Sister Schultz was nicknamed by the kids at Saint Mark's school after Sergeant Schultz on the TV show Hogan's Heroes. The difference was that Sergeant Schultz on TV was a pushover who was always saying things like, "I see nothing. I know nothing" in order to stay out of trouble. NOT THIS NUN...She was the enforcer at Saint Marks and made everybody's business her business. To us kids, she was the second most fear human being in the world right behind the notorious Sister Godzilla.
Sister Schultz looked just like the German prison guard and behind her back all the kids would say, "I see nothzing...I know nothzing" in our best German accents - while being deathly afraid of getting caught. The guys figured that if you put Sister Schultz and Sergeant Schultz in a ring, the Catholic nun would pin the Nazi prison-camp guard and have him begging for mercy in less than a minute. The eight grade boys started a rumor that she had been a professional wrestler (in men's competition) before she entered the Nunnery! Anyway, back to the story. It was three O'Clock and the prison doors were open and we were free - in other words school was out. A bunch of us headed over to a game of tackle at the lawn next to the Venice Police Station.
The hard part was dodging the land mines - dog poop! This challenged my vomiting superpowers. As the smallest guy on the field, I was hard to catch...but eventually did get caught with the ball on the 10 yard line and managed to drag three older Venice High guys across the goal line for a touchdown. During the game I stepped in a warm pile of dog poop and vomited like a binge-drinker at 4:00 am in the morning. I couldn't take the stink anymore and invited the Saint Mark-ites over to my house for a game of "touch" in the street. I figured that since it was Friday and Irene (our house cleaning lady post 7/15/13) had spent the day clearing paths in the middle of debris, I thought it might be safe to invite friends over because the mountains of clutter had been leveled.
Along with Ralph and Dino and RC and Quarto and "Slow Harry" I recruited neighbors like, Tommy Blaser and Jeff Lennon to join us in the game in the middle of the soft, tar street on Harding Ave. The teams were evenly matched and the score was tied, so we threw out the "Next Touch Down Wins" challenge. Receiving the kickoff, we made it past the fifty yard line at the bumper of the Dahlin truck full of trash and earned a new first down. Being so caught up in the game, I failed to notice that Ulrich and his crew of "Angry Little Men" had arrived back from Saint Monica's and had been sitting on the front stairs plotting something against me and my "pubate peons" (they called us). Ulrich and his crew were a dangerous subgroup of the Wolf Pack and were not as creative as the older more Alpha members. Instead, his cronies were about as inventive as caveman and usually hid behind cars in ambush where they leaped out on smaller victims with fist and knuckles flying.
With three downs wasted, we had one more possession in order to score the winning touchdown. Although Tommy was younger than me he was a very good athlete and the quarterback drew up the play for him. At the snap of the ball and with the count of "alligators" on two, Tommy was covered like glue and I was free on the right side, running along the curb in front of the Blaser house.
RC threw the ball to me. I reached overhead and snagged it out of the air. Miracle - it actually stuck to my hands. I pulled it in and WHAM! Somehow my foot managed to catch something and down I went - face first on the ruff, greasy asphalt along the curb.
Trying to be as stealth as possible, the scheming Lilliputian villains pretended not to be paying any attention to us as they walked up the street in their covert plan to head to Rosie's liquor store. As planned, Ulrich had stuck his leg out and caught my foot! By the time any of us looked up, he and his bunch of hoodlums were already down the street.
Crack..went the sound of my bones when my right arm stuck the concrete curb that reshaped my dangling appendage into a grotesque "U" shape. I guess the adrenaline shock had minimized the pain of the face-plant and the blunt force trauma. The first thing I thought was how lucky my team was that the ball was dead and Dino couldn't score on the fumble.
