Future Business Leaders of America, respectively – in for a closer look.

“Identify yourselves,” Kevin said into the microphone, which no one except him seemed to know was not connected to the unknown ships. “Prepare the guns,” he said to the crew, who were making posters for a pep rally. “This could get ugly.”

Our ships were moved into position and guns aimed. Now we were worried about the math test in third period and the possibility of war.

“Man the cannon!” Kevin said. “Ready, aim…”

“Wait! Wait!” said the Class Gluten-Free Bake Sale Coordinator. “What’s that on the side of the ships? I think it says…Go Wildcats?”

Yes, it was our dear rivals from the neighboring town. Looks like they had obtained for themselves a navy. Had it not been for the unsteady block printing and pathetic drawing of a wildcat on the sides of the ships, we would have launched on them and probably have had to make up our math test. The near risk of war marked a turning point in the relationship of our schools, and I can safely say that today we are not rivals but allies.

Editor’s Note: It turns out that the San Diego School District has returned the armored vehicle. I hope they kept the receipt.

Posted on 23 September 2014 by Mark Kaplowitz 3

Remember Trapper Keepers?

Everyone had one and I wanted one too. It was called a Trapper Keeper. A plastic binder with sliding plastic rings and a flap that folded over the front, so that all the notes were “trapped” inside this latest assault on parents’ school budgets.

I remember when I sat my parents down and told them I wanted a Trapper Keeper. “So it’s just a binder with sliding plastic rings and a Velcro flap?” they asked.

“No, it also has a picture on the front. Jimmy has one with a Ferrari and I’d like to do something similar. Not the same exact thing, of course.”

“Of course.”

I chose a Trapper Keeper with a Ferrari on the front. I liked to sit in class and flip the switch that slid the plastic rings in and out of each other. The Establishment didn’t understand what an innovation that was. The metal rings in regular binders snapped together with a loud and irritating snap—if the rings snapped together at all! After a few days the male and female parts of the metal rings would fail to line up, and you would have to use your finger to bend the metal and force the rings closed.

The Trapper Keeper closed with a whisper. I would sit in class, opening and closing the plastic rings like a latter-day telegraph operator. I also liked to work the Velcro. Over and over again I would rip open the Velcro flap, open the front cover of the Trapper Keeper, open the plastic rings, close the plastic rings, close the front cover, and seal it with the Velcro flap.

“Mark, do you need to sit in the back of the room?” my teacher said, “Why don’t you choose one state for your folder and join the rest of the class? We are listing all the different uses of manila paper.”

I thought I could give her one pretty good use of manila paper that was not on the list, but then I remembered something Oscar the Grouch once said on Sesame Street: “Discretion is the better part of valor.”

I rejoiced in the feeling that my notes on the Civil War—also known as the War Between the States and the War to End Mutton Chops—were secure in style. The Trapper Keeper even accelerated my transition from carrying all my books in a backpack to the far more efficient method of carrying all my books in my arms, as I wanted all the world to behold my glorious plastic portfolio emblazoned with a red Ferrari. And as I traveled throughout my little school, I imagined that I too was that Ferrari, fast and sleek, until I was yelled at for running in the halls and had to appear in traffic court.

At home my infatuation with my Trapper Keeper was no more subdued. I would sit on the couch with the pretense of working on my thesis on the influence of Casio watches on youth culture. But all I did was open and close the Trapper Keeper, open and close its silent plastic rings, remove and inspect and reorder and replace its folders with the pockets on the sides, and sit and look at the way its plastic cover captured the glint of the twilight sun coming through our bay window.

And then one day the unthinkable happened. One of the plastic rings did not line up. I quickly realigned the ring-halves, but it was only the beginning. The other two rings started having their problems, too, and I noticed that the beautiful folders with the side pockets were getting mushy at the corners. Even the plastic cover had started to tear, and the Velcro on the front flap had a coat of orange cat hair. Father Time had not forgotten my Trapper Keeper.

