The Time I Tried to Sell My English Teacher's Car

Best offer.

Now that I have children and grownup/parental responsibilities and no sleep and uh, a job, I no longer have a lot of free time.

And because I no longer have a lot of free time, one of the many things I don't experience much anymore is...boredom.

Sure, I'm bored at work (where do you think I'm writing this post?), but I actually have things I'm supposed to be doing with my day. I'm speaking of the boredom where you literally have nothing to do. (I don't count extra studying or other productive pursuits as "something to do"; this is an underachiever who's writing this post.)

Although I'd often just suffer through my boredom complaining about being bored, occasionally my boredom would compel me to engage in mischievous activity.

This post describes one of those times.



One day while I was sitting in Mr. Candia's 11th grade English class, we were in the middle of a start-of-session handout when Mr. Walt, a science teacher, walked in to chat with Mr. Candia. I found their meeting far more interesting than the quiz, which was probably related to A Separate Peace or Catcher in the Rye. I'd never seen science and English teachers mingle before, and the contrast between the soft-spoken and erudite Mr. Candia and Mr. Walt, who could pass for a blacksmith in Middle Earth, was just too bizarre to forget.

Anyway, Mr. Walt was there to congratulate Mr. Candia on his purchase of his new car -- "an '88 Grand Prix," I still remember him saying.

I don't know how or why the idea came to me, but a few days later I put up some posters around the high school selling the car (adding "See A. Candia, English department") for $2400, which was far less than the actual cost and value of that kind of automobile had it been a few years old, let alone a recent purchase.

I WAS PROBABLY SAFE
I had a feeling that even if I were caught, I wouldn't get into (much) trouble. After all, it was more of a mild prank than anything particularly malicious. It wasn't as if my flyers said, "If you'd like to buy this car, go to the teachers' lot and spray-paint your name on it."

Plus, although Mr. Candia came off like a snob if you didn't know him, but he actually had a very dry sense of humor. This was evidenced by an incident that, had it occurred in a different teacher's class, would have likely had me sent to the dean's office. We were discussing the kinds of things people subconsciously doodle, and what that says about their personalities. Apparently if you drew morbid things like dead people and coffins, you likely needed to see the school psychologist at the very least.

"Anthony," he announced to the class in his gentle voice, "I'll bet you're the kind of guy who draws dead people."

"Yeah," I replied, "Dead bald people." The rest of the class went Oooooooo, but Mr. Candia, to his credit, nodded with a tight smile that I interpreted to say, "All right, I walked right into that one." (I should mention that Mr. Candia was bald. One time I asked him whether his high school class voted him Most Likely to Recede. I came up with that joke one night and waited several days until the time was right to spring it.)

REVENGE
I never found out if, or how many, people actually contacted Mr. Candia about the car, and he never made any mention of whether he'd seen the posters or of my involvement in them. But one day, a couple of weeks later, I was called to his desk during another handout.

"Could you smile for me, Anthony?" he asked.

I smiled.

"No...can you smile and show some teeth."

I smiled again.

"Thank you. You can sit down now."

I didn't ask him why he needed me to perform that facial exercise, but Mr. Candia was had a quiet eccentricity about him, so I didn't think about it all that much.

UNTIL
A few days after I smiled for Mr. Candia, I was about to leave seventh-period Chemistry for final-period Band when a couple of my friends rushed into Mr. Spengler's classroom lab.

"Have you seen this?" one gasped as he thrust a small flyer in my hand.

I looked at the flyer. What I saw was a drawing of myself, in the style of a carnival caricaturist where the head to rest-of-the-body ratio is 1:1. My small body was wearing a tutu, and my legs were peppered with tiny hairs.

The copy of this thing read "VOTE FOR ANTHONY -- PRESIDENT OF GIRLS' LEADERS CORPS" along with the slogan "Tony's no phony!"

As I sank into red-alert teenager panic, I tried to think about which kid I might have pissed off enough to retaliate like this. There were a few names that came to mind immediately, but I worried that it might have been the work of someone whose anger with me was not yet known; I knew there had to be people out there I annoyed without even being aware that I was annoying them.

But then I looked at the drawing again, and when I pondered the goofy toothy smile, it clicked.

"We've taken down as many of these as we could find," one of my friends said, "but they're everywhere!"

Finally understanding what happened, I laughed -- probably the last reaction my friends were expecting. "Don't bother taking the rest down," I said. "I know why they're up."

EPILOGUE
Mr. Candia and I never spoke about either incident, though I did make one oblique reference to "used cars" a few weeks later. We remained on very good terms, even when I asked him to sign my yearbook the following year:

It reads: Anthony, Thanks for supplying the laughs and the gags throughout 11 Honors English. [Wishing you] the best of everything, and if you're in the market for a used Grand Prix '88, stop in and say hello next year.

I kinda wish I'd taken him up on the offer.