By now you all have noticed that I have been taking more and more liberties with my Knee Deep intro, particularly the part where I say “MORE PLEASE!” I’ve invited a few guests to try their hands at it with voice overs and have gone off the rails with a few wild screeches myself. Being that the holiday season is upon us, I thought it was time to set up a little yuletide contest and invite you to send in your own attempt. Sultry or sad, quick or quacky, video yourself saying, “Don’t forget the M as in more please!” and over the next week email it to jeff@jeffmbender.com. Send those more pleases to me, and I’ll choose the best one for a Christmas gift mailed directly to you. It’s my way of diving headlong into the season, and it’s your way to audition for your very first part as an authentic voice over. I know, I know, it’s not Hollywood, but who knows? You may be the next Tom Hanks doing Woody in the Toy Story Fifty! And speaking of stories, here’s Knee Deep, episode fifty-one called Parking Myself in a Corner.
From time to time when I was teaching art, I would get a student of exceptional talent, a student whose gifts were so extraordinary as to change the way I looked at the world. On my roster one year was a student who was on the autism spectrum, and as I got to know him, I learned he had challenges interacting socially with others. I’m going to called him Incredible Cal because his mind dealt with numbers like one of those hand-held calculators that came out in the seventies, the ones we all rushed out to buy to replace our slide rules. Most people don’t remember the slide rule, and it has gone by the wayside like spiral notebooks, oversized collars and eight track tapes.
Oh man, actually, I still have all of those.
Anyway, I loved having Incredible Cal in art class because he had a gift for memorizing all kinds of data and numerical information. Once I found out that he had this special gift, I threw away my personal calendar and began supplying Cal with the dates of every appointment I had on my agenda. For example, if I had a dentist’s appointment next Tuesday at 3:30 after school, I didn’t need to write it down. I just told Incredible Cal and he would remind me as soon as he walked into my class. If I needed to know anything, in fact, about any number, like what Pi was out to the thirtieth decimal, he could tell me on the spot. That kind of information is indispensable when you need to fact check the world or win a car for being the closest to guess how many jellybeans are inside a Volkswagen. With Incredible Cal around, I started to feel like I was young again and powerful, back in the seventies, wearing bell bottoms, and listening to the Electric Light Orchestra.
I also realized that Incredible Cal knew the license plate number of every teacher’s car in the teacher’s parking lot. It was his gift. You wouldn’t think information like that is very important, but, turned out, it kind of was.
“Cal, do you know the license plate numbers of every teacher’s car in the lot?” I asked one day.
“Yes, he knows all of them,” half the class pipped in. “Just ask him.”
“Cal, what is my license plate number?”
“IN RPTD 88.”
My mouth dropped open. “Oh, wow,” I said astounded, “That is right!”
Not able to let that go, I had to know more. I figured if he knew the numbers, he knew how many cars and what types should be in certain places. As it turns out, teachers park in pretty much the same place every day, based on how far it is to the entrance, or who they want to avoid on their way out. I always parked pointed towards the sun to warm my seat so that in the winter I could feel like I was in one of those mall massage chairs when I drove home. For many teachers, however, they just liked their spot. Their car felt at home in the imaginary privacy of their own area, much like a cat feels at home inside a microwave.
As long as all the teacher’s cars were where they were supposed to be, Incredible Cal was a diligent and quiet worker in class. The license plate numbers were all in place in his world, and all was arithmetically correct. One day however, he came in belting out a license plate number over and over. Something was up.
“Cal, what’s wrong, is there anyone who is parked in the wrong spot today? Is there a teacher that has taken another teacher’s spot?”
“Yes,” he answered frankly. “Mr. Dubious is in Mrs. Meek’s spot.”
“What kind of car does she drive?”
“Blue Toyota Camry.”
Where does she park?”
“Under the tree, always under the tree,” he answered in a flash.
This was beginning to sound like a game of Clue. There was a who-done-it happening here and Cal knew all the players. I ran over to the window and sure enough, under the tree was a somebody’s car, but it certainly was not a blue Camry.
“What’s Mr. Dubious’ license number?” I yelled across the classroom to Cal.
“IN CKN74 JF.”
“Well, I’ll be darn,” I announced loudly, as if it were an assignment, “Mr. Dubious took Mrs. Meek’s spot today, and her blue Camry’s clear down at the other end.” Thankfully, I soon had thirty more kids by the window to back me up. We looked out across the big wide black paved expanse, and we all had the same thought.
Who was messing up Cal’s parking lot every day?
Who would have that kind of nerve? Why would someone purposely put another person through that kind of pain? Standing there, I began to wonder, as kids leaned out four stories up, just what kind of car wars had been happening right under my nose all these years as I pulled in and out of my workplace parking lot. This was undoubtedly some kind of a game of musical car meanness, and it had to stop. There were cars out there that I liked with their everyday cozy car spots, the ones they had become accustomed to, and they were being dethroned to some menial rectangle a half a block away! Someone was at the heart of the pattern change, responsible for this blatant disregard for personal space, and there was only one person could get us back to square one: Incredible Cal.
Of course, I immediately realized that Cal’s remarkable skill with numbers was far more important than anything I had to teach that day. I asked the kids to grab their stools, and, as was common in my class, invited them to come up to the blackboard for one of my chalk talks. We were on a mission.
“Class, Cal here has made a remarkable numerical discovery. We’re going to bypass today’s lesson to learn something about numbers,” I proclaimed.
Heads nodded. They trusted Cal and, they trusted his numbers. After all, he knew the birthdays of the six hundred and forty kids in the building on any given day. He knew how many kids could fit in the lunchroom as well as the amount of money each one owed on their lunch ticket.
“Cal, you’ve made me very curious.” I started. “We have a car situation in the parking lot. Some teachers, you’ve pointed out, are in the wrong places. I know it bothers you that the license plates aren’t in order, so let’s start with Mr. Dubious and work backwards and find out who started this parking disaster. Cal, do you know when did this start?” I blasted out.
“August eighth, the second day of school. The principal took Mr. Dubious’ place, and he had to move down one.”
“And whose parking spot was that?” I asked. “I mean whose spot did he take?”
“Miss Grayson’s.”
And hers? Where was her spot?”
“Next to the curb,” Cal announced.
“I see, so she had to go across to the other side. And then what happened?” I continued…
And on and on it went. Cal began indicting teacher after teacher who had outright stolen the spot of another. Evidence to the contrary, the school lot had become a psychologically twisted exhibition of manipulation, a living display of car dominoes, greed and acquisition. All across the lot, cars were parked in wrongful places, with felonious disregard for the parking wishes of fellow teachers. No sooner were teachers reaching school, putting themselves out there on the front lines as trusted civil servants, a kid’s first responder so to speak, that they found their own coworkers had pulled their parking spot right out from under them.
We listened in fascination as Cal went down the line and named every single teacher who had taken the spot of the one before, and just to make his point, their license plate number also. Even sweet Mrs. Hematoad, who had unfortunately taken her maiden name back after her divorce, had taken someone else’s spot. The game of Parking Lot Clue was coming to a dramatic tipping point. A teacher, some maleficent, had started this whole avalanche of perpetuity and dishonesty, and by the time Incredible Cal was done with them, their name would be drug through the mud of Integrity and Character.
And from out of nowhere, a tiny voice, unheralded, came forth from the back row.
“And where did you park today, Mr. Bender?”
The last car domino had fallen.
I looked at Cal. He had my number, and it was up.