I was walking around Essex street when I passed the 100 year old pickle-district (yes, NYC has a pickle-district) and I remembered the last time I was there:
5th grade. 1993.
I went to a very small private school growing up and something that isn’t often understood by people who went to public school is that private schools are basically just glorified babysitters at the beck & call of the wealthy parents who pay them. If the richest parents want something, it happens. If the richest parents don’t care about something, it doesn’t matter. And that’s it. Everything else that goes on in the school is an unregulated hodgepodge of whatever the teachers actually feel like doing on any given day.
“The entire grade should take off a day to see Broadway musicals,” says the drama teacher.
YES. DONE.
“The children’s computer room needs accounting software,” says the children’s computer teacher coming on tax season.
YES. DONE.
“The kids would learn a lot about Jewish heritage if we took them to the pickle district,” says the overweight, constantly eating Rabbi.
YES. DONE.
Generally teachers could come up with any half assed excuse to pull us all into a field trip and basically get a day off for themselves.
The best one however was when my favorite teacher, the slightly deranged gym teacher, Dr. Bud, convinced the school to let him take his 3 favorite students to a Mets game instead of going to school.
To put Dr. Bud in perspective you have to realize first he was neither a doctor nor named Bud, and second, he was kind of mentally unstable.
He would get into chair throwing fits of rage when English teachers gave long tests that kept the kids late into his volleyball lesson.
He’d start frothing at the mouth when someone didn’t hustle back on defense.
Sometimes you’d turn a hallway corner and accidentally find him crying. Still not sure why.
His real name was Julian Sherman, but in this wonderful world of make-believe called private school when he walked in his first day and said “Call me doctor” the obvious response was…
YES. DONE.
“Also… don’t call me Julian or Sherman. I want everyone to think I’m friendly. Call me Bud.”
YES. DONE.
For reasons I’m still not sure why Dr. Bud took a real liking to me. I was a chubby kid obsessed with drawing, but somehow he got me to play sports and actually enjoy it. (In 7th grade, at the height of my obsession with basketball I’d secretly decided to dedicate my first NBA MVP award to Dr. Bud) I guess he was proud of that, so he was constantly showering me with praise.
“You’ve got real court vision Danny!”
“You’ve got more heart than a hundred Gils!” (Gil was my friend who didn’t care about sports, who Dr. Bud openly hated.)
“If you keep it up, you could be a player at Minnesota State!”
He was my Cus D’Amato.
I believed in myself so much I started making baseball cards about myself.
There are made up statistics on the back of this card. (and yes, that is a clown in the background. He was our a math teacher.)
In an effort to keep encouraging me and his two other favorite students, Calie and Spiegel, he came up with a contest for best students in gym, and the winners would get free tickets to a Mets game! Of course the contest was never announced until after it had been decided and the rules were never defined to anyone but himself. And I’d find out later Dr. Bud had previously bought 4 tickets for the game that day and he didn’t want to waste them. But nevertheless Calie, Spiegel and I won the contest!
The Mets were playing a day game and when 4th period bell rang, Calie, Spiegel and I got up from the rest of the class and walked out like champions.
“Later losers. We’re going to a baseball game cause we won an unspecific, secret contest! We better make our way to the parking lot and get into the 1987 sedan of that crazy guy who uses an alias!”
Who knows. Maybe it wasn’t actually safe. But it was private school. So no one cared.
That first moment when you break the teacher-student barrier and all of a sudden this teacher you’ve known in one context becomes a real person in a real world context is very strange. By the time we’d been sitting in Van Wyck traffic for 40 minutes and Dr. Bud had ragefully cursed at every immigrant on the road that barrier had long been shattered.
Truthfully, the game went by without major incident or rape attempt as far as I can remember. We spent most of the game talking about baseball mechanics, while Dr. Bud scarffed down unkosher hot dogs, but wouldn’t let us have any. We bragged about it when we got back to school, cause for an 11 year old it was still pretty awesome.
Dr. Bud dropped me off last and when he pulled up to my house he looked me intensely in the eyes, readying himself to say something important.
“Those Packi cab drivers are always fuckin cutting you off.”
I pocketed that pearl of wisdom, got out of the car and started to run up the driveway.
He called out the window with one last thing for me to remember.
“Don’t tell your mom I said that!”
What could 11-year-old-me say to a crazy man on the verge of mental collapse who had somehow been entrusted with 3 children’s lives for the day?
YES. DONE.
THE PICKLE GUYS: 49 Essex St. btwn Grand & Hester