I looked to my classmates for support, but they had all moved on to ever more efficient ways of keeping their notes together, such as folding them up into little squares and shoving the little squares into pocket books or duffel bags.

It was time to say goodbye to my Trapper Keeper. I opened and closed the plastic rings one last time, gently using my fingers to help them lock with dignity, folded the flap over, the Velcro fibers barely catching anymore, ran my hand over the Ferrari as a final salute, and laid the Trapper Keeper to rest in my parent’s basement where it could spend eternity next to Candy Land.

Posted on 12 April 2012 by Mark Kaplowitz 9

Remember the Etch A Sketch?

I’ve been hearing a lot of people talk about the Etch A Sketch lately. What a fantastic toy. A plastic rectangle and knobs for kids who couldn’t deal with crayons and paint. I loved how the advertisements for the Etch A Sketch always showed works of art that could hang in the Louvre next to the Caravaggios. All I ever drew were clusters of curved lines that looked like something prison psychologists ask serial killers to look at and interpret.

My parents arms’ came directly out of their heads in the family portraits I drew as a child, and my hand at the Etch A Sketch was not any more deft. So I had to resort to drawings that could be made by repeating a few simple maneuvers with the magnetic stylus. The best sketch I etched I named, simply, “The Spiral.” I created it by taking the stylus around the perimeter of the screen, and when I reached the starting point, I moved it towards the center just a tad and repeated the perimeter, going around and around, getting closer to the center until I had a rectangular spiral just perfect for making adults seasick. It was Thanksgiving Day that I finished “The Spiral,” and I staged an impromptu showing for my captive relatives.

“Oh, uh, that’s really wonderful, Mark,” said one uncle. “Wow, I think I’m getting a headache.”

So proud was I of my gritty lithograph that I couldn’t bear to shake it up and lose it forever. So I placed it on a table and announced that no one could touch it for the rest of eternity. About ten seconds later my mother started to move it to make room for the stuffing.

“My work!” I shouted. “What are you doing?”

“Honey, your work is in dinner’s way,” she said.

I took the Etch A Sketch up to my room where it could be cloistered in a corner. The cretins to whom I was related just didn’t appreciate great art. Perhaps I would have better luck amongst my peers at school.

“What are you doing?” I shouted to a “friend” of mine who was trying to pry the Etch A Sketch from my hands as we waited for the bus on Cyber Monday before it got the Cyber. “You’re going to shake it up!”

“Isn’t that the point?” he asked.

“I just wanted to show you my work.”

“It’s stupid,” he said. “My six year old sister could have done that.”

I kept the Etch A Sketch in my school bag, which I carried flat, in my arms, so as not to disturb the delicate arrangement of aluminum filings. While the teacher tortured us with sums or yet another project involving construction paper and glue, I would periodically peek at the plastic mural in my bag.

“Mark, I don’t see enough glitter on your Santa,” the teacher said. “I think you need to focus.”

At lunch time I had to be extra vigilant. By now everyone knew I was guarding a secret in my bag, and I couldn’t just leave it in the classroom. I would be so nervous that my magnum opus would be defaced by some juice-box-drinking bandit. So I took the bag with me, and set it on the cafeteria table, and balanced the Styrofoam tray on top of it with my square pizza, pretzel rod, and milk.

“Mark, why are you eating your lunch on top of your school bag?” everyone asked me.

“Um, the Surgeon General says it prevents rickets,” I said. “Didn’t you hear?”

Like any kid who walks around school guarding something in a bag, I became a minor celebrity. As we lined up for the buses at the end of the day, some classmates encircled me, their intentions not completely benign.

“All right,” the ringleader said. “What do you have in that bag?”

Perhaps I had misjudged them. Perhaps they would be as entranced by the beauty of “The Spiral” as I was. So I took it out and showed them.

“That’s it?” they said. “An Etch A Sketch?”

