I wanted to get a 100% on my fourth-grade science test. Yes, 90% would secure an “A,” but 100% would secure bragging rights at the dinner table, and I could mention it nonchalantly over Mom’s Salisbury steak. I wasn’t good at nonchalance yet (my speciality was gleefully waving the test paper in front of my parents), but I was slowly learning that appearing modest had its uses.
On this particular science test I knew every answer but one — the name of the comet that passed by earth every seventy-five years. My mind drew a blank (unheard of then, but heard loud and clear now that I am seventy-six).
“Come on, Elliot,” I silently cheered myself, “you’ve got this!” But so far, I hadn’t “got this” at all.
I looked at the clock — 12:55. I just couldn’t bring up the name, nor did I even have time to put on my thinking cap. And we had to put our pencils down in five minutes. Panicking, I thought that I probably couldn’t dredge up that answer even if I had until 2:00 or even 3:00 (when we left for the day).
And then the answer came flooding over me as a wildly popular song popped into my head: “One, two, three o’clock, four o’clock rock…”
“Rock Around The Clock”, by Bill Haley and the Comets, had been playing on every radio station that year. With a smile of pure satisfaction, I scrawled HALLEY’S COMET just as Mrs. Yount called for us to put down our pencils. Humblebragging rights secured!
For a kid who had been more into “The Farmer in the Dell” than this newfangled rock music that was dominating the airwaves, I am now amazed that another Bill Haley smash hit was an even happier influence on me all the way through high school. His “See You Later, Alligator” made it oh-so cool to say goodbye to friends by reciting that silly rhyme in order to prompt them to give their equally cool retort of “After while, Crocodile.” Anybody over the age of six caught simply saying “Bye-Bye ” was immediately branded a dork.
And of course this silliness was soon augmented with “By and by, Butterfly,” “Toodle-loo, Kangaroo,” “Hit the road, Happy Toad,” and the bilingual “Hasta mañana, Iguana.” The fun wasn’t limited to us guys, either. When I suggested to my fifth-grade girlfriend, Michelle, that we should meet up on the playground at recess, she responded with a cheerful “Okie Dokie, Artichokie.”
Despite being obsessed with perfect test scores, I was never the top student in any of my schools (in my defense, we had a whopping 970 in our senior class, the largest in Indiana), but I was always the most resourceful in recycling material that I’d learned much earlier. In my high school science class, we had a unit on reptiles, and had to come up with our own topic for a ten-page paper. Frankly, these scaly creatures left me cold. I was a sucker for marsupials, but sadly we never studied those adorable pouched koalas and kangaroos.
Scrounging for a topic, my Bill-Haley-inspired answer on that sixth-grade science test inspired me once more. Having visited my grandparents in Miami Beach during winter vacations, I did have alligators on my mind, so Mr. Haley once again came to my rescue: why not do a term paper on the differences between the (“see ya later”) alligator and the (“after while”) crocodile?
I loaded up my essay with the usual: alligators have U-shaped snouts, crocodiles V-shaped; alligators prefer a freshwater environment, crocodiles, saltwater; alligators prefer small prey like snakes and fish and birds; crocodiles have been known to enjoy dining on a buffalo or even a lion: yikes!
But what earned me 100% on my term paper (oh, drat, I swear that I was going to be too modest to mention that) was when my dad insisted I conclude with the fact that since only crocodiles exist in saltwater, it is they, not alligators, who need to keep their eyes clear of saline crystals for perfect vision when on land. And so to wash them, they must shed “crocodile tears.” My teacher adored that — thanks, Dad.
That’s all for this Monday morning, readers. Until April 7th — be sweet, parakeet.