The Revenge of the Pickle by Kurt Alan Tornberg (fiction book recommendations .txt) 📕

The Revenge of the Pickle

When I was in fifth grade, I had two teachers that were kind of buddies with each other. At least that was the way they acted while at school, I am not really sure they were the same outside of that arena. There names were Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones, ( you probably understand why I cannot put their real names in here.) Anyway, there was a day that was coming up at the end of one week somewhere in the spring time that there were no scheduled classes. There was a vote taken to see if the two combined classes of Smith and Jones were going to go outside and have a recess time, or where we going to stay inside and watch a full length featured film. (I am sure that it was the original Moby Dick, with Gregory Peck). One of the things that Smith and Jones were good at was manipulating how they want things to go. So by some magical words they were able to sway the majority of the vote to stay in and watch the movie.
Oh yeah, I just remembered why we were really given this choice. It seemed that the United States Government, in its infinite wisdom, decided to test a thermo nuclear device on an island called Amchitka in the Aleutian Chain in Alaska. Half of the school stayed home that day in the fear that it would cause an earthquake, ultimately resulting in a Tsunami. Children of parents that most likely survived the 1964 Good Friday earthquake, which left the entire waterfront of Seward Alaska ablaze and most of the town wiped out. It was 1964.
I never really did like Smith and Jones; Jones mostly was just mean and did not have the minds of the kids that he taught at heart. Smith was the same way, but he had a way of making you think that he really did, which was just bull shit. Well anyway, they got what the wanted, I wanted to go outside, I always wanted to go outside. I was an 11 year old boy for goodness sake, all I ever wanted to do was to go outside and get into some sort of trouble. I was resigned to stay in with the rest of the class.
The place where they showed movies at the school was also the lunch room. It also doubled as an art room on a daily basis, there was not a lot of left over space in this school. So on the day before the movie, what kids that where left behind, where having lunch in that room. I was sitting in the southwest corner trying to avoid any trouble, I was eating my lunch that my dad had packed for me in the morning. In this lunch was a large dill pickle that he had carefully wrapped in order to keep the juice off of the sandwiches. I unwrapped the pickle and started munching on it along with my sandwich, it was a great combo. Somewhere about two thirds of the way through the pickle, it slipped out of my hand and fell to the floor, bouncing into the corner. I was rather displeased with that result and was certainly not going to pick it up, although it did cross my mind. But in the dim light where it now rested it looked somewhat like a turd.

Lunch was over and now the room had been converted into a movie theater. The old Bell and Howell movie projector had been rolled in on that old green cart that had the squeaky wheel on it and put into place, courtesy of Mr. Jones. Mr. Smith erected the fold out screen and locked it all into place. They announced the name of the movie and told us all that we would like it. ( It was another one of their autosuggestions in the quest for manipulation of young minds.) There were four huge rolls of film that where on that movie, possibly five, I rolled my eyeballs as they pulled down the shades in the room to make it dark. Outside was like one of the most glorious days of the year and we were cooped up inside watching a movie! What was wrong with these guys? They must have been 11 years old at one time. They must have been sissy boys when they were that age, and did not get the opportunity to go outside on some occasion, and now wee taking it out on us. Anyway the movie starts flickering along with the occasional film splice freak out that would make the picture go crazy and whack out the sound, you had to push the black button on top of the projector to get it to re-frame itself. It was top of the line technology for 1968, the logistics for setting up something like this was admirable to say the least. It was a lot of hard work which I did not come to appreciate until my later years.
About half way through the second reel of film, I very casually and quietly got up and went over to Mr. Smith and told him that I need to speak with him out in the hall. Of course Mr. Jones and his sour puss had to drag him self along. I said to the both of them, “Say, I really don’t know how to tell you this.” Mr. Jones then blurted out, “Just spit it out kid!” “Alright, I…I…I think someone went to the bathroom in the corner of the room.” If I had been on a regular film set at MGM, I would have won an Oscar for that performance. Mr. Smith, “What!?”
“I think some….”
“I heard what you said, Show me.”
So I took them back into the room and we navigated in the flickering light in between the scattered chairs and kids to the southwest corner of the room. Occasionally one of the kids would look up to see what was going on, but really paid no attention to the clandestine activity that was being perpetrated right in front of them . I lifted my arm and pointed down under the table into the corner, and there it was, it the flickering light of the Bell and Howell Projector, was the Turd. Mr. Jones’ eyes rolled up inside his head and he turned and put his hand over his mouth, Mr. Smith said, “Oh my God,” quietly under his breath. They turned to each other and started devising a plan to remove everybody from the room to clean up the doodie. My mind reeled with the idea that I had got one over on them, inside me was filled with elation, now we were going to get to go outside! As the reel ended the lights came up and Mr. Smith said, “Can I have your attention?”. He had strategically placed himself in the room so that when he said that, everyone in the room was looking away from the log.
“We are going to take and intermission, let you guys go out and stretch your legs, and we’ll call you back in a few minutes from now.” Only a few minutes I thought, heck, it is going to take you guys a lot longer to find a broom and a dust pan. I was hoping that they would go and get a mop bucket all set up before they actually looked at the subject, I was figuring 10-15 minutes. The thing was that my father ran a business in this quaint little town. He brought television into their living rooms everyday of the year. In a day where there was no satellite TV, back when things were all analog, nothing was digital unless you worked for NASA. My father asked the townsfolk to support the cause by donating $4.50 a month. Not a bad price, even in that day. But Smith and Jones hated that idea, they hated my dad, and they hated me. I think that it was karma, bad karma on their part, why else would a dill pickle fly out of my hands and land in the corner of the room and then disguise itself as a turd? It was their fault, not mine.
Well they called us back; at least I got 9 or 10 minutes outside with the rest of the class. Secretly inside my head I was a hero for saving the rest of the kids from the boredom of that movie. I felt like a secret agent, for I could not tell anyone else about the operation, the Intel could have leaked into the wrong hands. Surely I would have been held captive by the end of the day by the two Nazi’s.
As we all filed back into the lunch/movie/art room to watch the rest of the movie, I was detained by Smith and Jones. “Mr. Tornberg, do you know what was in the corner?”
I gave the most definitive answer that I could, “Poop?”
“No you idiot,” Jones said, “It was a pickle!”
With a puzzled look on my face I said, “It was?”
After a severe grilling and accusations that I had placed it there, I was released, never flinching for a moment, to give it away that it was a Black Op. They gazed at me the whole time while the rest of the movie played. I did not look at them, but I new that they were looking at me, how did I know this, because the side of my head was smoking.
Good thing was that there was no Tsunami or earthquake, we survived another day, even though occasionally, someone takes a dump in the corner of an old school room. Then again, maybe not.

Publication Date: 08-08-2011

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