My "Get Smart Quick" scheme

When I was in seventh grade, I frequently slept over then-best-friend Kelly's house, where I would be exposed to such influences as the dance routine she made up for The Proclaimer's "500 Miles" and the exact combination of buttons used to cause Sonja's "kiss of death" to incinerate her enemies. Kelly loved the WWF -- the fake-wrestling one, not the tree-hugger one (whose magazine I received monthly) -- and R.L. Stine, which was lucky for me, because it meant I never had to buy an R.L. Stine book myself.

But extracurriculars aside, Kelly and I were in the same class at our middle school: seventh grade honors. Our class, like the eighth grade honors class, met in the basement of our middle school, where we were more or less isolated from the rest of the student body. Our "cluster" -- the group of classes that rotated through the same teachers through the day -- included seventh and eighth grade honors and seventh and eighth grade stay-backs. Our cluster was the only one with a separate school entrance, around the side and to the back of the building where we could get direct access to the basement level. The car bay was sheltered in the L of the building and curled around like a snail shell, letting parents slowly let their children -- us -- out one by one before curving back out to the parking lots in front.

I got the distinct impression that school officials were segregating us, keeping us from contamination -- but whether it was the fear of us being contaminated, or contaminating others, was anybody's guess.

Kelly and I, being "gifted and talented," had that classic honors-student combination of perfectionism, ingenuity and laziness. That being the case, the Friday night before a big Monday science test, we found ourselves in her bedroom -- The Undertaker staring menacingly at us from postered walls -- thinking up new ways to study without effort.

We had been talking about ESP in language arts class, for reasons I cannot begin to recall, and Kelly and I had set our minds (literally) to learning telekenesis. For about a week, we met on a daily basis in my basement and focused our "mental energies" on moving a very small piece of paper. It probably never worked, though I can't say for certain: The basement was drafty.

My mind must have been wandering over these facts as I sought an answer to the perennial question of how to get an A with the least possible effort, because I had a sudden epiphany.

"Subliminal studying," I said to Kelly, breathless.

"What?" Kelly asked, distracted by a Star Trek rerun.

"We can study for our test subliminally," I said.

"What do you mean?" This time I had her attention.

"We can make a tape with all the information from the chapter on it, and then listen to it while we sleep," I said. Kelly seemed impressed. The Undertaker seemed unmoved.

So we got to work. Kelly had a karaoke/recording stereo that had the necessary microphone. We took turns reading the chapter. We would share the tape: One of us could listen to it Saturday night, one Sunday, and by Monday morning, we would both have a perfect working knowledge of botany.

My only memory from this experience is of sitting in Kelly's darkened room, reading softly into the microphone as I tried not to wake her, long after we had turned off Star Trek. "Potatoes are tubers," I read, congratulating myself on my brilliant scheme.

Listening to the tape as I slept, of course, had no discernible effect on my retention. In fact, all I remember from the entire year of science is the above fact about potatoes.

But having read the entire chapter aloud on Friday night, I did very well on the test.