Incident at Locker #147

How an Obsession with Decorating Went Terribly Wrong

By the early 70s, black & white ‘Op-Art’ (Optical Illusion Art) began appearing in many of the home decorating magazines I read in the back of the library. Patterns of black and white wavy stripes, Escher-esque optical illusions, and bold circles-and-squares had already made their way from the hippie culture of the 60s’ to Goldie Hawn’s Laugh-In outfits. Now, this “Mod” art form was filtering down through the culture lines into Mainstream America. I loved the coolness of the graphic patterns and the hip, far-away urban culture they represented. How bold! How anti-establishment! How avant-guard!

I had some time to kill one late Friday afternoon in June waiting for the school bus to leave after the final Future Farmers of America club meeting. So I snuck into the empty library and cracked open the latest issue of Architectural Digest. They were featuring a New York City “Mod” loft apartment, and its walls were covered with an intriguing pattern of tri-colored squares — a classic optical illusion.

I’d been thinking about painting my room at home and decided I would use this pattern as a reference for my project! I stuffed the magazine into my book bag and caught the last bus home.

I ran up the stairs to the small bedroom I shared with my brother. It was a low, dark room, with just enough space for two old iron beds. The floors were made of painted wooden planks — the kind with sharp splinters that would drive themselves into bare feet. The ceiling sloped down at the edges, following the lines of the roof. Two small windows with rotting wooden frames looked out over a front yard. Between those two windows was a large empty wall — a bare canvas just crying out for some decorative pizzaz!

I took out the magazine and carefully measured out a pattern of squares that changed position, depending on how you looked at them. Next, it was time to gather up my supplies. It would take three colors to create the illusion. I found a couple of quarts of black and white enamel paint in the basement, leftovers from one of my mother’s many painting experiments. Later that same weekend, my mother bought me a quart of red enamel paint and a small ‘artist’ brush — both on sale at the Western Five and Dime store (an old-fashion Dollar Store) in Honeoye Falls. With all my supplies secured, I could now start my masterpiece!

This project was my first encounter with oil-based pigments. The fumes they gave off were potent and after a few minutes of precision painting, I became so overwhelmed by them that I passed out for a few seconds under my new creation — until the fumes cleared enough for me to continue.

I suppose it should have occurred to me to open a window or turn on a fan or something, but I was actually kind of enjoying the curious mental high from inhaling the fumes. The smell reminded me of fresh mimeograph ink I used to eagerly inhale as a designated distributor of elementary school handouts.

Anyway, after weeks of painstaking work, and multiple fume-induced pass-outs, my creation was ready to show to the world. So I invited some Ionia kids up to have a look.

“What is it?” one of them said scrunching up her face. I tried to explain the illusion…how you could make the squares appear to be coming at you or receding away from you by squinting hard for a few seconds. But she got bored after a few tries and left. Another playmate stared hard at the mesmerizing tableau, trying to get the illusion to ‘pop’ until he suddenly announced, “Oh, I’m getting dizzy,” and promptly threw up on my bed. Ok, so maybe not everyone saw the world — or the illusion — the same way I did.

After this initial artistic adventure, I became even more Op-Art obsessed. Just before the start of school in the Fall, my mother snagged another ride to the Western Five-and-Dime and asked me if I wanted to come along. Since we didn’t have a car and were rarely able to go anywhere, I eagerly said “Yes!”. Once inside, she instantly wandered off and lost track of me–an annoying habit of hers. Experience taught me that I would eventually find her so I began my own Five-and-Dime journey through rows and rows of dusty bins and shelves.

I suddenly came upon a jaunty display of Con-Tac! Paper. The Con-Tac! Paper Company manufactured both plain paper (for lining your kitchen shelves) and “decorated” papers (for other artistic endeavors). Among the faux wood-grains, drab olive greens, and mustard yellows of the 70s’, was a single roll of a stunning black-and-white ‘Op-Art’ pattern.

Because it was the only such roll in the display stand, the store had slashed the price to $.75. I quickly counted my pocket change and realized I had just enough to buy it. I met up with my wandering mother at the checkout counter. She was purchasing some new tubes for the TV set. I threw the roll up on the counter. She just stared at this curious anomaly — and then back at me. I swear I saw her roll her eyes as she looked back up to the cashier. After the creation of the “Wall of Illusions” in my bedroom, she was probably wondering what “artistic” plans I had for this purchase.

In September, on the first day of High School, we were assembled into the Auditorium and the Administration distributed 3x5 cards to each new High-School student, showing a locker number and the 3-digit combination. When the assembly was finished, we excitedly ran upstairs to find our new lockers. (In this WPA-era school, elementary kids occupied the ground floor and High School students took the second floor.) There were rows and rows of skinny, industrial-brown lockers arranged all the way down both sides of a long hallway and it took me a while to find #147. But by the end of that first day, I had misplaced the 3x5 card and had forgotten both the locker number and the combination and had to make a humiliating trip to the Principal’s Office to get help.

As the weeks went by, the rules of High School Education became more and more apparent to me. Downstairs, in Elementary School, I was seen as a curious child, eager to learn and ask questions, and open to possibilities. But Upstairs, I was continuously asking too many questions in my classes — continuously challenging the way things had always been, the status quo. My teachers didn’t know what to make of me. From their point of view, public education existed to graduate standardized workers who would be able to function in any kind of industrial or corporate structure. Workers who would never question the decisions of their higher-ups. Workers who would never ever try to do anything out of the ordinary. Workers who were Dependable. Dutiful. Drab. Dull.

