How is a child made...

“How is a child made?” I once remember asking Patrick in 5th grade after ogling over Hyacinth Lyons all afternoon, watching her bend over to retrieve her plastic pencil sharpener. Observing her method of effacing the blackboard with an eraser— her tightly jean cusped ass swaying back and forth like a metronome, wondering what she looked like underneath everything.

 

“Well,” Patrick commences, talking with his calloused hands, on top of the monkey bars, “After you get married you go into a bedroom and lock the door.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Then you take off all of your clothes.” Patrick says again, scratching the area on his face where one day there will be a goatee.

 

“Yes.”

 

“Then she slowly removes all of hers.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Then you face each other for fifteen minutes and look at one another-examining every solitary orifice, curve and feature.”

 

“Yeah,” VonBehren’s face is pinched toward Patrick in curiosity.

 

“After that you put all your clothes back on, compliment each other and light a cigar.”

 

“Really?”

 

Von Behren seems to have just seen the premature light emanating from the end of the tunnel. The song “God Made me Funke” by Kool Moe Dee sounds like it could have been written by a cigar chomping Dr. Spock.

 

“No, but it sounds like it might work.” Patrick is all laughter. His face turns the color of watermelon Capri Sun. VonB then coerces Patrick to give him his bread and butter or-as VonB says, “Killer Carbs,” hoping it will give him enough energy to run around the field in PE and impress the new Algebra teacher.

 

Years later I have mused more than once if Patrick’s sophomoric hypothesis concern child conception has anything at all to do with Hale’s passion and predilection for a damn fine Cigar. Somehow I doubt it.