Tufts University - Jumbo Yearbook (Medford, MA)

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Let ' s see ... last summer I was a cab driver for a month, I got robbed twice so I quit and went to Panama with Janis. And before that I worked for a restaurant washing dishes until I realized there were more cockroaches in that kitchen than humans, and I split for the West Coast. Before that I was a janitor, a truck packer, and — oh yes! A Nurf-Ball maker! 2500 + nurf-balls a day! A working-class hero is something to be! And tell me Norman — would you say you ' re from a middle-class background with grounded in middle-class values? I was born with my father ' s silver stethoscope in my mouth, and power-hungry brothers breathing down my neck. And what was it that led you into a life of crime? I replaced the stethoscope with a harmonica. I told my brothers to go to hell. Y ' know, I had that problem, too, when I was a kid. My father wanted me to be a used-car salesman like himself. I wanted to change my name and become a priest. We both mutually agreed on a college education. See what happened? Leo, your problem seems to stem from your ignorance of proper etiquette, your indecent sarcasm, your inane desire to be famous, your inability to get laid whenever you want, and your insatiable appetite for cheesecake. Norman Squid, with a name like yours you ' d clean up as a psy¬ chiatrist. Or even a novelist. Y ' mean if I can ' t beat ' em, join ' em? Wasn ' t the immortal Fester P. Gazotsky once a psychiatrist? Yes, before he discovered laughing gas in Vienna. Also a novelist. He wrote accounts of patients like Nietzsche, Freud, all when they were old, and Adolph Hitler even. An elaborate fantasia, I must admit, Norman. Have you added any new chapters to the Fester Bible? Yes! Norman beamed. A new one, I haven ' t finished it yet, called Take a Fantasy to Lunch! and it ' s about lunch last week in Jay ' s Deli — Enough! screamed Dorothy. Why don ' t you write a real story? Huh? Norman blinked hard. Fester P. Gazotsky ' s not real! I think I better leave ' said Leo nervously. Wait! yelled Norman, let me ask you something, Leo. Let ' s say you ' re a student with a good idea, a brilliant one, yet you couldn ' t find a course in which you could express it. What would you do? Teach my own course, said Leo, defiantly. Ahh, yes. And if you didn ' t like the Literary Magazine? Start my own. And if you couldn ' t stand paying money to go to a lousy meat- market Stonewall Gym party, to hear greasy ear-splitting Dirk and the Driven Insane destroy their musical instruments, gawking at fresh-out- of-puberty boys and girls caught in the grip of social paranoia? 26