Repost-- in honor of my good buddy Steve

Would you believe in a love at first sight
Yes, I'm certain that it happens all the time
What do you see when you turn out the light
I can't tell you, but I know it's mine






Steve was one of the funniest guys I've ever known. I think he gets credit for coining the phrase "drater."
When we were in school, he had a hate vendetta against the special ed kids.

That sounds harsh, but it wasn't a one-sided thing. They hated him equally, if not more.

There was a woman who adopted about 2-3 special needs children. I never really understood how the state could've okayed that. Because her idea of rehabilitation was making them pick grass. No shit. I guess she thought she was renting a couple of llamas, or lawnmowers, because these kids did lawn work. There was never any suggestion to 'go outside and play', it was always 'go outside and pick grass.'

Soon after finding this out, Steve put them into several 'drater' categories. Grass picker was for the higher levels, and drooler was parcelled out to the more severe cases.

Steve wasn't a bad guy. He mostly left the drater kids alone, but they could sense his dislike, so natch, they would fuck with him.
Little Jeffie H. would hug Steve, or give him a hard shot to the nuts. Somehow, I think the hugging was worse, because he knew Steve hated it. In return, Steve would 'pole' Little Jeffie.
Poling: (this took two people) grabbing someone's legs, and running with them until reaching the flagpole. It was successful when 'your' pole met the flagpole. Hence, 'poling'.
Steve didn't always catch Jeffie, because Jeffie was a runner.

Not long after, one of the drater girls (Donna) developed a crush on Steve. Not a big deal, right? Until she started doing things to get his attention. Like throwing his books down, trying to fight with him, or basically just standing by his desk until he acknowledged her, or told her to go away and pick some grass.

When she finally realized who she was dealing with, she stepped it up a notch. The story I heard was that she gave him a partial haircut with a pair of safety scissors.
Bad idea, Donna.

Steve's retaliation sparked a chain of events that has since gone down in history.

Instead of doing something overt, Steve went for something totally unexpected.


















Yes. His retaliation was ex-lax. It kept Donna out of school for at least a day, and that was a happy day for Steve.

Unfortunately, Steve told people of his newfangled drater repellent.
One of the girls in his class took this little nugget of information to the principal, and Steve got into trouble.

And then he left the drater kids alone.

Right?

Wrong.

Welcome to Thunderdome.

As Steve was waiting for his dad to come pick him up from school, he had a showdown with the girl who had ratted him out. Stacy.
Things wouldn't have gotten ugly, if she didn't catch him pissing in her mom's van.

That was just Steve's way. If you slapped him, he punched you out. If you broke both his arms, he'd bite you to death. If you told on him for giving Donna ex-lax, he pissed in your mother's van. That was just his way of filling his dance card.



Steve was just finishing up pissing in Stacy's family van, and the Stacy clan must've been lying in wait for him, because as soon as he stepped out of the van, and zipped up, Stacy's younger sister greeted him with a board to the face. She hit him with a fucking board.
By all rights, this should've ended the fight.
Instead, the board hit activated Steve's cage fighting instincts, because when she swung the board at him again, he kicked it out of her hands, and it went flying across the parking lot.

By this time, the mom had made it outside to where her youngest daughter was sparring with the drater whisperer. She yelled at them to stop, but Steve was wound up, he was ready to kick ass and chew bubblegum.
Stacy's sister went for him, and just as she had her claws out, wolverine style, Steve reached into his pocket, pulled out his finishing move, and gave her an equal opportunity k.o.
She did not pass go, she did not collect $200, she went straight to kissing the concrete.



Steve has many more run-ins with the grass-picking society, and when he finally graduated, the special ed department threw a party.

Mr. Fowler and the Red Light Special

One of the best mentors I've ever had in my life was my science teacher, Mr. Fowler.

He wasn't a touchy-feely type of guy. He wasn't going to wipe your ass for you, or accept any kind of excuses. Dog ate your homework? Too fucking bad, sunshine.
He was a man who expected you to do, not to whine.
Having said all that, he was one of the fairest people I've ever known. Fair, but tough.

One of the things he decided that we would do was learn to classify leaves. I think he described it something like this: "We're going to make a book of leaves that you'll learn to classify. By 'we', that means 'you.' You'll thank me when you're off camping, run out of toilet paper, and know that what you're wiping with isn't going to turn into an oozy rash."

----


To learn to classify leaves, Mr. Fowler would take us out on nature type excursions. We'd pick a couple leaves off trees, and take them back to the classroom to try to distinguish what they were.

Me and my best friend teamed up to do our book together, and we actually got pretty good at it.
Mr. Fowler would test us, give us random leaves to classify, and such.

A few weeks later, we were almost finished with our leaf classification book, but still needed a few more samples.
Mr. Fowler took the class out, and let us roam around in the woods, finding what we needed.

Me and my best friend wandered off in search of a cottonwood tree, which was all we needed to finish up our book. I was wearing headphones, singing along to TLC's Red Light Special, and humping random trees small enough to wrap my legs around. Some of the trees I pretended were Mr. Fowler.

I saw my best friend out of the corner of my eye at the same time I spotted the cottonwood tree. I could hear her walking up behind me.
As she got closer, I rubbed my ass on the base of the cottonwood tree and told her "Using Mr. Fowler's scientific tree classifying method, I can tell this tree is a cottonwood, simply by the way the bark feels against my ass."


I turned around to ask her a question, and instead, there was Mr. Fowler.

I immediately felt my face turn horribly red. He said "That's nice, Sal, but I don't think the science community will get behind that."
With that, he walked off, laughing.

--

Later that week, in class, Mr. Fowler was handing our books back to us, I found a note in mine from the man himself. Next to the cottonwood leaf, was a note. "Classified using RLS method--patent pending."
Red. Light. Special.

You dirty boy, Charlie.