At first, I had no idea that anything was wrong. As usual, I was the the last one to figure it out. The angry little subgroup of the Wolf Pack ran away to the Kissel's house and it wasn't until I stood up to my feet that I realized that my arm was deformed into the shape of a pretzel. This was a bummer, I had just gotten the full use of my leg back and now my arm. Ughhhh! We were just a bunch of 7th graders and all of them too stupid to know what to do, so they left me there - in the street - with a broken U-shaped arm and scurried home like a bunch of frightened cockroaches when the light is turned on. Irene had already left for the day and Kurt had just gotten home. He was sitting on the front steps by this time and as I approached from the Blaser's direction I screamed, "Hey, Kurt! I broke my arm!" in stoic, Viking non-emotional language that was instilled in our Dahlin DNA.
"Yeah, right" he said, sarcastically thinking I was pulling a seventh grade prank. Dad always said, "Swedes don't cry" and since there was no tears and carrying-on like a normal kid with a broken arm - Kurt didn't believe me, until I had gotten close enough for him to see the roller-coaster shaped appendage.
The Saint Monica record-breaking Water-Polo player, LA County Lifeguard and Eagle Scout - causally stood to his feet, tore the flap off of a cardboard box of decrepit National Geographic magazines that had cluttered our front porch and folded it lengthwise down the middle. He set my arm in it like a splint and tied twine around the bent thing that had been placed in the crud contraption.
"Go find mom" he said rather unceremoniously, then turned as if bored and went into the house in search of alfalfa sprouts and other hippie food.
(Before cellphones, and before 911, this was not such an easy task - but at least on this occasion, I wasn't going to die like last time (Post 11/29/13).
My white uniform shirt was full of grease, mixed with blood from the a fresh flow that dripped down from the cut over my right eye. It looked worse than it really was - but with the blood and the cardboard splint and the grease, I was a sight to behold.
I went from house to house looking for mom. Blasers. Tripps. Nargies.
I went to the Lennons knowing that mom probably wouldn't be there, but having a little bit of Viking terrorist in me, I was hoping to gross them out. It was devilish, I know, but it worked. Panic ensued when Dick Gas and DeeDee Lennon saw me, but I also have admit, it felt good to think that someone cared. On the way out, I said "Hi" to the statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary in their front window and headed towards Saint Mark's school. I waved Hi to the Smiths and to the Gillemots on the way and thought I would try the convent (where the nuns lived) next. I really didn't think mom would be there either, but figured that I could get a little payback on some of the Catholic Sisters and hoped to freak them out like I did when I showed up at their front door as "Spawn of Charles Mason" on Halloween (10/28/13).
The adrenaline was wearing off and my arm had began to throb in excruciating pain. Going from door to door in a bloody, grease-stained shirt with a twisted limb in piece of cardboard was just about the most pathetic picture in the history of the Venice California...NO!...in the History of the world. I looked worst than the "pagan kids" we collected money for in the plastic loafs of bread handed out to us in class. I felt like that little bird in the book, "Are You My Mother"...
... only the little lost bird, didn't have a broken wing and wasn't covered in blood.
Oh well, I found mom later that evening and the poor thing took yet ANOTHER trip to Saint John's emergency hospital. When I arrived home later that night with my arm in a cast the Wolf Pack made fun of me. I may have been down, but I wasn't out. I thought about putting the alligator we had in the backyard in their room, but I already had one wrestling match with that aquatic dinosaur and didn't want to go through that craziness again. Instead, in the middle of the night, I decided to sneak quietly upstairs to the third-floor abode of the Wolf Pack and slightly opened the cage of Iguana Del Diablo (8/1/13)
Wait for it!
Wait for it!
I was like a kid waiting for Santa Clause to arrive. I didn't sleep until I heard the screaming and panic of the Wolf Pack on the third floor as they wrestled with Del Diablo and with each other(that was the part). I smiled, reveling in sweet revenge and fell sound asleep with this comforting thought, "Victory...smells like the sounds of the Wolf Pack turning on each other." heheheheheI know I was the one with the broken arm, but I felt like I had won!
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