Venice Invades the Boy Scout Universe!

I don't know what was worst...the Dahlins headed out of Venice to the zoo (post 5/3/2103) or Troop 32 headed to Farragut State park in Idaho to meet up with 35,000 other Boy Scouts.

In the words of the robot on Lost in Space "Danger Will Robinson"

Stardate: July 6th 1969

Captains Log: We had our heavy-duty, 1959 Chevy moving-truck converted into a "scout bus" by cutting the back doors in half,  installing some porthole windows and hard wooden benches along the sides. This left the center floor section open for transporting all the tents and backpacks and camping gear and for staging cage fighting. Miraculously, no one had fallen out of the back doors on any of the trips to Camp Slauson or Josepho so far, but we came close a couple times.

This half-open, barn-door (at the rear of the truck) arrangement had its advantages and disadvantages.

ADVANTAGE 1) On one trip, Charlie climbed out of the back of the truck onto the tongue of the trailer and slid himself onto the fender of the little cargo trailer, we were pulling in order to appropriate something we "desperately" needed inside the truck that was a matter of life and death.  Like a spider monkey, Charlie, climbed up on top of the little white trailer and slowly scooted himself very carefully towards the rear. I voted against the rope. I kind-of-felt like Charlie would have been better off without a bowline tied around his waist. I figured that if he fell off without the rope then at least he might have a chance of survival, but with the rope - it would be like being dragged behind a horse at 57 miles per hour on hot rough asphalt (not a good ending - if you know what I mean)!  Believe it or not, Charlie actually made it inside the trailer grabbed the bag of marshmallows and made his way back into the back of the "Scout Bus" without the scout masters being none-the-wiser.

ADVANTAGE 2) Another thing this particular arrangement afforded us on long trips, was that we could stand on the bench seat and hang our talliwackers out the back, when some small-bladder'd tenderfoot had to take a pee-pee between potty-stops!

ADVANTAGE 3) This gaping hole in the back end also allowed us to "full-moon" passerby's, especially if there were pretty girls and grandmothers in the cars trapped behind our slow-moving, smog-belching, billboard of a truck  - representing the Boys Scouts of America (Hey, I was twelve and at least we thought it was pretty cool - though, I'm pretty sure our scout masters might have felt differently - had they known).

DISADVANTAGE 1) Potential for falling out of the back - especially when leaning out to take a leak or when "giving the moon" to an old Mormon grandmother from Utah.

DISADVANTAGE 2)  Was the fact that carbon monoxide FUMES blew into the large open back. Carbon monoxide poisoning includes light-headedness, confusion, headaches, vertigo and can lead to the toxicity of the central nervous system. This might EXPLAIN WHY we sent a Boy Scout crawling out on top of a trailer on the freeway, pee'd on the cars behind us, indiscriminately exposed our bare butts to grandmas and fought with one another all the way to Idaho.  And... it might also explain why we always looked like dazed, refugee-rats whenever the truck finally rolled into a rest stop.




The other normal Boy Scout troops did not travel like us... they had air-conditioned travel-coaches with a restroom on board and drove through McDonald's on their way across country.












Although the carbon-monoxide poisoning could be blamed for a lot of things, in our case, however, I don't think the toxic fumes we were breathing could be blamed for mass constipation. I think that was due instead, both to the menu, and to the fact that the Scout Master's son never rinsed the pasta which ended up sticking to the insides of our intestines like the heavy paste on paper mache!

It's not like something we compared notes on.  "Hey, Kissel..have you taken a poop yet?"  That would have been ridiculous.

But, after 4 or 5 hot, sweaty days of traveling and camping the two scout master finally put two and two together when everyone began to moan and groan about stomachaches which they figured was more than just the ordinary toxic confusion, vomiting associated with minor carbon monoxide poisoning that was driving us all mad.

AND SO... the night after the infamous spaghetti incident, on the very same day I rescued David Cockerel from drowning in a small muddy lake outside Rock Springs in Wyoming...is when the proverbial "poop would have hit the fan" except for there was no poop and the scout masters came up with a diabolical plan.

