THE DAHLIN ZONE and my biggest nightmare!

There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man.  It is a dimension in Venice California in the gap in time between now and then. It is the middle ground between what was fact and what was perceived to be. In it lies the pit of fears regarding the survival of Catholic school and lots of older brothers. It is the dimension of 1960’s in Markie D’s imagination. It is filled with tragedy, humor and a satirical look at the human condition.  

It is known as “The Dahlin Zone”  

I blogged my way through that first terrible week of fifth grade in September of 1966. It is now October 1968, I have just turned 12 and am in seventh grade in Catholic School. Sister Edith is my teacher, and (like a lot of the nuns before her), she has had her share of Dahlin boys (5 or 6 to be inexact, one right after another).  By this time in her long teaching vocation she was just plain tired of the plague that had infested Saint Marks some many moons ago beginning in the 1950's. Sister Edith will forever be notorious for her music lessons and will likely go down in infamy for her "head tones," for cracking rulers over hands of many-a-seventh grader, and for throwing erasers. She had a good arm and nailed me just about every time she hurled one of those chalk-filled bombs in my direction. She is probably in heaven right now playing catch with Jesus (However, I just hope she's not throwing erasers).

Anyway... I skipped reporting on last year - my sixth grade experience. If life wasn't already difficult enough, I mean, being shocked and shot, buried and shoved in the Hamper of Death, Milk Wars and pushing cars, left behind and knocked out, bitten by snakes, tormented and tossed like a salad in the trunk of Gustav's legendary Rat Killer...Sixth Grade was far worst than all of those things combined!

Besides starting the year off on the "wrong foot" with leprosy, and a stolen sweater that embarrassed the heck out of me...Du...Du...Du...I discovered my biggest NIGHTMARE!

Oh, I had barely made it out of Sister Godzilla's class by the skin of my teeth. I'm not joking when I say,  "I barely made it out." My only consolation was the fact that all of the Nuns at Saint Marks already had - like - eight Dahlins before I got there and were not, under any circumstance willing to subject themselves to that kind of pain ever again. Not one of them would ever consider holding anyone of us back for another year. Thanks to the shear number of Dahlins and the rather rambunctious nature of my brothers, who preceded me, I practically had FUNKING INSURANCE.  When I was promoted from fifth grade, it was Sister Godzilla's last year and she tried everything in her power to flunk me back into the fifth grade for another stint- since she was leaving. PAYBACK for the time we had electrocuted her (BLOG Post 4/26/13). Apparently, the Pope vetoed her, because the Catholic Church felt they couldn't afford to ruin a perfectly new teacher, recruited to be her replacement.

I made it!  Just like the Hamper of Death... just like the Templates... and just like Salton Sea, I made it out alive!

Having said all that, why couldn't they have moved me across the hall into the other sixth grade class? Why did they stick me in my mother's class? (The reason was obvious,, to spare the nun across the hall). Yep, my mom had begun teaching the sixth grade at Saint Marks and I mistakenly figured that this year would be like being on a holiday where I could just kick back and relax!  Nepotism had to have it's advantages, right?




I love my mom, but boy was I wrong!

Turns out that, I didn't have a clue!

My mom was funny and there wasn't room in our classroom for two class clowns and besides she could make an example out of me! 

In the future.. they are going to find out some things about little boys.  They are going to discover things like ADD and ADHD and learning styles and things like that.  In 1967 they didn't have those kinds of labels. I don't know if that was a good thing or bad thing. Without being defined or confined by a label I guess we really didn't have all the excuses we have today. But, the way I was wired...let me just put it this way...there was nothing in that classroom setting that was conducive to my particular learning style. We couldn't move enough, we couldn't touch enough, the desk chairs were too hard and too straight...there was too much order... I couldn't learn through my ears and the teachers talked too much. All of this to tell you that...I was special...and they just didn't know it or how to handle someone like me. Shucks, why stand when you can sit? Why sit when you can slough? Why slough when you can lay down? Why lay down when you can crawl around on the floor and grab the girl's ankles. 

Why obey when you can climb over the cloakroom wall and make everybody laugh and why study when you can cheat off Regina's paper.  (It was all pretty simple to me - I don't know why they didn't get it)

Sixth grade would be the hardest ten years I ever spent in school! I figured my mom  might just flunk me, since I was hers. I pictured it in my head - I would probably end up like Jethro Bodine (on The Beverly Hillbillies) as a 26-year-old in Junior High School (I guess by then, at least, I'd be as tall as Marilyn Jones and maybe even have hair on my lip by then like some of the other boys). Anyway, like The Beverly Hillbillies, I was a fish out of water. That very first week I learned that sixth grade in my mom's class would not be a "cake-walk" especially since I arrived on the first day with "leprosy."

I'm going to tell you about that story,  but it all begins a few years earlier about how the Dahlins managed to bring mosquitoes to California.

Yep, we are the one's...all right. And I'll tell you exactly how that came back to bite me (that's a pun)...let's say, it came back to bite me - like a bazillion times AND just two weeks before the first day of school. Everybody knows that sixth graders can be pretty cruel at times and should understand why I wished I have been committed to a Leper Colony Instead.

I would have gladly accepted the bell around my neck and publicly declared myself to be unclean rather than the ridicule of my friends.

...and it all began with my dad's frugal, hair-gel concoction of sugar-water... which I tell you about Next Tme...

...in the mean time, here is a picture of my hair that is as hard as a plastic, baseball helmet...that a gale force wind couldn't mess it up. That is where we get the derogatory expression... "Helmet Head."

Oh, and by the way, The Beatles just came out with a new song, "Hey Jude" sounds pretty cool to me and looks like it's probably going to be a pretty big hit.

Take a bad song and make it better...  Don't be afraid

And anytime you feel the pain, hey Markie D, refrain,
Don't carry the world upon your shoulders