Eddie

In the Los Angeles Unified School District during the 1950s, each student was supposed to follow a program consisting of required courses and electives in their last 4 years of school (9^th through 12^th grades).  For planning purposes, each student was matched up with a program (math, music, science, etc.) while they were still in the 8^th grade. 

 

Clearly, 95% of all 8^th graders haven't the remotest idea of what they want to be when they grow up.  This 95% group is most fortunate as no shattering of dreams will come to pass.  As for the 5% that think they do know what they want to be when they grow up, they're all headed for tragic disappointment.  All but a few will never come close to doing what they wanted to do.  The very few that actually get a chance to do what they thought they wanted to do, will discover they were dead wrong.

 

Just how were kids lined up with a program?  It's possible each student met with a guidance counselor but I do not recall any such meeting.  If I was assigned a guidance counselor at any time while I was in school, it's news to me.  Had I met with a guidance counselor in the 8^th grade at the age of 12 or 13, it would have been a complete waste of time.

Guidance counselor, "What's your favorite class in school?"

Phil answers, "Gym".

Guidance counselor, "What do you want to do when you grow up?"

Phil answers, "I'll be playing centerfield for the New York Yankees".

 

I think it more likely that school administrators arbitrarily slotted kids into programs and sent home a letter to their parents that amounted to "speak now or forever hold your peace".  This might help get the LAUSD off the hook regarding future litigation. 

 

As kids, we were labeled and sorted as early as the 2^nd grade as I recall.  I would love to know what the actual labels were.  Smart and less smart?  Normal and more normal?  Intermediate and advanced?  At Eagle Rock Elementary, each classroom would separate students into 2 groups when it came to academic activities.  This life-changing, psychotic-inducing, inferiority-complexing practice was carried out in the open for everyone to see.  This was reinforced everyday from the age of 7 to the age of 11.  Granted it was a small school but with education being the single largest part of the California State budget, wouldn't you think there would be enough money to figure out a better way? 

 

The one junior high was fed new students from a handful of local elementary schools. The labels we were given in our elementary schools were somehow transferred along to the junior high, where new students were separated into different levels for classes in math and English.  The die had been cast long before we got there and we could now just mark time until our self-fulfilling prophecies came to pass.

 

The first memory I have of looking at the program options was when I was in the 10^th grade.  My fraudulent math score on the Iowa test, and Mr. Cressy's ego, were the only reasons I got through Algebra in the 9^th grade.  I was told Geometry did not involve any Algebra, so I agreed to take it in the tenth year.  Thankfully, Geometry was simply common sense so that turned out well, but I now desperately needed to avoid any additional math.  I remember spotting a program having to do with Languages.  It did not require any math beyond Geometry.  The plan did require 4 years of foreign languages.  Since I had just completed 2 years of French, I would take Spanish for the 11^th and 12^th grades. 

 

In hind sight, this proved to be a brilliant move that put me squarely on the path of least resistance.  It eliminated math for good, and by cutting off both languages at the end of 2 years, I would not have to deal with anything really complex.  The only possible downside was a science course requirement.  I chose Physiology which was taught by Mr. Imperatrice.

 

Mr. Imperatrice was considered by most students to be somewhat of a character.  On the first day of class a few years earlier, he had brought in a box of items to be passed around while he attended to administrative forms and the like.  One by one, the items were handed around from one student to the next, until each item had made its way back to the front of the room.  The items were supposed to hold each student's attention for a few minutes before being passed along.  Included was a sliced open chambered nautilus, a rattlesnake skin, a human skull and other such items.

 

When Mr.  Imperatrice had finished with his forms and all of the items had been returned to front, he began placing the items back in the box.  When he came to the clear bottle labeled "wood alcohol", he studied it closely with a worried look.  He said to the class, "I marked the level on this before I passed it around.  It looks like the level is lower.  I hope none of you were stupid enough to taste this.  It is a deadly poison".  Two students jumped up and went screaming out into the hall to wash out their mouths at the drinking fountain.  Mr. Imperatrice was doubled over with laughter as the bell rang.

