The Importance of Impeccable Timing

Football is won based on perfectly timed, high-speed plays. If everyone does their job effectively and is in the correct spot or reaches for the ball at the exact planned second, the play will be made. Anything less than perfect results in failure or a play made on luck. The same holds true for all ball sports.

My wife Cheryl, the first girl from Bellingham High School to go to a State meet in gymnastics, pointed out to me during the latest Olympics the need for impeccable timing. Kips, flyaways, dismounts, roundoff back and front handsprings to double and triple layouts, Yurchenkos, Tsukaharas, and now the Biles, are only accomplished by practicing the timing repeatedly. The same can be said for routines performed by champion ice skaters. I by the way, have done each of these moves simply by forgetting to put the rubber mat in the bathtub when I shower.

In music, the musicians are so focused on the conductor that each member of the band or orchestra starts and stops their piece at the exact same moment. They follow the wand’s beat as they move through the music. Each trill and run are done at the tempo of the wand. Anything less than perfect timing and rhythm creates, in the music world, a term we call “a train wreck.”

I have never had good timing or luck and many times was the instigator of the train wreck.

Elementary School

Chuck, Harry, and I started kindergarten together at Alderwood Elementary School. It was a deceptive ploy by the school district to place us in Mrs. Grimes class with the belief that all twelve years of school would be like her class. She was kind, she smiled, she never raised her voice, and we had treats. I have learned that this is the same technique that recruiters use for the Armed Forces.

An 18-year-old walks into the recruitment office and is met by a friendly recruiter who makes the teen feel like the military is absolutely the best life for him or her. Join the Band of Brothers, have a forever family. After a slap on the back and a friendly hand shake you are taken by bus to meet your drill Sergeants and all hell begins. This was the shock we faced when we left kindergarten and entered the 1st grade.

The First Grade

Our first-grade teacher, whom I shall not name directly but had the same last name as the mark of the beast in the book of Revelations, was either a retired drill sergeant or the beast herself. I will identify her as Mrs. 666.

Mrs. 666 was not kind, always raised her voice, never smiled (unless one of us was about to get a beating) and never gave treats. When drill sergeant 666 came into the room, all talking ceased and we sat upright in our chairs trembling. Some teared up and started to weep and one girl would continually pee on the floor. You can imagine Mrs. 666 by thinking about the wicked witch in the original Wizard of Oz movie.

Chuck and Harry’s desks sat in line with mine and we would whisper to one another for support, occasionally giving the correct answer to a question one of us was stumped on. Sometimes though, it was impossible to pass an answer when one of us was put on the spot.  I can remember Harry being asked a question by 666. He had no answer which infuriated the teacher. She moved to his desk, grabbed his hand, placed it in the center of his desk and beat it with the metal edge of a 12″ ruler. Perhaps if she understood the rules of the Geneva Convention, she would have known that water boarding was illegal too.

Sometimes it was every boy for themselves. I was one of the kids in class who had a hard time visualizing words. Mrs. 666 gave us a sheet of paper before lunch which had a collection of shapes. Each shape had an instruction as to what to do with it. We were to use our color crayons to complete the project. As soon as the lesson was complete, we could go to lunch. For some reason, I could not figure out what I was supposed to do for the instruction, “color the bunny pink.” My other two compatriots, without slipping me the answer, handed their completed assignments to 666 and went to lunch. She would not allow me to eat because I didn’t color the bunny pink. I was just happy she didn’t chop off my hand with her ruler.

As a first grader there was no way to get revenge on the wicked Mrs. 666, except of course for the girl who daily peed on her floor. I regretted the day I was born when I envisioned eleven more years of teachers like 666. And then one day, the tables turned. I call it the importance of impeccable timing.

Mrs. 666 sat at her desk in the center of the classroom. None of the terrified students looked at her as we struggled with the assignment she had given us. It could have been something she had eaten the night before or maybe for breakfast, but 666 started to uncomfortably swell with gas.

Since there was not an adult available to watch her class on short notice, thereby preventing her from running to the bathroom, she devised plan “B”:

On her desk was a tower of stacked reader books. She would stand up, lift the stack into the air and drop them back onto the table. During the resulting crash she would pass the gas.

As the pressure became unbearable, 666 stood up, grabbed the stack of books lifting them high above the table. She then dropped them. The resulting crash caused the startled class to look up at their teacher. The crash obviously startled Mrs. 666 too because she was about four seconds late with her plan. Now, in dead silence, she let the gas go . . . long and loud. She then took three steps away from her desk and waved the air with some papers.

Chuck, Harry, and I looked at each other. All the other children looked around the room at their classmates. Then Harry absentmindedly piped up with, “Shoot one over the bow, teacher?”

I don’t know if it was the wide eyed, shocked look on her face, the fact that she had tooted, or Harry’s little remark, but the nervous students began to giggle. The story didn’t have a happy ending that day, but it did at the end of the school year as the school board refused to renew her contract.

I have had a tendency as of late, to have incredibly bad timing. On the cruise we just returned from, we brought an extra suitcase of formal attire for Gala nights in the dining room. I understood Gala nights to be Monday and Thursday. On Wednesday night we met the maître d’ in our casual clothes and asked for a table. He gave me an odd ‘head to toe’ look but led us into the dining room. After we were seated, it became evident that all the men were in tuxes and the women in expensive gowns wearing their finest jewelry. My impeccable timing was off by a day. As we ate that night feeling awkwardly underdressed and being watched by our fellow diners, I realized that I was the cause of yet another ‘train wreck.’ Speaking quietly across the table to Cheryl I said, “I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it!”

“What?” she asked.  “That you got the wrong night for Gala Night?”

“No,” I said. “That I couldn’t figure out that I was supposed to color the bunny pink.”

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