# Re: Memoir - School

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Posted by Anonymous on March 03, 2021 at 05:02:39

In Reply to: Memoir - School posted by Pete on March 02, 2021 at 03:00:34:

Wow, great story!

I had an experience while in 8th grade in elementary school. We were having a Christmas carnival (yes, a Christmas carnival, ha ha), including a Santa Claus "station" that everyone wanted.

Each of us 8th graders were running an event, sometimes two. I had the bingo station. My station cost 2 tickets (ticket proceeds went to a charity), but the winner of each game got to spin a wheel and would win the prize showing on the wheel. One of the prizes was to dunk "any 8th grader" in the dunk tank. Keep in mind, this was a carnival in a cold climate in the winter, so everything was indoors - including the dunk tank.

The dunk tank was the only "wet" event - later in high school, I ran another event at a carnival, but that was outside in hot and muggy conditions.

All of us 8th graders knew about the possibility of getting in the dunk tank, so we all had a change of clothes ready, but we were supposed to "pretend" that we didn't and that we didn't want to "get our clothes wet" and stuff like that.

Well, let's put the rest of the story this way - there were 30 wedges on the wheel, and only one of them was this dunk tank thing. I was expecting it to come up sooner than it did, and then I was expecting the person who won to pick me, considering I was the host of the game. It took almost 2 hours (many, many games, don't remember how many) before someone landed on that wedge. And to my surprise, they didn't pick me! They picked a good friend of mine, who I will call Steve here (not his real name). The reason they chose Steve was because this kid who won the bingo's older brother knew both Steve and I quite well, and they thought it would be funny.

Steve is quite shy, but we did get him to run an event - he was dealing with the "star" event - the Santa Claus! He was collecting tickets and taking the photos of the younger kids with Santa, either with or without their parents, and then getting their contact info so the pictures could be sent to them later. Well, since he was just picked, someone had to cover for him.

Lucky for me, my relief came and I had my lunch break just as Steve was ready to go into the dunk tank (I kind of arranged it at this point, ha ha). He seemed to be looking forward to this, as he was more confident than I'd ever seen him. He didn't take anything off - he had on his blue jeans, a red t-shirt, and his HUGE skate shoes (they were all the go back then). I followed him over, egging him on, and he climbed up on the seat, replacing a young teacher, who had been in the tank for the 2 hours I had been running bingo... Now, the person that "won" the bingo game was to come to the front of the line when this happened, and be the first to dunk their chosen person. One of the teachers who was helping to run this event told Steve he could take his shoes off, and he said "no way!"

"Fine then," the teacher said (or something to that regard - this was back in the late 90s, and I don't remember the exact words), and the little kid who won the bingo threw a tennis ball. It clunked the target, but wasn't hard enough. Not bad for the first try. He threw another and just missed the target. With his third, I whispered to him to run up and hit the target if he missed, to which he smiled from ear-to-ear. He threw it, and once again hit the target but not hard enough. Steve taunted the kid a bit, until the kid ran up and hit the target, sending Steve straight into the water with a huge splash. What a thrill!!

Steve surfaced with a huge grin on his face. Our rules for these 8th graders going in was that they didn't have to stay any longer after they'd been dunked once, but could if they wanted to. Steve wanted to, so he did - long enough for my lunch break to run out.

So I went back to my bingo station, having never eaten lunch (who cares when you can see your best friend get dunked in all his clothes - AND his shoes!). To my surprise, the VERY NEXT kid to win (the younger sister of one of my enemies, ha ha), landed on the dunk tank on the wheel. She ended up choosing her big brother (the one who is my enemy - will call him Callum). Now Callum was a bully, and was quite selfish. He was supposed to be helping in the kitchen making hot dogs, and such, but he instead was out screwing around with the cotton candy machine. I really had no interest in him getting dunked, other than that he deserved it. I only remember that he was wearing beige baggy cargo shorts and a white shirt. He got dunked, because I saw him screwing around in the kitchen later, still soaked, trying to get sent home.

Anyway, since Callum had gone to the tank, Steve had gotten out. He sloshed his way back over to the Santa station, without changing, and had gone back to his duties. There was so much water around him on the gym floor, that one of the teachers actually came and forced him to go change. But before he did, he got a photo of himself - he framed it and hung it up in his room. He always said that was the best day of his life. We always chatted about this after, and he did do several other wet clothes experiments at home, but his parents always got mad at him, so he stopped eventually. He always said he loved getting his clothes wet "because it is a harmless thing to do to defy your parents", ha ha. Steve was (and still is) the only person I've ever known in-person to have also liked getting his clothes and shoes wet for fun.

We ended up starting 9th grade at the same high school, but I changed schools mid-way through the year (we moved to the next town over). We kept in touch lots (sports and such), until he moved away during the year we were seniors in high school (in different schools, as above).

The more interesting part of this story, is that I got a friend request from "Steve" (like I said, not his real name) on Facebook about two years ago, and accepted. Low and behold, there was the photo of him standing in our elementary school gym, soaking wet from head-to-toe, in shiny jeans and red tee, prominent in his photo stream.

I connected with him, and found out that he had moved back to the town we went to school in (I have since moved to the other side of the country), and was a teacher at the high school that I went to (not the one he went to). He had done a very similar experiment as Peter, but in the school pool, and with clothes as the "weight" to see how much clothes will weigh you down in a pool. He had gotten three boys and three girls to come ready with regular clothes and shoes (I'll call them collectively the "subjects" here), and had other students team up with them. The subjects were to start in a bathing suit, and swim across the pool with other people in their groups timing. Then, they would record times and make hypotheses, etc., and repeat with a new piece of clothing on each time. The last thing was the shoes - Steve said that one of the boys had brought the shoes he was going to wear in a shoe box. He never thought anything of it, just figured that's what he used to carry them to school. Until he opened the box to put them on, and Steve noticed that the shoes still had all the tags on, and the stuffing inside.

"You're gonna wear those?" said one of the girls. The boy said something to the effect of, "yeah, why not"?

Yup, brand new shoes, during the experiment in school. Steve said he had to be careful to not "stare" since he was getting a bit excited about this, but let the kid go in. Apparently, the boy was just a bit of a class clown (albeit quite intelligent, apparently), and had just thought it would be funny to wear brand new shoes in the pool. He also wore them to school the next day, still mostly soaked, to the laughing of all the classmates.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this! I have another to write at some point - will have to wait for the right time.

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