“Not just any Etch A Sketch,” I said. “I call it ‘The Spiral.’ Isn’t it grand?”

“I could do better than that,” he said. And before I could stop him he snatched the Etch A Sketch from my hands and shook it up. Before I knew what I was doing I was at his throat. A teacher had to separate us, and of course the thug who ruined my work said that I started the whole thing. Then I had a chance to explain what happened. At last, someone would understand what I had gone through the whole day.

“And then he just shook it up, erasing my drawing,” I said. “It’s like the drawing never happened.”

The teacher looked at me, and looked at the Etch A Sketch, its red plastic chassis glowing in the afternoon sun, and said, “But isn’t that the point?”

Posted on 26 March 2012 by Mark Kaplowitz 8

Remember the President’s Fitness Test?

When I was in elementary school and completing my gym fellowship, after the square dancing seminar but before I had to defend my thesis on crab soccer, we were advised that we would all be participating in something called the President’s Test on Fitness. The President’s Test, as we called it, was a series of five events by which we’d all be embarrassed in front of our peers: the shuttle run, pull-ups, sit-ups, the sit-and-reach, and the mile.

The shuttle run sounded interesting at first because it contained the word “shuttle.” This was a more innocent and simpler time in America, and shuttle launches had yet to become boring. I and my cohorts all had being an astronaut on our “when I grow up lists,” usually just behind baseball player, football player, and He-Man.

The shuttle run, however, was nothing like going into outer space. A pair of erasers was placed at one end of the gym, and a starting line at the other end. One by one we would sprint from behind the line, grab one eraser, run back to the starting line, deposit the eraser in hand behind the starting line, sprint back to the other eraser, grab it, and run back to the starting line before you could hear the other students making fun of how slow you ran.

Pull-ups involved taking an overhand grip on a horizontal bar set higher than you, letting your feet dangle for a few moments, and making it look like you were making a diligent effort at doing a pull-up without making so many funny faces that you became known as the kid who makes funny faces when he is trying to do a pull-up. Today the pull-ups are probably done in a private room so that only the gym teacher gets to laugh at the funny faces. But in those days public humiliation was one of the five food groups.

Sit-ups were easy. You just had a partner hold on to your feet while you did as many sit-ups in a minute as possible. I used to gain a competitive edge by playing with my partners Velcro sneakers, unfastening and re-fastening the noisy fibers over and over to disrupt his rhythm. Or if he came from that sect who wore KangaROOS, I would search for the little hiding place in the footwear that held the student’s milk or drug money.

The sit-and-reach was something that if on television today would say “Do Not Attempt” at the bottom of the screen. The subject sat on a mat with legs straight out, and a wooden box with scored measurements was placed at the end of the feet. The student would then be asked to bend forward and stretch his or her arms as far as possible past the feet. The performance in this event would be measured by the farthest measurement the student’s fingertips could reach on the wooden box, divided by the number of screams emitted as the gym teacher pushed on the student’s shoulders, shouting “Come now, you can reach farther than that! Don’t let those European kids beat us! You owe it to your country!”

Because that was the original purpose behind the President’s Test. The council that eventually created this wonderful opportunity for American children was established in 1956 by then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower after he saw a study that showed European children to be more fit than American children. I, however, did not know or care about the patriotic origins of the requirement that I trip along a dusty track, heaving and wheezing and flailing my arms like a whirligig, taking enough staggered steps in my Velcro sneakers to hopefully add up to a mile.

The President’s Test has probably been redesigned to include meditation and yoga and an exercise where you try to name as many vegetables as you can in under a minute. The tests are all done in private rooms, and everyone passes. And most of all, true to the origins of the test, the mile is only a kilometer.

Posted on 8 March 2012 by Mark Kaplowitz 16

From Seditionist to Blogger

In high school I authored and distributed an underground newspaper. I believe this was a step towards becoming a blogger.

