Wednesday, June 01, 2016

Rabbit, Rabbit

One of my high school teachers, Joseph Melango-- and now I can't remember the name of the class he taught, I'd guess that it would be called composition or possibly rhetoric in old days; we learned how to write arguments, debate, and there was a lot of learning what our own opinions were in the class -- in any case, he used to have a tradition of saying "rabbit, rabbit" on the first day of a month to bring luck.  It had the first thing you said just after waking.

He used to be the theatre instructor and before I attended Corvallis High School, he directed the school plays.  He was semi-retired when I started and other teachers took over directing.  I liked him, he was theatrical, but also strict in an old-school rigor kind of way.  He retired completely shortly after 1983.

I used to say "rabbit, rabbit" for a while in the early 80's, and as I lay in bed listening to the cat purr loudly as he licked Mark's head, and Mark saying "Thank you, I'm done" to the cat and pushing him away, and the random coins or whatever falling out of someone's pockets or whatever it was they had been falling out of randomly for the last six hours, and the wheezing-thud of the refrigerator, and the sounds of The Child springing out of bed and his door bursting open, and the sounds of my own breath, I said, "Rabbit, rabbit."

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