“Mary, do you think I should take the Stuy Test?” I’d taken standardized tests before, and they’d all been easy. I always broke the ninety-eighth percentile; I never had to study. I wanted to know if the Stuy Test would be any different.
“Sure, Ned,” she said. “Buy a book on it. Take a look at it over the summer.”
I wrote on a piece of loose-leaf, “Buy Stuy book.”
“Ned,” Mary leaned in close. “You don’t need a list, and you don’t need to worry. You’ll do fine.”
Those words weren’t a comfort—they were a challenge. I thought I could do fine; Mary thought I could do fine; I’d damn well better do fine.
So began a summer singularly devoted to getting into Stuyvesant. It started with the book. That evening, I trotted into the living room and told my parents I needed it.
“The Stuy Test? Neddy, you’ll do just fine. You don’t need a book,” Mom said.
“He wants a book, I’ll get him a book,” said Dad.
The following weekend, he took me to a mega-bookstore and we headed for the test-prep section. There it was, sitting low on a rotating display case, light gray with blue letters: Preparing for the SSHSAT: 8 Practice Exams Included!
“That the one?” Dad asked.
“Yup.” I smiled, stowed the book under my prepubescent armpit, and walked to the cashier past some blurry-eyed high school kids scanning SAT books. “That’s me in four years,” I thought.
I went home and cracked open the book, eager to start on the problems. I read the first one: “A circle with diameter 4 has an area of ? Use π = 3.14.” I reread it. Was this some kind of joke? I hadn’t done pi before. I ran to show Mom.
“Mom! Mom! How do you do this?”
My ears were hot. My stomach was knotted around my throat.
“Calm down, Ned, calm down.”
She sat me down at the dining room table. “Ned, I saw this coming. Ever since you heard about this test, you have been too worried. Understand? You are not allowed to obsess about this test. Understand?”
“Yeah.”
But it was too late. I was already obsessed. The test had offended me by giving me questions I couldn’t answer. I intended to kill it.
“Now, as for this problem, it’s just pi. Do you want me to show you how pi works?”
I nodded. She showed. I’m a fast learner.
I got some index cards and wrote on them in clear seventh-grade print: “Area = πr2” and “Circumference = 2πr.” I taped the cards to the wall near my bed. When I fell asleep that night, the cards were the last things I saw.
The second day, I worked on vocabulary. Abject and knoll were words I didn’t know, so I dug up a book called The Words You Should Know: 1,200 Essential Words Every Educated Person Should Be Able to Use and Define and I started with A. I worked through abnegate, abrogate, abstruse, amortize. I put them on cards, too. I closed my bedroom door. Family was now ancillary to the test.
On the third day, I started making tables. Fractions and decimals. I made two little columns. One read from ½ to 1/20; the other, .5 to .05. For each fraction, including the weird ones like 1/17, I wrote the appropriate decimal. I hand-calculated everything in the warm air of my room.
It was mind-numbing work, but that was the point. Studying is mind-numbing. There’s information on paper, and you shove it into your head. It doesn’t involve people, or feelings, or getting others to like you. As I continued to prepare for the Stuy Test, afternoon in, afternoon out, I realized that despite the propaganda, I liked studying. I didn’t care about what TV told me, and I didn’t care what my friends thought—studying was fun.
When I went to summer camp,* I took the book. I spent four weeks with wanna-be teen rebels. I was a rebel, too, participating in routine camp activities but in the back of my mind thinking, “1/13 = 0.0769.” At night, if I wasn’t too tired, I would turn on my flashlight and quietly test myself. Then I’d slip the book under my pillow, so the information would diffuse into my head overnight.
I worked on triangles, memorizing formulas for base and height. I thought, “Parallelogram, trapezoid, rhombus, rectangle.” I put myself far above my campmates, deciding smugly that I wasn’t “confused” or “different.” I didn’t listen to loud music or salivate over girls. I had a test to study for. I was focused on a single, attainable goal.
