DARE

Daring your seventh grade buddies was a popular and revered experience. Prior to the first bell at Churchill Junior High School we played hardball every morning. A common dare on this discerning playing ground was to slide with your school clothes on. This dare was so common that it need not be spoken aloud. That is, if the opportunity to slide was available and a player chose not to capitalize on the situation they were considered a woose or a pussy… It was an automatic dare. Not to accept this challenge invited a round of hissing, boos, and general cussing. There were other common dares. An opportunity to “man up” in the arena of your peers. Blowing the powdered sugar off the top of the daily desert cake was most popular and did little damage. The antithesis of the powdered sugar cake was the peanut butter icing cake which was dared to be squashed into an unaware victim’s face. Getting the peanut butter out of your eyelids was a real challenge. I can remember one day this ritual getting out of control at our table and the lunch monitor, Mr. Desario, gave our entire table detention. The very next day there was a mimeographed memo read aloud in every homeroom concerning the Do’s and Don’ts in the cafeteria. Specifically it read, “Food particles should be eaten not thrown at other students, teachers, cafeteria help, or faculty in or about the lunchroom.” Memo’s needed to be very accurate in the seventh grade as if any area of consequence was omitted we would surly take advantage of it. The relationship between faculty and the student body was definitely adversarial. Their job was to teach and make good citizens out of us and our mission was to learn as little as possible while maintaining decent grades and not getting caught screwing up.

The only place prone to more dares was the boys’ locker room. This den of iniquity was the perfect setting for manhood dares. There were gym suits in some lockers that hadn’t seen the inside of a washing machine in seasons. Seventh grade boys were different from sixth graders as almost all seventh grade guys had started sprouting hair under their arms and genital areas and we were extremely proud on demonstrating this phenomenon to our classmates. We weren’t shy about becoming men we embraced it. Many sixth graders didn’t take showers as they were embarrassed to reveal that manhood hadn’t struck yet but not the case with the gorilla seventh graders. We had dares about how far from the urinal you could hit the target to hiding one another’s clothes when you were in the shower.

Keith, Larry and I created a daily dare which was the guy who dared to leave the showers last and would be the latest to class was the winner. He was bad, cool, a total disrespect for authority. A guy any seventh grader would admire. The vast majority of the other seventh graders in that class thought we were monarchs in the arena of locker room dares. We ruled! Medieval Kings could only wish for such loyal admonishment. What most of our loyal subjects didn’t know is that the class Larry, Keith and I had following PE was art, and the art room was directly on the other side of the girl’s locker room. So close we could spit and hit it! Art class wasn’t on the same level as the rest of your curriculum, especially to guys. There was something feminine about art in the seventh grade. An athletic viral kinda guy almost didn’t want to do well in art as some kind off proof of his masculinity. So we really didn’t care if we were late for art. So what! Your parents really wouldn’t get angry if you flunked art. After all it’s not an academic subject and they never had art when they were in school. A guy could just explain he didn’t have any talent for the subject and it would probably be accepted. A bad grade in art probably wouldn’t even ground you!

One day Larry introduced a new product to the showers. Something just being advertised on television called “Soapy”. Complete with a jingle, “Soapy soaps you clean with oceans full of fun… bubbly, bubbly, bubbly clean before you’re done!” Ah, leave it to modern science and seventh grade boys to muscle up some fun! It was not surprising that the three monarchs of dare were the last in the showers this particular day. As a matter of record we were so late the next gym glass had already began. “Soapy” was the first body shampoo directed at the hard to bathe market. It produced bubbles as big as your hand. Lottsa, lottsa bubbles. We were having oogles of fun with this stuff. So much so that we noticed the floor of the communal shower filling up with bubbles. Keith, the genius he was, came up with an idea to block the drains, leave the showers on and empty this “soapy” stuff onto the floor to surprise the next gym class when they came back into the locker room. Who were Larry and I to argue with genius? One for all and all for one! The daring monarchs emptied the bottle, clogged the drains, left the showers running and skedaddled out of there. Apparently the shower floor over flooded and the water and mounds of bubbles made its way onto the floor of the locker room. By lunchtime we had heard stories the soap bubbles were one to two feet high, up to the benches. They had to get the janitor in to clean it up! I thought for sure we’d have a memo read to us the next morning in homeroom but maybe since the faculty was trying to encourage the taking of showers following PE classes they optioned not to comment on the incident?

Larry, Keith and I would generally take turns in being the latest for class as that way we were all winners and no chickens, but sometime into that quarter Keith stopped being a winner and was making it to art class on time or just a little late. I felt it was because Keith really liked art. After all he had an undeniable gift for drawing cartoons. Don’t get me wrong we all enjoyed art class whether we liked art or not. Our art teacher, Ms. Marano, was just out of college and she had a body built for a Las Vegas show girl. Larry used to just sit there and try and draw her boobs. I liked helping her in the back room. Since I was the tallest she would always call on me to get stuff off the top shelves that she couldn’t reach. There was something exciting about being back there alone with her. Boy if art involved fantasies we were really learning! But in the seventh grade women, fantasies or art appreciation were not valid reasons for chickening out on a dare. Keith had to be taught a lesson so Larry and I conspired to leave the showers early one day and gave Keith the illusion he had won. Poor naïve Keith was wallowing in it as we were hiding all his clothes, and securing every unlocked locker as to make sure he had no opportunity to cloth himself. The late bell had not even rang as Larry and I were leaving the locker room. Keith’s last words to us were that we were pussies. Twenty minutes later Keith walked into art class dripping wet in nothing more than a towel wrapped around his waist. The girls in the class were hysterical. I never thought he’d have the balls to do this. And so the legend was created, Keith Gucwa was the king of dares. He had bigger balls than anyone in the school let along the seventh grade. Every dare made in that school from that moment on would be compared to Keith’s magnificent achievement.