INVESTIGATIVE “JOURNALISM”

Woodward & Bernstein Slept Here

And everyone wanted a seat at the table

Follow me back to 1974, or so. Seriously.

No, I wasn’t there when Old Plaid was born, but I can imagine it all too well.

Furniture Designer: Have you seen the new line of leisure suits that Sears is promoting? A sort of rustic rose and barf-green plaid combo.

Furniture Executive: Yes! The pattern kinda reminds me of Daisy Duke’s shirt. You know, the girly plaid one she knots right under her ta-tas.

Furniture Designer: Exactly! Maybe we could coin some of that sexual innuendo in a furniture covering? I’m thinking family room couches — we could start calling them “sofas” again. Hearkens back to the far-out ’50s with a tinge of not-too-far-out-there feminism.

Furniture Executive: You mean like a colorful plaid permutation? Groovy!

And that’s how Old Plaid came into the picture.

I’m told he was an “impulse buy” for a principal some years back. Dude in Charge had a little extra cash in his slush fund (all administrators have slush funds — you know that, right?) He had a chance to purchase new English textbooks and chose instead to up his interior decorator’s game, or something. With a hideous rustic rose and barf-green plaid couch.

Men.

This wild family furnishing actually recycled itself down to Room 215.

On its journey to my classroom, this sad sack of a “groovy” ’70s sofa had been in the principal’s office, his administrative assistant’s alcove, the main office, and an off-the-beaten-path locale known as the “Faculty Dining Room.”

Of course, the plaid davenport didn’t cushion the derrieres of many teachers as they dined. Funds supporting a separate place for us to recharge and replenish were soon moved back to the principal’s slush fund — probably so he could redecorate again.

Twenty years or so after his initial conception, Old Plaid took on a sorta existential existence —helping to rest the rumps of hundreds of teenage scribes.

And you can bet those kids of the ’90s and early aughts knew how to turn a once peerless piece of plaid pulchritude into a grubby refuge of rebellion.

Or, at least hang out in the choice location to take a load off.

Anyone who knows a teenager can guess where this story is headed.

Let me explain.

I spent more than two decades marshalling my teenage forces in favor of scholastic journalism. The kids had a certain amount of freedom that normal high-schoolers just don’t possess.

They did their fair amount — in the pages of our student newspaper and yearbook — of investigating, ruminating about, and skewering various folks “in charge,” like that dude at our school. The kids relished their assignments — and, I’m proud to say, earned quite a bit of hard-fought-for recognition over the years.

But, as we all know, all work and no play makes Jack & Jill, well, boring.

So they spent a lot of “down time” in the computer lab adjoining my classroom — which, for some reason, they called the “Bat Cave.” And they termed their gregarious teen socializing “Kumbaya.”

Over the years, kids of the high school persuasion sat on that damn couch til a number of predictable things happened to it.

• The left arm fell off one day after five or so of my charges perched on it. Yes, they tried to re-anchor the appendage. In fact, one young lady had her dad come in with his power tools. But alas, repair efforts were for naught, and I made the executive decision that a one-armed sofa was better than none, so we carried on.
• Holes of varying sizes started appearing in the putrid plaid. This just meant the students — being an average of 15 years old — just made those gaps larger, by digging pens and pencils and rulers and at one point someone’s Size 13 soccer cleat — into Old Plaid’s orifices and then pulling the cushion stuffing out.
• One young man deserved props, at least, for trying to patch the sad plaid. One afternoon he went home after school and picked up his big sister’s sewing basket. She apparently had taken a quilting class in college, and possessed a bag of scraps, too. So Sammy Homemaker made a valiant effort with bright blue fabric to contain some of the damage. Let’s just say his efforts pretty much failed, spectacularly.
• Two recent Journalism Program grads — who had matriculated to well-known colleges — came back to visit with an iron and some adhesive-backed photos. This resulted in an unsuccessful attempt to adhere snaps from back in the day to the surface of Old Plaid. Which also meant short-circuiting the power in the English Department wing. No lights, no computer, no more school, at least for the day.
• A series of cryptic messages — some in the form of protest signs — started cropping up on the file cabinets behind Old Plaid. “I am a couch. I have feelings,” read one of my faves. “Please do not: cut me; tear me; molest my stuffing; tattoo me; sit on me if you are quite smelly. Thank You!”

Of course, Old Plaid eventually suffered the ultimate indignity.

I was lounging around on said sofa one morning during my break. Grading timed essays, I think. Well, that’s a pretty great guess, because as an English teacher, I was always grading.

I paused after plowing through one particularly dense piece of prose. Glanced down, beyond where the Old Plaid’s left arm was supposed to be.

And saw vermin droppings.

Eeeeeeeeeekkkkkkk!!!

I couldn’t tell if a rat or just a lil old field rodent had left his calling card, but I was up off that couch faster than a cat chasing a you-know-what.

“Yup, you’ve got mice,” the building superintendent said, after I’d fled the entire length of the building to his office and begged him to take a look-see at the tell-tale calling card.

“Yikes! How do you know?” Lots of gasps. I was exhausted from the sprint and fearful of the outcome of his investigation.

“Well, you’ve got the scat,” he pointed out. Professional lingo for mouse poop. “And I dug around in the springs, too.”

“What did you find?” I was surprised Old Plaid still had springs. And pretty pessimistic about the professional diagnosis.

“Oh, you’ve got a nest in there.” Great, what does that mean? “I’d say at least two mice. But you’re lucky — they look to be little, by the way they set up housekeeping.”

My students christened the small visitors — which we never saw, I should add — Woodward & Bernstein.

I have to say I was — briefly — proud of my kids’ ability to remember reportorial history. But accumulated knowledge aside, they continued to sit, aimlessly farting around for the rest of the spring semester. I, meanwhile, never again got near Old Plaid — nor the Bat Cave, really — again.

Bad things, of course, come to couches who harbor interlopers. And, natch, a high price must be paid.

I was desperate by the end of May to give the old heave-ho to Old Plaid. But he was a three-seater. And built in the ’70s, before manufacturers started skimping on materials. Pretty heavy, dude.

I talked to the building manager, who said I could get the couch out to the hallway, he’d have someone haul it away. So I paid two football players to take care of the dirty deed for me.

And because we’re talking teens here, you know Old Plaid had a much softer landing than that.

It was gone the next day when I came in to work. But the custodial staff hadn’t had time to get to it. A theater student — who’d been running lines for her final exam out in the hallway near Room 215 after school — said a well-known cabal of potheads co-opted the couch and transported it to someone’s nearby basement.

It was only a matter of time before someone’s mom discovered the detritus and demanded it be removed.

Poor Old Plaid. He didn’t even get a proper disposal.

The last I saw him a few weeks later, he was straddling the grassy median in front of the school —getting drenched in a summer monsoon.

I have no clue what happened to Woodward & Bernstein. The mice, not the investigative reporters. But I’m told they’re intrepid examiners of American angst. They probably found another place to nest.