I left camp with some friends and some enemies, and carried the test-prep book home to the city. These were the worst two weeks of the summer, the real hot, soggy ones in late July. By now, I was up to the Ds in The Words You Should Know. Deign, demagogue, dereliction, discomfit. I started writing a little book that I never finished, offering advice for students taking the Stuy Test.* Flash cards littered the house.
And all the time, I was getting smarter. I knew pi; I knew graphs. I knew mean, median, and mode. I knew 1/12 = .0833. I knew the vocabulary through E. There is a movie called Stand and Deliver where an overachieving teacher shows underprivileged high school students calculus in six months. Whenever those students had to get some work done, you’d see clips of them improving, as pop music played in the background. My summer was like Stand and Deliver without the pop music.
I took the book with me to Lake George, in upstate New York, on our family vacation. A flubbery** old woman was reading on the beach. The presence of me with a test book annoyed her. She glowered and said, “Whaddaya studying for? This is a beach! Enjoy yourself!”
I grinned. The information was flowing from the paper to my head. Life had never seemed so simple or so right.
When that test finally rolled around, it wasn’t even an issue. I took it and got into Stuy. It was like building a sand castle—the work was the fun part; the end result was sort of a letdown. As a force of habit, I continued reading The Words You Should Know in my freshman year, eventually getting to S. I studied very hard throughout my four years at Stuy, but I never approached the superhuman weirdness of that summer.
*New York City has five boroughs: Brooklyn, The Bronx, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island. Manhattan is the New York of the movies, Queens is where the airports are, Staten Island is at the other end of the ferry, The Bronx has Yankee Stadium, and Brooklyn is where I live. Hope that helps.
*This was the same camp that’s detailed on this page–this page.
*Also during this time, I wrote a very bad short story about an old man named Arnold Adams, who didn’t need women or family or anything, and lives on his porch shooting at passing cars. It’s around somewhere.
**Don’t tell me you don’t know what flubbery means. It’s that look old people get when their neck hangs down, and their arms hang down, and they appear to be melting in their own skin.
HIGHWAY TO HELL
My family takes cheap vacations. Any trip that involves an airplane, we avoid—too much money. Any trip that involves a resort, we shun—too many people. Disney World, Busch Gardens, camping, Europe? We’d never consider them. What we do for vacations is pile into our van and drive to weird East Coast destinations, like Binghamton, New York, hometown of The Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling. (Seriously. I’ve been in the Rod Serling museum.)
On one of these jaunts, we ended up at the Allentown, Pennsylvania, county fair. We had meant to go to the Poconos, but Dad decided at the last minute that we needed some real culture, so we headed for “The Largest County Fair in Eastern P.A.”
The place was full of suburban guys my age, traveling in groups, chatting up girls, and smoking cigarettes. I was being led around by Mom and Dad, with Daniel and Nora in tow. I tried walking fifty feet ahead of my family or trailing far behind them, but the suburban kids were onto me no matter what. They gave me dirty looks and snickered as I passed by.
“Hey, Ned?” Dad asked at a particularly low moment. “How would you like to see that?” I looked where he was pointing—a stadium marquee with red letters:
Destruction can really cheer up a thirteen-year-old. I wasn’t sure what a demolition derby was, but it sounded violent and it
would give me a chance to stop walking around with my parents. I told Dad, “Sure.”
Here’s how a derby works: some redneck with a car so screwed up that no one will buy it decides to have fun and compete for prize money. He pays about fifty bucks; his vehicle gets a paint job, and its engine is “modified” so it’ll run for a few more hours. On derby day, he drives to a stadium where he slams into other cars until he totals them all, or just his own. If his is the last car running, he gets a big check.
We bought our tickets. “It’s just like a baseball game,” Mom announced, but she would soon learn.
We entered the stadium—a racetrack used for derbies every other week—through a Colosseum-like stone arch. We went to our seats in the very back of the stands, right in front of two young mothers holding toddlers. We were such tourists: Dad kept checking our tickets (“6Y, 6Y, where is 6Y?”), and Mom read off events from the county fair calendar (“Look, kids, tomorrow there’s a pig judging!”) as we sat down. I rolled my eyes.
“Why are you embarrassed?” Dad asked quietly. “Look around—do you really care what these people think of you?”
