The Thomas Jefferson of the Pell Grant Elites
For a brief period, I was a community college scholar. This should come as no surprise to anyone who knew me as a fifth-grade genius. During the intervening years, I may have fallen off the educational map. Spectacularly some would say, through my year as an eighth grade Robitussin addict where I tested at a sub moronic level and ended up having to take all shop classes during my freshman year of high school.
My second try at community college, let’s just say, the Dean’s List couldn’t hold a candle to my LED intellect. I suppose it helped that I was twenty years older than most of the other students. At the very least, I knew who Bob Dylan was when his lyrics were discussed during the twenty minutes allotted to the poetry section of English 202 toward the middle of the semester. The fact that I could sing/recite all the words to Dylan’s “Rainy Day Women #12 and 35” blew some minds. This, of course, was years ago before Chalamet played Dylan in that jackassy movie.
But for every high I experienced in community college; I faced several devastating lows.
The one particular low I’m thinking about today as I sit here writing this column involves a worksheet handed out to a biology class of which I was inexplicably a student in. The sheet was composed of four cartoon lizards and the borders of four countries. None of these countries were Poland. I knew this because I have the borders of that country tattooed on my arm for when I do something stupid, I can just conveniently point to the tattoo rather than have to explain myself.
Anyway, the page appeared to resemble a coloring book page. This alarmed me. I hadn’t been within arm’s reach of a box of crayons since my daughter was a child. My son, six years younger than my daughter, turned his nose up at coloring books, finding little interest in activities which didn’t involve violence.
When the biology professor, really just a glorified high school teacher moonlighting at the satellite campus for a few hundred dollars of folding money, passed out several sixty-four count boxes of Crayola, I knew what I had to do.
I colored the anolis lizards with slender bodies and long tails yellow. The stocky anolis lizards with the stubby tails got the purple Crayola treatment. I colored the borders of the four islands inhabited by the anolis lizards. Magenta for Cuba, Jamaica caught the marijuana leaf green. Hispaniola, I shaded with jazzberry jam and I mango-tango-ized Puerto Rico.
This was some top tier refrigerator work, I thought. My hard-working wife was going to be so proud of her studious husband coloring anolis lizards like a goddam art major. I hoped she’d take a moment to marvel at the pointillism technique I incorporated in the colorization of Cuba.
Not only was I having great fun coloring my worksheet, but I was also learning a little bit about the inception of Darwinism.
The eight other students scattered throughout the classroom looked impossibly young. They tended to keep their distance from the sullen, bald guy (me, somehow) muttering darkly to himself. Coloring the anolis lizards and a handful of Caribbean islands didn’t seem to be quite the soul-deadening proposition to them. If anything, the prospect of such an easy grade motivated these kids to make sure they colored inside the lines.
My humiliation baffled them. My knowledge of the Bob Dylan catalogue invoked their pity. I cleaved closer to the coffin than to the activity book. They treated me the way I treated my father-in-law who was a doddering old fool who wouldn’t shut the fuck up about Frank Sinatra.
I knew it was going to be like this, though. I knew it my first day of student orientation.
I disliked the student coordinator, immediately. And I’m not one given to irrational fits of disdain. I hated the way he overenunciated every word hoping to convey the adequacy of the community college’s Speech 106. If I’m being honest, I disliked the jackass before he even opened his mouth. His red hair and simpering, smug manner were the peanut butter and jelly crying out for me to make an annihilation sandwich out of him.
He was half my age, standing at the front of the seminar telling us, telling me, what an amazingly fun adventure college was going to be as though we were all idiots embarking on a day trip to Disneyland. There I was, just trying to get out of the factory, grinding through this schooling so I could land a career making less money than I did at my last job.
“Take out your smart phones,” he said, perfectly, “and call up your Twitter account.”
I did not take out my phone. I did not go to my Twitter account. My phone had a compass and a sundial carved into the jawbone inlay. I was on the OG network. There would be no tweeting, instagramming, facebooking, tiktokking, myspacing, or livejournaling. If absolutely necessary, I could text someone within a three-mile radius depending on how hard the wind was blowing.
He told us the first tweet posted would win the tweeter a prize, and about three seconds later, he was handing out a fanny pack embossed with the college’s logo to a brunette who looked to be all over about twelve years old.
I surprised myself by how quickly the bitter resentment welled up within me. This was supposed to be a fresh start for me after twenty years of factory stagnation. The excitement, the anticipation of giving the focus of my life over to educational pursuits lasted exactly one early afternoon.
I was surrounded by students who would soon become alumni who would become Burger King managers and ass-wipers at the local Abandon-An-Elder. I didn’t feel superior to these people. I was of these people, maybe even a little bit less than these people since I despised any over the age of me. They couldn’t even force themselves to make eye contact with me. I could only blame myself. Maybe, I was showing too much chest hair. That happened sometimes. Buttoning any of my top four buttons gave me the sensation of being choked out.
Would I have continued the college indoctrination seminar if I knew eight short months later, I would be coloring anolis lizards with a fistful of Crayolas among a group of kids who believed Bob Dylan was a contemporary of William Wordsworth? Yes, of course. The one unimpeachable goal I’ve harbored my entire life was to be the smartest person of whatever room I entered. And there I was… The Thomas Jefferson of the Pell Grant elites, competently coloring anolis lizards, living the dream.
Karl Koweski is a displaced Region Rat now living in rural Alabama. He writes when his pen allows it. He’s a husband to a lovely wife and father to some fantastic kids. He collects pop culture ephemera. On most days he prefers Flash Gordon to Luke Skywalker and Neil Diamond to Elvis Presley.
THE POLISH HAMMER POETRY CORNER is a weekly column, posted each Tuesday morning.
