Are you a triskaidekaphobic?

 

             It’s been 19 years since I retired from public school music and gifted-education classrooms, and I still stand on the porch the first day of school and wave toward the yellow buses that pass. This year, one lumbered by empty at 7:15.

 Thursday, I was on the porch earlier. Here came a bus at 7 o’clock. It stopped in the valley south of Couchwood and honked. In all my years, I never remember a bus driver taking time to honk for and wait for his riders. But, I decided, if his usual time is 7:15, of course, the boys in the Terry Lynn addition would not be ready. Here they came, looking like Mom had thrown their backpacks at them while they were still tying their shoes. Forget combing their hair.

 Morning traffic had backed up to my hill, and I’ll bet if I could have heard some of those drivers, they would’ve been chewing somebody out.

But things smoothed, and I went back to my newspaper. Uh-oh. Here came the 7:15 bus at 7:07! It cruised up the hill without stopping. I guess the girls who usually ride had gotten a car.

Aww. Here’s the 7:15 bus—right on time. Guess I’d missed the first two on Monday.

All this to say --that one fall Friday before my spring retirement, we had finished our music lesson with time to spare. These were the days that creative and critical thinking exercises were encouraged as part of every discipline in middle school. I had the perfect poser.

After each student had a pencil and paper, I wrote on the board, “What is a “t-r-i-s-k-a-i-d-e-k-a-p-h-o-b-i-c.”?

Many answers dealt with the word itself: someone who eats Triskies, then decks a person and gets sick (Amanda); a person who has an illness requiring fluorescent pink and orange Band-Aids covering the upper body (Leah); a Candid Cameraman who dives to get trick shots (Krystal); one who tries to find a cure for AIDS (Brandy).

Many students knew the meaning of ‘phobic’ and picked up on it: a person who is afraid to eat cheese pizza on Fridays (Edward); one who is scared of a first-aid kit (Angela); … scared of frogs (Marlie); … the dark (Steven); … colors (Doris); … music (Brian); … insects (John Paul).

Others went for the highly-rated, off-the-wall answer: people who scream out for no apparent reason, talk to themselves and their dogs. They sweep the road, but never go out in the town (Vicki); tries to get in touch with three people who can skate backwards (Becky); … from Mars—red, no eyes, no head (Katie); has a toe on his head and a finger on his eye (Summar); translates the language PomTom from Mars (Jennifer).

Michelle thought it was a head doctor. Niesha called it a choir teacher who played many instruments while trying to sing. Jeanette said it was a garbage truck worker.

Bernard, in the Disney movie, “Rescuers,” is a triskaidekaphobic.

There are only two dates in 2013 where—if you ARE one of these people—you might want to watch your step, so to speak. One is tomorrow--Friday--and the other falls on a Friday in December.

Me? Nah, I’m not superstitious, but wait – black cats walk in front of me every day. Maybe I'd better be extra careful tomorrow. 

 

 

 

 

 

.

  .

 

 .

     

 

 

 

        

                .