Tired of Titles

I'm getting tired of trying to think up clever titles for each post - hence the above title. Of course, now that I've used that title I'll either have to come up with other clever titles - or clever non-titles - like "This is not a Title". Crud! Now I've given that one up too. I suppose I could delete that line and still use "This is not a Title" as a title but I think I'll just stop now :-)

I'm still working on those first few months in Winnipeg and I need to say a bit more about all the teasing at St. Paul's... There were a number of reasons for it:

Reason #1: The very public butt kicking I described in the prior post.
Reason #2: My fairy boots... Yeah - I mentioned to my mom that I wanted some boots because snow was getting in my shoes. I described the "Beatle boot" style most of the guys were wearing but instead she got me some light-blue/gray suede ones that appealed to her (decidedly feminine) sense of taste... She was so proud of them that I didn't want to hurt her feelings so I wore them all winter. I don't know who came up with the term "fairy boots" but within hours everyone knew it... It was quite an experience walking down the hall :-)

BTW - Regarding that bit about not wanting to hurt mom's feelings: It's not what you think... If I had expressed any lack of gratitude she would have started crying and doing her "You never appreciate anything I do! I should have never been born!" routine. (Don't forget the thick Hungarian accent.) Trust me - it was a lot more pleasant wearing "fairy boots" for 6 months than having to deal with mom's histrionics :-) But back to the list of reasons...

Reason #3: I was American. (That by itself would have been enough.)
Reason #4: I had been in Germany since the age of eleven so I didn't know any of the slang terms for male or female body parts or sexual behavior and preferences. You know - the things teenage boys spend almost all of their time talking about... It made me such an easy mark...

So I was henceforth known as the clueless American freshman with the fairy boots who'd gotten his butt kicked... I mean seriously - if that doesn't make you laugh it should :-)

I want to point out that I wasn't exactly being singled out... Merciless teasing was a core dynamic at St. Paul's... If you said or did anything even remotely stupid you were going to get hammered - it's a guy thing. Circumstances just left me a lot more 'exposed' than most...

The funny thing is that I still had an attitude... I was raised to think of myself as a superior being among peasants... And I had never seriously questioned it. Not until a month or two later...
But the point is that on top of everything else I was kind of an arrogant @ss...

I did make one significant contribution to St. Paul's though: I coined the term "mop chop" for haircut. It quickly gained popularity...
As it turns out "mop chop" is actually in the Urban Dictionary but I doubt I was the sole originator. I derived it from "mop top" (the Beatles' hairstyle)... Since "mop top" to "mop chop" is not exactly a quantum leap it probably occurred to lots of others around the time. (Great minds and all...)

But I was still pretty proud of it :-)