MEAN MCLEAN By David A. Chodack   I don't know. I guess some people just need each other, even if it doesn't look that way. I mean, even if it seems like they can't stand each other, sometimes there must be some strange kind of bond there. It's like opposites attracting; like boys suddenly deciding they like girls, and can't live without them,  after all those years of hating them.   Anyway, that's the way it seemed to turn out with Dean "Mean Gene" Mclean and "Rotten" Eddie Kimbrough. We all would have sworn that they couldn't stand each other, that each one hated the sight of the other one. We thought either one, would have been only too happy to see the other one die, right there on the spot, or at least disappear and never come back.   But in the end, I guess it just wasn't that way at all.   Really, it wasn't just Eddie Kimbrough who hated "Mean Gene" Mclean, either. We all did. He was the meanest teacher in the whole school. Just ask anyone, even the other teachers, and they would tell you that.   That's how he got his name. "Mean Gene" Mclean, so nasty and mean, they made him Dean."  And that's exactly what they did. He still taught two classes of History, but he spent the rest of his day suspending kids and yelling at them and even at their parents, when they got called to school.   None of the other teachers really wanted the job, but Mean Mclean did. He really got into it, too. His face would puff out and turn red and his eyes would bulge and his voice would go up, a little bit at a time, until you could hear him throughout the school. His whole body would shake sometimes and spit would come spraying out of his mouth when he got excited and his fists would clench.   One time - and I know this is true, because I was there - he caught Billy Lesky and Eduardo Mendoza fooling around in his History class.  Billy was laughing while Mean Mclean was talking, but only because Eduardo was making farting noises.   "The two class geniuses" Mean Mclean said in a soft voice as he pointed both of them out. Eduardo dropped his head and giggled, while Billy, who must have been all laughed out, just kind of grinned sheepishly. "They both know their History so well, they don't have to pay attention. He's making farting noises" Mean Mclean's voice began to rise a bit, as he pointed at Eduardo again,  "and you," mean Mclean's voice rose some more as he shifted his attention to Billy,  "think that's so brilliantly funny, that you disrupt my class, MY class" Mean Mclean was really warming up now, his face almost the color of a red candy apple, as he walked to the window and opened it. "If I were you two and I was in the kind of trouble you two are in right now, do you know what I would do?" Mean Mclean was in a full rage now, "I would jump right out this window, right here from the fourth floor and save my parents the embarrassment , the humiliation of having to come to school to discuss this matter!"   And of course, the kid who got yelled at the most, and got suspended the most, and whose parents got yelled at the most,  was "Rotten Eddie" Kimbrough. "Rotten Eddie" wasn't really his name, not the name his parents gave him, anyway .They just called him Edward.  "Rotten" was  something all the other parents in town had added, when they warned their own children to "stay away from that rotten Eddie Kimbrough, who is always getting in trouble.", which of course, made him just about the coolest, most popular kid in school.   Eddie wasn't really a rotten kid anyway. He was just spirited.  He was the one who was always talking and making jokes in class and stuffing the water fountains with toilet paper so they would send a stream of water several feet high and  overflow. His parents had to come to school so often, that everyone figured they were on a first name basis with Mclean and just called him Mean Gene, instead of Dean Mclean.   But it wasn't even Eddie Kimbrough and his parents that Mean Mclean was yelling at when it happened. Eddie was sitting outside Mean Mclean's office waiting his turn, but it was Tommy Finch and his parents who were getting it full blast.   Probably, Eddie was just hoping that Mean Mclean would get it all out on Tommy and his parents and have little or no anger left for him. All anybody knows for sure is that one minute, Mean Mclean was screaming at Tommy and his parents and then all of a sudden, the next minute, he collapsed.   Just like that, he fell on the floor and started gasping and choking and struggling for breath. They say his face was turning purple and his eyes were rolling in his head, but I don't think anybody really knows if that's true, either, except maybe Tommy and his parents. And they were too scared to notice..   The other thing everybody knows for sure, is that when Rotten Eddie Kimbrough heard all the commotion, he went running into Mclean's office. He didn't stand there and laugh, the way you would have expected him to do. Instead, he dropped right to his knees, right there in Mean Mclean's office,  in front  of Tommy and his parents and he began trying to revive old Dean "Mean Gene" Mclean.   There he was, the worst kid in school,  and he was pounding on Mean Mclean's chest and even breathing right into his mouth, trying to get him to revive. And when that didn't work, Eddie Kimbrough was the first one on the phone, while everyone else just stood there, frozen in shock.   Eddie  was the one who called 911 and got  the ambulance down there. He was the one who made sure they got  Mean Mclean to the hospital and he even stayed there until they knew Mean Mclean would be all right.   At first, they thought Mean Mclean wasn't going to make it, but in the end, he was too mean to die and so he  pulled through. He was out of school for a few weeks and he was a little more quiet and relaxed when he first got back, like he was afraid to really haul off and yell at anyone, but we all knew it couldn't last forever and sure enough, a bunch of us were walking by his office one day and we heard this roar!   It was old Mean Mclean. He was back in top form and somebody was getting yelled at good.   We all stood there. We wanted to run, to get away from that awful, familiar sound, but we couldn't move. We had to see who the first victim was. We had to see whether the kid and Mean Mclean would both come out alive, so we waited. And we waited. And in the end, we all should have known better, but you could have knocked us all over, when "Rotten" Eddie Kimbrough walked out, just like old times.   Eddie looked over at us and grinned and  then he looked back at Mean Mclean and he winked at him.   Eddie winked his eye like it was all a big game the two of them were playing together. And we're all waiting for Mean Mclean to explode even worse this time and I wouldn't have believed it, if I wasn't there to see it with my own two eyes, but  I swear Dean "Mean Gene" Mclean, the terror of Madison Junior High School, gave "Rotten Eddie" Kimbrough  a wink right  back, before he turned  around and went back into his office and closed the door behind him. BACK TO THE FICTION PAGE HOME PAGE