Many years ago, before the

days of cellular phones and rolling blackouts, I was in school, and I

had a desk. I specifically remember my sixth grade desk because it was

the first one that had a storage area.

Thus, I could stockpile all

sorts of important items inside: pencils and rulers for making those helicopters

when I was bored, triangular paper footballs for flicking, and these heavy

things with pages, I think the other kids called them textbooks.

I liked gliding my hand across

the scarred top of my desk, feeling the ball point indented braille left

I can still see that desk being

moved to the wall of the classroom when our music teacher once let us

have a dance party. It was the first time I danced. I was doing "The

Shag" to "Stuck in the Middle with You" by Steeler's Wheel.

Cindy Hardie sent me her wool hair ribbon to tie around my neck. This

signified our "going together." It was a short courtship, though,

as I broke up with her because it was wool and it itched. Afterwards,

safely returned to its rightful place, my desk held a smiling, dancing

fool.

Humming at my desk the Paul

Williams' classic, "Just an Old Fashioned Love Song," I would

smile up at Mrs. West. I was totally in love with her. I can remember

laying my head down on the cool surface and praying in the winter of that

year when she was late to school during an ice storm. Word had gotten

around that she was in car accident. I imagined her in her car sunken

underneath the ice at this nearby creek.

It turned out her car simply

wouldn't crank in the cold weather. I would later have daydreams about

saving Mrs. West's life by either fending off cold weather crocodiles

with nothing but a protractor and compass, or by making a bomb out of

just the parts of a ball point pen. A Nixon-era McGyver, I was. Like a

marine recruit I could tear apart and reassemble those click-type pens

in record time top shell, bottom shell, silver spacer sleeve, pen tube,

spring and push button. Over and over I would drill myself, and of course

the dastardly principal was the villain.

This is probably where I acquired

my need to "rescue" every woman on earth. It took a few years

till I would learn, (or they would teach me) "they" weren't

the ones who needed rescuing. Before the Computer, before the CD Player,

before even they invented an industrial cleaner that didn't smell like

vomit, I had my desk, my first true icon of security and structure. That

was the genesis of my infatuation with things that hold stuff.

Today, I don't know where Mrs.

West is, or where any of that junk is, though my old textbooks are still

in great shape. I hardly dance anymore and I haven't played paper football

in a while. Yet, when all is boring and mundane and, you know, adult,

I go deep inside my little brain and I take out my pencil and spin that

ruler.