First day. Senior year of High School. Two study periods in a row, right after lunch. Easy classes. A car. (Albeit, the most cartoonishly shitty car since Archie sat behind the wheel of his jalopy. Adam Sandler wrote an ode to my car. ) Still in all, life was good. Smooth sailing.

The universe has ways of throwing curveballs.

Now, High School is it's own odd beast, and follows certain unspoken rules of conduct. One of which is, first day of school, the lunchroom is a free for all. Sit where you want, but be mindful; human nature, teen politics, and the need for routine and ritual dictate that where you sit is only fluid on this one, magical day. Sit, but sit at your peril, for your ass will occupy that table for the year.

My friends and I quickly spied a table, and hurried to occupy it. Strangely, the table NEXT to it was empty. Eerily empty. Like someone knew something we did not. But the die had been cast, the asses had collectively found their round plastic resting places, and there was little to do at that point but rail at the cruel fates.

They say smell is the surest trigger to memory. The smell of gray beef and cheap bread. mingling with the scent of newly minted trapper-keepers… the very thought of this smell, now, with ten years distance, brings back a wave of remembrance. Of horror. You see, the empty table that sat adjacent to our own was not to be empty for much longer.

A few minutes into lunch, madness descended into the room. It was awesome and terrible in its blind, monolithic power. How to describe their entrance? What words to bend, like steel bars, to fashion a proper model of these raw forces of nature?

Okay. Either this will make perfect sense to you, or you will scratch your head quizzically, and wonder what I'm going on about. But do you remember the Bugs Bunny cartoons where Bugs is being chased by the mad contingent of hunting dogs? They would animate it as a violent cloud, from which would emerge snapping jaws, kicking feet, and odd heads of dogs at impossible angles. And the cloud would move with a seeming group sentience that belied the madness of its fury.

Picture that, but with retards.

Now, gentle reader, if your sensibilities are offended by this term, please understand, so are mine. And therein lies the crux of this tale.

I am not sure if I can properly convey the feeling at their approach. If life had a soundtrack, at that point, Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" would have be pounding in stereo-phonic might. And overlaid upon it would be Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee," until the two songs merged into an unthinkable cacophony. But life does not have a soundtrack. It was a mass of confusion, a living wave of terrible power, and it sounded like
THIS.

You see, our high school had, apparently, received new funding in the summer interim, to build a new wing, for special education. And apparently, my group of misfit friends and I were the only ones not to get the memo. Some social engineer genius decided it would be a wonderful idea to introduce the "special needs" students into the "gen-pop" of the lunch room. Since, you know, there is nothing more enlightened and accepting that a teeming room of teenagers, hopped up on coca-cola and pizza bagels.

I can assure you, gentle reader, that no matter how noble the intention in the planning stage, those best-laid plans of love and harmony were fated to "gang aft glay" and in a very bad way. I am almost positive that the intent behind this integration, in a social setting, was to have meaningful connections establish between the "special" students, and the rest of the student body. Nothing could have been farther from reality. One can almost picture the administrators,their eyes tinted pink from the rose colored glasses they wore, all doped up the lies of Hollywood- happy images of Dennis Quaid from the TV movie BILL helping mentally handicapped Mickey Rooney experience life. Indeed, one of the more popular television shows on at the time was LIFE GOES ON, with Chris Burke. (Being the tales of a wise and innocent Down's Syndrome child and his travails, and friendships, through high school.)