The year provided many changes. One change I did not see coming was a sudden surge in popularity. People I hardly knew or who before wouldn't give me the time of day suddenly started stopping me in the hall and congratulating me on doing so well on the last meet I was in. In truth it all felt insincere and annoyed the hell out me. The thing that frosts me is that if I wasn't a gymnast leading the team and winning meets these people would be as mean to me as before. A story that I love to tell and serves as a metaphor for Johns' and mine position on being popular. Our high school commons area was fairly large and everyone found a piece of wall to sit against if they wanted. We were known as the wit brothers and were kicked around a bit our first few years here. A girl I had known since kinderarden named Lisa Steinhauser fell into the popular clique and looked down her nose at us and made it obvious she thought we were pond scum. So one day she walks by and sneers at John and I and says " Why are you guys here? Nobody wants you and no one likes you so why don't you save yourself a lifetime of humiliation and just go away so we don't have to see your pathetic faces. " At this she and her friends are laughing and taunting us. John sits still and doesn't react, which surprises the hell out of me. They walk across from us and make rude finger gestures as this group of J.V. cheerleaders sit down to wait and flirt with the jocks. I know John and I know he is cooking up a devious plot that will more than likely land us in administrative trouble. He turns to me and whispers the plan. I wholeheartedly approve and go about implementing operation "Two Minute Warning". This is to be a mime act of terrorism against this cruel sect of nasty cheerleaders. John and I make a big fuss of pretending to construct a bomb with dynamite, nitroglycerin, spools of electric cable to trigger the detonation with one of those plunger things you alway see in movies. I would go outside and pretend to carry in heavy boxes of unstable explosives while John (The master bomb assembler) would carefully tape and put together a complicated bomb out of imaginary parts.This act took about 15minutes and was almost completely ignored by our target. We both very carefully lifted this immense masterpiece which was very heavy and struggled carrying it over to where they were sitting. It went like this: John says " Jody be careful one false move and this whole place could go up. Remember I installed a mercury back up switch..." I reply " O.k., o.k. sorry I'm doing my best. Cool your jets already. John says " Hey just pay attention to what your doing this stuff is extremely volatile. Stay focussed and we can all enjoy a nice shower of J.V. cheerleader body part from the comfort of our own personal bomb shelter." I answer "Got it, we're almost there get ready to place the payload on its target." John says " O.k. begin lowering now that's it careful, good stop right there, lower your end. Now run back and bring the detonator caps and a spool of electrical wire." I say enthusiastically "Holy shit, I can't believe we're actually going to go through with this." John say " Believe it. This time tomorrow these pesky little critters will be a thing of the past." I continue with the skit as we wire everything and carefully roll it out to our side of the commons. By now everyone is wondering just what the hell is going on. So being urged on by our audience we make the final preparations. John and I walk out to the middle of the commons clapping our hands and announce loudly "Excuse me fellow students, may I please have your attention. It's our great honor to announce that there will be several new opening on the J.V. cheerleading squad due to a terminal personality conflict...." At this point Lisa gets up and walks up to us and says " Hey losers cut out your stupidity before we get the football team to kick your ass." She laughs along with her cronies and sits back down. We continue " Sorry for the interruption the show will be starting shortly. As it is customary to give victims of a crime some last words we now offer that opportunity. Lisa? Anyone want to comment on how you feel about your up coming execution?' They all give us the finger at the same time. We continue " It's a shame to lose team work like that we just witnessed. So without further ado is there anything anyone would like to say?" The entire commons of about 50 people start chanting : "Blow them up boom boom. Blow them up and make some room." John looks at Lisa and says " It would appear your knights in shining football gear are nowhere to be seen and unless I'm mistaken your popularity is taking a sharp and sudden drop." Lisa screams " Somebody stop these freaks they're bothering us." John says " O.k. people lets hear it !! Let's make some noise." The crowd at the instigation of our good and very funny friend Steven McClintock start yelling " Sure we'll miss them when there gone, as fertilizer for our lawn" John says " Back up everybody and get to a safe distance before I blow these suckers into oblivion. Can I get a count down 10 Jody would you be so kind as to do the honors ." I say " Why thank you that would be nice." "9...8...7" John asks " Goggles so we don't get anything in our eyes?" I say " John you do think of everything don't you?" John answers " I try to my good man I try to" The crowd counts while I push the plunger down with dramatic flare."6,5,4,3,2,1 booooom!!!" Every one covers there eyes and rolls on the floor as the the bell for first the class rings. This little act made us fairly well known and respected by those that we cared about. We'd be in class and when people would disagree sometimes someone would say "don't make me call the wit brothers to blow you up." What it did do is prevent any other group of snobby kids from harassing us. The football team thought it was hysterical and told us so. No matter how many times we were asked or how much we were offered that was our final act of terrorism. The purpose of this little tale is to give some perspective on the type of social setting we were now dealing with. I go to Ceramics and see Lori sitting at her wheel. We both decided to cool it off a bit until after the gymnastics season. This didn't prevent our friendship from growing . I walk in and " Yo Lump, how was your weekend." She would smile and reply "Not bad loser it was a stone groove of righteousness and psychedelics for all to behold." Regardless of how hard we tried to keep our relationship platonic it just didn't want to stay there. She would go to all the meets and we would spend time together whenever we could. The intimacy and trust between us continued to grow. The end of the season came around and we tragically lost to Yorktown by less than a tenth of a point. Ted always said "if you don't beat the reigning champs by a significant amount you don't deserve to win." We were all disappointed but were resolved in the fact that it was definitely possible next year. Ted had said it might take more than 1 year. Our entire team was returning and Fox Lane gymnastics was put on the map. We even made the New York Times Sunday Section with photos of John and me doing handstands on opposite ends of the parallel bars. The next day Lori wasn't at ceramics class. I found out she didn't make it to school that day. In fact I didn't see or hear from her all week. I called but no one answered no matter how late I called. After 2 weeks I went looking for her and knocked on her door to find her mother in a cops uniform . She says " Jody I think you better come in and sit down I have some bad news to tell you." My heart started pounding at the thought of what it might be. That's it for tonight. Thanks for reading . Jody
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