Artist Unknown but not Uncelebrated

It still remains unsolved who the mystery crapper is at the middle school but the entire eighth grade class was brought into the auditorium and given “the feces lecture”.

James came home from school on Friday and all he had to say about his week was “someone wrote stuff all over the eighth grade bathroom walls with shit again.”

Apparently this happened before?

“Was it Bubba?” (not his real name) I asked.

“No,” James said. Bubba has only one reprimand left before he gets kicked out of school. It wasn’t him.”

“Any suspects?” my husband asked.

“None.” James said.

James is not usually the kid who has his finger on the pulse of whatever mischief is going on at school. I like to think it’s because he chooses to walk the higher ground. But honestly, it could have happened while he was at the urinal and he wouldn’t have noticed. He’s like his dad that way. You can tear down wallpaper and paint the walls yellow and he won’t notice. Although you think he’d notice if the graffiti was accompanied by a foul smell.

Naturally, my husband reports the incident as an update on Facebook, home of people we haven’t seen since the last time we cracked open a yearbook. It has the effect of bringing all the 40-year old men with whom he went to Boulder High School out of the woodwork, and turning them into legends in their own minds. I can’t say I would turn down any of their friend requests if I saw them in my inbox. But maybe I should.

Skye: Hearing a story from my oldest about a lunatic missive written in doody in the boy’s bathroom at the middle school. Every boy got called to the auditorium for “the talk”. Hmmm.

Ratliff: no comment

Babcock: I was about to hail Mr. Ratliff to read this post……and…nevermind

Ratliff: It was clearly a misguided girl who sneaked into the boy’s room. Clearly.

Skye: Yeah, all I could really say to him was, “sorry you had to deal with that today”. He seemed cool with that.

Studholme: Um, I remember the ‘Mystery Shitter’ at Boulder High School. The rumor is, he was caught in the act by Buster. Do you remember that, Ratliff?

Ratliff: I remember the Mad Crapper and I remember Buster, but the Crapper was never once caught.

Studholme: Awesome! Totally awesome. You are a God to me Ratliff. The back stairwell ‘aroma installation art’ piece at the end of the year in 1988 (I believe) was my favorite. Troy W. was able to experience it fully.

Ratliff: Oh how the mighty have fallen! Now I’m just a Rubenesque librarian. The aroma installation was a joint project with Pete F. who is now quite a successful postmodern artist in Chicago. I wonder if he puts that project on his resume these days.

Stahlberg: I remember the ‘aroma installation art’ piece started as a baby food jar filled with Jimmy Dean sausage and…well, that is the only ingredient I remember. It was proudly shown to me by Ratliff who then put it back behind the furnace of his parent’s house to let it ‘fester’ (yes, that is the word he used). Six months later (six months!) the art went ‘interactive’.  I to this day still cannot eat Jimmy Dean sausage.

Ratliff: It was a quart mason jar. You gotta get a whole pound of the Jimmy in there. It’s enough to turn you vegan.

Stahlberg: That’s right, it was a bigger jar. I still remember when you pulled that pig out of your duffel bag at school and put it in the top shelf of our locker, warning me not to knock it over. I think I started smoking that day.

Studholme: I am crying. I remember Troy W. running into the stairwell from the top floor after science screaming “Last Day of school MotherF-ers!” with this amazing smile on his face. He must have cleared the first flight and then it hit him. He came out and I do believe he had just vomited and begged everyone not to go in. I caught a whiff and my gag reflex kicked in and I knew that I was witnessing and smelling pure genius. Whew. Wicked stuff. If it is any consolation Ratliff, you are the stuff of legends in my book and that isn’t granted often.

Ratliff: Thanks, Tom. And I thought nobody ever noticed me back then.

These guys all have jobs. Librarian. Engineer. Teacher. They are the parents of gifted children who aren’t hiding jars of sausage behind their parents’ furnaces. They’ve probably never heard of Jimmy Dean. Maybe there’s hope for Bubba, afterall. I know it was him. It wasn’t my little angel.

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