Back when I was a wee lad, a mere sophomore in high school, I thought I was pretty damn funny. Strange how little things change. But anyhoo, I found myself sitting in Sophomore English class, smack in the middle of the classroom. I was too shy to sit up front — especially since I had a huge crush on the teacher, Ms. Lloyd, and I was ever fearful of what might “pop up,” you know, being a teenage boy and all.
But I digress.
And I was too much a goody-two-shoes to sit in the back of the classroom with all the kids who were too cool to sit anywhere but in the back of the classroom.
Sophomore English was a school year divided by study tracks. One track was composition, another was Greek mythology, another was Speech, I think. There may have been others, but I don’t remember. I moved into Ms. Lloyd’s classroom mid-year as I started the composition track. I found this education style uncomfortable because, after a school quarter or so in one class, I had grown comfortable with a certain routine, certain friends, a certain class pecking order, as it were, and then we were all uprooted, shaken up and placed in a new situation to sort through all over again. Welcome in the part of my life that I’m in now, but as a painfully self-conscious teen it was very stressful.
On the first day in Ms. Lloyd’s class, during the roll-call, among the names she called out was Sam Lapin. The kid next to me raised his hand. “Here.”
My best friend, Lu, had told me about this kid, Sam Lapin, told me how funny this kid was, how clever he was. This was my best friend, telling me — pretty damn funny me — since junior high — how funny this Sam Lapin kid was. Until that day I had never met Sam Lapin, though I had seen a kid on the playground and in the halls who I thought was Sam Lapin, and I despised the very sight of the kid, not to mention the very mention of his name. And here he was, sitting right next to me in English class. Only the kid sitting next to me answering to the name Sam Lapin wasn’t Sam Lapin, or at least the kid who I had thought was Sam Lapin up to that point!
Okay, so I had to get used to a new face to associate with the name of the kid I hated for no other reason than my best friend’s accolades.
As time went on in the class, Ms. Lloyd proved to be a very good sport — if not an easy target — for my brand of humor (hence my eventual crush...plus she was nice to look at), which is very word-nerd oriented. My brand of humor relies heavily on plays on words and taking words from someone else’s mouth in their alternate contexts.
But the thing I noticed was that, at every moment I found to blurt out some wise-crack based on Ms. Lloyd’s words, Sam Lapin from right next to me, blurted out a wise-crack, too. Not only that, but he often said the same thing I did. I mean the same thing, word for word, which caused both of us to look at each other and laugh with, I’m certain, the same look of bewildermazement on our faces! And whenever we didn’t blurt out at the same time, he proved to be as pretty damn funny as my best friend, Lu, had told me he was! In turn, Sam Lapin found my solo quips to be worthy of a good laugh.
In short time I no longer bore any animosity toward this Sam Lapin, but we shared the spotlight in cracking up each other and our fellow classmates and — yes — Ms. Lloyd! One day Sam made the first effort to forge a friendship — detailed in another blog post to come — and to this day we remain good friends, despite our infrequent correspondence and even less frequent face time, as we now live in places about 600 miles apart.
But our shining moment as the comedy duo Sam & Tony came late in the school year. I’d like to think Ms. Lloyd had something to do with Sam and me winding up in her classroom for the entire rest of the school year as the English tracks changed, but it may have just been lucky coincidence.
Sam’s trademark wise-crack move was to respond whenever a teacher — after explaining a concept or procedure — would pose the open-ended question to the class, “Are there any questions?”
Every time — and I mean every time — Sam would raise his hand. And the teacher would point to him. “Sam?”
And every time Sam would ask the question, “What’s the capital of North Dakota?” It mattered not what the topic of discussion was; that was Sam’s question.
As I said, Ms. Lloyd was a loving, trusting easy target for guys like Sam and me, and every time she asked the question and Sam raised his hand, she fell for it. Every. Time. But one.
Late in the school year she finished a discussion of a topic or a set of instructions, I remember not which, and she asked the inevitable, “Are there any questions?”
Sam raised his hand.
Ms. Lloyd got this expression on her face, a sort of bemused smile-smirk, as she looked at Sam and said, “Not you, Sam--” She was on to him and she finally hadn’t taken the bait! Instinct took over, and I raised my hand as she finished telling Sam with a chuckle in her voice, “--I’m not falling for it this time!” And then she shifted her gaze to me. “Tony?”
Fighting a laugh at my own clever self and barely managing the words, I said, “What’s the capital of North Dakota?”
The whole class erupted in laughter — or at least I like to remember that they did, but they might have been so tired of our shit by that point that they didn’t bother to hear us — and Ms. Lloyd hung her head in defeat. I’m certain Sam knew what was going to come out of my mouth the moment Ms. Lloyd called on me, and his laugh was the loudest in the class.
For many years after we graduated Sam and I maintained a friendship with — and I my crush on — Ms. Lloyd, sending or bringing her a Snickers bar every year on her birthday, an inside joke the origin of which I no longer remember.
I lost contact with Ms. Lloyd only about 10 years ago, a good 20 years after my graduation from high school. A Facebook search seems to be in order.
And to the person who was that kid I thought was Sam Lapin from 7th grade into the first semester of sophomore year, whoever you are… I’m sorry for all the dirty looks and mean thoughts I sent your way.
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