Spiral

Today I opened up a new spiral notebook and the last page was part of a Vietnamese newspaper.

There's a bomb in the bathroom

Throughout school there were always a few bomb threats each year.  Usually these were just from someone calling in a threat but my senior year things went a bit differently.  There was a bomb in the school!  ...or so they thought.

After it was known that we needed to get out of the school, word spread that a bomb was found in one of the bathrooms.  Someone noticed something suspicious in one of the toilets and alerted the principal's office right away.  They took a quick look and determined we should get out of there--better safe than sorry sort of thing.

The "bomb" was investigated a bit more and determined to be....the automatic flusher.  It had gotten loose.

Clarky

In seventh grade I had a teacher affectionately known as Clarky.  Clarky taught Social Studies and was a great and passionate man who truly wanted his students to learn.  One of the ways you could tell this was through his utter frustration.  Every so often the class would make him just so very, very mad.  The worst of this occurred one day when he had too much of a student not knowing or paying attention and decided to throw his book across the classroom.  We paid attention the rest of the time.

My other biggest memory from that class happened the day someone decided to put a dead bird on Clarky's desk.  Yes.

Sometimes I wish I could turn back time

One year when I was in high school a lot of people wore Carhartt jackets.  Makes sense, I’m from the sticks, lots of farmers/hunters, etc.  It became so popular that it was somehow thought to be “gang” related and there were threats of it being outlawed.  It was all very laughable.  Anyway, for senior skits that year, a group of guys performed “Quit Playing Games with Carhartt” to the tune of “Quit Playing Games with My Heart” by the Backstreet Boys.  It was one of the most fabulous things ever and I can’t help but sing along…to the wrong words…if I ever come across the song on the radio.

Planting the future

When I was little my Mammaw Shirley and Pappaw Toodlum decided they wanted to do something for me that would benefit my future.  While other grandparents start a college fund or go gaga over Gerber life insurance, mine decided to plant some ginseng.  You see, the Crumps were quite adept at finding ginseng, morel mushrooms, whatever they looked for.  A pretty penny could be made selling ginseng (and nothing's better than some fried morels) and they wanted the best for me. 

The ginseng was put in the ground at the edge of the woods right behind the house and through the years we would check on it.  Still there, growing along with me, things were as expected...then one year--no ginseng.  During the in-between years wild blackberry bushes showed up in the same area.  It was marvelous as blackberries are one of my favorite fruits (I have a blackberry story for another time) and yum, cobbler!  But, as things go, it turns out that blackberries and ginseng aren't the best of friends and yep, they killed each other...