The Eight Year Old Comedian
Posted: Thursday, May 21, 2009
by Mike Fak
http://mikefak.com
I imagine most people don't remember everything they did over the years that was goofy. I seem to have a knack for remembering things so I do have a mental handle on many of my biggest blunders or forays into goofiness that I have done over the years.
I recall the first time I did something silly that made people laugh and although I paid the price, I found the laughter it got me was something I would strive to replicate for the next half century.
Back then the neighborhood, now called Wrigleyville, was a tough place to grow up. It wasn't the grand, restored neighborhood it is now. At the time I lived there in the 50s it was more gangified and punkified than it was gentrified.
When I talk about the old neighborhood and how tough it was, I have two standing jokes about those days. The first is: In that neighborhood you either had to be fast or tough. I ended up being the fastest first-grader in Illinois; until I took up drinking and smoking.
The other joke is: The school I went to was filled with beatings, muggings, shootings and stabbings. And than Sister Mary Shorts in a Bunch retired and that all ended.
Getting back to my story. It was second grade and we had a nun as rough on kids as a cob in a January outhouse is on a person's kiester.
She really did have a nickname. It was Sister Mary Long Johns because when she sat at her desk you could see the old long johns protruding down to her ankles.
Now this sister should have played for the Cubs because she had a great arm and deadly accuracy from anywhere in the thirty by fifty foot schoolroom.
Many an occasion found the sister wheeling around with the ever-present eraser in her hand and firing a strike at a kid in the back of the room goofing off when he should have been paying attention to what she was writing on the blackboard. Then as the youngster knocked the chalk dust off, she would stand with her hand outstretched waiting for the kid to bring her eraser back to her. Immediately she would erase something just to make sure that missile had enough chalk in it for the next target.
I was called up to the blackboard one day to write the answers to some multiplication problems she had written on the board and although I have always been good at math, this was one of those off days in my head.
For some reason I looked at the number six and saw the number nine which meant all of my answers were wrong. I could tell as sister stood behind me that I got something wrong and it dawned on me just at the moment she smacked the back of my head with the eraser.
I was a little shocked by the gentle smack and said something about getting my hair mussed up, which made a few of the girls snicker. Sister than picked up another eraser and proceeded to pummel my face with twin erasers, chalk dust flying everywhere.
I knew my face was covered in chalk because I could feel it around my eyes and the front of my shirt looked like I had been in a snowstorm. Now more kids were quietly giggling and I saw my first chance at standup comedy come to me.
Turning to the class, I raised my hands in the air and said: "ooooh, oooooh, sister killed me and now I'm going to haunt this school."
That brought the laughs and it also brought out the hand broom for a couple raps on the knuckles but I didn't care. I had made a joke in front of 47 kids and they thought it was funny. It was a start.
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Top-level comments on this article: (4 total)Good thing this happened way back when, Mike. In today's society Sister Mary Long Johns would be in jail for child abuse. On the other hand, you seem to have survived your grueling ordeal, so maybe it's not as bad as you make it sound. (Yeah, right.) Thanks for sharing!
I was looking for some sort of "whitey" reference!
Mike,To bad we didn't have "water"boarding your face back then, then your Father would not have know how bad you were!! My Father always told me"you get in trouble in school, wait until you get home" I wished he had "waterboarded" my rear end instead of what his hand did. Unlike what our government does, ask for my name and address, HE KNEW that! Funny thing I turned out OK.Jim Griffin
Enjoyed your article. Thanks for sharing.
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