In Perspective - Beware the Strawberry Ice Cream

By Rodney Hays

In Perspective - Beware the Strawberry Ice Cream


Last week I took the week off from my walk down memory lane to discuss the Mediocre 10 and the new football re-alignments. This week I return to my childhood.

The year I started kindergarten my little family moved to Midwest City, Okla. -- home of the famous Tinker Air Force Base and the infamous Shotgun Sam's pizza parlor I used to eat at when I was a kid. I say Shotgun Sam's was infamous because I think that's where I ate the pizza that made me throw up one night and caused me to swear off pizza for the better part of a year.

I started school at East Side Elementary School -- Home of the Fighting Jets -- in 1972. I don't remember my teacher's name, but I do remember I was in the afternoon kindergarten class, which was very cool for me because that meant I could sleep late and watch The Price Is Right with its brand spanking new host, Bob Barker.

In that kindergarten class, to quote Robert Fulghum, I learned all I really need to know. I learned how to read by having fun with Dick and Jane and their dog Spot. I learned to write my name poorly, which I still do to this day. I learned to color way outside the lines and that purple was my favorite color, even for elephants. I learned that naps were good. And I learned that strawberry ice cream, no matter how good it tastes going down, does not impress girls when it comes back up.

I had to learn that last lesson the hard way.

I guess I had known most of my life up until that point that I was allergic to strawberries. At the time that wasn't a huge deal since the taste of real strawberries disgusted me. I always thought they looked so cool, but that little prickly fruit totally weirded me out when one was set before me.

On the other hand, the taste of imitation strawberry was right up my alley.

One day in school, the lunch room provided all good students with strawberry ice cream. Since I wasn't a good student, I traded my Spam sandwich for a small carton of the creamy delicious goodness.

I ate that strawberry ice cream like it was the antidote to the poison that Jack Bauer was exposed to. I sucked it down because it was delicious. I cashed that little cup because I wanted some ice cream, allergies or no allergies.

Then I went back to class.

After lunch at East Side Elementary school, we went out to the playground and then on to class for a little story time (probably more fun with Dick and Jane and reading about Spot running. See.).
All the students were gathered around the teacher. I remember sitting, what we called, Indian Style on the floor, but I'm sure today it is called Native American Style or maybe, criss-crossed. The teacher began the story. My stomach began to gurgle.

Before I knew what hit me, that pink creamy goodness that went down so easily, was now a pile of steamy pink froth sitting in between my Native American sitting legs.

It was disgusting.

It was so disgusting in fact, that a really pretty kindergarten girl sitting next to me decided she too would toss her lunch into the mix.

The weird part about all of that was there was a restroom right there in the classroom. I could have gotten up, walked five feet, and emptied my ice cream snack into a proper receptacle. Instead I emptied it onto the floor, in the middle of story time, causing another student to do the same.

I was embarrassed to say the least. And I didn't eat strawberry, real or fake for several years after (I mean when Starburst was introduced, who could pass that up). I also didn't get asked to the prom that year.

There was another great memory that really stands out from East Side Elementary School. It was show 'n tell.

One March my Uncle Jerry gave me some little tiny baby chickens for Easter. They were real live chickens, nothing plastic. They were all yellow and white except for their dyed little chicken wings, which were all the colors of Easter.

We must have had a half a dozen or so live chickens in a box in our living room. It smelled like Green Acres right there where I watched the Price Is Right -- and Green Acres for that matter.

But I was so proud the day I walked into that classroom with my little colorful chicks. My fellow classmates thought having baby chickens at your house might just be the coolest thing they had seen since the introduction of the 45 rpm record machine.

Most of the class even forgave me for smelling up the room with the scent of fake strawberry and bile.
Those were great times back then. I look back on East Side Elementary with fondness. Except for my short visit with the principal one day.

I was sent to the principal's office for being bad or coloring on the wall or throwing up my lunch or something. When I arrived, the principal didn't even want to hear my side of the story. He just reached into his drawer and showed me his extremely large paddle and told me where on my body the paddle might be applied. I got the point. I still think it's weird to threaten a 6-year-old with an instrument of torture, but this was the same school that gave strawberry ice cream to a kid with allergies. I should've known.

Anyway, kindergarten was a lot of fun. That first year is always exciting for kids. And I believe I probably did really learn a whole bunch of stuff I really need to know.

