"Blame it on Paul Newman"

With my first Mother’s Day without my mother upon me, I have been doing some reflecting on our years together.  The first thoughts are still of the last years spent nursing and caring for her, time that I am grateful to have been able to have given her, even though many of the actual tasks involved were not ones that I had ever had a desire to do in my life.  Often, while in the midst of performing some undesirable task, usually ones that involved many changes of disposable gloves and vast amounts of baby wipes and household cleaning supplies, I would start muttering “This is God’s answer to your having been the president of the Future Nurses of America in high school.”  That memory always was enough to make us both start laughing and would make the task at hand easier to accomplish.

Now, first of all, you must understand that from the beginning of my school years I suffered from a few very chronic and debilitating learning disabilities.  This was before the days of testing and labeling such things, so those of us who suffered just had to do the best we could without the benefit of counseling or special help.  My mother, who understood all of her offspring very well, was quite aware of these conditions, as I was not the first one in the family so afflicted.  Hence, I found myself delivering many a note to the school nurse which read as follows:

To Whom It May Concern:

Please excuse Mary Lynn’s absence yesterday as she was suffering from a severe case of schoolitis, coupled with an acute outbreak of homeworkatosis.

Very truly yours,

Mary G. Ferry

This was further complicated by the fact that, as far as I was concerned, if I could get B’s and C’s without studying, why waste a lot of time just for an A?  Luckily for me, in those days marks were based more on your test scores than on homework and notebooks.  Therefore, in June of 1977, I found myself standing with my classmates in my cap and gown receiving my Regents Diploma in Math/Science/French in preparation of taking my stellar academic attitude on to the next level.  Of course, I was paying strict attention as they were handing out the special awards and not at all concerned with the fact that maybe I had a surplus of dates in attendance, so I do not know why I missed when they called my name until I got an elbow in the ribs.  But there it was, I had to go up again to receive a special award for being the outgoing President of the Future Nurses of America.  Crap, but wait a minute the envelope contains a picture of Ben Franklin, cool!

When we got home for the party afterwards my oldest sister, who had been Valedictorian of her class (needless to say, she had had a very different attitude from mine for her school career), started grilling me about the events of the day.  “Who was the really smart guy that the class gave the standing ovation to?”  Oh, that was Mark, he likes school and has been a senior for years but decided we were the class he wanted to graduate with.  “Humph”“Why did you all sing when that other boy got his diploma?”  He is the son of the head of the math department and the mastermind behind the smoke bombs that went off in school last week so we sang “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”.  “Humph”“What was that disgusting song you got your diplomas to and why did they play it?”  It is what we chose as our class song, “FREEBIRD!!!!” “Humph!”  I can tell she is not at all happy with any of the answers and is building up to the question she really wants to ask.  “WHY do you want to be a nurse?!?!”  I don’t.  “If you want to go into medicine be a doctor, not a NURSE!!!”  I do not want to be either one.  “Then why are you PRESIDENT of the Future Nurses?!?!?!?!”  Paul Newman.  “WHAT?!?!?!?!”  Blame it on Paul Newman.  Our mother, who up until now had been struggling to maintain a straight face through all of this, suddenly needed to check on something in the kitchen.  Something must have been burning in there as she immediately started to choke.

In our high school the students who planned to go to college took Regents courses, while those who were not going to further their education had a different set of classes.  Most of my classmates in the Regents courses considered themselves superior to the non-Regents students, and would not associate with them.  I also found that most of these people were fond enough of themselves that it did not matter what I thought of them.  Most of my closest friends were in the other classes so I was well aware of the fact that they did not have the amount or degree of difficulty to their work as we had.  This gap widened as the years went on until Junior year when the non-college bound mostly spent half of their day at trade school and the college bound had the toughest year yet, as the majority of our State Regents Exams were upcoming that spring.  Towards the end of the winter, we had an unexpected new source of excitement go through the school.  There was to be a movie filming in some nearby locations and they wanted busloads of students as extras!  Could this be?  Yes, it will be a hockey movie and they are going to film in several nearby locations and whole classes will get to go!  Then, the biggest news of all, you guessed it, it is starring Paul Newman!!!!  It seemed that every time we met up by our lockers another friend or two had found out that they were going to go.  Many of them were going several different days.  English classes, history classes, business classes, the hockey team, all were going.  Surely, my teachers would start saying when we were going to participate.  I asked the teacher in our next class, only to find out that we needed to stay in school and work, we had upcoming Regents Exams.  Say What?!?  My sense of injustice kicked in full force, we have the harder work load and our reward is to stay in school!  They are going to see Paul Newman!  Who are the “smart kids” now?

Being a person who never meekly submitted to authority just for the sake of authority, I may have mentioned this to every teacher, but was repeatedly met with the same response.  Then I got the idea that French Club should go, after all, many hockey players are native French speakers from Canada.  I was informed that they spoke “Canadian French, sniff” and we were studying “Proper French”.  I continued to press my point, only to hear, “Assez toi, et ferme la bouche!”  Now, for those of you who do not have my benefit of four years of high school French, I will translate.  I heard this phase often and it puzzled me until I realized it meant, “Thank you very much for your thoughtful input, you are one of my favorite students.”  I never did get to go and see any of the hockey scenes filmed, but if you watch the movie “Slap Shot” many of my schoolmates are in those crowd scenes in the hockey arenas.

Meanwhile, my previously mentioned learning disabilities had made me realize that lying down in the nurse’s office with a headache was a legal excuse to not be attending a class.  This whole Paul Newman thing was giving me many headaches.  One day while I was there a meeting of the Future Nurses was being held and they were planning upcoming field trips.  I came to the realization that this was a school organization that did nothing but go on monthly field trips during school, there for providing a legitimate legal excuse for not being in class.  Sign me up!  This was at least a small step towards getting even with the system for not sending us to see the “Slap Shot” filming.  At the conclusion of the final field trip of the year, it was announced that we would be having election of officers for the following year.  The offices of President and Vice President had to be held by upcoming Seniors, and there were only 2 of us at this meeting.  Having been a 4-H member for years I had already figured out that the perfect office to hold in any organization was Vice President.  It looked great on resumes and applications and there was no work involved.  I quickly nominated the other candidate for President, leaving me the gravy VP job.  I was feeling quite proud of this quick bit of thinking, a feeling which lasted until the next December when the President opted for early graduation.

Blame it on Paul Newman.