Somewhere in the dim recesses of my mind as well as the storage cabinet to my left are remnants of a fairly creative past. Yes, I have a fairly creative present, too, but I have to laugh at some of the things I used to get away with in school, things that would never be allowed today, as they would be considered a total waste of time, getting in the way of “real learning.”
And yet, I learned an awful lot in high school and college, even though I occasionally indulged in pure antics and thankfully, my teachers went along with it all.
Certainly, Ed Eaton did at Green River Community College. At the end of every quarter, Ed would give his Advanced Journalism class a final that was fairly real world. Some event would unfold before their eyes and they had to report on it at the scene, then go off and write a news story about it on a very tight deadline.
This was a perfect stage for my mayhem. Not one to do something mundane, I decided to engineer a coup. After all, I had a tank, I had machine guns and fake grenades. It would be a cinch to conduct a coup, I thought.
But it’s me we’re talking about. I had to have detail, of course. So I forged a new constitution, crafted extraneous demands, and just to give the show a little more gung-ho, there were plans to seize the campus radio station and newspaper, something Ed knew nothing about.
Ah, those were the days. Busting into the classroom with toy machine guns and brandishing grenades. You certainly couldn’t do that these days. I don’t think anyone would find it “normal” to see an armored car (built out of a 1962 Ford Galaxie mind you) roll up to a school building with a bunch of armed mercenaries pouring from it like a clown car. And most certainly someone would have ended up calling 911 once we took a couple DJs hostage at KGRG.
This was not the start of my antics by any stretch. I would have to go much farther back in my life (harp music), to Hazen High.
It was there that we managed to spend two whole days putting the high school newspaper’s Editor In Chief Wes Barrett on trial. Our teacher, Hang ‘Em Up Hacker was the judge, replete in black robe.
Me, I was the Co-Prosecutor along with Kathy McMahon. This was back in the days of my fascination with Groucho Marx, so the whole shtick borrowed heavily from Marx Brothers movies. My brother had a Groucho outfit he had made for Halloween, so the illusion was complete, right down to the greasepaint moustache.
Again, what’s any shenanigans without detail? I printed up all the legal paperwork myself. This was back in the days before computers, mind you. I didn’t even have an electric typewriter then. I did what I always do, improvised.
This is Wes’ Warrant for Arrest. There were also subpoenas for witnesses and plenty of other “officialdom.”
I must admit that Wes played along nicely. I charged him with high crimes and misdemeanors, including “Making a Nuisance of Himself” and “Getting Unnecessarily Friendly With Transfer Students,” a predecessor to today’s sexual harassment charges. Ever on the forefront of legal precedent.
All told, Wes was charged with eight counts of treasonous and malevolent deeds.
On April 25, 1975, the case came to trial. I made the opening statements, again, borrowing liberally from Groucho.
It went something like this:
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I, J. Cheever Loophole, wholeheartedly and by status quo, intend to prove Mr. Barrett guilty on all counts, and believe me, he can’t count too high. Now then, in re: yours of the fifteenth, yours to hand, that we seem to believe, in lieu, that despite all precautionary measures that have been involved, we will show that these proceedings need not need to proceed unless we receive an ipso facto that is not negotiable at this time and place, quote, unquote, semi-colon.”
And that was just the opening statement. For two days a long line of witnesses were brought up to the stand, each with a wilder story than the last, grilled by the crack Co-Prosecutor who had more shticks than a campfire.
O.K., so it wasn’t two whole days. It was during journalism class at the end of the day. But it was so much fun. I walked a fine line between being very funny and very just shy of sharing the truth, not that anyone could tell the difference.
At the time, I thought I didn’t like Wes. Now, years later, looking through all the documents from the trial I still have – including the layout of the room, all the questioning and testimony – I realize I just didn’t like anyone in power. Now, there’s a surprise.
A couple years later, a new Wes stepped into my life – Kevin Gunning, the Green River Community College Editor In Chief. We didn’t get along either. Not because I had a problem with those in a position of power, but because I really didn’t like Kevin. He was a freaking idiot! Things went from bad to worse between us to the point where I had to be sequestered on the other side of the campus with my cohorts in crime, Steve Klopfstein and Brian Thompson, the staff cartoonists.
As we know, I should never be left along for too long. And while I never put Kevin on trial, he was punished daily by my very presence on his staff. It was then that I discovered that the written word was a very powerful thing, and I would regularly mock him in RobZerrvations, written at a level he could never understand.
Sure, I would have loved to put him on trial, too. But I had my hands full. After all, I had to coup to plan, another one of my many escapades in education, and yes, I still have a folder filled with all the planning for that, too.
In the Emerald City, putting away my plans for a coup now that the other guy won the White House,
– Robb