I heard that Larry died in a fire from smoke inhalation.

which kind of sucks. I liked Larry. I haven't seen him in decades and when I tried to look him up a few years back I heard that he had died in a fire a few months earlier.

It's too bad. I wanted to say hi and see what happened to him.

Larry was actually kind of a troublemaker when I was in high school with him. For the first couple of years I looked down on him. But over time I came to understand him and by my senior year I grew to actually like and respect him.

Larry was old school and still wore a grease cut. He was a born rebel and didn't take a lot of guff from teachers or the administration. The vice principal hated him and as to be expected, the enemy of my enemy is more often than not my friend.

He was looked down on by the college bound set although he was rather bright. If he had decided to he could have whistled his way through college but that wasn't where he wanted to go.

He was a pretty good organizer and that was one other thing the administration hated about him.

The truth is he was bored as hell with school and saw through the BS they used to try and keep us in line. Threats to have a stain on his 'permanent record' were laughed off because he knew there was no such thing. Threats to ruin his chances to get into college were a joke because he was not headed that way.

He wasn't intimidated by the school authorities and they hated him for that, too.

There was a program called 'Good Government Day'. It may still exist but every high school was supposed to send a representative and Larry threw his hat into the ring. At first everyone laughed.

He ran a basic straight faced campaign on the outside but his quiet campaign people spread word that it would give the administration a real black eye if we sent him. 

Of course the so-called class leaders were appalled and started badmouthing him. Those were the handful of students that got all the plums. They were always being sent off to represent us because the administration knew they would be good little boys and girls.

It was getting close to the election and the administration did another stupid thing that pissed off practically the entire student body because they were treating us like small children.

The student body was looking for a way to retaliate and they found it in Larry. We decided that sending him to Good Government day would embarrass the administration. We knew he'd do something.

He won with about 80% of the student vote. We all knew there was no way the administration could stuff the ballot box. In fact the woman responsible for counting the ballots had been counting ballots for only a few minutes and looked at the vice principal and said, "We're sending Larry." The vice principal turned ashen. I grinned broadly.

He must have cringed as he pictured 'Nando straight out of 'West Side Story' from his black pointed shoes to his scalp full of Greasy Kid Stuff entering a world of wholesome collegians resplendent in their Ivy League button down collared madras shirts.

I'm sure he wanted to call the whole thing off. I'm sure he considered it but rightfully figured there would not be a school standing if he did. There would be a terrible uproar and he'd likely get fired.

We sent Larry off and as we planned he did create quite a stir. The stir he created wasn't what we had expected. We had figured he'd get popped for smuggling beer in or maybe picking a fight with a teacher of some damned thing. We just knew he would create a real horror show of some kind. We were actually planning on it.

Instead he blew our minds. He buckled down, got with the program and put his all into it to the point where the Good Government people gave him some kind of special award.

Needless to say that afterwards when that was announced on the school PA system everyone cheered. We knew we had really stuck it to the administration because then had tried to find an excuse not to send him. Not only had Larry truly pissed off the administration but he had brought the school glory.

Of course the final humiliation was at the next assembly when the vice principal had to call him up on stage, shake his hand and tell him what a good job he had done. The look on Larry's face when he got called up onstage said 'kiss my ass'. We were ecstatic.

I gained a lot of respect for the guys that were headed off into the industrial arts careers because of Larry. I'm sure he had done a lot better than the college bound set. They would have played the 'to get along go along' game. I'm sure he had stuck his neck out and rolled the dice and won. Larry had guts.

I sort of lost touch with Larry some time after graduation and wish I could have met him when we were older but it was not to be. It's kind of sad.













To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY