[ja]cobdavis

First, a bit of background on my 5th grade teacher. In the early fall there was me and a couple other ‘under-performing’ students that got pulled from being allowed to lunch in order to be forced to do the previous night’s homework. One of my cohorts started to yell and complain about how he legally couldn’t be held from lunch and started to cry – needless to say he was fat. Misses Smith came trotting over and bent down in the 5th grader’s face and began to unravel. The child said he was going to sue and began to bawl. The only thing me and the other failure could do was sit and watch in horror. I refused to go back to class and hid out in my house for three days. The school thought I was ditching class. With the principal, my mom, and the school’s guidence councilor it finally came out that I was afraid of the woman.

Cut to spring time where things seemed to have smoothed out, Misses Smith got the class together into a show of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Keep in mind this is a public school and the meaning and storyline washed over me and I didn’t understand a single lick of what was going on. All I cared about was my crush on Darcy Taylor and her love for apple juice. Darcy was the narrator for the show, singing all the major parts and carrying the class in talent. The ‘bad boy’ of the class got the part of Joseph, a shock to everyone including him. I played the part of one of the half dozen brothers, but I was given a minor roll in placing Joseph in prison. Which was a nice feeling because I thought I should be playing second to Darcy. My “brother” in crime was a girl who lived up the street from me. Jacob was played by another Jacob who was a real dick head the entire time I knew him. Everyone else had parts moving furniture or minor parts playing a mule or another brother.

The play was clunky and awkward just as you’d expect a play put on by ten year olds. Though somehow Misses Smith had a coat either made or borrowed that seemed to fit the boy working it. A lavish thing with swirls of colors and patterns nearly unrecognizable – like something out of a really loud cross-dresser’s closet. It had puffy edges as if a unicorn’s mane got tangled and released itself after gnawing it off and it’s rainbow blood poured down it’s coat which was then cut into a shall for a small child. Joseph wore the coat with ease.

The tape of all of this still lives somewhere at my mom’s and is mentioned in those times when family drinks enough to remember the embarrassing parts of your life. It’s good that it’s nearly lost.