WFW - The Shoe

I wouldn’t say I was a bad kid.  

Not everybody I grew up with would agree with that estimation. 

I grew up smoking cigarettes, skipping school, cussing, fighting, and generally disregarding any rules imposed by adults.  I liked people, but not so much those in authority.  I always had a need to go my own way – and some of the choices I made put me in with a group of mostly feral kids.  We spent much of our after-school time with each other, guided only by our collective ids, with all the folly that came to pass as a result. 

Among former smokers I know, most say that the times they really struggle with urges is when they're in a bar, surrounded by cigarette smoke. The smell and the setting takes them right back to that place in their minds when they began smoking, and the memories urge their body to follow. 

Since I quit smoking about the time I was old enough to go into bars, I don’t share that association.  When we were kids, my buddies and I would swipe cigarettes from our parents, then we’d go swimming at Emerald Park pool.  When we were finished, we’d retire to the woods, take out the cigarettes (which we had hopefully not gotten wet in the locker room), and smoke them.  It was a fun part of my childhood, that brings back fond memories. 

Now, many years later—over forty years since I quit—I rarely have any urge to smoke cigarettes. The one exception is if I’ve been swimming in a chlorinated pool, have some of the residual smell on my skin, and get downwind from somebody else who is smoking.  It is that combination of smells that triggers me.  It is all I can do to not mug them, steal their cigarette, and smoke the shit out of it. 

Another time we really enjoyed smoking was during the 880 – the half-mile run all the Colin Kelly Junior High boys had to do every couple weeks in P.E. class.  The course followed the periphery of the grounds of Kelly, and the adjacent Howard Grade School.  At about the halfway point, the course went past an entrance to Emerald Park (Hmm … that place keeps coming up in this story).  One of us would have a cigarette tucked in his sock, and somebody else would bring matches.  When we got to that point in the course, we’d slip through the fence, quickly light the cigarette, have a couple drags each, then toss it out.  On dry days, we might snuff it, and set it on a fence or a curb to finish later - but in the typical Willamette Valley drizzle, the remainder would have gotten soaked, so we wrote it off as a loss. 

Because of the delay caused by the cigarette break—and the fact that we weren't among the faster runners anyway—we would usually come in a minute or so after the last of the other runners, at least one of whom had typically ratted us out.  Terry Viohl, the P.E. Teacher, would be waiting for us, and just call us out, “Chamberlain, Heldt, Newton!! Into my office!”

Everybody in class knew what was coming next, and could hardly wait.  So they either showered and dressed quickly, or waited to shower until after the show.  We would go into Viohl’s office, and one at a time, be instructed to pull down our gym shorts, bend over and grab our ankles, thus displaying our butts; bare but for a jock strap. 

About the time we assumed the position, the chanting would begin.  Viohl’s office was surrounded by windows, through which all we could see was a mosaic of our classmates' faces, chanting ‘Shoe!! Shoe!! Shoe!!’ – to assure that the corporal punishment would be accompanied by humiliation.  They wanted nothing more than the satisfaction of seeing us cry.  Then Terry (yeah, we were on a first-name basis with Mr. Viohl ... when he couldn't hear us) would reach into the cubby where math teacher Cecil Kribs kept a set of gym clothes.  Viohl would reach in slowly, and with a smile, extract one of Kribs's size 14 Converse—the perfect size to induce terror in the heart of a young teenager—and begin his windup.  As the shoe hit its mark, the crowd outside the windows erupted in paroxysms of schadenfreude.  The shoe really stung, but none of us would validate this punishment with tears.   And no matter how it stung, it didn’t hurt badly enough to counter the pleasure we had gotten from those couple drags off a cigarette.  And it damn sure didn’t prevent us from doing it again the next time we ran the 880.  

I don't really know what was going through the minds of the spectators.  Did they enjoy the spectacle of rebellious kids getting their just desserts?  Did they admire us for taking our punishment 'like a man', and not crying?  I imagine it was some of each.  Few of them expressed admiration directly, but there were a lot of questions about the experience. 

I doubt that anybody who got the shoe had much affection for Mr. Viohl - but time really does heal wounds.  A good friend of mine has stayed in touch with Mr. Viohl, and occasionally does handyman work for him.  He brought me over to Mr. Viohl's house a couple years ago.  He is now in his 80s, and has grown into a pretty genial old man, who is married to a very lovely wife.  By the time we left that day, I had a standing invitation for Friday evening happy hour at their home ... and even posed for a (fully clothed) re-enactment of being administered 'The Shoe'.