I'll have to leave you hanging on this one... and come back and share how this interrogation tribunal got us a Highway Patrol escort... (well, kind of anyway)... to the embarrassment of the Entire Boy Scout Universe and to which (I'm sure) Lord Baden Powell was rolling over in his grave.  

AS I leave you until next time-  there are many of you right now saying, "Oh, this guy is just making up stories for sensationalism!"

I guarantee that every single bit of this is the "Straight Up TRUTH!

And I would ask, or dare anyone who is reading this - especially if you were a member of the illustrious Troop 32 from Venice California to weigh-in and corroborate these stories for the rest of the disbelieving world - at least for those in the 78 countries who read this BLOG!

Until next time...  Du är älskad!

AT ANY COST: The Induction Malfunction

As they tied the Boy Scout handkerchief around my eyes I could smell the salt air mixed with the dust of the backyard of the old Venice Scout House. With my eyes blindfolded my senses buzzed. I could hear the sound of the lone engine of the “Venice Short Line” that slowly chugged down West Washington Way and could also smell Alan, who hadn't bothered to bathe or use deodorant in about a month, and fought back against my urge to vomit.  In this initiation process, two Patrol Leaders spun me around trying to make me as dizzy as possible before pointing me in the direction of the backdoor that finally creaked open.

 

My heart jumped with anticipation about the secret induction ceremony into the Venice Boy Scout Troop 32. We were not the saints we had been years earlier. 

At twelve, I was youngest, smallest, weakest member of the Dahlin Wolf Pack. I was in by blood, but didn't really feel like I belonged.

I wasn't old enough to smoke with them in the hippie "hooch hut" out back or hang out with them when they went on those notorious hikes to Tuna canyon in Malibu. 

All I was to them was a toy, a thing to punch, or knock out, or electrocute, or bury, or shoot, or embarrass in front of friends and to experiment with.  

I lived in the same house, drove in the same cars, but always felt like an outsider looking in.    

I hoped this Boy Scout thing would be different, like a new tribe – a brotherhood where I might feel accepted and as though I belonged - crazy right? This is probably the same thing “Squeaky” Fromme was thinking when she signed up for the Manson Family. 

My head was still spinning when the Junior Assistant Scout Master put a dollar bill in my hand and whispered in my ear that I should not lose it, "at any cost."  Still reeling and off balance I ran into the door jam and eventually stumbled into the scout house that was dark and lit only by candles. Waiting inside were all the potential members of my new tribe. 

Walking through the short, dark corridor and into the center of the dilapidated old house on Washington Way (that had been purchased by the Venice Lions Club and giving to our Troop), I could feel the intensity of those anxious, sweaty, smelly boy scouts who had been just as eager as I was for this induction initiation.  Before reaching my destination someone grabbed the dollar bill out of my hand. I could smell the fiend and had every honorable intention of getting the dollar back “at any cost” (but figured that socking the kid in the face who stole it was something that I had to deal with later).

The handkerchief was pulled off eyes and I stood stunned before a tribunal of Senior Patrol Leaders and the two Scout Masters – Jim Serosi and Lyman Tapp as the entire troop looked in.  I don’t know why, but I felt like one of those Christians in the coliseum getting ready to be burned at the stake. 

“Mark Dahlin” said the skinny Scout master, “You were handed a dollar bill, were you not?”

“Yes sir,” I said nervously, yet with intense pinpointed eyes that I think might have frightened him.

In an effort to bail out the other leader, the heavier Scout Master continued, “Where is the dollar bill now, Mr. Dahlin? Will you produce it for us?” 

Biting my tongue and clenching my jaws, I had a couple options and I didn't want to blow my chance of finally belonging. If I said I dropped it, it would be a lie. Did they want a liar in the troop? Probably not! If I told the truth and said that someone stole it from me, then it would be like ratting-out one of my new tribal members and who would want a snitch to belong to this new brotherhood that I was so desperate for.

