Kalico 2: Hypnotized & Naked in Hope Springs

Yolanda: Typing for His Honor

Yolanda: Thursday morning

I have a few minutes to knock out a journal entry before volleyball practice, to satisfy my Academic Committee, or whoever else is reading this. One way to find out who reads it is to write what I truly feel and see what repercussions percussitate.

Uh, spell-check tells me there's no such word as percussitate. In that case, it's a new word that I'm making up right now that means "to go boom" when a percussion becomes a repercussion. You can look it up in about 20 years in the Oxford English Dictionary and know that you first came across the term here.

His Honor treats me like I'm his court clerk.

Not officially, of course, because I don't get paid for it and anything real official from the Justice of the Peace court, a county employee does the work. But most of the official paperwork can be handled by His Honor simply filling in the blanks with his own handwriting on the various forms provided which are supposed to cover most contingencies.

But still, His Honor makes me do a lot of his typing, including his notes from whatever committees he might be working on in the community. Naturally, to keep his reputation as an upstanding member of the Hope Springs community, His Honor serves on a lot of committees. Some Texas law, I guess, keeps His Honor from holding more than one elective office at a time, such as City Council, School Board or County Commission. However, civic organizations are fair game for him.

This brings us to the Citizens' Committee for Good Government, or CCGG, the biggest civic organization in Hope Springs, Texas, USA. Also known as the Nifty Fifty. That nickname comes from two sources: A. Usually about 50 people or more show up for meetings, and B. their annual dues are $50 per person to give them a treasury to work with. They consider this amount low enough be affordable, but high enough to encourage people to join only if they are serious. It keeps out the riff-raff, so to speak. As if Hope Springs has riff-raff. Maybe the fee is designed to make any undesirables self-identify.

So, back to the CCGG. This outfit meets at the back dining room at the Hope Springs Cafe on Main Street right here in Downtown Hope Springs. That cafe is right next to the Bijou Theater, and which as of this week, makes it convenient to anyone who wants to make a night of it with dinner and a movie. I made the announcement sign myself.

The CCGG has been doing a lot of planning lately, and thus His Honor has found a lot of typing for me to do at home, especially on those nights when I don't have a date to go to the movies, or perhaps an evening meal at the best restaurant in Hope Springs. So, that makes me available for His Honor's typing chores about every night of the week, especially in the summer.

So, I might as well be His Honor's court clerk. The stuff I've been typing this summer is starting to disturb me. I mean, like it's not as if I don't read this stuff I'm typing, so I get a picture of what's happening. And what's happening is the Big Nifty Fifty have decided that we innocent students need a sex education class in a major way, and real soon.

Ordinarily, I would think this would be what I guess is the normal stuff we got in the seventh grade: They take the girls into one room, stick up a diagram of female insides and say, "Girls, your hips are about to get wider, your breasts heavier, and your period is going to start soon. This is nothing to panic about, but when your emotions get too much for you, we've got a school nurse or somebody to help you take care of it. And, for God's sake, don't talk to the boys about this."

Nobody ever said what they told the boys. I suppose it's like, "Guys, here is a picture of a dick. Here is another picture of an erect dick. If you get an erect dick while you are asleep, because that sort of thing happens, if you never noticed it before. So if you get one of those, you'll probably have a wet dream. That will be nice, but you'll have to clean up the mess first thing in the morning. And for God's sake, don't talk to the girls about this."

Apparently, there's a lot more to sex than that, because this time the whole town has entered into what must be classified as an adult conspiracy around a Ninth Grade Project. Even stuff that you would not suspect might be related to sex education, such as our new academic uniforms, is part of the logistics of this Nifty Fifty plot.

I'm too embarrassed to put all the details here in a journal, but I'm not sworn to secrecy and I have figured out a few of their plans. So, I plan to talk this over with someone. Probably Wallflower or Kalico because their names came up in the notes for recent meetings. Maybe they have noticed something. My name and Amy's name came up, too. Not much said about us, except they want to pay special attention to us before school starts.

Gotta stop writing now, volleyball practice awaits.