The morning across the high school campus before the first bell in chemistry class was low-key and solemnified, an attitude that bespoke of mist-filled warrens and bleary-eyed coffee stains and efficacy for all things "college prep", a sort of sappy counterculture "Garfield" comic strip appreciation for some vague "Good Times" memory of "The Beatles" and haywire factoids about the close of "The Cold War" as wholesome and nutritious as a brown paper-bag lunch.

This was the neglected third floor of the dingy, amateur sciences. . . . . which, along with math, left no room for equivocation in our age of politicking and "the spongy liberal arts" of nattering nabobs and the swelling backsides of "museum mavens" holding fundraising socials. The hard, unpleasant truth is always underfunded-- especially the type that is not very gratifying to self-appointed notions of "genius", and leaves one "washing their hands of it".

Yet, there was so much "the slide-rule" technical men could not see. . . . . but they played their own version of "Aerospace politics" that asked no questions as America continued to arm itself to the teeth and politicians grandstanded. Just as "the building boom" went on and on with hard-hat construction workers, but the only thing one knew is that they wanted to get out of doing "A REALLY HARD JOB", or something that took too much rigor.

It was like those minimum-wage jobs in "fast food" when a sleepy black kid would have to dress up as "Ronald McDonald" and "get down" with a bunch of raucous 10 and 11 year-old's at "the birthday party" because "it was all grandma could afford". We'd nickname him "Homie the Clown" after a character on "In Living Color", punch him in the gut, and run around like a bunch of wild little Indians. Finally, a little imp would pipe up-- "Homie the clown be a homosexual!" while the poor 20 year old would cant his head in pain, at a loss for words.

The bathrooms were always trashed, the toilets leaky, the paper-towels pulled down, and it didn't bespeak of elevated employment that awaited "the deseg" kids in this chemistry class, through whatever haze of "Bill Cosby/George Washington Carver/Fat Albert" denial. That not everyone was going to grow up to become Muhammad Ali, Sammy Davis Jr., or James Baldwin.

Sometimes they'd look at "all this white man's frippery", particularly the candied effort to act as if they had an equal chance to understand it and get on the fast-track to a decent university, and they'd curdle up their face with a leer of a stumped grin. . . . . as if to ask, "how's this relevant to my life?". The dim-eyed white kids would stare on like hypnotized chickens, not particularly interested in the subject matter at-hand either. But this was 1st period chemistry, as stubborn and persistent and unyielding as the crud on the bottom of the glass beakers, the rust on the Bunsen burners, and the ache of the disinterested teenage soul whose eyes were going into a kaliedoscope of pornographic fantasy for the jeans-covered behind of that girl two rows ahead.

But whatever you want to say about school, at least it gave us "some structure". . . . . otherwise we'd all be "up to no good". Goths and "hipsters" hang out by "the smoking wall", neither male nor female but a bunch of "alt" black witches. Or at a party you have kids trying to act like they belong "by desperately being AGAINST something" with unlimited clawing violence, then "a running joke" that's so low it's on "an amoebatic slurry" level about a krazy-krash-kat named "Stony", who-- encouraged by the attention-- may actually "go over the edge" with one of his dumb pranks and either be led away in handcuffs or have a tube rammed down his throat and get his stomach pumped at the hospital.

You had the self-consciousness in the dark, desperately wishing that you could be a ruffled, flavored "potato chip" instead of a plain, white one. . . . . and have the rough ridges of a spicy ethnicity, and feel more "authentic". . . . . which is why youth culture "gloms on" to evermore funky, far-out things as a random, postmodern cultural reference. The "where, what, how, when, and why" of it eludes almost all; and no one particularly cares except for the losers.

Somebody stop me. . . . . with this click.