one of my favorite parts of graded school -- besides the day our third grade gym teacher mrs. brabazon played an ethel merman record and taught us about lip-syncing (and i wish i was kidding) -- was film strip day.
i remember walking into a classroom, seeing the projector that had been hauled out of the audio/visual closet, and feeling that incredible rush of geeky excitement. always one to think ahead, on the first day of a class i would do my best to finagle a desk in the middle of the room, just to the left. this was the spot where the projector would eventually be set up, and whatever kid sat in that seat was given the enormous resposiblity of operating the clicker.
the clicker was the button that advanced the projected images from inside the machine. i prided myself on my clicker skills -- being able to perfectly anticipate the loud tone from the accompanying record, indicating you should move ahead to the next image. my clicks were always perfectly timed. if they were the slightest bit off, i would punish myself for the rest of the day -- no cherry torte on my lunch tray, no "donny and marie show" on friday. the frustration of a pat meyers or a ronnie shilling operating the clicker was enough to send me over the edge. (they would inevitably be one or sometimes two clicks behind, requiring me to flail and shout "click the clicker! click the clicker!")
film strips gave way to educational films, like this one. i don't remember this particular film from those days. we may have watched it. it's already had over 13,000,000 views on youtube. i figured a few more couldn't hurt.
tuesday is a joke / played on those not quite prepared / the same game again
Tony... I only WISH I had had your gym teacher. I might have excelled at that stupid class instead of sitting on the bench desperate to BOTH be ignored by the mean kids AND picked to be on their team. :)
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