My friend Darren and I had the idea of starting a literary magazine, but we needed funding for printing and the pizza parties that were required for every school club. We asked the administration for help, but the entire arts budget had been spent on glitter. So we took our operations underground.

The first thing we did was pick pseudonyms. Darren chose “A. Hamilton” because he wanted to express his belief in liberty and the nobility of the fourth estate. I chose “Zack Morris.”

Then we had to name our paper. Our high school mascot was the eagle, and so we decided on The Eagle’s Nest. Had I known that Adolf Hitler’s World War II bunker complex was also called the Eagle’s Nest, we might have chosen something else. But these are the quirks of history.

We gave The Eagle’s Nest a serious tone to appeal to a higher class of reader. We wrote articles about the quality of the school lunch, the demeanor of the custodians, and the girth of the cafeteria monitors. We wrote editorials protesting the archaic practice of running during gym class. We wrote fake interviews with teachers and students. We crafted syllabi for classes that did not exist. And at top of the issue, in a little box, was our journalistic creed:

If it’s not in here, we don’t give a s#!%.

We wrote the first issue on Darren’s computer one Saturday afternoon. I had the more trusting of parents, and thus the copying job fell to me. On Sunday night I asked my mother to drive me to Kinko’s.

“Of course, my pumpkin pie,” she said. “What do you need?”

“Oh, uh, nothing,” I said, curling a manila folder.

I made her sit in the car while I made the copies. It took only ten minutes. I came back home with a box under my arm, went upstairs to my room, closed the door, and thought about the meaning of freedom.

And then we received a call from Darren’s mother. “Do you know what they’re doing?” I could hear from the receiver that my mother held a few inches away from her head. “They are going to be handing something out to the kids at school! Something with bad words in it! They are going to get expelled and won’t get into college! We have to stop them!”

I tried to imagine how Darren’s mother found out. I pictured a deposit of laundry, a neglected computer screen, and a long interrogation.

Although my mother did not confiscate the copies and put them on top of her armoire next to my slingshot and BB gun, she persuaded me to seek administrative approval for my subversion. Darren and I agreed, through intermediaries, to postpone distribution, and the next day my father took me to the local law library to read and copy First Amendment cases. It was not my idea of radicalism. At least we went for ice cream afterwards

After a flurry of letters with the school’s lawyers, citing cases that involved Vietnam-era black armbands, Vietnam-era anti-draft t-shirts, and students who wanted to wear tissue boxes on their feet, a deal was struck with the principal. We would show him the paper we wished to distribute, and he would make “suggestions.” A memo went out to all teachers advising that Darren and I would be distributing an underground newspaper in between classes. The arrangement was not what we’d had in mind. We were not really fighting the establishment, and we were not really hiding our identities.

But when that first issue of The Eagle’s Nest was out there at last, and I saw my peers reading my “Elegy for Tater Tots” and laughing out loud, I thought to myself, “I like this.”

How about you? Was there an earlier moment in your life that led to blogging?

Posted on 1 June 2011 by Mark Kaplowitz 13

Remember Lunchboxes?

Remember lunchboxes?

I do.

My first lunch box had a Pac-Man theme and was made of metal. Inside I carried peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, a thermos, and little power pellets that I’d chew on when I wanted to eat the bullies at school instead of running away from them. Then the edges of the lunchbox rusted and would cut gashes in classmates who brushed up against me.

The following year I tapped He-Man, the most powerful man in the universe, to represent my lunch. If I needed the edge for a coloring assignment, or a group of other kids who were hogging the swings, I would hold the lunchbox up to the sky and a lightning bolt would strike me, and I would shout “I have the power” and get sent to the nurse’s office.

In second grade I had a Transformers lunchbox. A few twists and turns of the lunchbox would transform it into a robot that would sit on my desk and do absolutely nothing.

In third grade I bought a lunchbox based on The Wuzzles, a Disney cartoon named after creatures that were a cross of two different animals. One was a cross between a lion and a bumblebee, another a cross between a bear and a butterfly. Yet another was a cross between a cow and a pig, and caused dietary problems for many viewers. On the way home from the store, I stole frequent glances at the face of my Wuzzles lunchbox, and could not wait to show it off at school.

