344 - Meet the Gazer
A PG 13 tune
I must be crazy to post this story. I don’t know why in the hell I decided to write about it other than the fact the everybody I’ve related it to found it bizarre.
I attended Van Horn High school in Independence Missouri, graduating in 1972.
As is typical, everybody had to meet a minimal physical education requirement to graduate. There’s really nothing wrong with this, until it comes to the swimming portion of Phys Ed.
Van Horn was equipped with a large indoor swimming pool - we were required to swim quite a bit. I enjoy swimming, but I hated it at Van Horn…
…because boys weren’t allowed to use swimming trunks - we had to swim naked. Girls were afforded the luxury of bathing suits, but boys swam in the buff.
Whose brilliant idea this was I’ve no idea, but as you can imagine it definitely contributed to all kinds of tasteless stunts, the most common being someone yelling your name while jumping up and down or moving rapidly side to side or oscillating their hips in such a way that their appendage would spin like an airplane propellor, trying to get you to notice it, and woe be it to anyone that did because immediately the class would erupt into a chorus of “Meat Gazer!” with finger pointing and hoots and hollers. Trust me, you didn’t want to be labeled as a meat gazer, it made life difficult.
What reminded me of this unpleasant high school experience? I was making a batch of jerky this evening and my wife, being quite familiar with this story, walked into the kitchen and asked me if I was gazing at meat again.