At home no one listened to me anyway, so blaming someone else was totally out of the question. Besides, the dollar bill was given to me and it was my duty to hang on to it. I had one job and I failed. I looked around the room at all the solemn eyes that stared disapprovingly in my direction.  I wanted in! I saw Steve Kissel, and Ronnie, and James Humphries, and David Cockrell, and Phillip Aylala, and Chronister and Dego, and Mark and Alan and Ray and had to figure a way to fix the mess I had gotten myself into. Then I remembered the words, “At all cost.”  Was that a challenge or permission to do whatever it took?  Maybe that’s what they wanted, I thought?  Maybe this whole thing was a test and felt that this new tribe wanted to see what I was made of. 

I looked around at the “Pillsbury Doughboys” and the “Theodore Cleavers” and the “regular” kids from regular families that hadn't been raised by a pack of wolves like I had. 

I looked at those soft kids who hadn't had to fight everyday and who hadn't been though the same crud I did… and did what any member of a Wolf Pack would do among sheep. I smelled the stench of the kid who stole my dollar bill, grinned at the two Scout Masters and hurled myself onto about six members of the Flaming Arrow Patrol. 

Down we went into a massive dog pile of flailing arms and legs. I had Ronnie around the neck in a choke hold and squeezed him until his fingers loosened the grimy grip he had on the coveted dollar bill. Phillip, a wrestler from the Venice High wrestling team, (who outweighed me by 50 pounds) was on my back and was unsuccessfully trying to peal me off of Ronnie.  

“At any cost”

“At any cost”

“At any cost” …were the words that kept going through my head.

The whole troop was on the floor fighting. It was a regular bar-room brawl. Yelling and screaming and making threats to cancel the National Jamboree trip planned for July, the Scout Masters and Senior Patrols Leaders pulled kids off one by one until they got down to Ronnie and me.

Leaving Ronnie’s limp body on the ground, I quickly stood my feet, straightened my uniform, smiled at the two men in charge, saluted and said, “I believe this is the dollar bill you guys are looking for.” Pleased with myself. I smiled as though this was all in the course of ordinary business, like it was straight out of the scout handbook or something. 

It took a tribunal, several phone calls to parents (and seeing that my dad was the President of the Lions club and Troop treasurer), I was admitted to my new clan. Pshaw I didn't get what all the fuss was about…this was like just an ordinary day at my house.  After all this was not your ordinary Boy Scout Troop –this was a Boy Scout Troop from Venice California and a Boy Scout Troop that was now infected by the youngest member of the Dahlin Wolf Pack.  

Just so you know, this long-held, sacred ‘rite of passage’ for Troop 32 was abandoned and exchanged for something much different, more friendly and a little tamer...JUST IN CASE another kid from Harding Avenue every decided to join the Troop. 

Our dysFUNtional troop was now headed out of Venice and into the the Midwest! 

 Beware World! 

Moon Landing and Diarrhea part I    

Jesus. Venice. And Night of the Living Dead!

Venice was not just a place, but an identity - something that is inescapable part of you. Good or bad, being from Venice gave you both pride and cringe.  Though only 12, by 1969 I had been across the country and back 3 times and seen my fair share of the "Purple Mountain Majesty and Fruited Plains."  Everywhere we went, "tourist" (we called them, derogatorily), were the people living in their own towns who look at the long hair of my brothers and invariable asked if we were from Venice. I learned early on of the stigma of being from Venice that gave my brothers such pride.  It was like that part in the Bible where it talked about Jesus being from Nazareth that said, "Can anything good come for Nazareth?"

Every time someone looked at my family and asked if we were from Venice, it was as if  they were saying, "Can anything other than hippies, free love, drugs Flower Power and Jim Morrison come from Venice?" We thought that was good, but it appeared they didn't share that sentiment. They might well have said to our face, "Can anything good come from Venice?"  So I guess I understood how Jesus felt when he heard those words.

