Oops. I'd just used a term that, while a common descriptor among Spokane's paramedics, cops, and firefighters in the nineties, had not been in general usage in high schools in the eighties. A small mistake but I instinctively knew that I would have to watch what I said. What if I suddenly started talking about the Persian Gulf War, or the Internet, or something like that.
"Uh," I said, "Something I heard on HBO the other day on a cop movie. It's short for scrotums. You get it?"
"Oh yeah." Mike said, grinning as he thought it over. "Scrotes. That's pretty funny."
"I thought so." I said.
Our lockers were next to each other. I remembered that much. The lock was dangling from the handle; a standard, school issued lock. As Mike began twisting the dial on his I simply stared at mine.
"What's the matter?" Mike asked, looking at me.
I glanced at him. "I don't suppose," I said slowly. "That you know what my combination is?"
"What?" He said, confused, staring at me.
I gulped again. I could see in his face that he was starting to pick up that something was different about me.
"I uh… " I said. "I can't seem to remember my locker combination. A brain-fart I guess."
"Brain-fart?" He said, cracking up. "Goddam you're full of 'em today. Was that in the movie too?"
I realized that I'd used another anachronistic term. Christ, this shit was getting complicated. I was going to have to really watch my words. "Yeah." I nodded. "It was. A pretty funny movie."
"What was it?" He asked, pulling open his locker and removing some books.
"I forget what the name was." I answered. "Lethal Weapon, or some shit like that. So, do you know the combo for my locker, or what?"
"Yeah." He nodded. "You remember you gave it to me that time so I could put that herb in it?"
"Oh yeah." I said, remembering that Mike, who used to sell joints for two bucks apiece, would occasionally store his supply in my locker.
"Anyway, it's 34-13-23."
"Thanks." I told him, grateful. "I remember now." I began spinning the dial.
"Brain-fart's over." He chuckled. "I'll catch you later."
He was already out of sight in the passing throngs of kids before I realized that I had no idea what class I was supposed to go to. I stood there by my locker as the halls began to empty before me, trying desperately to think. What was my class schedule in the tenth grade? It was useless. Even looking at my books didn't help. Seventeen years had gone by after all. That information had long since been purged from my memory.
While I was still trying to figure it out Tracy came tooling by accompanied by her best friend Cindy Kendall. Tracy was giving me a strange look as she passed, a suspicious look. So was Cindy for that matter; a cute blonde who's image I remembered masturbating to many times during my teenaged years. I remembered seeing a flash of Cindy's white panties once when she'd been staying the night at our house with Tracy, a brief glimpse when she gotten up from the couch while dressed in her nightshirt. I remembered being obsessed with that half-second flash of those panties for months, able to masturbate to nothing else. Had that happened yet? I wondered. I didn't know.
"Tracy!" I barked as she passed. "Come here a second."
She hesitated, obviously not wanting to be seen talking to her younger brother. But finally she came over. Cindy stayed a distance away, watching us.
"What's going on with you today?" She asked, glancing around. "You were acting all weird this morning and I just heard you got in a fight with Richard Fairview. And that you kicked his ass. Is that true?"
"Yeah." I nodded, dismissing Richard Fairview. "But listen, I need… "
"What do you mean 'yeah'?" She hissed incredulously. "They called an ambulance for him. They say he's all fucked up! Did you do that to him? You?"
"Kind of." I affirmed. "But listen Trace. I need to know… "
"Kind of?" She said. "We're talking about Richard Fairview. He's twice your size. How the hell did you… "
"Tracy will you shut the fuck up for a second." I commanded.
She blinked at me in surprised respect.
"Listen." I told her. "You and I need to sit down and talk about something. Something that will probably be the most important thing you've ever heard." I glared meaningfully at her, knowing that my face was showing an adult expression. "Things are different with me. Very different. And I'll tell you about them tonight."
"What are you talking about?" She asked, wide-eyed.
"Tonight." I promised. "But for now I need you to tell me what my class schedule is."
"Your class schedule?" She asked, raising her eyebrows.
"Yes." I nodded. "My inability to remember it is part of what I have to tell you tonight. But for now, where the hell am I supposed to go?"
She looked at me for a moment in suspicion, confusion, fear, and awe. Finally she began to speak. "First period you have math… "
She wasn't able to give me actual room numbers or anything, but she was able to supply enough info for me to get through the day. I arrived in Algebra class just as the bell rang. I had a moment of panic as I looked around the room, seeing all of the students at their desks, the teacher at his desk and opening his roll book. Where in the hell was my desk? Was I really in the right first period class?
The teacher, a middle-aged, dark skinned man looked up to see me standing there. I couldn't even remember his name. Something Arabic was all that came to me.
"Would you care to take your seat Mr. Stevens?" He asked mildly.
"Uh, sure." I stammered, heading for the first empty desk. I was given several strange looks from the teacher and my classmates, leading me to believe I'd chosen the wrong seat. But no one said anything.
A minute later, the class began.
I sat through Algebra without a clue as to what the hell the teacher (who's name, Mr. Ached, I was finally able to discern) was talking about. I'd always been placed in the college prep classes in high school, a result of my high placement scores on the tests. I'd always been a good test-taker on general knowledge exams with multiple choice questions. So I'd been placed in the college preps where I'd been stoned much of the time and only garnering enough information to pass with a C or even a D in some cases. Algebra was not something I'd used every day in life and I'd come in on it in progress after more than a decade of not using it. I was hopelessly confused by Mr. Ached's lecture.
My second class, on the other hand, was the exact opposite. American History. In my previous life (as I was coming to think of it) I had an associates degree and half of a bachelor's degree in History; a subject that had always interested me. A completely worthless degree, I agree, but it's possession coupled with the obsessive reading I'd done on the subject throughout my life made me an equal (or perhaps even a better?) to the instructor as she lectured on the causes of the Civil War. I found the lecture naive and boring; packed full of basic information that had been scaled down for easy digestion by high school students. She presented the information in black and white, not touching upon a single controversial issue of that time; the sorts of issues we'd relished back in college. Strange, until hearing that lecture, I'd never realized how much we'd been bullshitted and programmed in school.
Third period was Human Anatomy and Physiology. This was a little less boring for several reasons. For one, it was another subject that I was quite knowledgeable about since I'd been forced to learn it at near physician level in order to qualify for paramedic school. It was also not politically scaled down for high school, although it was somewhat more simplistic than what I'd been taught. The second reason was the instructor, Mrs. Crookshank. She was a very attractive woman in her mid-twenties, probably only a few years out of college. I remembered that she'd starred in several of my masturbation fantasies and had been a frequent discussion topic among my peers when the talk turned to teachers we'd like to fuck. As she lectured the class on the circulatory system I found myself watching her body move back and forth to the blackboard, watching her ass beneath the pantsuit she wore, her tits bouncing beneath her sweater. I was OLDER than her, I kept thinking, but yet I was not.