Unfortunately, my second grade teacher didn't at all comprehend my awesomeness. In fact, she felt threatened. In hindsight, I can see why. She would ask a cute question, like, "Now, kids, what number comes after 99?" and she expected to see a group of slightly confused small children work through the hardest problem of their life. But the second grade me said "fuck that shit" (I don't know if I knew the word "fuck" or "shit" back then, but I'm sure that's what I was thinking anyway) and yelled out "100" like I taught the class. The look on her face every time I'd do that was, if I remember correctly, kind of like a cross between a frog croaking and a toddler's "oh shit" face after they've dropped their lunch all over the floor -- she was vulnerable and defeated. I thought I had won. I had not realized, however, that the horror she felt built over time and consumed her thoughts, eventually culminating in the most nefarious invention I have ever seen.
One day, in class, while we were all trying our hardest to color in the lines with old Crayola crayons to make our color-by-numbers reindeer as accurate and Picasso-like as possible, my teacher innocently called me up to her desk. Realizing that the last two kids that had been called up to her desk had just come back from the principal's office with a look on their face as if their very soul had been pulled out of them through their eye sockets, my heart sank. The smile on her face was a relief for a time, but as I got closer, I realized that it was actually more of a toothy Chuckie grin.
"My husband makes things in our basement. It's kind of related to his job. I've told him a lot about you and he made this for you. I think this will help you!" She was barely able to contain her villainous excitement -- I was in for the psychological knockout of a lifetime.
Out of her desk came a very strange contraption that looked kind of like she had pulled the pipe from the back of her toilet and spray-painted it an unbecoming shade of rusty metallic gray. It was a terribly unwieldy thing. As she demonstrated how to use it, her pupils grew and her eyes widened, and she might as well have been the Wicked Witch of Western New York.
"See, you just hold it up to your ear like this... and when you talk, you can hear yourself! And if you ever start talking too fucking loud like you always do, you will DEAFEN yourself and your ears will bleed and your brain will turn to a mushy pile of gelatin and we will all tear out your intestines in celebration and throw them at the windows of your house so that your mother knows never to send her fucking kids to this school ever again!"
Okay, that isn't what she said, but that was what I heard.
She ensured that she was saying this part as loud as possible, so that the whole class heard. Even with a two-ended pipe up to my ear, I could hear the cackles and giggles. I wasn't going to live this one down.
For three consecutive days, I had to hold the ridiculous thing up to my ear every time I spoke in class. Eventually, I just stopped talking, so that I didn't have to hear myself. My second grade teacher was not only vindicated, but she also thought it was fucking hilarious. I had lost.
It has been at least 8 years since the pipe telephone entered my life, but it has never left. I don't know where it went. I think my mother probably threw it away in a fit of rage towards my second grade teacher's disturbing lack of professionalism and overall villain complex. But, at least in spirit, the pipe telephone has always been attached to my ear, monitoring what I say and never allowing me to raise my voice too much. This blog, named after the pipe telephone that haunts me so, is my 8 year delayed retaliation. This blog isn't just any personal blog -- this is my quest to defeat the pipe telephone.
