Fred Covell Revisted

I remember it clearly: Second grade, a math test. We wrote our name at the top of the dittoed paper, filled in the answers, and then Mrs. Wallace had us pass our papers forward. She then somehow shuffled them, and passed papers back, so that we had a fellow student's test to correct as she read off the answers.

I looked down at the paper I had received: Fred Covell's, the class idiot and bully. However, the handwriting on the test was my own. In fact, once I looked closely, I noticed that my name had originally appeared on top of the test I was holding, and that it had been hastily erased and been replaced by the name of Fred Covell.

I took the test up to Mrs. Wallace and handed it to her... but how the story progresses from here is not really important.

What is important was how I felt: I actually felt pretty good that the stupidest kid in the class had singled me out as the person he would most want to be. It made Fred kind of pitiful and sad, but it gave my pride a little 12-volt zap. It was a little confirmation that I was actually one of the smarter kids in the class, and as much of a little prick Fred was, as much as he could beat me up with no problem, he knew that I was better than him.

I got to relive that feeling today when Reeza's Mike asked me if I was posting under another name at the PattayaSecrets' message board while we were having a beer over at Margaritavilla. Apparently some modern-day Fred Covell with the user name Algom was copying all of my writing here on Jil In Pattaya, and posting it over at PattayaSecrets as his own.

Heheh. Thank you for the affirmation that I can actually write Algom, you pitiful soul. Mind if I call you Fred?