The Hole

"I've got a song in my soul, and poo in my tummy"

With those words, I galvanized a nation into action. I set the cogs of a great machine in motion, and the course of human history was changed forever. Believe it or not, I'm actually able to type this with a straight face.

I mean...um, it's not like it's TRUE or anything, but all the skeptical looks I'm getting are just bouncing off your own monitors, time-wasters, so I'm not thrown off course a bit.

Decency, however, prevents me from lying for too long, so I may as well come clean. That immortal (immoral?) sentence (sentiment?) came from an Instant Messenger conversation I was having with my buddy Devin. I'm not sure what provoked it. Perhaps his threatening me with attack by bats caused me to deflect the threat's impact with well-placed moronics. Ambient Moronics, folks! It's a powerful force, and it's threaded through this Blog like the many cat hairs in my pillowcase.

But I wander. I'm gonna tell you time-wasters a story. This is a story of discovery, of dedication, of devotion and of dumbness. It is a tale of three high school dopes who took it upon themselves to make a difference. A difference, that is, in the boys' locker room. Our story starts with an innocent ceiling tile...

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"Pfft. Can't even afford to get tiles without chunks missing!" said one of us, putting shoes back on.

"Yeah, and all of the quotations in this story are going to be vaguely attributed too, since they're made up."

"That's out of necessity, because while one of us COULD have said this stuff, they're not direct quotes, and I'm more interested in flow than accuracy."

"HA! That one gives your position away, Paul!"

"Crap!"

"Am I David or Ben?"

"You can be whoever you want. Lookit the hole in the ceiling! That's the narrative focus here."

"Dude. A whole corner's missing. You can see all the girders up there and stuff."

"Is that your nasty old wadded up sock?" said the speaker, pointing.

"No."

"No."

"Nope"

"Oh, that's confusing. Toss me that thing, wouldya?"

Taking aim, I launched the sock in a wide arc up into the suspended ceiling through the hole in the tile in the corner of the room, above the lockers, and a Legend was born. The Hole had been christened. One sock, and the locker room at Potter's House was a little bit different.

"Yeah. There's a sock in the ceiling."

"That'd be a good name for a children's book! 'The Sock in the Ceiling!'"

"Shut up. Hand me that can of Riot Guard deodorant."

"T'heck with you! I'm throwin' this one in."

The can flew true, and landed with a thump on an adjacent tile. There was muffled chuckling.

For the next month or so, the three of us morons scoured the school looking for Hole Fodder. Anything metal was considered prime Hole food, and we even tore a door or two off the lockers in the locker room. Those little ones, about a foot square. They made a satisfying "clang-thump!" when they landed in the depths of The Hole.

"How about this roll of paper towels?"

"Chuck that fella up there!"

"Half-deflated volleyball?"

"To The Hole!"

"Traffic cone?"

"Heave it!"

"This mystery toddler?"

"That never happened, and you better put him back before we get arrested."

"Yeah, but it's funny if you think about it."

"I'm sure it is. Toddlers aren't good Hole Fodder because they're not metal. But check THIS out!"

It was a folding chair. One of those brown steel jobs you find at big conferences and family get-togethers. It was folded flat. We stared at it, eyes wide.

For the last couple of weeks, The Hole had been getting rather full. The objects we tossed up there no longer made a satisfying "thump" when they touched down. No, no, no. They now made MULTIPLE thumps, clunks and bangs as they bounced down the mountain of crap and sometimes came tumbling right back out of The Hole's maw. We looked at the chair, then up at eachother.

"Maaannn. This is gonna be tricky."

"Maaannn, this is gonna ROCK!"

"I'll climb on top of the lockers here, and you hand me the chair, okay?"

"Yeah. How much room is left?"

"Holy. Crap. You guys need to see this."

We took turns on top of the lockers, heads disappearing into The Hole, and beheld a wide pyramid of shoes, locker doors, sports equipment, textbooks, random bits of metal from the parking lot and various other junk in a pile that dominated the space between the building's structural ceiling and the suspended tiles.

"It doesn't smell that bad, even"

"Yeah, just wait 'til that apple goes!"

"That's a baseball."

"Baseballs aren't red, you wank. Hand me that chair!"

"Can you get it through The Hole?"

"Yeah, but *grunt* it's hard to *mmmph* get it around this other junk!"

"Sweet! You got it in there! Unfold it!"

"Oh, heck yeah. Good idea! I'll set it right here on the edge..."

And with that bad decision, came the demise of The Hole. With the chair visible from the locker room floor, standing sentinal before Crap Mountain, it was only a matter of time before the school principal saw it. Once he caught sight of a folding chair in the ceilling, he was bound to ask questions and draw certain conclusions. He was a smart man. He wasn't principal for nothing.

"I'm sure you three know why you're here?"

We looked around his office, at eachother, back down at the floor.

"Probably..."

"Yes. The locker room. Take this trash barrel here, and I want that room cleaned out COMPLETELY. And if I ever catch you doing this again, I'll set the bats on you."

So the three of us took the trash barrel, a camcorder and our crushed spirits into the locker room and emptied The Hole. The spectacular crapfall that nearly buried David when he pulled a tile out from under the pile was enough to bring tears of helpless laughter to the eyes of all, and it took us nearly two hours to get the stuff down. We filled the trash barrel twice. Some of the items, such as textbooks and the traffic cone were put back to use, and the folding chair was roundly cursed.

There was much laughter. And there was forged a memory that lives on today in my mind and on the Blog. Also on tape somewhere, although I can't for the life of me find that blasted cassette. Let us all have a moment of silence for The Hole and its mighty reign of six weeks.

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Y'enjoy that, time-wasters? It's a true story, minus some of the quotes. The crapfall was real. Real hilarious. We did videotape the demise of The Hole. We did get detentions. But I think you'll agree it was worth it.