Never Been to India

Most, if not all, boys born in Southern California in 1970 were named Brian. I was one of them. I have hypothesized that the tear-jerking made-for-TV memory of Brian's Song was fresh on our mother's minds. Perhaps Brian Wilson was a greater social force that I give him credit for. Who knows?

I was, however, one of many. There are funny stories about nights on the town with three, four, even five Brians at a time, but that's not what this post is about.

There is a great story about being at a strip club with three Brians, one of whom was a Spanish seminary student who looked like Jesus, but that's not what this post is about either.

No, this post starts with an incident in the 6th grade with with another Brian, Brian M. I, of course, was Brian R. We are not to be confused with Brian S., Brian G., Brian D., Brian C., Or any of the other Brians who were smart enough to go by their middle names.

It was the sixth grade, and Brian M. and I were the top two students in our class. Academically, we tied in everything. As there was no room for either of us to do any better, there wasn't really much of a competition between us.

Being children in California in the 70s, we were subjected to all manner of experimental hippie learning bullshit. One of the worst was a pre-boxed socially conscious color-coded reading comprehension system called SRA. Everyone took relative placement tests to find their starting position in the program.

Brian and I tested out of the program, but they couldn't just let us sit and do something else for an hour, so they started each of us two modules from the end. What was supposed to be 12th grade level reading packets, was actually more akin to reading Harry Potter, but without wizards, quidditch, magic, Hogwarts, or style....

Brian and I would race to see who could finish first. Both of us always got all of the answers right. This was busy work, nothing more.

One day, however, I found the spare instructor's answer key at the back of the box. We both began using it to finish the reading work quickly, so we could use the spare time to work on our more-challenging math homework. The plan worked flawlessly, until one day, a freckly redheaded bitch named Maggie caught us and ratted us out. Needless to say, a plethora of long lectures and volumes of make-up reading work lay in our future.

If they had just given us something worth reading, this would have never happened. I blame the system, and it was an educational system that began five years earlier in the first grade. See, the predecessor to SRA was a little something called Programmed Reading. I was able to read in kindergarten, but this program was used to teach me what I already knew.

Maybe you recall this program. Happy stories about Sam, Ann, Nip, and Ted. Wide-headed multi-cultural children playing without supervision in bland fields of rolling semi-gloss green hills. They climbed primary-colored textureless trees under unnaturally blue cloudless skies. There were no streets, and all of the neatly-square houses were white or yellow. The scene was creepy and serene, yet settled itself into my psyche as the proverbial happy place, you know, for those times the neighbor man tried to touch me...

It is that Programmed Reading vision of an alien utopia that comes to mind, for some reason, whenever I think of India. I've never been to India, but I'd like to go. I'm a fan of the food, and a bitch for Bollywood. Really, I cannot get enough of the long-play big-budget Bollywood music videos they play on the Indian cable channel. I own Lagaan mostly for the dance scenes...

I am certain that the reality of India will be nothing like my vision of it. Hell, it's probably not much different than San Bernardino. However, I'd still like to go, if for no other reason, nearly 1 billion Bollywood fans, but very few Brians to be found.