Stiff Upper Lip
On occasion, I think about a kid from high school who I used to hope I’d never see again. Not because we were mortal enemies or that he slept with my girlfriend (Shania Twain wouldn’t have been unfaithful), but because of how impervious he was to being ridiculed. Ridicule seems like too strong a word—he wasn’t threatened or involved in a physical confrontation. In fact, the main accusation leveled at him was that he liked plumbing.
During my senior year, I attended seven study halls over the course of my final two semesters, purposely taking the bare minimum classes for the credits required to graduate. I had befriended numerous teachers, but only one drove me in his rusty Ford pickup truck to a convenience store where he purchased packs of GPCs at lunchtime—he claimed GPC was an acronym for “Generic People’s Cigarettes”—and grabbed me a soup and/or sandwich along with a diet soda, infinitely better than another carton of skim milk. I’d taken Mr. Fairwood’s Graphics class to begin my senior year along with his Photography class, finding his laid-back style and recurring quips endearing, especially as a kid forever on the hunt for new father figures.
Fairwood said I could spend my post-lunch study hall hanging out in his Advanced Graphics class, which was comprised of a dozen kids, all seniors and juniors. One of them, Hogan, had been my grammar school best friend, and while we no longer chatted much or spent time together outside school, our bond remained intact. He’d grown up in my hometown’s low-income neighborhood and spent countless weekends staying at my house where my mother would make his favorite meal and treat him like her second son. Although we weren’t alike any longer—I had music and movies, he had booze and drugs—we both still loved baseball and had a mutual respect.
Along with myself, Fairwood allowed one other kid to sit in for his study hall. The kid didn’t talk much or know the students in the class like I did, but he was innocuous, using the time to actually study or read video game magazines while I sat beside Fairwood doting on him like his faithful assistant. The kid in question, Carl, was a lanky guy with awkward posture who only wore classic rock tee shirts (with occasional hooded sweatshirts) and jeans (or jean shorts), sitting in the front row with his back to the guys on their feet using the typesetting machine, printing press, and paper cutter to create the school’s newsletter, among other analog items.
Hogan, Aaron, and Jeff were the room’s alpha males, a trio of pure testosterone and nearly uncontrollable id when together, something they knew Fairwood wasn’t interested in containing if they got their work done. They would crack inside jokes, lovingly harass other kids in class who’d been their Graphics teammates for a couple years, and do high school guy shit like belch, fart, or armpit fart loudly because it tickled even Fairwood (while he rolled his eyes). The spectacle was impossible to not find entertaining.
One day, Hogan returned from the bathroom and as he walked by him, he yelled out, “CARLLLL!” Every thirty or so seconds, he yelled it again. Aaron and Jeff joined in, the room enjoyed the silly antics while Carl silently listened to his name pronounced with an excess of L’s, and the bell rang.
It continued the next day as Fairwood himself found it amusing due to the harmlessness, although following a week of repetition, he told the boys to shut up. They did. They then began pronouncing Carl’s full name in a deep, gravely, mock threatening tone like the voiceover for a horror movie trailer: “CARLLLL USHERRRR!” Once again, we laughed, Carl took it on the chin since it was his government name after all, and Fairwood told them to cut it out due to more attrition.
These boys accepted Fairwood’s dictate, but they refused to let him curtail their ingenuity. On a slow day at the printing press, Hogan’s imagination went to work following another return from a post-lunch bathroom break.
“WHAT’S UP, CARL USHER THE TOILET FLUSHER?!” he said to the visiting mime.
“CARLLLL USHERRRR!” Aaron yelled.
“THE TOILET FLUSHERRRR!” Jeff added.
“YOU LIKE FLUSHIN’ TOILETS, CARLLLL?”
“DO YOU FLUSH MORE THAN ONCE, CARLLLL?”
“EVER CLOG A TOILET, CARL USHERRRR THE TOILET FLUSHERRRR?”
Fairwood looked at Carl, silently absorbing the inoffensive nonsense, and laughed along with the rest of us. Could he genuinely accuse the three of them of bullying if they were asking the kid if he liked to piss and shit in a toilet before bidding adieu like everyone else did?
“I BET CARL GOES HOME AND DOES HIS HOMEWORK ON THE TOILET!” Hogan said.
“YOU EVER FLUSH YER HOMEWORK DOWN THE TOILET, CARLLLL?”
“HOW OFTEN DO YOU CLOG THE TOILET, CARLLLL USHERRRR THE TOILET FLUSHERRRR?”
“CARLLLLL!”
“USHERRRR!”
“THE TOILET FLUSHERRRR!”
It was stupid. It was nonsensical. It was the funniest thing in the world. And Carl finally reacted.
“Shut up,” he meekly said.
“WHAT’S THAT, CARLLLLLLLLLLLLLL?!” Hogan said, shocked he’d finally beaten him into submission.
“Nothing.”
“I THOUGHT YOU SAID SOMETHING, CARLLLL!”
“Alright, cut it out,” Fairwood finally told the boys. “No more saying Carl—”
“CARLLLL!”
“I mean it!” Fairwood yelled for the first time ever.
“USHERRRR!”
“THE TOILET FLUSHERRRR!”
