The Legend of "Cool Hand" Stan

“Therefore our legends come around to seeming legendary,

A path decorated with our comings and goings. Or so I’ve been told.”

-John Ashbery, The Vegetarians

Who else but “Cool Hand” Stan could wear a red t-shirt with black lettering that proclaimed WAVERLY JR. HIGH INMATE? This attire of conspicuous protest so eloquently stated what many of us kids felt like in a place where we were forced by our parents and society to be confined for 180 days a year. Stan wasn't a total rebel; after all, the colors displayed on his t-shirt matched Waverly’s official ones! Maybe that's why the faculty allowed him to keep on wearing it.

Stan was one of the smallest kids in school, not even reaching five feet tall. Was it because of all those Marlboros he smoked? My mother had warned me over and over that smoking would stunt my growth if I dared take up the habit. Robyn Lanham, Stan's self-righteous bus mate and fellow clarinet partner in the Waverly band, had tried in vain to rescue Stan from the vices of Smokers Alley, which defiantly stood across the street from the Waverly grounds, but Stan would not heed her fire and brimstone calls to repentance.

The other feature that stood out about Stan, besides his small size, was his shoulder-length black hair which cascaded straight down from the top of his head. He sported a glowing countenance that was accompanied by a broad grin. Stan’s muscular frame could not contain the overflow of his friendliness and self-confident demeanor. Clean and tight-fitting T-shirts and black LEVI’S were Stan’s staple attire. So, with his good looks, outgoing personality, and impeccable grooming (not even one zit ruined his light complexion), he had no trouble hooking up with some of the more-endowed Waverly beauties, save one.

Stan and I never hung out together socially, so I was caught off guard in the lunchroom one afternoon while eating alone, my head faced downward towards my bowl of chili. “Scott” Stan blurted out with a bit of urgency in his voice, “Would you look over this poem I wrote for English? My dang teacher wants it to have some kind of flow to it. Could you also check the spelling for me? I can’t afford another ‘F’ in English.”

I was disappointed, having thought at first that maybe Stan wanted to start hanging out with me. But I guess he, like everyone else, saw me as a Brain, and hoped to get some use out of my above average intelligence. “Sure.” I took the poem from him and noticed the title right off the bat, written in large letters: LAURA. I couldn’t believe he was writing about some girl, and was curious as to just how personal he was going to be with his written work. And with me, of all kids.

The poem contained a couple of minor spelling errors, so I used my BIC to correct it. I gave the poem back to Stan, who was now sitting across the table from me. “Stan, you need to rewrite this a bit neater with the spelling corrections, but the flow sounds fine to me. Can I ask you something?”

“Sure. What’s that?” Stan quipped.

“Is this Laura Erickson that you are talking about here?”

“What if it is, what’s it to ya?”

“You’re so good with the girls. So why are you afraid of her?”

Stan looked directly into my eyes, and mumbled, “I don’t know, it’s….just different with her. I don’t know.”

For the next few minutes, we remained silent as Stan re-copied his work. He thanked me before darting off, leaving his original copy on the table. I was about to yell at him to retrieve it, but something inside me stopped those words from blaring out. Instead, I took this copy and stuffed it into my shirt pocket. To this day, I still have the poem which reads:

LAURA

Laura has left yearnings in my soul

Though she has yet to amount to even being my one-night lover

What is it about this girl who’s got such a beautiful name

That makes her impossible for me to discover?

So tall, so shapely, and dirty blonde: She’s captivated me in my biology course

Laura’s the main piece of the in-crowd puzzle at my junior high!

Her voice is sensually deep, and she converses with great force

Oh, how I want to date this goddess, but I am too scared to try!

For some reason, this one girl became an albatross for him, in a world that Stan pretty much had control over, otherwise. I never did find out what grade he got for the poem.

By the time we reached ninth grade, I was mystified by him. And for my mystification, the Waverly-Powers-That-Be scheduled us to be in the same Wood Shop class. I felt I had no choice but to take Wood Shop since it was a part of a tri-elective course, along with Art and Music Appreciation; each segment spanned twelve weeks. I couldn't bear the thought of thirty-six weeks of French or German. I was enduring enough trials by attempting to stay fluent in my native English.