Like all those brown lockers.

In my own quiet way, I began to rebel against all this uniformity. The creative nature of my character was being stifled on a daily basis as they tried to make me fit in! How could I escape what they were trying to do to me?

And then, like a bolt of lightning, an idea came to me: I still had that roll of Con-Tac! Paper…and I would COVER MY ENTIRE LOCKER WITH OP-ART! My locker would become a singular piece of art amidst a sea of brown mediocrity. I would be recognized for my artistic creativity and lauded for my genius idea. The next day, I brought the roll to school and stashed it in my locker along with a pair of sharp scissors. Since I already knew that “timing is everything”, I had to wait for just the right moment to enact my brilliant plan.

For the greatest effect, I would, of course, have to do this project clandestinely, perhaps after school when most everyone had left for the day, or during a play rehearsal some evening during the break. One night that Fall, in the middle of a particularly boring rehearsal of “Lil Abner”, I snuck upstairs to my locker. I carefully made cuts in the Con-Tac! Paper to perfectly cover the ventilation slots at the top and bottom of the door. I even cut out a perfect circle to go around the built-in combination lock. After all this prep work, I s-l-o-w-l-y pulled off the protective sheet, exposing the sticky side of the paper, and then placed it carefully on my locker. Once I finished tucking in all the edges and pushing out all those nasty bubbles, I stood back to marvel at my creation.

Like a zebra in a heard of horses, my locker fairly shimmered under the fluorescent lights of the hallway. Yes, this was definitely a noticeable improvement over the conformity I had been assigned to and I couldn’t wait to see the reactions of my schoolmates the following day.

In the rush of the early morning crowd before homeroom, I marched confidently up to my locker, which was already surrounded by a crowd of astonished onlookers. They uttered hushed “ooohs and aaahs (along with a few “What IS it(s)?” as I confidently turned the combination lock, opened my locker, and began gathering up my books for the first period.

Suddenly, I felt like I was being pulled backward into an undercurrent or a riptide until I realized it was actually Mr. Blodgett’s hand on the back of my collar.

“Just what do you think you’re doing?” he commanded, his face growing ever more purple as he pulled me farther away. My astonished onlookers scattered like frantic wildebeests, not wanting to incur even more wrath from the fearsome Mr. Blodgett.

Needless to say, I really didn’t think of the reaction the school administrators might have upon the discovery of this wonder. I had already built a reputation as an excellent student, and because of this Mr. Blodgett couldn’t quite figure out what to do with me. I had already achieved model student status (no need for a hall pass here!) which meant I really couldn’t be marched down to the Principal’s office for a beating with the strap. Nor could Mr. Blodgett just let me go as he had already made a big show of grabbing me, probably for violating some obscure anti-decorating law I knew nothing about.

Instead, he shoved me through the nearby door of the Guidance Counselor’s office into a small adjoining waiting room. His face still purple, he told me to “Stay put!”, and slammed the door so hard I could hear the glass window rattle in the frame.

Nothing happened for at least an hour. I considered leaving the room, but then I began to hear other adults loudly arguing my fate in the next office. “Is he mentally disturbed?”; “If we just let it go, would this encourage the entire school to go on an unauthorized locker decorating binge?”; “Maybe he just needs a good whipping?”

Finally, I was asked to come into the office and was told that I would need to see the School Psychologist the next day.

I immediately began to argue my case in a completely impromptu exhibition of flawless Socratic logic, stating that although I was, in fact, guilty of decorating my locker, I knew of no existing rule that said we could not? They returned my “ignorance” premise, citing an obscure“defacement” argument; Decorating your locker was equal to defacing school property which simply could not be allowed. I shot back that I had not technically “defaced” anything, since one of the best things about Con-Tac! Paper is that it wasn’t permanent, and could easily be removed at anytime-returning the locker to its original drab brown.

There was silence among the assembled adults who stared at me and then at each other. I was shuttled back into the little waiting room, but this time heard only soft mutterings from the next room.

Upon my 2nd release from the little room, they pronounced their FINAL decision: The Con-Tac! Paper could stay up until the end of the school year at which point I would have to remove it and pay for any permanent damage–if any. I was also released from having to see the School Psychologist as I had made entirely logical arguments to them. Finally, no other locker decorating would be allowed by any other student — ever.

This last decision had the immediate effect of permanently protecting my notoriety as “The Boy Who Dared to Decorate”. No one else in the whole school would ever be allowed to do it again! For weeks afterward, in breaks between classes, I lingered near my creation while schoolmates, jocks, teachers, and even friendly Tiny the Janitor stopped by to congratulate me — not only on my superior decorating skills but also on my accomplishments with the Administration.

Fame, however, is a fickle mistress. While feeling victorious about my accomplishments, I also began to notice that people were writing little “notes” in-between the white and black squares. Little notes implying that maybe I was “crazy” or that maybe I was a Big Fag. At first, I was impervious to the slander and bullying, but little by little, more humiliating notes appeared…permanently etched with blue ballpoint ink. For everyone to see.

While the Con-Tac! Paper was temporary, the stinging notes were more permanent. After a couple of weeks, I decided that my fame had lasted long enough. It was probably time to pull off the sticky paper a little earlier than I had originally negotiated with Mr. Blodgett and the Administration. The Incident at Locker #147 had come to a close.

And, like any great artist, I consoled myself in the knowledge that it’s always best for one to be remembered in one’s prime — for the burst of creativity that appears and then just as quickly, disappears.

Like a shooting star.