I learned to share. I learned to play nice. I learned to keep my hands to myself. And I learned that when throwing up, aim for the goofy-looking kid on the left.

In Perspecitve - The Winter Olympics Has Captured My Heart

By Rodney Hays

Hello, everyone. Hope you are having a wonderful winter and I hope that your life has been completely consumed these last few days in the Winter Olympics.

Because mine has not.

I do have to admit the Winter Olympics are my second favorite type of Olympics behind the Summer Olympics. But I also have to be really honest and say I just don't get the Winter Olympics.

It's probably because I grew up in Oklahoma. When I was growing up, we didn't have a whole lot of sports that even resembled the winter games. We didn't have any mountains for skiing. We didn't have any moguls to bounce around on. We didn't have any tracks for luging. And we didn't have any rinks for skating.

We did, however, have frozen ponds.

In the winter time, many of our ponds on the Box K Ranch would freeze and "we" would have to go around and break up the ice so the cows and buffaloes could get a drink. When I say "we," of course, I mean Doc McClure (who did most of the work) and me (who did most of the supervision).

Doc McClure was a man, a mentor, a teacher and a comedic genius. You've probably heard stories about guys who "lived in a van down by the river." Well, Doc McClure was that guy. He actually lived in an old school bus shell that was converted into living quarters for Doc and his family. And the guy knew his stuff.

He taught me how to stack hay in a barn and change out parts on a giant brush hog -- mainly since I was the one that caused the parts to malfunction in the first place.

He also made me laugh fairly regularly by the way he said "yeller hop" meaning "yellow hop" and the way he drank a thermos full of coffee even when it was 185 degrees in a barn in the middle of July. They don't make men like that anymore.

Anyway.

It was always fun donning my rubber boots and skating across a frozen pond. I oftentimes was able to do an axel jump, camel spin and a compulsory dance along the edges of the pond. But none of that was for points and would even really be considered sport -- especially by Doc McClure, who used to call me "fancy pants."

There was also a time when it snowed in Cromwell, where I grew up, and we sort of "skiied" behind Robert Moneypenny's Volkswagen Bug. We would tie a rope to his bumper, sit down on a trash can lid and he would pull us around the football practice field. And, yes, we did run over the high school principal's cat, but, no, it still was not a sport.

We didn't even get close to anything called "Nordic combined," where athletes do two special events: a ski jump and then they go skiing on flat ground in the middle of winter with a deer rifle strapped to their back.

And the only thing that got "curled" was the Pentecostal women's hair on Sunday morning.

This was Oklahoma.

Although I haven't watched more than five minutes of this year's Winter Olympics, I did sit through the men's short track racing the other day. It is kinda cool to watch those guys spin around that track with basically knives on their feet. And we have an American that actually wins medals in those events. He's name escapes me now, but he's named after a Greek god or something.

I would also like to point out that nobody should be subject to curling. That is not a sport, people. At worst, curling is mopping the floor. At best, curling is a game for people who get iced in, have a little too much schnapps to drink and some extra brooms in the garage.

I cannot for the life of me imagine our Greek ancestors in Athens "curling" for sport. I can see them running (while nude). I can see them throwing a javelin (nude). I can see them swimming (nude). And I can possibly -- possibly, mind you -- see them skiing across the flat land strapped with a deer rifle (nude, but it would be weird). But I can never see the ancient Greeks saying, "Why don't we go grab a big rock and slide it on the ice and see how close we can get to that target down there. You guys grab a couple of mops. We'll leave our togas over here."

The other guys would respond by saying: "Are you nuts? What is ice?"

It just wouldn't happen.

But I do know why the Olympics are important. They bring countries together to root for athletes that are dedicated to these sports for no other reason than they are paid millions of dollars in endorsement money.

That's a joke. It's actually billions of dollars.

Haha. Another joke.

The Olympic games allow people across the world to come together in a spirit of international competition to watch their favorite athletes come in fourth to the Americans, French and Chinese.

So, I plan on going home some time this week, setting down, flipping on the television and preparing to watch what might just be the most important television you will see this year: "American Idol."

What did you think I was talking about?

If there is anything I learned from Doc McClure it was appreciate life, drink plenty of coffee and keep your eye out for a nice old bus and a small piece of the American dream.