The night before the first day of school, however, it occurred to me that, unlike He-Man and Transformers, The Wuzzles was not considered exclusively a “boy’s show,” and that some classmates might feel entitled to argue that a Wuzzles lunchbox was a “girl’s” lunchbox. I prepared a brief arguing that the lunchbox was gender-neutral, and placed in my lunchbox, sandwiched in between my sandwich and cookies shaped like Keebler Elves.

The next morning I sat on the school bus with my lunchbox face down on my lap. A few times I peeked at the face of my lunchbox to see if it had changed to G.I. Joe, but the Wuzzles just peeked right back at me. And for a moment their vibrant cheery blended-species faces filled my heart with gladness.

My teacher made us put our lunchboxes in the back of the classroom. Lined up from the left were the Thundercats and Go Bots luncboxes, and from the right were the Barbie and My Little Pony lunchboxes. And front and center was my Wuzzles lunchbox, colorful and proud.

I kept looking around the classroom at the other students, to see if anyone had figured out that the Wuzzles lunchbox belonged to me. A group of boys seated together pointed at the lunchboxes, whispered, and laughed. Convinced they were talking about my Wuzzles lunchbox, I leaned out of my chair to get a better listen, so far that I fell out onto the floor, and said “I meant to do that” as I stood up and brushed off my new jeans.

At lunchtime I grabbed my lunchbox in the melee of students, tucked it under my arm with the face against my body, and shuffled along in the boys line to the cafetorium, a cross between a cafeteria and an auditorium.

I ate with my lunchbox face down. I was sure that everyone was looking at me, and with envy I saw how freely they displayed their lunchboxes to the world.

When lunch was over I picked up my lunchbox and pressed the face against my torso as I had done walking in. And that was my routine.

I wish there was some kind of dramatic denouement to this story, a moment where my lunchbox was revealed and I realized that it did not matter what was on my lunchbox, and some kid wearing a Voltron shirt started a slow clap, and everyone learned a valuable lesson that I would later write about in a college application. But there wasn’t. I don’t know if anyone cared or even noticed. They never asked, and I never told.

In the fourth grade I started brown bagging my lunch. The Wuzzles lunchbox was thrown in the basement with my other lunchboxes, and eventually became part of the Earth’s crust.

Posted on 9 May 2011 by Mark Kaplowitz 0

Remember Typewriters?

Remember typewriters?

Image courtesy J. Mayer via Technabob via Creative Commons — Sculpture by Jeremy Mayer (jeremymayer.com), Image via Technabob (technabob.com)

I do.

The final assignment for my seventh grade English class was a research paper on William Shakespeare. We were given months to work on it, and the night before it was due I thought I should probably start my research or at least take a look at the assignment sheet. Aside from the usual admonitions about structure, sources, and spelling, there was a direction I had never seen: “All papers must be typed! No exceptions!!” And underneath that was something I had seen before: “No extensions will be given! No exceptions!!”

Typed? I had seen typewriters in movies. All of my papers up until then had been handwritten, and it was still the time where only extremely nerdy families had computers. This typing requirement put a ripple in my usual last-minute drill. I found my mother in the kitchen consolidating boxes of cereal and asked her if we had a typewriter.

“I think there’s one in the basement. Who knows if it still works. Why do you ask?”

“I have to type a research paper on William Shakespeare.”

“And dare I ask when this paper is due?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Of course. Well, I think I last saw it in the basement under a bunch of your old lunch boxes. When are you going to throw those things out?”

“Um, never.”

Underneath the moldy and dusty lunch boxes was a moldy and dusty plastic covering under which lay a somewhat less moldy and dusty typewriter. It was large and black like a Rolls Royce and at first I thought the carriage return was a hood ornament.

