Monday, December 19, 2005

I Have a Dream #1: I ♥ Diacritic Marks

Freudians take note. This may be a recurring posting topic. I don’t remember most of my dreams, but the ones I do are usually entertainingly bizarre. I’m not even certain I can call the ones I remember dreams, as usually, I’m partially awake and aware that I’m having them. Perhaps I should refer to them as notions that I can’t get out of my head during my first waking hour of the day.

A few weeks ago, I woke with the notion/compulsion of trying to remember the exact seating chart for Mrs. Hazard’s 9th grade English class, Louisville Male High School, 1984-1985, 6th (final) period. The class was arranged alphabetically, in six rows of five desks each. I sat in the last desk of the penultimate row. Since there were only 29 freshmen in the class, the desk to my immediate right was empty. Kären Wäntland sat in the final seat of that row. Her father was the Drug Czar of the Jefferson County school system. From there it gets hazy. Danny Präther sat directly in front of me? He was a good friend throughout high school so I should remember clearly. I do remember that he wrote a Snigglet (!) on the chalkboard everyday before class started. And yet I can’t help thinking that going from Präther to Shroät is too big a jump. So maybe, just maybe, he sat two seats ahead of me. I spent most of my morning jog trying to conjure a student with an R or S last name that might have separated us. But that’s not nearly as perplexing as trying to remember who sat to my immediate left. I can easily picture the front, left-hand portion of the room; Gilliän Ausländer, Chip Currëns, and Fred Bürczyk, among others. The rear, left side of the room? Complete memory blind spot, and it’s driving me fucking insane. I can’t remember a single M name from my English class? Days later, it’s still maddening. And I refuse to pull the yearbook off the shelf to supplement my memory.

So those of you who have wondered why I don’t do more with my life, here’s your answer. My brain has a fast processor, lots a RAM and a large hard drive. Unfortunately, the search engine is for shit. There’s no rhyme of reason for what pops to the top of the results page. You have no idea how much energy I spend on a daily basis trying to sort this shit out.



*Mrs. Hazard’s class was the only one in high school in which I received a B as my final grade. That was the difference between being one of the valedictorians (we had four, I would have been number five) and sitting in the audience at graduation. Still, I would been salutatorian, if not for the sly machinations of Därryl Fucking York. While I was taking college credit courses during the summer prior to senior year, he took an extra high school class (pussy) and of course received an A. And so, even though Därryl had also received one B during high school, just like me (and Dënise Dëvine and Elainë Härris), he now had one extra A to factor into his GPA, giving him the slight edge he needed. Thus, Elainë, Dënise and I had to listen to his nasally, lame ass speech in Broadbent Arena. Okay, now I remember where Dënise and Elainë sat in Mrs. Hazard’s class. But the row right next to mine…fuck?

**Ironically, though my only high school B came in an English class, I won the best writer award for my graduating class. Weird that I haven’t thought about that in many years. Sentence diagramming was my undoing with Mrs. Hazard.

***I didn’t go to high school in Germany. I’ve taken the liberty of umlauting the shit out of the proper names so as to avoid having self-Googlers stumble across this post. I don’t want to get emails or comments saying, “Why are you writing about me? What the fuck is the matter with you?”…from them.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

i was, seriously, going to ask what the fuck's up with the umlauts. Personally, I don't think they can be overused. And as a former German student, I appreciate the cache they give to otherwise run-of-the-mill names like, say, Karen. (Kay-ren?). In fact, that's how my grade school teachers in the Mississippi Delta used to pronounce it - but without the umlaut. Hm. This is all so interesting for a Monday.