My Life As The Class Clown

A history of my life in prescription eyewear, part 1

This is how my career in comedy started, with these glasses.

This column is dedicated to all my friends, who, over the years, have belly-laughed at my jokes and encouraged my bad behavior. Humor has always been my way of coping with less-than-ideal circumstances, namely the fact that by the age of five, my mother was GONE. As in, she went to NYC with all her buddies from the art department at Michigan State and never came back. I hope she was having a great time eating NY-style pizza and chain-smoking Virginia Slims in Soho. Meanwhile, my brother and I were having a shit time of it. Our dad had few domestic skills, and we were subsisting on canned National Guard rations, Captain Crunch, and cold hotdogs, and living in married student housing, this while dad was working on his doctorate at the University of Missouri. This was our life the summer before my kindergarten year.

Imagine, if you will, it’s the morning of your first day of school, and there is no mom there to properly brush your hair and put it in braids, and there had not been a trip to the store to get the “school wardrobe” in order. Add to this my dad’s brilliant idea to cut my hair, just minutes before taking me to school. This was 1967, and my dad was a typical sort of a guy, i.e. not Vidal Sassoon. He was a doctoral student in ed psych who did National Guard on the weekends. I distinctly remember his using the safety scissors from my art box, the ones which could barely cut through a piece of construction paper. Remember those? And there he was, trying to make me look presentable for my FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL, by cutting my hair. Holy mother of god, what was he thinking? Did I mention this is a guy with multiple college degrees?

I have intentionally left out my school portrait from kindergarten because there is no sensitive content feature in Substack. It was that sad.

I wish this had been me. Yep, that’s Mia Farrow and Vidal Sassoon. Pretty sure Frank Sinatra paid for that haircut. At least her dad saw to her having a proper hairstylist. Oops! - that wasn’t her dad!

The point here: all of this set me up for the behavior to follow, namely my irrepressible need to make people laugh. What’s that old saying? Oh yeah: “Better to laugh than cry.” I figured that out at age 5, and you know what? It has kept me sane my whole life. By being funny, I made myself and everyone around me happy, especially my classmates, who normally had to prop their eyelids open with toothpicks when we had to watch those movies on personal hygiene. My running commentary during the films kept everyone laughing (except my teacher).

Me, shortly after starting kindergarten, sporting Dad’s famous haircut. Pretty sure the asymmetry was not intentional. We lived in married student housing and had about three pieces of furniture. I loved watching Batman, Popeye, Fractured Fairytales, and The Monkeys on that TV. My long-term plan was to marry Micky, the drummer from The Monkeys. Yep - the funniest guy in the group. Always been a sucker for funny guys. And yes, that would include you, JOHN.

This is a great film to watch if you’re having a hard time falling asleep.

Though things were far from ideal at home, I always had great friends, and their parents picked up the slack, making sure I had fun and got to go to summer camp and giving me a ride back from Detroit when my dad forgot to pick me up at the airport after I returned from a 5-week orchestra tour. I was only 15, by the way, and this was pre-cell phones, and I think I mentioned this was Deeetroit… aye yai yai. In the ’70s. Not exactly a spot to leave a kid stranded with only $10 in her wallet, and walking around with an expensive musical instrument. Thank god for Mr. and Mrs. Learner, who noticed me sitting there alone in the airport terminal at 2:00 a.m. They drove me back to Battle Creek, no doubt saving me from certain death.

In my usual fashion, I like to take my readers on a little musical excursion, especially when I’m coming up short on a proper writing transition. This was my favorite song in kindergarten: “Downtown” with Petula Clark. This song made me think of my mom, living in New York City. It sounded like a happy place, and I really hoped to join her there one day. 😭 Enjoy!

OK… time to move forward on the eyeglasses timeline. And snicker all you want about my attire in the photos to follow, but know this: I did not get to pick out any of my clothes, ever, and most of them are from K-mart. God, I hated that store. Thanks to my stepmother, I still have a pathological hatred of shopping. It’s so bad that the only gift my kids ever get from me is cash - on every birthday and holiday. Fortunately, they are good with that. And I let them pick out their own clothes, which has saved me thousands on psychotherapy.

So, here’s to you, all my wonderful, crazy school buddies. Fasten your seatbelts as we take a little trip down memory lane at 20 miles per hour over the speed limit. I will be mentioning your names. And I would love it if you added some pics in the comments section – especially Rosaltha, who I hope still has a picture of us from Service Squad with our matching elephant print jumpers. Both of our mothers had horrible taste. Ours was what I would call a fashion trauma bond.

Me with my Marco Grouch glasses.

My life as the class clown began in first grade when I wore my Marco Grouch glasses to class for show and tell. They were a big hit. Everyone wanted to try them on, and before the morning was out, they were broken. Whatever. They cost all of 50¢ at the corner candy store. But seriously, that was the start of my popularity - it was because I made everyone laugh. I pity my first-grade teacher, Miss Hallowell, who could not figure out what to do with me. For starters, I refused to do phonics because I thought it was stupid. Then I said so out loud in front of the whole class, so she put me in the lowest reading group as punishment. A few weeks later, the school librarian pointed out to her that I had already read half the Nancy Drew novels and The Wicked Pigeon Ladies in the Garden. She couldn’t believe it. She thought I couldn’t read. Truth be told - I’d also read half of The Happy Hooker, which sat on the window ledge in our kitchen at home. I had no idea what any of it meant, at least not until third grade when Penny Nickels (yep, her real name) filled us in on the facts of life during recess. For two years, I’d hidden that book between my mattress and box spring, and after Penny’s enlightening lecture, I immediately set to re-reading it. Holy toots.

