The MEATs'
by Jay Dubya

The teachers on the high school faculty felt a great deal of anxiety and stress 
from always having to be perfect role models and knowing that at any time a 
parent or a student or a student conspiracy could fabricate some outlandish lie 
and get an instructor suspended. The men teachers had our own fraternity, which 
met (usually at bars) several times a year both in our town and out of our 
community. The MEATs was our unprofessional organization, and the acronym stood 
for "Men's Epicurean Association of Teachers." The MEATs was a convenient safety 
valve where the male faculty members could let off steam and it was a terrific 
escape mechanism from the rigors of teaching.

The MEATs had nothing to do with the local teachers' association, the New Jersey 
Educational Association or the NEA. The loosely configured "teachers' 
fraternity" was an appropriate emotional outlet because it afforded the men 
teachers a chance to have male bonding, to commiserate and also to get away from 
the mental anguish associated with educational pressure. Our beer and venison 
bashes unveiled our hidden carnivorous natures and gave us a way of basically 
thinking and behaving like primitive Neanderthal Men. Some of the guys on the 
high school faculty were accomplished hunters so boar, deer and bear meat were 
often on the dinner menu.

In 1972-‘73 I was President of the MEATs and conducted the general meetings. I 
was also the vice-president of the district's teachers' association at the time 
and the one thing I didn't like about the MEATs was the fact that the school 
administrators had helped found the organization before I had commenced with my 
teaching career in September of 1965. I had always been suspicious of school 
administrators "in the organization" fearing that their' motive for membership 
was a means of intelligence gathering about male faculty members. Some town 
board members didn't exactly savor my opposition to their directives during 
teacher contract negotiations and I really didn't need any principal or 
superintendent spouting off about how I had acted "unprofessionally" at the 
MEATs' unprofessional dinner meetings.

New male teachers in the district had to be accepted into our social rank by 
initiation. The men teachers all recognized that we needed such an ignoble 
organization to temporarily lose our identities, get plastered and behave 
unprofessionally just like the community attitudes had always perceived us as 
being and doing.

Each prospective first year teacher was given a topic for a "ten-minute formal 
induction speech" that had to be presented to the group of eighty-or-so 
educators in attendance at the first of two annual MEATs' feasts. Each new male 
teacher had a sponsor, who would lead the candidate from the restaurant's bar 
area to the secretive meeting room. The Board of Directors and Officers had 
carefully constructed and distributed speech assignments for the novices' final 
acceptance into the prestigious brotherhood. Here is a typical speech topic for 
a junior high school English teacher.

"Your subject is as follows: An intensive dissertation on the relevancy of 
subjects and predicates (as opposed to nouns and verbs) in this age of 
technological transformation and cultural upheaval."

A social studies teacher might be given the subject: "The need for non-tenure 
teachers to get directly involved in national and local social and educational 
controversial issues."

A science teacher might draw the premise: "The necessity of permissiveness in an 
unstructured high school laboratory classroom to teach students independence, 
responsibility, rebellion and anarchy."

A new high school literature teacher might have the speech topic: "The 
significance of the development of thespian and lesbian appreciation in 
education ranging from the gay nineties to the modern gay community."

Each new male teacher received a letter of invitation outlining his speech. Here 
was the official cover letter sent to all candidates. "The MEATs speech 
committee, after contemplative investigation has agreed upon the subject 
appearing at the bottom of this page as the most applicable to your ten-minute 
formal presentation to our noble organization.

"Your oratory must not exceed fifteen minutes nor should it constitute a mere 
nine-minute rhetorical utterance. All fledglings seeking membership into this 
esteemed organization should pay particular attention to your poise, dignity, 
confidence and mastery of content during your presentation along with other 
pertinent ramifications. We suggest that you practice as Demosthenes had done by 
putting pebbles in your mouth to improve your elocution and your enunciation.

"You will be addressing knowledgeable professionals having eminent and 
distinguished reputations. Our organization is comprised mostly of dedicated 
educators that have proven themselves worthy of the title of public school 
teacher. Be prepared to defend awkward intellectual positions that you might 
inadvertently propose or maintain, and above all else, don't act like an 
arrogant asshole. Your social acceptance into our most reputable association 
depends almost exclusively on your competency at defending your generalizations 
and hypotheses on your assigned topic. Be prepared to answer questions advanced 
by the Officers and by the Board of Directors after you deliver your speech. Any 
hint of frivolity on your part will not be tolerated and might result in you 
being ostracized from the faculty."