The once glamorous Canals that hadn't been filled-in, began to rot and stink and the formerly cute bungalows of Abbot Kinney's dream were now run down shacks full of pot smoking hippies, unemployed artist, and raucous parties of the flower children of the sixties.

Several weeks after I broke my arm playing football in the street, I had been outside in my cast. Although it had Andrea's treasured signature, as well as some other seventh graders, it smelled and was pretty disgusting already. I was didn't give much thought to that fact that I had only been wearing one shoe when an older couple slowed down to a stop in front of our house and gawked. The old geezer cracked his window a couple inches, as if the air on Harding avenue was unsafe to breathe, and called me over.







His wife was holding some kind of Hollywood, or Beverly Hills, or Celebrity map or something and stared at our house - eyes wide in disbelief and mouth hanging open in shock.




















With cars and boats and more broken down cars and broken down boats and creaky stairs and hippie brothers hanging out on the porch, the couple from Nebraska carefully whispered through the cracked window asking if my house was a hippie commune?



I said, "No, I live here!"

"With your Parents?" they asked, incredulously.

"Yeah!" I said.

"Poor parents" the man muttered.

"Where's your other shoe" the lady asked.

"What other shoe? I asked

"The one your missing" she snarled, thinking I was being a disrespectful smart-aleck.

I informed her, "I'm not missing one."

"Then why are you only wearing one shoe?" her husband barked at me as he took over.

"Oh, this old thing isn't my shoe. I came outside barefooted and found this decroded thing in the flowerbed."

I looked inside the window to see if our house was on the tourist map as a place of interest for being a hippie commune as they rolled up the window and sped away - only to screech to a halt in front of the Lennon Sister's home two houses up the street. I ran down the street towards them in my older brother's size 11 shoe and frightened the poor couple like I was one of the dead bodies in "Night of the Living Dead."

I can't really say with certainty whether our house was on  that map or not, but certainly this couple went back to where they came from telling their neighbors about what they saw on Harding Avenue and wondering if anything good could come from Venice?"






Pshaw... "fer sure" We have the Famous Lennon Sisters across the street and right behind us was Cheryl Arnold who was Miss Venice, and Miss Santa Monica, and Miss LA...SO TAKE THAT... tourist!

Ha! Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

With all that said, I guess the thing I want to share next with the world is that fact that my Boy Scout Troop from Venice - Troop 32, had been in steep decline by the time I had been recruited by my Eagle Scout brother and was not the best thing Venice exported: something me and my fellow hoodlum scouts took great pride in.

We raided camporees at night, causing havoc on Troop 34, cutting the ropes on tents and making life as miserable as we could at Camp Slauson in Malibu in the Santa Monica mountains.

Here is a picture of our (converted moving truck) i.e. Troop 32 Boy Scout Truck - that was a not a whole lot more than "cage wresting" on wheels.

You can take the Boy Scouts out of Venice, but you cant' take the Venice out of Troop 32!

Next time: National Jamboree and "Diarrhea 'till Easters"

Pubate Peons: The Dangeling Appendenge and Smell of Victory

(continued)...after sitting half-day next to Sister Edith and finishing the second half in solitary confinement next to Sister Schultz (for knocking out Terry in the school yard) a group of us ended up at the lawn between the Venice Police and Venice Fire Station.

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.      

MOST IMPORTANT - It was still early in the day and the herbal-smoking WOLF PACK have not had the chance to assemble in full force, therefore my friends would be reasonable safe from the terrorist attacks from my hippie older brothers. The last thing I needed was for one of them to be shoved in a hamper, put under a car, buried in a pit, dropped out of a window or electrocuted while flushing a toilet.

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."                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 hehehehehe

I know I was the one with the broken arm, but I felt like I had won! 

       

Werewolf II: Terry, Don't mess with youngest member of the Wolf Pack!