I was all thumbs when it came to working with my hands, dreading many of the assigned woodshop projects that required an intermediate mastery of wood-shaping skills at the very least. My dear ol’ dad never got around to teaching me about wood. So, when the candlestick holder project came due, it was Stan who saved the day. The lathe he was working at stood next to mine, so he quickly noticed just how incompetent I was. I froze with fear over how to begin the initial phase of the project, despite watching Mr. Gordon’s thorough demonstration.

I had been staring at the machine for five minutes when Stan turned off the lathe he was using. His piece of wood was now close to becoming a perfect cylinder. Mr. Gordon just happened to step outside. Stan walked over to me. “Scott, let me have that piece of wood, and I’ll get it started for you, all right?”

“Won’t Mr. Gordon get mad if he doesn’t see me actually doing the work?”

“He doesn’t care if we help each other out, and anyway, you’re going to hurt yourself. You’re so afraid of it, man, that you’re asking for it! It’s only going to take a few minutes and Gordon is having a smoke himself – I just know it. So we’ll be in the clear.”

Stan took the piece of wood out of my hands, pushed me gently aside, and stepped directly in front of my lathe. He began to do his magic on this ordinary-looking piece of former tree, whatever species it happened to be. I couldn’t even keep straight all the types of wood we used in class.

I wanted some kind of assurance that Mr. Gordon wouldn’t come in and catch us, so I asked Stan anxiously, “Stan, Mr. Gordon smokes? He really smokes?”

“Hell yes,” Stan quipped. “Shit, he’s even out at Smokers’ Alley sometimes hangin’ out with us kids. Gordon’s a real trip. He’s cool, so don’t worry, Scott.”

Stan continued after giving me a rueful glare, “Man, you are too tightly wound! Find an easy chick in this school and get yourself laid!”

“Oh yea, sure….Stan….right!”

“But get that hair combed and keep your shirt tucked in. Girls hate slobs!”

Stan proceeded to sculpt the block of wood into a cylinder with varying grooves of depth throughout, rendering it into something astonishing to behold. I got an 'A' on the project, even though I just sanded and varnished the damn thing. So the illusion that I was a top-flight honor roll student remained intact.

I could do very complex geometry problems in my head with ease and had effortlessly memorized all the world capitals. But Stan, despite his penchant for crafting works of art with his hands, wasn't deemed one of the brighter students at Waverly in the areas of book learning subjects like me. So our classes together were few and far between. In the ones we shared, notwithstanding the Wood Shop class, I noticed that Stan felt totally out of place. And given the fact that he was suspended several times for ditching school only reinforced my thinking on that point. Outside of class, however, “Cool Hand” Stan rocked! No one disliked this guy. I never heard a bad word spoken about him. Two to three times a month, I’d overhear some chick confide to one or more of her girlfriends, “Stan is so cute!”

Many kids at Waverly were jealous of those of us who got good grades in academic subjects, but I had my own bouts of covetousness, too. Oh, how I wish I could’ve been as talented with a piece of wood as Stan was. But more than anything else, I wanted to draw girls to myself the way Stan seemed to do so naturally, save this one goody-goody Preppie (but a sure “10”) Laura Erickson. I think he saw her as a goddess, while the other girls he happened to go out with were nothing more than conquests. He must’ve felt that he wasn’t worthy of someone that you could put upon a pedestal. Laura just had to know about Stan’s affections for her via the chicky grapevine. Still, as far as I know, he never asked her out, and I never saw them together. My guess is that Laura wanted someone more respectable, because she was always with some jock or Preppie pretty boy.

In a world of cliques, peer pressure, and all the burgeoning emotions that come with being a teenager, Stan’s cool exterior helped to keep me afloat during my middle school years at Waverly, which I shared with almost 1,400 unique personalities.

Time has taken me away from the halls Stan and I walked for three years, but I still entertain thoughts of him. Mere words don't do justice to that particular kid from an era which is gone forever. Somehow he mocked but managed to survive those rules and regulations designed to form the rest of us teenagers, and found his way into a clearing: A clearing where such rules and regulations did not damage us, but guided those of us who weren’t so sure of ourselves like Stan was. Somehow, we were woven with a clear purpose while secretly admiring guys like Stan. Though I've acquired more insight and maturity with age, I still don’t quite understand it all. All I know is that those years are still playing in the recesses of my mind, epitomized in the Legend of “Cool Hand” Stan.

The End