An incoming Spanish teacher was given this speech topic. "You are to present a 
provocative comparison and contrast of the structural analysis, etymology and 
evolution of frequently used Spanish and English expletives and exclamatory 
obscene nomenclature. Your fundamental focus should be on past history, current 
trends, phonetic patterns and tonal accents as opposed to traditional Spanish 
vernacular.

"Also, come to the meeting prepared to attack and critique all new innovations 
in the teaching of Spanish in the curriculum that have surfaced in the last 
twenty years. Finally, you should include in your presentation a justification 
of the need to teach Spanish to students in a community that espouses a WASPish 
Anglo-Saxon tradition and heritage."

The greenhorn teachers spent hours of honest research and mirror-practice 
perfecting their speeches. At the initiation meeting each candidate's sponsor 
(at twenty-minute intervals) escorted him from the bar into the stone-silent 
general meeting room. After the department area sponsor introduced the novice to 
the MEATs' conclave, the newcomer to the district would initiate his lecture.

All MEATs' members would sit attentively and pensively listen to the 
articulation for the first five minutes. But then the MEATs' members would begin 
talking among themselves' while the new teacher was struggling through his oral 
presentation. Soon everyone seated in the room was ignoring the standing 
speaker's sincere words.

As the stunned newcomer labored on with his oration intermittent burps and 
belches and also occasional loud farting interrupted his sentences. Despite the 
chafing distractions most of the shocked neophytes would persevere on until the 
conclusion of their discourses. Then heckling and jeering would ensue and 
several of the more muscular MEATs' members would rise from their chairs, grab 
the new candidate and threaten to pulverize the pledge, much to the elation of 
the membership.

Once the MEATs even had two local uniformed policemen enter the meeting during a 
speech presentation with a barking German shepherd baring sharp fangs and the 
cops put the candidate in handcuffs, made a pretend arrest and finally conducted 
the shocked rejected speech giver out of the meeting room.

After a speech was finally delivered the novice was shown a large hypodermic 
needle, which the President had earlier told "the candidate" would be used to 
inject a potent stimulant into his buttocks. He was also shown a large club and 
had been told that the awesome weapon would also be used against him if he did 
not fully cooperate and give a professional presentation. The pledge would then 
be blindfolded and instructed to bend over holding the seat of a restaurant 
chair. He would then be stuck in the buttocks with a pin, which the anxious 
pledge naturally suspected was the giant hypodermic needle.

Next came the highlight of the MEATs' initiation ceremony. Bob Gordon and Tim 
Carley poured red food coloring onto a feminine sanitary napkin and then placed 
the wet fabric into the blindfolded pledge's mouth. Jack DeCicco (the smallest 
MEAT member) next lifted and held the aforementioned giant club above his head. 
The blindfolded candidate was told to again bend over.

As the assembled male teachers all yelled "One, two,…" sweat beads would be 
cascading down the pledge's forehead during the extended hesitation. On the 
count of "three," Jack then slammed the huge shillelagh against the leather seat 
of another chair other than the one the blindfolded candidate had been gripping.

The most laughter was derived when the newcomer was instructed to "take the 
blindfold off and also remove the handkerchief out of your mouth." The staggered 
first-year teacher would incredulously gape at the red-stained feminine napkin 
sitting in the palm of his hand. The newly initiated teacher would then join his 
colleagues in harassing the next incoming prospect, who would soon be escorted 
into the room by his department sponsor.

As President of the MEATs I had the distinct honor and the unenviable task of 
controlling the avid half-inebriated beer guzzlers while attempting to preside 
over the meetings. My concluding remarks to the membership had been designed to 
make absolutely no sense at all. It was well' received and went like this:

My fellow processionals:

I would like to extonate to you', my trulifinated colleagues the salutrified 
experience it has been for me to be enulbed as el presidente of this 
trankanimous organization. This sobravenous group behoones me to be very 
podulent and pedistic about our civic troduncidies.

While you hornts and you cubinators have been blitumated in menstruation, I have 
been sedunting about the future mentronals of tomorrow, which will certainly 
allutinate our present circumcisions.

With such a relantrified faculty, ajending in consulfinating challenges, I am 
confident that the hermotudes of our civilization will certainly be donafied.

The ventrunal nature between teacher and student couldn't be more robundant and 
reperdidified. It can almost be vernificated that without being fully kakrinated 
into our produngeous society the citizens of tomorrow might be doomed to being 
ad-hutinrotted. I thank the MEATs for your gruntudinous attention and I hope I 
have merited your metronical conjuence.

