Ding Dong! The....

Let's reach deep into my psyche, shall we? Ha ha, I just named this post based on the "Ding Dong, the Witch is dead...." line and looked at my music player to see the song I'm listening to (a Lester Young number, featuring Roy Haynes' drumming) is called "Ding Dong." Well, there you go. Anyway.....

I found out some interesting information yesterday, but to put it in perspective, I have to give some backstory.

When I was young, I was rail-thin, which if you know me now, might seem surprising. I mean, I was a runt. Five feet tall, maybe 120 pounds....really small. Until I reached junior year of high school, when I sprouted about a foot. I was still thin, don't think I topped 140, but at least I was taller. Until then, I was game for hulking rednecks, of which there were plenty in Pearland, where I went to the last year of junior high and all of high school. One in particular was especially brutal to me, not beating me up or anything like that, but he enjoyed humiliating my puniness in front of anybody he could. This went on from approximately eighth through tenth grade. As I wrote a bit ago, I shot up a foot in very little time, and by eleventh grade, most of the picking-on had stopped. Now, I wasn't a super shy nerd who kept to himself, it wasn't like that. But still, I was no match physically for most of my male classmates. Part of the reason for this was that I was a year younger than almost all my classmates, too, having started first grade at five years old.

Now that I REALLY think about it, I believe the reason I gravitated to drums as an instrument was my lack of physical body. I wanted to play something physical to show that I could stand up to any jock and say "see??" I always liked sports and would have played them more if I could have stood up to the punishment. Other than some baseball (still my favorite sport), I didn't play much throughout school. I ran track some in school, and played golf, but that was about it. Playing drums was going to have be the answer, and I guess it still is. Even though, through food, etc. I don't think I'll ever return to the land of the "hey, count my ribs!"

So, back to the "one in particular" who liked to humiliate me in front of others at school. I found out yesterday that he died. Right or wrong, I had a feeling of immense joy. I won't state his name - I'm sure he had a family and such, and I have sympathy for them. But him? No way. He treated me like shit during school, and I'm glad I outlived him. So there. I'm doing a little dance. Even if I die in a car wreck this afternoon, I still exceeded his "sell by" date. I suppose, in a small way, that he, along with a couple of others, had something to do with my taking up drumming as a hobby/vocation, so maybe I should even thank him slightly for that. But it would only be slightly, believe me. It surprised me how much hearing he died affected me. I must have a lot of this stuff buried deeply.

Short post, I know, but it had to be made. This might begat more "school memories" posts. We'll see......