I did look around. The stadium was filled with burnt-out blondes, dirty drunks, and thirty-year-old guys with their mothers, but somehow, my family stuck out the most.
I tried to concentrate on the track below. In the middle, on a big concrete island, stood a podium and mike. A bald announcer came out and intoned, “Thank you, folks, for coming to our Saturday evening derby.”
The crowd booed. The mothers in back of us booed loudest. Disgusting.
“Ah … tonight,” the announcer continued, “we have something special for you. Our own Miss Kate Daugherty will sing our national anthem.” A tiny girl in a flowered dress minced up to the podium, planted her face too close to the mike, and in a cute but somehow terrible way croaked out “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
Without hesitation, the crowd hissed and jeered. Some people even threw soda cans and Styrofoam cups at Miss Daugherty. They didn’t hit her—they were too far back in the stands for that—but the girl looked ready to flee, and the announcer quickly hustled her offstage after her song. Mom and Nora were shocked. So was I, outwardly, but part of me sort of liked the booing, and when my parents weren’t looking, I did a little myself.*
As the announcer droned on about derby “rules,” the cars emerged. There were about thirty of them—two-doors, mostly, with a few four-doors and station wagons. Each car was painted with a number and a name like, “#92, The Avenger.” Everyone chose a car to root for. I liked an orange station wagon that had gigantic faces of Beavis and Butt-head** on its side.
The cars formed a circle, front ends facing in. The announcer began the countdown: “Five … four …”
Engines revved, kicking up smoke. “Three … two …”
Three rows down, a fat guy lifted his chin to the sky and shouted, “Yeehah!”
“One … Go!” The screeching of cars and fans melded in a roar.
That Beavis and Butt-head station wagon was the first to die. While the other vehicles charged forward, it vroomed backward, smashing into the stadium wall. It was quickly sandwiched by a Pontiac. The Beavismobile’s driver jumped through his windshield—the glass had been removed “to prevent injury”—and yelled at his car as it burst into flames. The blaze licked the stadium wall, obscuring other cars, spreading a stench of burnt-rubber smoke.
Derby clowns—like rodeo clowns, except with hoses—ran out and extinguished the fire. Everyone cheered. In another corner, two cars were going at it like mechanical elk: backing up, smashing into each other, backing up again. Each confrontation produced a metallic groan and thick black fumes. Six-year-old Nora was going through her environmental phase. She stood on her seat and yelled, “This is pollution!”
The crowd around us told her to sit the hell down. The mothers in back of us shot especially fiery looks.
Mom had had enough. “Jim,” she said. “This is not an appropriate place for children.” She grabbed Nora’s hand and left the stands. Dad said we’d see her when the derby was over.
By now it was clear: the two best cars were “Dickhead” and “Bonehead.” Bonehead was a big old black station wagon, covered with decals of skulls and crossbones. He was a brute; he smashed smaller cars easily. Dickhead—that’s what it said right on the side in huge brown letters—was a gray two-door with oversized wheels. The driver was wily; he didn’t do much smashing, but he avoided hits and outlasted his competitors. Dickhead and Bonehead seemed to have a pact that they wouldn’t clash until all the other cars were out.
There was so much to watch. Number Forty-one lost all its tires and was driving on hubs. Number Twenty-two leaked so much oil that it couldn’t move—no traction.* Suddenly the announcer called, “Halftime!” The still-mobile cars were driven to a pit-stop area, where the drivers got out and daintily stretched. Nonmoving cars were towed away to become scrap-metal cubes in a Pennsylvania junkyard.
Halftime began. Two derby clowns, dressed as firemen, drove into the stadium in a little red fire truck. They circled the racetrack, tooting a shrill horn and drenching each other with a hose. For a really big laugh, they stuck the hose between their legs and pretended to pee on the crowd. The patrons were not amused. They yelled, “What the hell is this? Sesame Street?” and threw empty food containers. The clowns flipped them off and continued their act.
As the clowns did their thing, I muttered something to Dad about how AC/DC* would have made a much better halftime act. This attracted the immediate attention of one of the mothers behind us.