 

I had also been told of an incident where the tables had been turned on Mr. Imperatrice.  Umberto Vallozzi was the scariest kid in school.  He was huge, dressed as a paratrooper, had lost 2 fingers to a cherry bomb, and was rumored to be a 19-year-old 11th grader.  Students referred to him as "Umbie", but I never knew anyone who actually spoke to him.  On one of the days that Umbie bothered to come to school, he took a seat on the window ledge in Mr. Imperatrice's class.  The classroom was on the second floor and the window was open.  He had been sitting there for a while watching cars passing by on Yosemite drive out in front of the school.  When Mr. Imperatrice saw him he shouted, "Vallozzi, get off of that ledge, right now!".  Umbie glanced over at Mr. Imperatrice, smirked, and disappeared out the window.  Most of the class rushed to the windows and looked down to see Umbie casually walking away from the thicket of 4 foot high shrubbery that had cushioned his fall.  The class looked back to the front of the room to find a very pale Mr. Imperatrice

 

Perhaps the most unique thing about Mr. Imperatrice was that when my sons attended the same high school some 34 years later, there was a woman teaching Latin whose last name was also Imperatrice. 

 

I asked Michael, "Maybe she's Mr. Imperatrice's daughter?"

Michael said, "No she's his wife".

I said, "No way.  Not possible.  Her husband must be somebody else".

Michael said, "No it's the same guy that taught at the school when you went there".

I said, "You mean he's still living?"

Michael said, "He doesn't teach anymore but he is alive".

I said, "This makes no sense.  Is she in a wheel chair?  Does she come to school with a paramedic?

Michael said, "She doesn't look much older than you.  She was in school when he was teaching.  That's how they met".

I said, "Great.  When her husband drops dead next week she can pick out a replacement".

 

Jerry Vande Sande sat next to me in Mr. Imperatrice's Physiology class.  He lived in Glendale next to Forest Lawn but his parents used his grandmother's address in Eagle Rock so he could go to the school.  Jerry was different than most kids.  He was pretty sharp but he was also drawn to stuff that was a little edgy.  He liked to go into people's houses on his way home after school. 

 

He picked houses set far back from the street.  Then he would check the car port or the garage window to make sure there were no cars.  If it seemed as if no one was home, he would find his way around to the backyard listening for sounds from a television, radio or appliance.  Once in a while when he made it to the backyard, some one would be there, or they would spot him from inside the house and come out to see why he was there.  He would simply tell them that one of those asshole college kids had thrown his baseball in this direction and was it okay if he tried to find it.  Usually whoever was home would spend 5 minutes helping him look for the ball before the search was called off.

 

When he got to the back yard and he was sure no one was at home, he would try to find a door in the back of the house that had been left open.  If he could find a way in, he would roam through the house looking for things that were interesting.  Once he found a house he could enter and that had interesting things inside, he would return the following week; same day and time.  I went with him once on one of these return visits.  He never took anything from the houses, he just liked the feeling of sneaking around in broad daylight in some body else's home.

 

One day at lunch, he told me that he had broken into a house at 1940 Campus Road, zip code of 90041.  If you check out this address on Google Maps, you can see that the backyard is quite hidden.  You can also see that it is the first house you come to as you walk from the school, past the public pool, and out the rear exit of Yosemite playground.  Since it was so secluded, he was certain none of the neighbors would hear anything.  However, he had cut himself on his shoulder when he reached in for the door latch and had to split for his grandmother's to be bandaged up. 

 

The following morning at school, all students were in their assigned homerooms listening to general announcements.  Part of the agenda for every homeroom that day included the following:

 

"This morning your homeroom teacher is going to look at everyone's hands and wrists.  Please assist your teacher by turning your hands so that both the front and back of each hand can be checked.  If you are wearing long sleeves, please roll them up."

 

Unless Vande Sande told someone else, only he and I knew what this was all about.  I smiled at the thought of some poor schmuck who had cut his hand recently, being dragged down to the VP's office to talk to the police..

 

The physiology class turned out to be fine with one exception,  Mr. Imperatrice required each student to complete a project for the science fair.  This depressing thought hung over me all semester.  I refused to deal with it until slightly past the last minute.  I asked my dad if he could make me a maze for a science project.  I gave him a drawing that he took to work.  He had the carpentry shop construct a maze with 4-inch high walls mounted on a 4 X 4 foot piece of plywood.  The sheet metal shop attached a hinged lid that covered the top of the maze.  You could see down through the lid as it was made with quarter-inch mesh screen stretched over a metal frame.  It was really a work of art. 

