Monday, November 27, 2006 Ghosts and writers
The other day, in response to an onslaught of reader demand, I started doing a little research on Laura Ingalls Wilder, pioneer girl out of control.
Before that, though, I was doing some research on Uncle Wiggily. Rather, I was looking for a funny picture to post on my high school buddy Kat's [Unreasonably Popular Social Networking Site] page. She'd gotten me first, with a picture of Wilfred Brimley shooting lasers from his eyes. It was captioned, "DIABEETUS."
I was really looking for a picture of a character, Bad Pip Sissywah, who may have sprung fully formed from the brain of the late Dr. Snead, one of the world's most entertaining and least explicable high school teachers.
The good doctor would routinely stop, mid-lesson, mid-sentence, and say something like, "Well, that's a bad one, ain't it? Baaad, bad. Bad Pip Sissywah, he shivered and shook. Old Uncle Wiggily, four hops he took!" Once the room was properly dumbfounded, he would return to the lesson.
The best part is, he was a math teacher.
He taught Math Analysis, which was a softball math course for those of us who who were too easy-going for Trig. Or Calculus. I forget which was supposed to come first. It was a senior level course, 90% jock, 10% poet. Dr. Snead would say, "Once when I was coaching the (name of pretty prominent school) basketball team, we had a bwah who was so dumb, we called him, 'Fish.'" and the jocks would say, "Pull my finger." Best of all, I had some close calls to failing that class. I would forget which position "Fish" had played at quiz time. (Trick question: Fish was clearly the goon, so it didn't matter.)
My friend took the same class the year before I had, and so Dr. Sneadisms can still crack us up to this day. That man left a legacy.
Anyway, when I was looking for Uncle Wiggily boardgame pictures, I found entire Uncle Wiggily books online, and I loved them! I wish I'd written them. I might have written them! Just as many associative leaps, single-entendres, and talking animals as my own writing, but less swearing and more references to Decoration Day and "the rag man."
So, in the spirit of Uncle Wiggily, I will close like this:
Now, if the cat doesn't fall in the pancake batter and get pawprints all in the maple syrup, I'll tell you in the next blog post what this has to do with Laura Ingalls Wilder! posted by Frenzy Lohan | 11/27/2006 06:32:00 PM
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