there is this one odd thing that i thought of while trying to decide which of the various bits to record.

i have this friend. he's been my friend for a very long time and we are such good friends that i'm friends with his parents. in that i could hang out with his parents without him being present and it would not be a problem. anyway, at some point - during high school, i think - we were talking and i told him about my crazy (wood)shop teacher that i had in middle school.

i call him crazy because he said, "okay," after nearly every sentence. he also said, "..around here," and other words and phrases that have escaped me at the moment. one might be inclined to think that i am exaggerating. during one class period (less than an hour) we counted these various verbal ticks and he said, "okay," no less than 80 times. considering he was not talking non-stop, and we were working more than half of that time, averaging an "okay" nearly every 40sec is impressive.

the point of all that was to show that there were very specific things that make this my experience. to be sure it was also the experience of others who had this teacher. but i am also sure that this was not the experience of this good friend of mine as we went to different schools, and yet, at some point he began telling the story as his own.

i realize that saying, "okay," is pretty common and perhaps we just had similar teachers even though we went to different schools. except there is no way that both of our shop teachers said, "you break my jigsaw blade, that's seventy cents around here, okay." it's impossible.

my guess is that some time after his family moved, while we were both in high school, he was sitting around telling stories with people and this one was funny. not only that, living across the country, no one could call him on it.

except, they moved back a few years later. and i've heard him tell the story at least three or four times. i always let it slide and say nothing, because, really, what could i possibly gain? at the very least i would look petty and embarrass him. quite possibly i wouldn't be believed. it doesn't matter anyway, i just find it odd. it does make me wonder about him a little bit though. he's very honest, sometimes brutally so. and i like that. i hope this has gotten to the point that he's forgotten it was someone else's story. or, if it's possible, that he's always remembered it as his own (though i doubt that). because i'd hate to think that he remembers it isn't his story and that he tells it anyway..

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