(Continued) 


The cool kids in our seventh grade class rarely ever picked Harry for kickball. He was tall and lanky and a little slow and I felt sorry for him. I felt sorry for stray dogs, for big fat Pinky (who was now living with us), and for anyone I felt was an underdog! 

Go figure! With a hundred older brothers and nine hundred of their friends who all tortured the baby brother - that's me - I thought it was my job in life to protect the "least of these" and to stand up for widows and orphans. You would think that when I dished out Terry's punishment the Nuns at Saint Marks would have been happy with my cause - especially since it had to do with justice and caring for a "slow" kid in class. 

No.  As it turned out, they weren't happy at all! 

As a matter of fact Sister Schultz, who was built like a NFL linesman and outweighed me by 200 pounds, put me in a headlock and I figured that Jesus wouldn't be happy with me if I took her down like I did Mike "Curtzy" back in the fifth grade (Post 6/29/13). I fell on the ground and pretended to pass-out hoping they would send me home.  No such luck!  I would have to go in and smell the sweaty aftermath of recess. 

Here's what happened. I could have cashed-in on the "bloody-knuckles thing" and get a higher pick for one of the kickball teams now that my approval rating was at an all time high, but I chose instead to do the ridiculous helicopter thing with Harry since he was left out again. He wasn't just picked last, he wasn't picked at all. Don't ask me how I did it, but I even managed to recruit Ralph to the silly nonsense that was making Harry so happy. 

Terry was one of the big kids and I'm sure he had hair coming in under his armpits. You could always tell when that was happening, because these guys were the ones who smelled like a garbage truck after recess. It was the same with eight grade boys too...they were plagued with this thing called puberty, but hadn't learned to take showers yet - like the high school boys had, so our end of the hall at Saint Marks always smelled like the rotting carcass of a dead cow that had been left in the sun too long. 

Terry was upset because I had stolen Ralph away from his team and Ralph could kick the ball over the church roof. Anyway, Dino had a mean kick and sailed the ball out-of-bounds over mean 'O Mr. Schneider's fence (who lived on the other side of the chain-link on Garfield), which meant that the kickball game was over.  Now Terry, was not only one of the big kids - I'd say in the top three, but was probably the brightest among the tallest and he like to let every know how smart he was.

Because he was upset that his team lost without Ralph he came over and began making fun of us twirlers. I was okay with it, it didn't bother me or Ralph that much, but when he started calling Harry hurtful names - THAT WAS IT, the hair on the back of my neck stood up.  I had been attacked by a rooster, whacked by a Nun, and totally humiliated in front of all the girls. This was not the day to sweat and stink and have hair under your arms or be too tall and pretend to be too smart and pick on the underdog -"slow Harry." 

I had to use restraint. I didn't want to just jump on his head and take him down. I had to think of a way to show how stupid he was at the same time. You know, like, cut him down a notch or two in his own eyes. 

Epiphany! The idea came to me. I asked Terry if he had ever taken the "Viking-Neck-Strength-Test?" (say that three times fast). I felt if Terry was too stupid to fall for it then he double deserved it. I told him we did this at home all the time and then proceeded to show him how to do it. I stood in front of the concrete wall and let Ralph demonstrate on me. He pretended to pull really hard and I pretended to fight back the best I could. I said the object was to see how far he could pull my head away and we would measure the distance and see who had the stronger neck muscles. The bet was on and all the boys gathered around for the Viking challenge. Since Ralph had just demonstrated on me, I "let" Terry try his strength test first. (Grin) 

You know that story in the Bible about wolf in sheep's clothing... well... I smiled on the outside as the inner werewolf went to work. I pulled Terry's head...the kids cheered.. he really thought he was something - UNTIL...

Until I had planted my feet against the wall and had his head out from the concrete wall some four inches and LET IT GO! 

"Whack" Cracked his recoiling head against the wall that sounded like a watermelon that had been dropped from the top of our three story house. 

Bam  Went Terry's limp body to the ground. 