“SHUT UP!” Fairwood yelled. “No more Carl, no more Carl Usher, no more The Toilet Flusher. Get back to work! And no talking!”
“What if I have a question about classwork?” Hogan asked.
“Fine,” Fairwood said.
“Do you know if Carl Usher the Toilet Flusher can use the printing press?” Hogan asked Aaron and Jeff as plainly as possible.
“HOGAAANNN!” Fairwood said while glaring at him for several seconds.
The classroom was silent for the rest of the day. Mocking Carl quieted down for the remainder of the week, but it didn’t die.
“How are you today, Cuh,” Hogan said before stopping himself as Fairwood stared a hole through his face. He changed his greeting. “HEYYYY, LRAC!”
“LRAC!” Aaron yelled.
“ELLLL-RAAAAC!” Jeff followed.
“What the fuck?” I said to myself, as I assume everyone else did too.
“What is LRAC?!” Fairwood finally yelled after the routine lasted a few minutes.
“CARLLLLL backwards!” Hogan said as Fairwood died laughing then told him to “CUT THE SHIT, HOGAN!”
Oddly, nobody started yelling “REHSU!”, which, in retrospect, is as shocking as anything in this recollection.
“I was talking to my friend Karl with a K,” Hogan said to Aaron and Jeff, knowing Fairwood would be pissed but not likely to send him to the vice principal’s office.
“Oh, Karl Rusher?” Aaron asked.
“Or was it Karl Flusher?” Jeff asked.
“IT WAS KARL WITH A K USHER THE TOILET FLUSHERRRR!” Hogan yelled.
“THAT’S IT!” Fairwood yelled. “DO NOT SAY IT AGAIN OR YER OUTTA HERE!”
“Carl,” Hogan whispered under his breath. Fairwood opened the door and screamed at him, “DO NOT TRY ME AGAIN, HOGAN!”
And he didn’t. Fairwood was a sweet, tolerant man as well as a pacifist who loathed conflict. However, Fairwood got sick, and a substitute teacher filled in to end the week. Unable to operate the heavy machinery without Fairwood in the room, Graphics work was done on the room’s new iMacs. Hogan, Aaron, and Jeff predictably sat next to one another, Hogan loudly rubbing his hands together as the computer booted up.
“Mr. Fairwood asked me to inform you that nobody is allowed to say ‘Carl,’ ‘Carl Usher,’ or ‘Carl Usher the Toilet Flusher’ or they will be kicked out of class,” the sub announced. “Please work quietly on the computers on any existing projects you have.”
Ten or so minutes elapsed until the silence was broken. In a voice exactly like the one Stephen Hawking used to robotically communicate with the world, one of the iMacs spoke to the room: “Car-Ul Ush-Er the Toi-Let Flush-Er!”
Hysteria. Madness. Teenagers doubled over like they’d never heard a better burn. Hogan played it again like the world’s most perfect joke had finally surfaced.
“Okay, okay!” the sub said while laughing. “Good one, but you can’t keep doing that.”
“But nobody said anything,” Aaron replied.
Moments later, a symphony ensued as Hogan played “Car-Ul,” Aaron played “Ush-Er,” and Jeff played “The Toi-Let Flush-Er” back-to-back-to-back.
“Guys, really, no more!” the sub sternly said.
“El-Rac,” the computer now robotically enunciated.
Picture the see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil monkey emojis anthropomorphizing and running around the room. Meanwhile, Carl silently sat at his iMac, the most stoic teenager in Enfield, Connecticut.
“If another computer talks, the person sitting at it can explain himself to the vice principal!” the sub barked.
The gag ultimately wore out its welcome when Fairwood returned, not that Hogan didn’t still speak to Carl or make Carl puns (“You ever smoke Carlboros?”), the most memorable time being when he read back the words on Carl’s tee shirt, infamously asking him, “DO YOU HAVE A STIFF UPPER LIP, CARL?!” about the AC/DC album cover Carl donned.
Before Carl stopped attending the study hall, Hogan asked him a similar question, whether it was about if Carl was on a stairway to heaven or eating a peach or on the dark side of the moon I don’t remember, but Carl had had enough. He turned his head as Hogan walked by and said, “Shut the fuck up!”
“OOOOHHHH, CARLLLL!” Hogan said.
“CARLLLL USHERRRR SPEAKS!” Aaron said.
“CARLLLL USHERRRR THE TOILET FLUSHER’S UPPER LIP IS STIFF NO MORE!” Jeff said.
And scene.
They wanted to lose. They needed to prove he was human, that he had a spine, that he could be one of them. I would love to say that Hogan apologized, or they became fast friends, but my recollection ends there. The second Carl pushed back, the jig was up. He took away their power, which he could’ve done at any time before saying those four words. Nobody ever found out why he suffered the fools for so long, but if I were to meet him again, guilty that I was complicit in laughing at him the entire time, I’d ask why he tolerated such bullshit. Was it because Carl was secretly his alias or that Super Mario was his hero or that he kept forgetting to put new batteries in his hearing aids? How could he be so unflappable?
“It freed me from the shame of having colitis.”
I didn’t have a high school crush; I had a high school flush.
CARLLLL!