I'll never forget the time I organized a Saturday noontime spring MEATs' fishing 
expedition to a salt-river-inlet that was fed by the Atlantic Ocean. The fellows 
showed up en masse, many of them not knowing a fishing rod from a lightning rod. 
After the six dozen of us consumed gallons of homemade Dago' wine and cases of 
Budweiser along with other potent intoxicants, the male teachers were more 
prepared to lampoon than to harpoon.

Several of our aberrant fishing lines became entangled with those of three more 
skilled and serious fishermen that frequented the isolated beach every day. Then 
one of the more extroverted MEATs' members demonstrated his casting prowess and 
suddenly his line intersected with those of the three serious regular anglers 
right after they had spent fifteen minutes unscrambling their lines from the 
first major entanglement. After they finished unwinding and unraveling the 
incredible knots the three disgruntled fishermen evacuated the sandy beach and 
left the MEATs stranded there to contend with each other's high jinks. The MEATs 
continued our merriment, drank some more, and a few of us even danced around on 
the hot sand to accordion music provided by one of our newest inductees, which 
scared every fish within a five-mile radius far out to sea.

The MEATs provided the men teachers the opportunity to abandon the tensions 
associated with the demanding role of being school teachers and gave us a 
license to act imperfectly and unprofessionally in secluded places far from our 
base of employment. It was a way for us to have some connection with the manner 
in which "regular civilian people" enjoyed themselves.

I recall a minor vendetta brewing between two members of the MEATs' fraternal 
order. Many of the fellows took sides in the friendly quarrel, which soon 
escalated into intense one-upmanship between the two competing camps.

Cars in the school parking lots were found stuffed with crinkled-up papers, 
which at first some instructors suspected had been done by naughty students. Bob 
Gordon was getting long-distance phone calls to buy swampland Florida real 
estate and defunct alligator farms. Tim Carley received inquiries at his home 
phone over falsified newspaper want ads published in his name advertising to 
sell "pedigree dogs', thoroughbred horses and collectible skunks."

The escapade expanded and more faculty members were soon affected by the 
imaginative pranks. I was summoned by a secretary over the intercom to the main 
office to answer a phone call before my lunch period. A man from Colorado wanted 
to sell me a bulldozer and a steam shovel and became rather angry when I 
informed the long-distance caller that we were being "innocent victims in a mass 
practical joke." Joe Sacci (a music teacher) woke up one morning and found over 
a hundred dead blackbirds and sparrows strewn all over his front lawn.

But the issuance of junk mail was perhaps the biggest craze. Men teachers were 
scanning every available magazine and newspaper and clipping out coupons 
guaranteeing free information on any product "with no obligation." Then we would 
print another staff' member's name and address in the information blanks instead 
of our own.

Some days I would go to my teacher mailbox and discover forty pieces of junk 
mail and then go home and find forty more waiting for me in my driveway mailbox. 
And the problem was growing to monster-proportions because all our names were 
being placed on other mailing lists all the time.

Teachers were getting mail addressed to crazy names like Sir Loin' Kyle and 
Missed Her Carley. And the junk mail was coming from unknown hamburger 
franchises, from taxidermy schools, from locksmith institutes of higher learning 
and from butchering academies. Jack DeCicco (a diminutive man) received at least 
five "Big and Tall Men's Catalogs" every week. Ron LeFey drove home from school 
one fine afternoon and found that a "test-drive camper" had been left in his 
driveway for a "free week's trial demonstration." And three years after the 
height of the junk mail deluge I was still receiving vestiges of the wild male 
faculty members' royal caper.

John Rizzo was a personable driver education teacher. John and I were appointed 
by the MEATs' executive committee to go to a local slaughterhouse and pick up a 
hog for the next annual end-of-year pig roast. John and I were standing in the 
meat house's receiving area and talking about what kind of hog we would be 
getting when a trap door opened behind Rizzo and a tremendous pork belly (slit 
down the middle) came rolling upside down toward us on a chain rotary.

The fresh out-of-the-freezer recently severed pig was speeding directly toward 
Rizzo. John turned around, saw the suspended animal heading his way and let out 
a scream that scared the heck out of me. The gigantic pig had blood oozing out 
of its nostrils and had just been carved open by skilled meat butchers.