With the help of a neighbor I hauled it up to my room and removed the covering. I was afraid to touch it, and as I plugged it in I felt a little like Dr. Frankenstein.

The machine whirred and I pressed one of the keys. The resulting sound was a like a gunshot, a short staccato pop and I checked the opposite wall for holes. I hit a few more keys, and figured if I could get used to the sound of Hungry Hungry Hippos I could get used to this. After a few minutes of working on my paper I realized something was wrong and had to visit my mother again.

“Mom, where does the paper come out?” I asked.

“It doesn’t,” she said. “You have to load typewriter paper. What have you been typing on all this time?”

“Um, never mind.”

I loaded in paper from my spiral notebook but the mangled edges looked like the work of a fifth grader, so I had to persuade my mother to drive me to the office supply store for some typewriter paper.

Typing on typewriter paper was a lot more effective. Then I accidentally spelled “Stratford-upon-Avon” with a “Q” and discovered that the correction tape was missing, and again we were off to the office supply store. Using a typewriter apparently required a full tank of gas.

Not five minutes after our return the ink dried up. I could see letters being embossed on the paper, and considered filling the indentations with pen. Luckily my mother still had her coat on and again we went to the office supply store.

But alas, the ribbon was not in stock. “We really don’t carry stuff for typewriters anymore,” the manager said. “But we’d be happy to order it for you. When’s your paper due?”

We tried another store but the manager there just laughed at me. It was getting late. Stores would be closing and I did not know what I was going to do. I needed this time to be thinking about making the Encyclopedia Brittanica entry on Shakespeare sound like my own words, not having my mother drive me all over Long Island looking for typrewriter ribbon. Writing with a quill would have been easier than this.

Somehow my father had gotten wind of my dilemma and took me to the working typewriter at his office. I typed my paper while my father sat in the waiting room reading a book titled You’re Almost There: Parenting Through Adolescence. It was close to midnight when I finished, and from my father’s face I gathered that we would be not going for ice cream. My parents bought me a word processor the following year, and we traded in the typewriter for an Acura.

I just read that the last typewriter factory in the world, located in Mumbai, India, is closing its doors forever. I am sure that a lot of people are lamenting this, people who grew up with typewriters, got used to thinking with rapidfire gunshots coming with every depression of their fingertips, people who got a thrill from hearing the ‘ding’ that told them to hit the carriage return, people who enjoyed the challenge of knowing which stores stocked their particular ribbon and correction tape. People who are not me.

Image credits: Sculpture by Jeremy Mayer, Image via Technabob

Posted on 2 May 2011 by Mark Kaplowitz 0

Remember When Wishing Someone a Happy Birthday Was Not Done Digitally?

Remember when wishing someone a happy birthday was not done digitally?

I do.

When I was a child, happy birthdays were wished in person, by a group of peers surrounding the birthday boy or girl, wearing cone-shaped hats with an elastic chinstrap stapled to the sides, and singing the song “Happy Birthday” while a parent tried not to drop the blazing cake on anyone’s head. When my closest friend at the time – closest meaning his house was closer than any other kid’s – turned five, I was positive that the instant he blew out the candles he would grow a few inches before my very eyes. I was disappointed to see that he stayed the same size and still refused to let me sign-out his He-Man figurines.

In elementary school the procedure was the same except that it was done during class time. These were the days before peanut allergies, and the procedure was similar except that a parent of the birthday boy or girl had to take time off of work to bring in a cake so that class time could be spent wearing the cone-shaped hats and singing the song. If your birthday fell on the weekend or during the summer you were out of luck.

In high school, though, the male students adopted an odd procedure for wishing other male students a happy birthday. Instead of wearing hats, or singing songs, or eating cake, or even just saying “Happy Birthday,” the birthday wishes came in the form of birthday punches.

My seventeenth birthday is etched in my memory. It was third period math class, and I was trying to decide how many lines of notebook paper I wanted my integral symbol to occupy, when a classmate in the next row said, “Hey Kaplowitz, I heard that today’s your birthday.”

