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BORING CLASSES:
Stephen Bloom’s
junior high was
just like any other.
Oh, except for
the raving mad,
chainsaw-wielding
Shop teacher.
The
Shop Class
Chainsaw
Incident PHOTO Whiskeygonebad/Flickr
When I was in junior high, Lynn Sloan was my fantasy. She had everything—tawny tresses that
cascaded to honey-hued shoulders;; pendulous, melon-sized breasts;; mile-long legs. Lynn was a 12
before 10 became the national standard.
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sighting, everyone—boys and girls alike—froze. Boys wanted her;; girls wanted to be her. In the
cafeteria, Lynn sat at the Table of Beautiful Girls, a select group of pulchritude, although none of
Of course, I had as much chance with Lynn Sloan as I had with Ann Margaret. Did Lynn Sloan even
know who I was? Fat chance.
Until the day I became a hero. Until the day I changed the world.
**
Boys in my junior high school were required to take Shop class, just as the girls had to enroll in Home
Economics. Home Ec was taught by Miss Hughes, a perky woman in her mid-30s with a Patti Page
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WKUHHIROGSDVVDWHVWRQKRZWR¿[DWRLOHWFXUO ABOUT STEPHEN G. BLOOM
and solder metal sheets to a Maxwell House Stephen G. Bloom, a professor
Coffee tin to make a watering can that didn’t of journalism at the University
leak;; and saw, plane, and stain scraps of pine of Iowa, is the author of
Postviile: A Clash of Cultures
to build a napkin holder.
in Heartland America, Inside the Writer’s
No one gave a shit about Shop. For some MInd, The Oxford Project (with Peter
reason, all the boys I knew were after the Feldstein), and Tears of Mermaids: The
Secret Story of Pearls. He writes frequently
glamour profession—law—although no one
about things guys talk about when they’re
quite knew what exactly a lawyer did. Medicine not around women. Check out more here.
was messy. It involved blood, and my friends
fainted at the sight of borscht. Law was vaguely
about prestige, facing the jury, doing something right for people who had money to pay you—and
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wearing a suit, being married to a woman in capris, cruising around town in a convertible.
Shop was a dead-end. It prepared you to be a carpenter or a plumber (was I ever behind the curve on
that one). The goal was to become, if not a lawyer, at least a white-collar professional, someone who
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the wall, I gasped for breath, as much out of shock as out of fear.
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foot.
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insisted that I made a bowel movement every morning, I surely would have shit my pants.
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My time to be a man had ³<RXXQGHUVWDQGPH"´
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closer, surely to administer him that morning. Maybe he was unloading on
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punishment. It was then showing up for parent-teacher conferences.
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wasn’t making $13.50 an hour installing Sears
feet. My backbone stiffened. dishwashers.
My chest puffed. “Stay away, 1RPDWWHU:KLWWOHEUXVKKDGLQWLPLGDWHGDJHQ-
:KLWWOHEUXVK´ eration of boys with his mean Shop machismo.
He was one sick fuck. No wonder Shop had such
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chaser. He’d be in Greystone Hospital, or perhaps Rahway State Prison.
In the nanosecond while I was pondering all these incalculables, I heard something far off in the
There comes a time in each of us when we no
By now, 40 or so classmates longer can accept the accumulation of crimes
had formed a tight circle against humanity. For the sake of the thousands
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motherfucker off.
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generator, he would have been able to power the cities of Passaic and Nutley.
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No matter how outmatched I was, I was ready to meet my maker.
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mesmerized, primed for bloodied knuckles, busted jaws, the clean snap of a broken nose. Someone
could have taken bets and made a fortune.
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They were the minority, though. Most everyone was rooting for me. I was Crusader Rabbit, Sherman,
David beating the shit out of Goliath, all wrapped into one.
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I saw in his right hand he was holding something metal and something large.
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soldering iron. Or maybe the Iron Claw, a torture device he kept in a glass box on his desk. But—
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saw’s rotary blade, which sputtered and revved until it was spinning at 2,000 RPM.
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going nuts.
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face, as the blade spun and buzzed.
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**
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would eventually inspire the movie.)
Bravery was one thing. Turning into a stump at the hands of a sociopath was another. I scrambled to
my feet, broke through the ring of boys, and made a break for the stairs, careening down corridors,
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The school’s gym teachers, Mr. Frampton, Mr. Lambakin, and Mr. Fletcher, had by then converged at
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He held out the whirring chainsaw like it was a torch, taunting anyone who came near him.
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jig was up. His whole demeanor changed. He Not the kinds of men to walk
looked down, slowly turned off the chainsaw, away from beating the shit out
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of the rotary blade took 10 seconds to stop,
of another human being, the
and presently there was a deafening silence. A three gym teachers grunted.
standoff of sorts apparently had been reached.
Not the kinds of men to walk away from beating the shit out of another human being, the three gym
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for a takedown.
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them both off with ease.
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tranquilizer gun?
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Baxter had become a human straitjacket.
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:LWK:KLWWOHEUXVKJRQH should have hired him to negotiate an end to the Cuban
I had become a hero. Missile Crisis.
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labored foot in front of the other. Fifty or so boys followed
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from freshmen, put his arm around me.
**
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one ever found out what happened to him. I imagined the little men in the white coats drove him to a
sanatorium, where he was put in a padded cell, mumbling nonstop about sawdust and rotary saws.
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whisper in reverential tones. Some just stared in awe.
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came over to me, smiled again, and purred two words:
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Beautiful Girls.
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take over the class (must have been the backlog of broken radios and toasters), so I got another high
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To this day, I can’t hammer a nail straight, but it doesn’t bother me. I owe that and the dawning of my
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