for the HMS Bounty mutineers.
I was wrestling with the Sunfish, and it was both wrestling and boxing with me, and karate-chopping, too.
The “cute little boat” was beating the crap out of me.
Every time I got up, I got knocked down or knocked overboard. My arms and legs were abraded raw and red from the sandpaper-like surface of the deck.
I was clearly no match for the Sunfish or the squall.
I suddenly realized that my worst prospect for the formerly sunny day had progressed from merely having a lousy time to actually dying of a concussion from a swinging boom or drowning or being lost at sea and becoming fish food.
There was no way I could control the “cute little boat.”
Applying some very basic nautical analysis, I realized that the wind—normally a source of cooling and propulsion—might actually kill me.
The only way to minimize the effect of the wind was to minimize the size of the wind catcher—my sail. I had hoped to lower the sail and just use the Sunfish as a giant surfboard or kickboard and slowly move it back to the beach. Unfortunately, the ropes were so snarled that there was no way to lower the sail.
Reluctant to abandon ship, I wrestled with the mast and tipped the boat over. With mast submerged and keel facing the sky, I was able to both kick and paddle it back toward shore. After a while I noticed that the mast, boom and sail had become detached from the hull socket, but they were still tethered to the Sunfish by rope and were following me to the distant shore
Despite the much smaller profile without the sail, I still had to fight the wind, and the waves were growing. It seemed to take forever to reach land. When I got close, I saw an ambulance with flashing lights on the beach, and two men wearing white shirts with red crosses and white Bermuda shorts and knee-high socks were running toward where they thought I would come ashore.
As soon as the boat stopped moving, I crawled away from it through the shallow water and onto the sand. I collapsed and tried to spit out the salt water, seaweed and sand in my mouth. The two medics kneeled in the sand next to me, and seemed to be examining me. They spoke, but their words didn’t register.
I either rolled over on my back or was rolled over by them, and eventually I sat up with their support. I felt like I was still bouncing on the waves. One of them opened a medical kit and took out bandages. Then the two of them started swabbing me, and I saw that the bandages were quickly turning from white to red. There were even red spots on their white Bermuda shorts.
When my head stopped spinning and my breathing returned to normal, they helped me to stand up slowly. They supported me under each of my arms. I looked down and saw that I was covered with blood from shoulders to fingers and toes. Even my nose was bleeding. I was told I had a black eye and that I should be X-rayed. My sunglasses were gone. My diver’s watch was gone. So were my waterproof camera and most of my bathing suit. Every part of me that had feeling felt really bad.
One of the medics asked me if I had been attacked by just one shark or by several, and if had I lost a passenger. I said that I was sailing alone, but it took a while before I could admit that I had been attacked by a cute little Sunfish.
Chapter 4
Cat Woman
“Crazy Frazy” had day-glow complexion, and orange hair like Clarabell the clown on Howdy Doody. She had been torturing students for decades before it was my turn to be a victim.
It was alleged that she had held onto her job despite countless criticisms because she provided excellent investment advice to the school principal. Apparently Frehse and the principal bought Texas Gulf Sulphur just before a big spike in the share price.
Frehse was crazy about (among other things) cats.
Her house was filled with long-clawed felines that hissed and leaped from floor to furniture to the shoulders of unfortunate visitors. Her classroom was filled with pictures of cats. Frehse even purred like a damned cat.
When she wasn’t purring, this teacher of English frequently talked baby-talk.
Favored cats, and favored students, were called “foofums.” Frehse rewarded the most favored human foofums by showing them cat books, page by interminable page.
When she wanted to point out something that impressed her, she’d murmur like a two-year-old, “Saaay, look uh nat.”
When she was enthusiastic about a book with words, not just pictures, she’d tell us that she’d “crawl barefoot on bloody stumps over broken glass” to read it. She had a very strange obsession with the Civil War Battle of Chickamauga, and often read about it and talked about it.
Hillhouse High School had a central courtyard with a few benches, bushes and scraggly trees. One tree, the foof-tree, was favored by Frehse. A lot of our class time was spent looking at, and at Frehse’s command, waving and purring at and talking to the damned tree.
Frehse punished some students by commanding them to water the foof-tree. Some students kissed Frehse’s ass by voluntarily watering the foof-tree. Many students wanted to chop down or burn down the fucking foof-tree.
We never knew what to expect when we entered foof-land.
Sometimes as we marched in, a student would be pinched on the shoulder and commanded to go to the blackboard and “write ten beautiful words,” or “write 200 words about tobogganing,” or “explain why striped cats are superior to spotted dogs” or “list 500 reasons why Elvis should be president.”
Our English teacher used her classroom power to defend “The King” from showbiz competition. Frehse once caught a girl with a picture of singer Pat Boone in her notebook, and gave her double F’s on a homework assignment. The quick-thinking girl instantly flipped the page to reveal a picture of Elvis, and the lunatic changed her mark from abject failure to double A’s.
One time, a class was ordered to write 500 words on “how Capri pants have been the downfall of western civilization.” (Girls couldn’t wear pants to our school.)
As we sat at our desks writing either ludicrous compositions or serious exams, Frehse would scurry around, purring like a damned cat, and sticking a pin into our arms and shoulders. Fortunately, this was before HIV.
One regular classroom activity was centered on a grammar workbook developed at Manter Hall School in Massachusetts.
Frehse’s “Manter Hall Day” was like a perverted TV game show, and could have been invented by Monty Hall—or Monty Python.
One third of the class would be seated in chairs spread in an arc across the front of the room, with titles like Number Boy, Card Girl, Question Girl, and Third Assistant Alternate Score Keeper. They administered the quiz to the rest of the class.
Frehse was emcee, seated in the middle of the stage.
