January | 2015 | bobdahl

A classmate from years long gone
sent him some old, old grade school
photos and he looked at his fifth
grade class photo and saw himself
sitting way, way back at a desk all
by itself because the teacher, Mrs.
Allen said he was the not very funny
class clown so he should sit in the
dunce’s seat and it had to be his
through parent/teacher conferences
so his parents would know what he
desperately had been keeping from
them. Fifth grade was a really
tough year.

Then he looked at the sixth grade
photo and there he sat right behind
the girl who accused him of reaching
around and squeezing her prematurely
developed boobies when all he did was
snap her bra strap a few times until
she screamed. The principal hung him
on a clothes-hook for that. The girl
eventually recanted and the princi-
pal let him down. Sixth grade was a
really tough year.

He looked for himself in the seventh
grade photo but he couldn’t find
himself and then he remembered he
thought he was Pat Boone singing
“April Love” and “Oh, Oh, Oh,
Bernadine” with his legs up on the
desk of the big breasted girl until
she screamed and the teacher
sent him to the principal’s office
and, well, you can take it from
there. Seventh grade was a really
tough year, too.

He couldn’t find himself in the eighth
grade photo either. He kept looking
for Ricky Nelson. He was sure he was
Ricky Nelson. That was the year he
bought a guitar and wished his lips
were more pouty, like Rick’s, which
is the short form of his name which
he eventually preferred because it
sounds more mature. On the few
occasions he realized who he really
was, he told everybody to stop call-
ing him Bobby and just call him Bob,
so much more mature.

In high school he thought he was Paul
Newman and in college he just knew for
sure he was Robert Redford.

By the time he was sixty-seven, he
recognized himself in the mirror. And
then he went to his fiftieth high school
reunion thinking he looked pretty damn
good, like he knew he would, but, nobody
recognized him. He guessed all those
tough years in school being somebody
else had, in fact, finally taken their
toll. He wasn’t a celebrity after all,
which he knew for sure when they even
forgot he had been the senior class
treasurer, a kid who couldn’t even
balance the books.