My six-year-old son hates school. At least, that\u2019s what he screams on a regular basis. \u201cI hate school! I HATE IT! I HATE IT!\u201d He repeats this mantra every night before going to sleep. There\u2019s usually some flailing involved, too. You get the idea.<\/p>\n
Now I don\u2019t think he really hates school. He\u2019s all smiles when he comes home, and he looks forward to meeting his friends every day. Besides, hatred is hard work. It takes concerted effort, and, quite frankly, he\u2019s a lazy kid by nature. I don\u2019t think he\u2019s up to it.<\/p>\n
I know I\u2019m not.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve hated bosses and I\u2019ve hated obnoxious actors and I\u2019ve hated girls who done me wrong. But it never sticks. The last time I made the effort to really hate somebody over a long period of time was back in college. They were my dance teachers \u2013 the Landrums.<\/p>\n
Bill and Jacqui Landrum.<\/p>\n
They were pure evil, and I hated them with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns. Especially Bill.<\/p>\n
Not that they cared. They\u2019re big time choreographers in Hollywood<\/a> \u2013 the last time I saw their name in the credits was for the movie “O Brother! Where Art Thou?” They\u2019re both successful and confident, and my hatred didn\u2019t faze them in the least. That\u2019s how it works, you know. The hater damages nobody but himself, while the hated go on blissfully without caring. As my old boss used to say, hatred corrodes the container it\u2019s carried in.<\/p>\n Initially, the Landrums and I got along well, despite the fact that he was this faux-European snooty guy who looked like an emaciated Arnold Schwarzenegger, and she was a forty-something Fran Drescher type who looked like she\u2019d had her face shellacked. I was a crappy dancer, and they were freaks, but I could live with that.<\/p>\n The famous \u2013 infamous?- Bill Landrum moment was when he was showing us the correct dance move to open and close our arms.<\/p>\n \u201cYou cannot just open thim like some veectim,\u201d he would say with his untraceable Germanic\/Mexican accent. \u201cYou must be a king! You must say \u2018hello!\u2019 \u201c And on \u2018hello,\u2019 he would snap his fingers, slap his pelvis with both hands, and then thrust out his arms and his \u2018jewels\u2019 with power and authority, all the while saying \u201cHello! These are my jewels! You don\u2019 like them? I take them back!\u201d And then he would snap his fingers again, withdraw his arms and pelvis quickly, and then bow his head with ludicrous solemnity. (At least, that\u2019s how we all did it when we imitated him ad nauseum.) He was quite a character, that Bill Landrum, and I actually liked him once. (I didn\u2019t like his jewels, though.)<\/p>\n I remember the exact moment when I turned on the Landrums. They had come to see a show in which I sucked out loud. It was Noel Coward\u2019s witty one-act play “We Were Dancing,” and I played a zombie in it. The script didn\u2019t call for a zombie, but I played one anyway. Bill told me my performance was \u201cunacceptable.\u201d And he was right. And I knew he was right. But I didn\u2019t want to hear it.<\/p>\n So I had two choices. I could have sucked it up and gone on with my life, or I could hate him.<\/p>\n Two roads diverged in the wood, and I, I took the one that let me hate Bill Landrum with the white hot intensity of a thousand suns. The whole experience gave me an enlarged capacity for petulance that has not served me well in these subsequent years. Were I to meet them today, I\u2019d apologize and try to bury the hatchet. But I\u2019d probably still think they were loons.<\/p>\n Back then, though, I was far less enlightened. I devised a whole host of ways to irritate them, particularly Bill. I remember once he told us to hold out our arms at our sides so we could just barely see our hands in our peripheral vision. Like a jackass, I stretched out my arms at well over a 180-degree angle, far too widely to be seen in my periphery. Bill came up to me and said something like \u201cJeem, you can\u2019t see your hands!\u201d And I said \u201cYes, I can! See?\u201d And then I wiggled my right-hand fingers, as if to cutely wave \u201chellloooo!\u201d Bill, flummoxed, just said \u201cFine. You\u2019re special,\u201d and walked away in a self-righteous huff.<\/p>\n The nastiness increased, and so did the audacity of my defiance. I remember when we all had to stage our own dances, and I did mine accompanied by PDQ Bach\u2019s classic \u201cLittle Bunny Hop Hop Hop.\u201d I hopped like a bunny and hit myself over the head with a cardboard tube. I\u2019m not sure I kept a straight face, but they sure did. They were less than pleased.<\/p>\n And then, of course, there was the infamous moment that I will never forget, even though I wasn\u2019t there to witness it. I had stopped going to their class by this point, but my crank-calling Esteemed Colleague I mentioned two days ago<\/a> showed up at my invitation and, after dropping my name and asking if I was there, proceeded to dance to the carnival music coming out of his own boom box. When confronted, he introduced Bill to a little stuffed raccoon and said \u201cSay hello to my little raccoon.\u201d Bill wasn\u2019t interested. After being forcibly and profanely ejected, My Esteemed Colleague opened the door again, and his little raccoon, a wind-up toy, came scurrying across the floor.<\/p>\n The next hour, I arrived at Landrum\u2019s class a minute or two late, and everything came to a screeching halt as my friends turned and stared at me to say, almost in unison, \u201cUhhh, Jim \u2013 what the HELL was THAT?!!\u201d One classmate said, \u201cAt first, it was just kind of surreal, but when he came back the second time, we thought he might have a bomb.\u201d<\/p>\n I\u2019ve enlisted My Esteemed Colleague\u2019s peculiar talents for equally baffling stunts in later years. When Tuacahn came to LA for auditions for our 2001 season, I asked him to come and audition. The season was as boring and white bread as humanly possible \u2013 “Oklahoma!” and “The Sound of Music” \u2013 and he came in and did this wild improvised monologue about ball bearings that were running through his veins. He then burst into song, singing something of his own composition with the lyrics \u201cYou don\u2019t believe in the Prime Directive? How did you ever get into Starfleet?\u201d There was some pseudo-dancing and writhing involved, too. I had to leave the room because I was laughing so hard, mainly at the stony faces of the other producers and directors who had no idea what to make of this guy. When I came back in, I instantly offered him the role of Captain Von Trapp, which nearly gave the director of “The Sound of Music” a heart attack.<\/p>\n I\u2019m sorry, what were we talking about again?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mysix-year-old son hates school. At least, that\u2019s what he screams on a regular basis. \u201cI hate school! I HATE IT! I HATE IT!\u201d He repeats this mantra every night before going to sleep. There\u2019s usually some flailing involved, too. You get the idea.Now I don\u2019t think he really hates school. He\u2019s all smiles when he ... 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