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February 3, 2007
meat is murder
it seems like a lifetime ago - but i still remember the first time step-pop turned the family van up beracah drive and we discovered for the first time that vast expanse that opened up just past the tree-line revealing a row of modest houses on the left a smallish blocky looking church building on the right. and interspersed amongst some taller weeds were a handful of star-spangled school buses - i'm guessing this was meant to be in keeping with the all-american theme of the aptly named all american christian academy even though none of those buses appeared to work. a telling metaphor if you ask me.
the school itself was inside what probably would have been a 3 bedroom 2 bathroom house if it had not been converted into a learning annex. the principle's office was in the garage - and the lunch room was on the back porch. at the height of enrollment we had maybe 14 students - a collection of kids whose parents were members of the church or kids like my brother and i whose parents were slightly nuts. and i'm here to tell you my parents were slightly nuts. around the same time my brother and i were enrolled in this school - mom and pop also got mixed up in a pyramid scheme that marketed freeze dried meals that replaced actual meat with large chunks of soy that were supposed to taste exactly like the meat that they were being substituted for - of course it was terrible and rubbery and did my parents talk about it with everyone they came in contact with? yes. yes they did. in fact the royal american food company encouraged its members to host dinner parties allowing them to prepare delcious dishes like chicken a la king and beef stroganoff for their soon to be former friends. and did my parents follow this advice with far too many friends and family members for my liking. you know it's true. in fact - it was probably around this time that i made the decision to never introduce any future friends to my parents. ever...
why did i bring this up? ah yes - the meat deficiency in my parents diet caused them to think that sending my brother and i to all american christian academy was a fantastic idea. in fairness to my brother - he wasn't even a problem child. he was a good student and enjoyed the other private christian school he was attending at the time. i was coming off a two year stint as an unruly home schooler/stay in bed mom - which immediately followed a two year stint as an unbridled hooligan during my 3rd & 4th grade years that caused me to be homeschooled in the first place...and so there we were - my brother and i - with our military haircuts and our spit-shined shoes...not to mention the absurd red white & blue ties walking into a two year polyester nightmare. an i can safely say that experience effectively scarred me for life - and not with one of those cool scars either - you know, the kind that you talk about on a 4th date when it's apparent things are getting sufficiently serious so you think it's probably a good idea to portend some emotional depth...not that this has ever happened to me.
in some ways the administration tried to make our time at aaca seem as normal as possible - we had a flag football team - we had p.e. every day - of course even these simple joys were robbed by all of their pleasure by the rigid dress code we had to abide by. i can safely say in 1987 & 1988 we were among the first males in america to wear shorts the fell mid-knee. for our younger audience members who may not be aware i should mention that in those days such shorts were not en vogue. in fact, they did not even make shorts at that length so we had to buy these really uncomfortable workout pants and modify them appropriately - and boy did we get laughed at. on occasion we would go to the local public high school to run on their track and...it's a miracle i have any self-esteem left at all.
also - i'm fairly certain that the excessive workouts stunted my growth and caused me to hate running even to this day. our p.e. instructor/principle/primary teacher mike mincielli had gotten his hands on the training program used by the miami hurricanes and thought such a program for training elite college athletes would be completely appropriate for a rag tag collection of jr. high and high school students. so we were doing 440 yard sprints and timed mile runs and on one particular sunny day i ran a 6:10 mile - and i don't know if that's good for a 13 year old all i know is that every day after that i had to do additional running because i could never break that time. and that additional running was done through through anthill (among other things) infested cow pastures with five lb weights in each hand.
after these rigorous workouts we had to fulfill an obligation known as project responsibility which included mowing - weed eating - livestock wrangling - and planting half grown trees. because my step-father was always late picking us up from school my brother and i were subjected to additional work that had to violate practically every child labor law ever written. seriously. we were doing a minimum of 25 hours of hard labor every week - and there was no loafing on the job either because all of the teachers/church staff lived on the property and they were always watching. the pastor/figurehead/cult leader/football coach lived in the palatial estate at the end of the road and always seemed to know everything that happened. and if anyone slipped anything passed him you could be certain his wife would find out about it. because she was the devil.
every year we attended an annual convention where kids from freakshow schools like our own would compete for supremacy in athletics, music, and of course preaching. i didn't do so well in the athletics portion but i managed to place 3rd in the piano recital. of course the asshat who got second place was more than happy to inform me that there were only 3 of us in the competition. but that's okay because in 2007 i'm awesome and he's probably still an asshat. anyway, the day we left i got into an ice fight with this girl named diane and i was chasing her with a handful of ice and because diane was a very skinny girl she managed to slip into the space between the ice machine and the wall and as i prepared to unleash a barrage of ice at her the devil walks around the corner and clucks disdainfully like a character in a novel that teenage girls enjoy reading - stating that i am in clear violation of the school's rigid 6 inch rule and should be punished as unjustly as possible. she actually didn't say that thing about unjustly even though you know it was totally true. by the time her husband arrived on the scene an innocent ice fight had turned into domestic battery with me standing over a cowering diane preparing to punch her and who knows what else - so i was threatened with expulsion and the pastor insisted that i write the following sentence 636 times: it is a sign of weakness for a young man to strike a young lady.
it's funny - even now now every time i reach for a handful of ice to freshen a beverage i think of diane and that silly little school with its star-spangled buses and i thank God we got out of that place alive and that my parents are eating meat again.
| By young_christopher | 5:02 PM
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Comments
Posted by: Gwen at February 7, 2007 11:39 PM
Posted by: Heidi at February 11, 2007 9:57 PM