Me pretending to be a crossing guard. The famous Fremont School is in the background, the stage for my early years in comedy.

First grade, the year I read The Happy Hooker instead of Dick and Jane. The lesson here: do not be fooled by appearances. I was already a handful.

I’m going to mostly skip over second grade because that was boring as all get-out. Apparently, our teacher was an ex-nun, who’d left her order because (not kidding) they weren’t strict enough. Ok, let me get this straight - the nunnery was too lax, so Ms. Hodgkin decided to teach 2nd grade in an inner-city elementary school. The worst part: this ex-nun did not put up with my antics, not one iota. And since I could not control my mouth, I spent half of that school year pounding blackboard erasers outside in the snow. No lesson was learned, by the way. I had straight A’s that year, but nun lady gave me 4’s for “deportment” - the lowest mark. My parents didn’t know whether to give me $5 for good grades or to ground me, not that those options should have been mutually exclusive.

The year of Eartha Kitt - 3rd grade.

Third grade was when the real fun started. I and all of my friends were in Mrs. McCoy’s class. She was really cool, though a bit of an airhead, which was perfect because most of the time, she didn’t notice the pranks I was pulling–like the time I poured 5 canisters of scouring powder down the utility sink with my partner in crime, Rosaltha. We were laughing so hard tears were streaming down our faces. Mrs. McCoy didn’t notice that either. And third grade was the year Rosaltha and I had the honor of being put on the Service Squad as partners. What were they thinking?! The icing on the cake - Ms. White, our principal, decided Rosaltha and I should be the ones putting up the American flag every morning. OMG.

Mrs. McCoy was a lot like this woman from Star Trek, except she had more lines.

In her office, where the Venetian blinds were always mysteriously closed, Ms. White taught us how to properly fold the flag, and she warned us to NEVER, EVER drag the American flag on the floor, like it was illegal or something. After that, you can bet that Rosaltha and I dragged that flag across the floor in the sports equipment room every single day. In fact, we created our own official flag ritual that included its making contact with the floor and our shoes, and we laughed our asses off. Fortunately, we never got caught, or we for sure would have been expelled. The risk was well worth the thrill.

Third grade was going pretty well, until one day, out of the blue, Mrs. McCoy sent me home with a note for my parents, which read: “Mr. and Mrs. Andrews, I regret to inform you that Christina is having a difficult time seeing the blackboard.” OMG… I knew what that meant. I had to get glasses. 😭

Gotta love that Maria-from-the-Sound-of-Music haircut. A poor imitation for sure. And I look so innocent, which I was not. A month after this picture was taken, I had the distinction of being the first kid in my class with glasses. I’m sure it was because I was reading in the near dark every night after my stepmother put me to bed at 7:00. I had also heard that masturbating makes you blind from my Catholic schoolmates, so that might have been a factor.

So, off to the optometrist we went, and boy, did that guy put the “tryst” in optometrist. He spent the whole appointment flirting with my stepmother. When it came time to pick out glasses, neither of them was paying much attention, and I was left to my own devices. As I looked at the wall of frames, I remembered how much I loved Catwoman, and then the black cat-eye glasses grabbed my attention. Whoa…. those would look so cool! Right? I totally sure of it. Since we didn’t go to church I was unaware that hubris was the worst of the seven deadly sins and proceeded to insist that I needed those glasses. Reluctantly, the doctor and my stepmother’s checkbook came to an agreement - I could get the Eartha Kitt glasses. Two weeks later, when we went to pick up the glasses and get them adjusted, reality sunk in. I did not look like Eartha Kitt. Not even remotely. But I kept this to myself, because following my insistence on getting these frames, I had to listen to my parents argue about the cost, like for days. You would have thought they had to refinance the house to pay for my glasses. So, I damn well better like them.

Eartha Kitt, me in 4th grade, me in 5th grade. Surely you can see the resemblance. I was forced to wear those cat-eye glasses for THREE YEARS.

One of the worst days of my life was having to go to school for the first time wearing those glasses. It was humiliating. I had realized my error the minute I tried them on, but it was too late, they were paid for. Now, here I was, on the way to school, everyone staring at me like I was an alien. On the upside, for the first time, I could see the leaves on the trees - that was cool.

When I got to school, I could hardly bring myself to walk into Mrs. McCoy’s class. I prayed at least my friends would make the Eartha Kitt connection; fingers crossed. In I went and immediately, and I mean I-hadn’t-even-taken-off-my-coat immediately, the class bully, Brian Babb, shouted “Hey look! Christina has granny glasses!” The whole class burst into laughter, including my friends. The Eartha Kitt connection - not made. This turned out to be one of those pivotal moments in my life. Either I was going to start crying, and boy did I feel like it, or I was going to own it and then beat up Brian Babb on the playground at lunch. I stood there for about one second and then chose Door #2. I proceeded to push my new glasses toward the bottom of my nose and did my best imitation of Mr. Tudball from The Carol Burnett Show (even though he doesn’t even wear glasses). Everyone, except Brian Babb, burst out laughing. My glasses were suddenly transformed into a stage prop for my comedy show. I was back on my game. And yes, I whipped Brian Babb’s butt on the playground. He was pretty cute, and I was pretty motivated. Secretly, I think he liked it.

So, part two of the Prescription Eyeglasses series will come out next week. You’ll get to hear about and see my progression into metal frames, then Larry King-style oversized plastic frames, followed by my final transformation into contacts and Ray Ban aviators, which looked great with my bikinis. Stay tuned.

Me, on the beach with my dad. He no longer cuts my hair, and my stepmom no longer dictates what clothes I wear. Thank god. FYI, my dad really likes donuts.