“Oh really? No one told me.”

“Very funny.” And he came over and punched me seventeen times in the upper arm, hard. “And one more for good luck,” and he punched me again. Then another classmate got me. Then another. I tried to turn away but they had no problem going to the other arm. “Happy Birthday,” each would say before laying in. They were all lined up. It was like being mugged.

By fifth period my arms were throbbing and I couldn’t hold them up. I staggered into English class like an old boxer and the words going through my head were, “Please, please no more.” But they were there in the back of the classroom, like a gang, throwing their fists softly into open palms, waiting for me. “Hey guys, it’s Kaplowitz’s birthday today!” said the ringleader, the same one who first got me in math class. I cited an old rule from the Court of Chancery that permits only one series of birthday punches per person per birthday. “Wow, you’d make a good lawyer,” he says, and then starts punching me in the arm. He doesn’t get through them all because I start falling to the floor and our teacher starts passing out copies of A Separate Peace.

My arms eventually healed, which was fortunate because wishing someone a happy birthday today requires typing. But not much more than that. You enter a username and password on a social networking website, and the website reminds you of your friends’ birthdays. Click on their name, type “Happy Birthday” in the field, press return, and you’re done, your birthday wish slotted atop all the birthday wishes that came before. For a while I tried to add variety to my birthday wish by adding “Hope you have an awesome day,” but then one day I did that with two people who had the same birthday, and I got caught and it was awkward. At least I didn’t punch them.

The other day was the birthday of a good friend that I had not seen in a while. I could have posted a “Happy Birthday” on his profile page, but it felt so impersonal. I wanted to do something really special. So I texted him instead.

Happy birthday to my wife, who tolerates all this blogging, and who I think is expecting more than a text.

Thanks to Adam Foley for the topic.

Posted on 7 April 2011 by Mark Kaplowitz 0

Remember When People Passed Notes in Class?

Remember when people passed notes in class?

I do.

In third grade I conspired with some classmates to make another classmate believe he was being stalked by a ghost. I wrote notes in a squiggly lettering that said things like “Your parents don’t love you” and “Courdoroy pants are in your future.” We would leave the notes on his chair when he got up to sharpen his pencil. He was looking worried by the second note. I was pleased at how smoothly the plan was going. When lunchtime approached and we were forming two gender-based lines, a classmate and co-conspirator put his hand on my shoulder and said, “It’s over. He knows.”

“He knows? Who told him?” I was ready to kill this person who had the temerity to ruin my plan. But it turned out to be a kid who was much larger than I, and I decided that for the sake of everyone’s education I would not press the matter further.

When I was fourth grade I passed a note to a nearby classmate named Charles, saying “Charles is a big oaf.” Señora Goldfarb, our Spanish teacher, caught me and made me write it in Spanish a thousand times. After a few hundred I started getting tired and making mistakes, and as punishment I was not permitted to participate in the Cinco de Mayo celebration, where every student was responsible for making his parents buy an authentic Spanish dish for the class.

In high school there was a girl named Gretchen who passed notes by folding them into the little triangle, which everyone called a football. She would flick the football in the direction of her intended audience. Gretchen had bad aim and a few times the note landed near Mr. Mauser, our math teacher. Whenever this happened Mr. Mauser would pick up the football and ask who it belonged to, and when Gretchen confessed he would ask her whether the football formed an isoceles or equilateral triangle. If she was right she got the football flicked back to her. If she was wrong he opened the note and read it. Gretchen soon became the go-to sophomore on triangles.

I don’t know whether today’s students still pass notes, but I’m sure many are electing to text their cruel missives. No teachers to avoid, and no fellow students to recruit. No one would know if you were passing a note or checking your stock portfolio. Until someone accidentally texted the teacher.

Thanks to Toni Calabrese for the topic.

Posted on 21 March 2011 by Mark Kaplowitz 0