At the end-of-year pig roast Zeke Shullmon, a junior high science teacher 
entertained the assembled MEATs. Zeke showed us images from a slide projector of 
past MEATs' banquets with certain members vomiting in toilet bowls or having 
simulated sex with a rubberized woman dummy used in health classes to 
demonstrate artificial respiration. That particular meeting was perhaps the most 
raucous one ever for our illustrious organization.

The high school vice-principal tied one on good that afternoon. First he mixed 
the salad by putting all of the chopped-up lettuce, radishes, pickles, green 
peppers and onions into a new clean waist-high trashcan. Then he liberally 
poured a gallon of oil and a gallon of vinegar into the mix, put the trashcan 
lid down onto the container, lifted the metal can upside-down over his head and 
blended all of the delicious salad ingredients together. Actually that was the 
best salad I had ever tasted.

Next the feeling-no-pain vice-principal put the decapitated pig's head on his 
own crown and stuck bones in his nose and mouth, looking very much like a 
cannibal out of Robinson Crusoe. The school administrator and I soon got into a 
heated argument over "teachers' rights" and "educational philosophy" and the 
school executive stood up and wildly took a swing at me. I ducked down and his 
fist penetrated a wall of the club we had rented for the MEATs' party. The 
fellows then moved a piano over from an adjacent wall to cover up the hole that 
had recently been formed.

The following Monday morning the high school principal called me into his 
office. I thought I was going to be interrogated about the hole in the clubhouse 
wall. Instead the principal was upset that I was violating the school's teacher 
dress code by wearing a ‘70s leisure suit with an open collar and no tie.

"I want to see you wearing a tie to school," the straight-laced principal (who 
was not at the most recent MEATs' feast) insisted.

"Leisure suits are now in style," I argued, "and ties aren't worn with them. 
Check any men's fashion catalog to see what I mean."

"I still want you to wear a tie at all times," the principal rankled. "I have 
nothing against leisure suits, but if you want to wear one then you must wear a 
tie too!"

"Ties strangulate blood circulation to the brain," I replied. "Do you want me to 
suffer a massive stroke?"

"Wear ties!" he maintained. "If you don't you'll be regarded and treated as 
being insubordinate!"

"Ties are symbols of subordination!" I fired back. "And besides, the women 
teachers don't have to wear ties when they wear suits! It's gender 
discrimination against male teachers!" I shouted. "Yes, that's what you're 
advocating with this stupid tie thing! You're playing a silly power game, that's 
all you're doing!"

"Wear ties!" the principal yelled as his face turned red. "Wear ties I said!" He 
repeated in a maniacal tone of voice.

"I can only wear one tie at a time," I laughed in response to his crazy and 
animated anger.

"Why are you so stubborn!" he challenged. "Why can't you just wear a tie as a 
favor to me instead of being so obstinate!"

"Do you see this gold necklace!" I exclaimed to the uptight principal while 
pointing to an expensive piece of jewelry hanging down from my neck. "This 
golden necklace cost as much as fifty ties, so the next time you see me wearing 
a leisure suit with this golden necklace around my throat just pretend you're 
looking at me wearing fifty ties!"

"Very well then, you can leave now!" the principal ordered. "I only wish that 
you were more cooperative!"

"You mean more subordinate!" I answered as I rose from my chair and then left 
his comfortable beautifully decorated office.

The MEATs to the male teachers was like a twice a year New Year's Eve party 
where everyone (except the high school principal) could deviate from stiff rigid 
"professional behavior," discard our inflexible public' image and then explore 
the suppressed Mr. Hydes that dwelled deep inside of us. Over the years our 
membership has gotten older and has mellowed. The members from the early 1970s 
are mostly now married, have wives and families or are retired or dead. The ‘70s 
MEATs' camaraderie has lost much of its former momentum, zaniness and spunk, and 
by 2003 it is but a faint memory of a happy bygone era.

John Magliari was a new member into the MEATs. But I remember John (who was 
actually shorter than Jack DeCicco) from the first day of school in September of 
‘69. I was in the main office seeing if any teacher had been absent when 
Magliari entered to put a check next to his name on the teacher attendance 
sheet.

"Are you an administrator?" John asked seeing that I was hanging around in the 
main office.

Before I had a chance to answer or even introduce myself as a permanent sub', 
the principal came out of his office and said, "Mr. Magliari, I'd like to talk 
with you a minute!"

That day I had little to do and was becoming bored. No teachers were absent so 
Bill Catello and I walked around the building and gave teachers on cafeteria or 
on study hall duty fifteen minute breaks to freshen up or to use the facilities. 
When I stepped into an A-Wing classroom, I was about to introduce myself to John 
Magliari but he beat me to the punch.

