Jun. 17, 2003 - 18:08 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

The End Result

Starting Junior High School -- Middle school plus one grade then, everything in the whole kaboodle was new, confusing and not really close to understandable yet.

Assembly, now that was a new word and a new thing to do, weird it was.

I was still trying to recover from the impact of entering Junior High, it was all a Chinese Fire Drill (excuse me) and this Assembly thing was done in a (new word) Auditorium. Whew.

As time went on, Assembly sorted itself into many different aspects, most of them boring and unpleasant but with the occasional fun thing. Listening to the grownups blathering grew old, it was borium in the auditorium.

I guess it was our world's way for training us to attend those innumerable meetings in our later work life we would be required to struggle through.

Back to school now. It was a highly regulated mass uproar, we kids tumbling in resembling a mass of boiling teakettles having tight lids, steam spouting out apace. Of course the girls were epitomes of good behavior.

A degree of order was demanded of us and "Silence" thundered out assailing our ears. That merely turned our volume down a bit. We kept on, whispering and quietly snickering. Various snatch and grab games always being played undercover.

At the start even us boys would shape up and listen, hoping for a degree of entertainment and on into the meat of the thing, in desperation and disappointment finally resorting to thinking up rude appellations for the stuffed shirts and shirtwaists on the piddling podium and whispering them back and forth. Big contest, who could come up with the grodiest name.

Eventually our brains and bottoms would be numbed enough for us to retreat into the inner sanctums of our youthful minds.

At that time of life, we boys, most of us I think, were assaulted by the huge flow or hormones bringing thoughts of what we would like to do at their urging. Sitting there in front of the world those thoughts were rather unproductive and remained that, just thoughts. Thence, my mind would to other imaginations wander and on the slate of condemned boredom mind-write boyish tales of derring-do or ways of accomplising the impossible achievements of the Horation Alger boys. From rags to riches in twenty minutes or so in that hard auditorium seat.

One assembly that we enjoyed to the maximum, legal amount was when a visiting speaker from somewhere in he United Kingdom, who in a very informative and humorous talk acquainted us with the different words for the same things - here and there. Such as lift for elevator. Then he got into definitions of words common on both sides of the sea. For example, he brought out to us that "homely" in our country meant ugly and in his country I think it meant pretty and a homebody.

There were other assemblies that were fun, around Christmas time there would be the Grand Carol Sing assembly. We boys enjoyed that, oh yes we really did. We would sing the proper notes, but with words of our own choosing. But, nobody got hurt or in trouble, our pitiful, wee, singing voices were drowned out.

For the most part though we would sit, paralyzed in our behind numbing seats while some grown person on the podium would drone on about things we really didn't care about and didn't want to hear.

On through my work life were those mandatory meetings all too often, terrifically boring and often quite off the point, given by a supervisor who didn't believe a word he was saying and was the last one who would practice what he preached.

Meetings, assemblies never seemed not much more than wasted time. In the factory we would often think that if we didn't have to attend those damnable meetings we could get the work done that management was screaming for us to put out. I must admit some meetings I attended something sensible and concrete got done, but it was usually a surprise to all.

When it comes to nuts, bolts, parts and pieces - a good assembly is The End Result . . . . . . . . .

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