 

My idea was to place a mouse at one end of the maze and let him work his way to some food at the opposite end.  I would record the time for each  trip on a large poster board to see if there was any improvement over time.  Not an original idea, mind you, but one I thought I was capable of recreating. 

 

There were 2 major obstacles that complicated things.  The first was that I had put things off for so long that I was left with only one weekend to finish.  The second was that outside of a few astrophysicists, no earthly creature was going to make it through the maze; let alone a mouse.  I had gotten carried away with the layout I gave to my dad.  It was way too intricate with all kinds of doubling back required to make it through.  No time to panic however, so I set off for the hobby store Friday afternoon to buy my mouse.

 

The hobby store is no longer there but at the time it was located on Caspar Avenue, a half block south of Colorado Blvd.  I had been in the store once before to look at model airplanes.  I hadn't seen any mice at that time but I was told they had them.  I asked the owner if he had any mice for sale and he showed a half dozen to me that were wiggling, squirming, twitching and sniffing their way around inside a little cage.  It wasn't until this point that I suddenly realized that (1) I would have to touch and physically handle a mouse; and (2), in the unlikely event that I could bring myself to actually touch one, far worse was the overwhelming horror I foresaw when the project was finished.  What am I going to do with the little bastard?  The only outcomes I could envision were the type of things that haunt people the rest of their lives.

 

I left the hobby store sans mouse and deep in thought.  In the 7 blocks it took me to walk home from the hobby store, I devised plan B.  Given the circumstances, it was obvious the only way out of this mess was to use an imaginary mouse and make the whole thing up.  I named the mouse "Eddie", and gave him credit on the poster where the data was plotted on a huge graph.  The X axis was the range for trip times and the Y axis was the sequence of individual trips.  I had read enough about similar experiments to have a pretty good notion of what the learning curve should look like.

 

I spent most of the weekend working on the data and the poster.  I tried to do everything I could think of to make it appear legitimate.  The trip times ranged from around 8 minutes at the beginning, then gradually improved until they leveled off at less than 2 minutes after the 63rd trip.  There were 6 different trips where no time was posted but a symbol referenced a footnote at the bottom of the poster that explained why the trip had not been timed.  I used one marker to prepare the poster but I used several pens with different colored inks to record the imaginary raw data in a spiral notebook.  The notebook was the project log where dates and trip times were posted over the many days it had supposedly taken to complete the project. 

 

My dad dropped me and the maze off in front of the school on Monday morning.  Some kids helped me carry the maze into the library where the science projects were to be displayed and judged.  I put the poster on a table against a wall and placed the maze at the base of the poster.  I placed the project log on top of the maze and quickly exited the library.  I had real doubts that I would get away with this.

 

Later that afternoon, I was sitting in the Physiology class along with everybody else.  The bell rang for the start of class but Mr. Imperatrice was not in the room.

A few minutes passed and suddenly Mr. Imperatrice pushed open the door, walked to the front of the room and slammed a book down on his desk.  It was obvious that he was pissed.  He had come from the library where awards had been issued to the best science projects.  Mr. Imperatrice was one of the judges and had been on the losing end of a heated disagreement regarding the awards.    

 

The argument had lasted a while and was the reason he had been late to class.  He proceeded to go on a rant in front of the class about how absurd it was to award first prize to the kid that showed up with the laser beam projector.  Mr. Imperatrice claimed that the kid couldn't possibly have done any of the work.  His dad worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and was obviously responsible for the whole thing.  Regardless who built the thing, it amounted to making a product, not doing science, which was the whole point of the science fair.

 

Mr. Imperatrice went on to say that the project that deserved the award wasn't outwardly as sexy as the laser beam projector but it was had been carried out in the true spirit of the scientific method.  The student had to have spent countless hours observing, measuring and recording results. 

 

I thought to myself, "My God, he's talking about little Eddie!".  It was one of those rare times when I felt both immensely proud and deeply ashamed.