"Oh, you administration!" he exclaimed in his broken Argentine Spanish accent. 
"Just sit in back of room and observe my lesson if you'd like!"

I stepped to the back of the room, watched John's entire lesson and then told 
him he had done a "satisfactory and almost excellent job." He thanked me for my 
compliment and still thinking that I was an administrator, John invited me to 
come in anytime I needed to write up an official lesson observation report.

A month later Bob Gordon told John Magliari that he had heard that the principal 
was going to observe the jittery teacher the next period, which was only five 
minutes away. "You'd better use the bathroom now. I know I would if I were you!" 
Bob told the recently hired English-As-A-Second-Language teacher.

"That's a very good idea!" the new ESL teacher acknowledged.

After John Magliari entered the Men's Room (which was really part of the faculty 
lounge), Bob Gordon, Tim Carley and I slid the Coke machine from a side area to 
the lavatory door, which needed to open outwards for someone to exit.

After John had finished doing his business he attempted to open the bathroom 
door but couldn't because of the huge heavy obstacle in the way. He began 
pounding on the door and screaming and begging, "I need to keep my job! Let me 
out of here! I have to be observed by the principal!" John was screaming.

I had the next period off so I walked down to the A-Wing to get John's next 
class settled. Two minutes later Bob and Tim moved the heavy Coke machine back 
to where it belonged. Magliari rushed out of the Men's Room and sprinted like a 
wild man down the C-Wing to the A-Wing. He entered the room and was very 
relieved to see no principal seated in the rear. Then he thanked me for 
"watching my class!" John did not realize that I had been one of the 
conspirators and perpetrators who had blocked the Men's Room door with the bulky 
soda machine.

The following fall I organized a little MEATs' hunting trip to a small game 
preserve not far from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Bob Gordon was a skilled 
taxidermist' who promised to stuff any animal that one of us might bag. John 
Magliari came along on the hunting expedition, and my brother-in-law was a guest 
member of the hunting excursion.

I had shot a white ram on the expedition, which Bob Gordon later mounted onto a 
large plaque that now hangs from a wall in my den. My brother-in-law was on the 
other side of a hill. He fired several shots from his rifle, and before John 
Magliari or I knew what was happening a wild boar with sharp tusks came snorting 
over the crest heading right towards Magliari and me.

John and I dropped our rifles, dashed to the nearest tree and then started 
scaling the oak as fast as we could. The ferocious wounded beast slammed its 
head into the base of the oak, nearly knocking John and me off our limbs. When 
the MEATs' hunting trip had ended I had shot the ram, my brother-in-law had 
killed the boar, Bob Gordon had gotten a deer head trophy and John Magliari had 
killed three blackbirds while shooting at a wild turkey.

I had always liked John Magliari. He came over to my home along with math' 
teachers Jim Smythe and John Senna and we played cards in my carpeted basement 
and enjoyed more than a few beers together. John would even accompany me down to 
Ocean City, Maryland on April weekends and help me set up the arcade prizes at 
410 South Boardwalk.

Being an ESL teacher, John Magliari always had small classes with around ten or 
less students in each one. Then the administration assigned the shy young man 
cafeteria duty and a difficult study hall loaded with eighth grade hellions that 
John had trouble disciplining. "I can't control those crazy kids!" John openly 
cried one evening at my house. "In Argentina the students always respected the 
teachers. Here the kids try crucifying me every day!"

John went to the administration and asked for small classes to teach rather than 
be abused in the cafeteria or having rolled-up paper balls hitting him in the 
back of the head when he was facing the opposite direction in the hard-to-handle 
eighth grade study hall. John Magliari was never re-assigned and subsequently 
went into a deep state of depression. "Learn how to keep the lid on!" he was 
told. "You're a teacher and you have to be able to control students in all 
situations!" was his advice received from the administration.

John's unfortunate fate was chronicled in the local newspaper with a headline: 
"Local Teacher Shot to Death." The article described John and his exemplary 
teaching record. Administrators stated that his work was most satisfactory. The 
newspaper never reported the truth that John Magliari had shot and killed 
himself because he was despondent about not knowing how to cope with or how to 
control the malicious non-ESL students he had encountered both in the cafeteria 
and in the eighth grade study hall.

More articles by Jay Dubya
http://feeds.rapidfeeds.com/4820/