“AC/DC! I love them!”
“Yeah?” I said, turning around. “So do I. I have all the CDs with Bon—”
“Highway to hell!” she began singing, rather well actually, bouncing her toddler on her knee.** “Highway to hell! I love that song! Highway to hell! That’s my favorite!”
“You know what would be really cool?” Daniel chimed in. I smiled. My little brother looked like a smaller version of me, and he tended to come up with warped ideas like me as well. “It would be really cool if AC/DC was playing on little harnesses, like, flying over the derby as the cars crashed into each other.”
“Wow,” one of the mothers said. The other one was still bouncing her child and singing. “That is a really, really cool idea.”
“Not exactly,” I said, challenging my brother. “How are you going to suspend the drummer over a demolition derby?”
“They could suspend the drums, too!”
“Or they could use electronic drums.” This from my dad.
“It wouldn’t be the same,” the singing mother said. “Highway to hell! Dun, dun! It would be a lot better than these clowns, y’know?”
The second half of the derby was the same as the first but drunker—more rowdy cheers, more mangled autos. Four cars remained. Number Twenty-three got blind-sided and whipped around, slamming into Number Sixteen. Sixteen revved his engine too fast, and a piece of tire ripped off and flew across the stadium.
Then, finally, Dickhead and Bonehead faced off. I decided to root for Dickhead—the underdog, the sly trickster, constantly running from danger. Except he didn’t always run successfully. Bonehead gave him a few good hits, tore off his bumpers, and crumpled up his hood like a mountain range.
Front end skewed, engine dragging, parts trailing, Dickhead gave one last gasp as his engine fell out. By then, it was no longer even a car—just a heap of metal with three wheels. The announcer thundered, “We haaaave a champion!”
A dinky recorded version of the national anthem played over the loudspeakers. The clowns rushed out and presented Bonehead’s driver with a nine-hundred-dollar check and a medal. He gave the audience a grimy smile.
The two mothers walked with us out of the stadium, back through that stone arch, rehashing the details of our AC/DC Demolition Derby World Tour.
Daniel: “You could have the whole band playing on a see-through net, like, above the derby.”
Mother
#1: “I don’t think you can stand up or play drums on a net.”
Me: “Forget about the drums. We already said electronic drums.”
Dad: “I hate electronic drums.”
Me: “Who cares?”
We found Mom and Nora, and on our way out of the county fair, I bought a T-shirt that read “35th Annual Destructo-rama Derby.” The suburban kids eyed it jealously as I walked behind my family.
*Miss Daugherty was much younger than me, and she was doing something better than I ever could do it—that’s why I booed. Even in junior high I was hypercompetitive, and I loved it when other people failed. Sorry.
**Beavis and Butt-head were the animated stars of the Beavis and Butt-head television show, one of humankind’s more accomplished satires. They made fun of teenage television-addicted wasteoid culture by analyzing music videos and setting things on fire.
*A car was officially out of the derby if it didn’t move for fifteen seconds. When that time had elapsed, the announcer would pipe up from his booth, “Number Sixty-four, turn off your engine. Don’t even try to move. It’s aaaall over.”
*An Australian rock band. What I love most about them is that after their first singer, Bon Scott, met his “death by misadventure” (aka alcohol-related stuff—but seriously, that’s on his death certificate), they found another singer who sounded just like him and went on to play for three decades and counting.
**AC/DC’s best song.
ARE WE ALTERNATIVE NOW?
When I was thirteen, I went to my friend Ike’s house and formed a band called Wormwhole. I provided percussion (I banged some drumsticks together) and Ike, who thought up the name, played acoustic guitar.
A few things about Ike: First, he’s a cool guy, one of my best friends, and I’m privileged to know him. Second, he’s a big, buff Mayan dude—he was born in Central America, where, I learned, the Mayans were conquered by the Spanish in 1519,* but he swears he has full-on Mayan warrior blood in him. That probably accounts for his workout schedule: Ike’s room is a mini gym full of punching bags, weights, and rowing machines, and he constantly uses them. His biceps are as thick as my neck.