Yes, I admit it, I had some serious crushes when I was but a boy. Mickey (himself) always said that he hated girls. He said that repeatedly until he was fourteen and that lie could be twisted into some kind of “you-must-be-gay” sort of insult. Couldn’t have that, could we? Especially since my only experience of sex was violent and with another boy. But how could I ever admit the truth about the girls I loved? It was all too silly for words.
All pictures of Annette that I didn’t draw are from her Facebook page, borrowed (or stolen) with love.
Annette Funicello was someone I only saw in Disney movies. And she was quite a bit older than I was. She was born in 1942, and when I was a lovesick puppy of twelve, she was already an old woman of 26 years. I am thinking about her again now, and she has already preceded me in death. I was able to reconnect to her through her Facebook page here; Annette Funicello. But there was never a chance to meet and pursue her in real life. So, naturally, she is the one I told my friends about as the woman I loved when I was twelve and wise in the ways of the opposite sex.
I did not draw this. It is from Facebook.
But the real, secret truth is… ta, ta, ta, taaaah! I really loved another. She was in my class. She was, as my friends and I all agreed, the most beautiful girl ever born into our little community of Rowan, Iowa. She was a farm girl named Alicia Stewart (this, of course, is a lie. I fictionalized the name because we are actually friends on Facebook and she might actually read this post. It doesn’t bother me if she reads this and figures it out, but I want to provide her with deniability so no one else has to know. She has a beautiful family complete with grandkids, and I would never embarrass her in front of them.) To me, she looked like Annette Funicello. I never admitted my deep and abiding puppy-love crush on her to anyone. I loved her never-the-less… and probably still do.
There was that night when I was eleven, and snow was falling heavily after choir practice at the Methodist Church. The walk home was extra difficult. It was becoming a minor blizzard and I was plastered with snow from walking into the teeth of the wind. When I got as far as the Library on Main Street, Mrs. Stewart and Mrs. Kellogg called me into the Library to warm up. They called Mom and Dad to come get me because I really had no business trying to walk home in a snowstorm like that. Alicia was there.
HOLLYWOOD, FL – SEPTEMBER 14: Annette Funicello (R) kisses Mickey Mouse 14 September 1993 after she received a star on the famous Hollywood Walk of Fame in California. The U.S. actress and singer is best known as a famous mouseketeer on the popular 1960’s television show, “The Mickey Mouse Club” as well as the beach movies she made with Frankie Avalon. (Photo credit should read VINCE BUCCI/AFP/Getty Images)
I had my Russian cap with the ear-flaps on and everything pulled down to protect me from the snow, including the front board which was like the bill of the cap, but could be snapped up out of the way. Snow was caked even on that little front flap. My eyes were mostly covered by that frozen and snow-encrusted front flap.
I said, “Gee, I think it might be snowing outside.”
Everyone laughed. Alicia lifted up the front flap and looked me right in the eyes.”Michael, you are so funny!” she said.
I wasn’t really that funny with my stupid little understatement. But her smile was priceless. And I keep it in my heart to this very day. It was the greatest gift any girl ever gave me during my sorry little childhood.
Sincerest Apologizes, Mr. Mohamed
This picture is from Ahmed’s sister’s cell phone… I think.
Dear Ahmed Mohamed,
I am sorry that Texas is what it is. Land of the big white lie and home of the brave-if-you-don’t-confront-them-with-people-they-don’t-understand sort of cowboys. I am a veteran Texas teacher with a lot of English as a Second Language teaching experience. I am quite familiar with kids like you. You built something wonderful that worked and showed off your electrical engineering skills and your future promise as an inventor. It was a clock. And you wanted to show it to your engineering teacher… which you did. And he was impressed. But he told you not to show it to your other teachers for a very good reason. Some of them are white people. Some of them are Texas conservatives. And you had no way of knowing how they would see a Muslim kid with a strange wired-up device in his back pack. The rest of the world does not look at such things with the fearful eyes of a cowboy conservative, or automatically make the assumptions that were made. You see, these people love guns and shooting stuff with a deep abiding passion that they really can’t believe other people don’t share. It is an unfortunate feature of being a cowboy conservative that they are addicted to Bubba-thinking.
In case you forgot about what actually happened I have included some YouTube videos to refresh your memory.
Bubba-thinking allows cowboy conservatives to convince themselves that the solution to violence in schools and terrorist threats is a “good-guy with a gun”. They think that some clear-thinking hero-type (white guy) can make a correct assessment of a possible threat in a split second, and quickly react, taking out the threat with a well-placed shot that would never miss the intended target and do damage somewhere else, thus rendering the “bad-guy” (usually brown or black) sincerely executed without the need for an expensive trial that might only have let him walk away from his crime, or intended crime, a free but wiser (also living) man. Bubbas believe with the fervor of religion that “bad-guys” need to get what’s coming to them.
So, this is why they arrested you. To prevent you from killing innocent school children with your clock which might’ve somehow turned out to be a bomb, because you are from the same part of the world as those evil, icky ISIS guys that cut people’s heads off. They suspended you from school because, even though no bomb squad was called to diffuse your clock, and they soon learned that it was only a homemade clock, they were convinced that you were trying to scare people and become famous with a hoax bomb, the law they actually invoked to cover up their mistreatment of you.
I hope you are happy in your new school. I hope you appreciate that you have the last laugh in all of this because the notoriety and viral Facebook fame you have achieved will open more doors for you and take you to places far beyond the simple teacher’s approval you were seeking for your inventive talents. And I hope in your new school you will have fewer encounters with the Bubba-thinking of some Texas teachers.
Sincerely and with apologies,
Mickey
3 Comments
Filed under commentary, humor, racial profiling
Tagged as Bubba thinking, commentary, cowboy conservatives, current events, humor, News, politics, racism, satire