I stood over the top of Terry in a symbolic jester of victory, foot on his chest, raised my hand and said, "Yeah! Who's smart now..Huh?" and called him one of the names he had insulted Harry with. Applause from the smelly 12 and 13-year-olds, prompted me to go into my "Wicked Witch" routine, "I'm melting...Good bye cruel world!" Laughter! 

Then  thud... I was on the ground, tackled by a 290 pound female linebacker dressed in black in white in a police choke-hold. She thought I killed Terry, but I knew he was only unconscious and would wake up momentarily seeing stars. 

I decided not to take out the Nun, because she was Jesus' wife and knew that it wouldn't have bode so well for all the Purgatory time I already had coming, but Terry? He DESERVED IT!  Poor...poor...Terry! 

Sister Schultz pinched my ear, dragged me inside and made me sit next to her desk for the rest of the day in front of the entire eight grade class to give Sister Edith a break.  "Yuck!" Those guys smelled worst than seventh graders. I sat there and stared down David Smith for the rest of the day and only managed to heave twice.  

                      It was a good day after all!  

"In a city known as Venice, there's a grand old school
Pledged to God and to our country, hail all hail to you.


Joyous days. Happy Days. Spent with in our hearts. 
Hail to you, our Alma Mater. Hail, all Hail Saint Marks!" 

P.S. Alma Mater.. means pregnant mother or something like that in Latin.        
 

"Et tu, Brute?" The Werewolf of Venice

(Continued) I apologize for being late on getting this one out.. but as it turned out, after my epic clash with the rooster, (which was once a close ally) the insidious beast was now nothing more to me than a backstabbing traitor... "Et tu, Brute?"

Needless to say, I was late for school.

I wasn't happy that I had to give excuses for my being late to school, either. I tried the best I could to explain why to my seventh grade teacher, Sister Edith. I went on about how it was trash day and how it was my job (even though I had fifteen thousand older brothers) to drags the cans (all by myself) to the ally because of my "Saint Francis" relationship I had built with the mini-Godzilla (when my brothers tried to kill me by burying in the Igloo of Death Post 2/27/14) and how the ugly attack rooster wouldn't let anyone else in the backyard and how all of this had something to do with the Mexican Tomato plants...

I don't know what it was...but I don't think that a 12-year-old is supposed to use words like: Saint Francis, Godzilla and Mexican Tomato plants all in the same sentence or all in one long breath. She interrupted me, impatiently tapping her worn out yardstick on the old brown desk. 'Rude! Hello!' I thought.

Thump Thump Thump! Tap Tap Tap!  The sound of her rapping that stick on her desk gave me a flashback! My pre-pubescent PTSD kicked in and I zoned out!

The rest of the kids in the class room started laughing. 'What?'  I thought, 'Like this doesn't happen to any of you other little creeps. Yeah like none of you have attack roosters and a Staff-Sergeant-Dad, who beats on the ceiling with a broom handle on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings. Like none of you have to eat oatmeal with meal worms before you get here. Like no one else here has ever had to wrestle an alligator or has been bitten by a snake or thrown over a cliff or shot at with needle-tipped arrows, electrocuted or dropped out of a window. Sure, right, like none of you other kids haven't ever had to do battle with a prehistoric monster first thing in the morning before school.' I sneered at the class and looked at all the empty eyes staring back and then it dawned on me!


THEY DIDN'T!  Normal People didn't have a giant frog the size of a beagle that ate baby chickens, or an alligator, or a monkey, or rattlesnakes, or chuckwallas or a bazillion rabbits and guinea pigs, turtles, a nasty looking cat that had been raised from the dead... or a pigeon that lived on top of the refrigerator or mushrooms that grew in the shower.    

I forgot that the Dahlins weren't normal...by any stretch of the imagination... and then realized that they thought I was making this entire story up about having to do battle with Godzilla before even getting to school! Like it wasn't true! 'Idiots! What do they know?'

