The Fight

Here's something odd for you. My dad has now tied my grandma for the number of times each has given me grief for not updating the blog. Alright, Dad, you play supporting role in this one, so here goes:

In 3rd grade (and every other grade through 6th)I got in a lot of fights. Looking back, I can't remember what led to most of them.

I do remember fighting a lot with Jason Beard. In the middle of the year, I had to transfer out of Ms. Unander's class and into Mrs. Forrester's class because he and I fought all the time.

About that -- freaking genius idea! For a guy I hated so much I fought with him every day, you'd think we'd find each other on the playground or something, but I don't think we fought again after switching classes. I guess it must have been scholarly pursuits at the crux of our problem. (You know, how do you draw a capital cursive Q, which dinosaur was the coolest -- deep stuff like that.)

Hindsight also makes me feel bad -- you have to wonder why I switched classes and he stayed.

That said, if I hadn't switched classes this story wouldn't exist. Man, I wish I had stayed. I don't like how this one ends.

With any new teacher there are pros and cons.
Pro: Mrs. Forrester was pretty old - I believe that she could give first-hand accounts of dinosaurs that would back my "T-Rex is the coolest" argument.
Con: Apparently you and Jay Warnick can't say "naked ladies" back and forth across the room without your parents getting a phone call.
Pro: I learned what "beheading" is -- cool word!
Con: Dad picked up the phone when it rang and was waiting in the classroom when I came in from recess. Apparently he agreed that "naked ladies" was an inappropriate thing to say over and over again across a room of 3rd grade kids.
Pro: Everybody laughed when I guessed what a "metallic" taste was, but I was right.
Con: Suspended for two days? I have to stay up in my bed for the rest of today? Oh, man!
Pro: Wendy Luebbe
Con: Chad Harmon

So Wendy Luebbe was in my new class, and she was one of the three cutest girls in my school (Cari Pocock and Dena Miller were the other two). As a third grade boy, you don't really know what's going on or what to do with this weird feeling, so you do some strange stuff. I had to let Wendy know that I thought she was cute, but how? The first idea that I came up with was to keep throwing the big rubber ball at her during recess. That didn't seem to work.

I can't remember how I hurt her, but I do remember that she had some scratches on her neck and she and I were in the principal's office.

Enter Dad: stage right
Exit Sean and Dad: stage left
Suspended for how long? Oh Man!

Rumor had it that Chad Harmon and Wendy were boyfriend and girlfriend. This made no sense at all because Chad played the accordion. Even in the third grade I knew that something was a little off about anybody who played the accordion -- I'm pretty sure some accordion-playing whack-job on Mr. Rogers was the one who clued me in.

Clearly, I had to fight Chad. The premise of the fight was that he was an accordion player and I was the founder of the AAPNCA (Anti-Accordion Players Named Chad Association).

Long story short:

I got the living crap kicked out of me by an accordion-playing whack-job named Chad. He got the girl; I got a bloody nose. He now has a blog with a story about how he kicked the crap out of some kid that looked like Opey, and I run for cover whenever I hear "Lady of Spain" and curl into the fetal position whenever my grandma turns on the Lawrence Welk show.

Soccer is cool!