Let's Get Outta Here

When my best friend and I were in 7th grade we had this game we would play where we would take popular songs of the day and write new words to describe a situation we were encountering at that time. Sadly, or maybe fortunately depending on your point of view, I can only partially remember one of those ditties we reworked. Olivia Newton-John had just released her "Physical" album and MTV was only too happy to show the video ad naseum that alternated images of hot sweaty hard bodies with not-so-hot sweaty flab bodies in work out attire at the gym, with an impish Olivia complete in sweatband and leg warmers devilishly goading the men into getting physical.

At around the same time our beloved science teacher had to take a leave of absence and a substitute was put in her place. Now, in hindsight, there really wasn't anything about the substitute, Miss Russell, that was terribly offensive or obnoxious. In fact I recall her being a patient and fair teacher. And I certainly was never one to give teachers a lot of grief. But for some reason we had it out for Miss Russell-(or was it we had it IN for her?).

One advantage of the substitute teacher is that you can usually get away with a lot of stuff that you normally wouldn't get away with. One of those things being the seating arrangement in class. My best friend and I got to sit right next to each other, which was trouble because the two top desk we sat in was positioned in a little alcove in the class that was partially obscured from the teacher's sight.

One stunt we would pull would have made Harry Houdini proud. We would take turns escaping into the next door classroom. You see, the alcove that our desk was placed in had an unlocked door that attached to the classroom next door, which was not actually being used as a classroom, but instead as a storage room. So we would bravely enter the room for no reason whatsoever while the other would stay seated at the desk. Miss Russell would continue on with the lesson none the wiser. Then whichever one of us had entered the room next door would return, we couldn't help but break out into the giggles. Miss Russell never knew, or at least never let on that she knew.

When we weren't escaping class for the solely for the sake of escape we would play the lyric game in class. We would take turns reworking lyrics to popular songs in an effort to express our frustration and dismay with being forced to accept this substitute teacher. We decided that Miss Russell was so heinous that we would rework "Let's Get Physical" to "Let's Get Outta Here". We were so clever and poignant in that reworking and we carefully wrote the new lyrics down. Here's a small sample that I could muster up through memory:

I've been patient I've been good
Tried to keep my punches back
you've been treating me so bad
You know what I mean

Let's get outta here, outta here
I wanna get outta here
Let's get outta here

You get the picture, I suppose. Now it certainly wasn't on the level of Weird Al who could succintly make a social statement with his satirization of popular music. But we were only in 7th grade.

That was only one of the mischieveous things we became involved in during science class. The next year in 8th grade my friend was a science aide for our beloved teacher who had returned that year. Occassionally she would need additional aides to assist with projects and on one of those occassions she wrote a note for my PE teacher to allow me to be excused from PE class so I could assist with science labs.

Now, my PE teacher was as clueless as they come and don't you know I used the exact same note almost each and every day to be excused from PE to hang out with my friend and another friend in the science lab-unattended and unchaperoned. We got into as much mischief as you could with a bunson burner, beakers, and saltine crackers. However the most exciting science experiment we undertook involved cigarettes we had found in the teacher's desk. We lit up right there in the science lab which was gutsy and uncharacteristic for myself and my friends. We really were Goody Two-Shoes-which incidentally is what prompted me to even write this post. I heard Adam Ant's Goody Two Shoes song earlier. My friend and I loooooved Adam Ant and we probably reworked a song of two of his.

But anyway, when I wasn't skipping PE class to smoke cigarettes in science class, I had other friends who would fill small empty purse size bottle of Mink hairspray with liquor from their parents liquor cabinents. When we didn't dress out for PE we had to sit on the bleachers and watch while the rest of the class played soccer, or baseball or whatever other althletic event was being covered in PE.

Now that lure was enough to get me out of science class and back into PE class.