Their stupid excuses on the other hand were like pathetic white bread in comparison, "My dog ate my homework." Hello, gag me with a spoon! "I stubbed my toe and my mom rushed me to the emergency room and I had to keep it elevated all day and had to watch cartoons and eat ice cream."  Whaaaaaa! Really? 'Oh poor baby, call the Whammmbulance!'

They thought I was joking and Sister Edith thought I was trying to make fun of her and she pulled a desk up to the front of the room and made me sit right next to her all day long! She wouldn't even let me show her the blood that had run down my leg and into my red Ked sneakers.  "Sheeze-Louise"

Trust me, someone was going to get it!  "Stay clear or my, oh my!"  Forget about the boys for a minute - one of them was bound to get it at recess. But. there. THEY. were! The girls! Ughhhhhhh. Looking at me like I was some alien creature from Mars.  Marilyn and Theresa and Julie and ANDREA!  I knew I didn't stand a chance with the girls against regular boys who were human-beings from planet earth.

Stupid
Dumb
Retarded
There I sat like a wounded or sickly wolf cut out of the pack - right up next to Sister Edith's desk. It was like I had leprosy or some contagious disease.

"Head tones" the Catholic nun screeched.  No! She wasn't about to get 'head tones' from me today... I refused to sing!

I was somewhere outside the Troposphere... Flying in one of the Apollo rocket ships on the way to the moon. I was trying to get away and thought that maybe I could live up there - if I was lucky!

"Read the question Mark!" Sister Edith bellowed judiciously from the platform where her desk was perched! My spaceship crash landed and I was suddenly back on planet Earth, in Venice, in the seventh grade, in a room at Saint Mark's school. I fumbled around for what seemed like 20 pressured-filled minutes trying to find the page we were on and didn't have a clue where we were. I knew it had something to do with Pavlov's dog, and, in a conditioned involuntary reflex I began reading in the middle of the page at the exact same time that Earnestine started to read! Sister slapped my desk with her yardstick and yelled at me.

I had no idea why the nun had gone berserk! First the rooster, now her! In front of the entire class, she wrapped my knuckles with her ruler and broke the thing over my hand. 'Ha! That'll teach her' I thought.

After Earnestine began reading again, I looked down the page of the text book and realized that she hadn't asked me to read.  She had asked Earnestine to read the paragraph following the QUESTION MARK - you know - a question mark the little squiggly thing with a dot that looks like this...
          ?
I thought she had asked me to read the question!  But she had asked Earnestine to read the question mark.

Alright! Touché Sister, this one was yours - you won this one, fair and square.  I limped outside for recess and all the boys wanted to see my bloody knuckles. They thought it was cool how I made up the big story about having to fight a rooster this morning and then how I dared to disrupt the class by reading right over the top of Ernestine, especially since I was in whacking distance of Sister Edith's notorious yardstick. 

Acting braver than I really was, my bloody knuckles were now a middle-school badge of honor and I said, "Oh Yeah!" and tried not to limp. Ricky said it was the best excuse story he had ever heard and all the smelly 12-year-old boys laughed in agreement. They thought I was cool for making up such a far fetch story about guard roosters and Saint Francis and all that! 

Anyway, I had been attacked by a rooster, humiliated, threatened with a stick and whacked with a ruler by a 300-year-old nun. Like one of Pavlov's dogs my fuse was a little short because of all the stimuli I had been subjected to this morning and knew that I had a long hard day in front of me. 

Ralph, the guy who helped me nearly cut off my leg 5 months ago, (blog post 11/29/13) Harry and I decided that we would ditch kickball and twirl ourselves around like helicopters instead. Actually the cool kids didn't pick Harry for one of the teams and I felt sorry for him.

And... this is when the Inner-Viking - the fuse blew... and Pavlov's passive dog turned into a werewolf that snapped. 

Poor, Poor, Terry!  

Blame it on the rooster, on Sister Edith, on her stick - her broken ruler; blame it on my PTSD...blame it on a conditioned involuntary reflex... blame it on my past electrocutions...but none-the-less, I really think Terry deserved what he got next!