KJZZ contributor Robrt Pela read an essay live in downtown Phoenix in September as part of The Show's first-ever onstage production, Radio Heads. Stay tuned for news of future live Show events.
I am walking to the principal’s office. I can find my way there blindfolded. Not quite 10 years old, I am — according to most adults and many of my classmates — completely incorrigible.
My sins are numerous: I refuse to recite the Pledge of Allegiance; I insist on spelling my first name incorrectly; I dress like a chorus boy from a Las Vegas floor show. I’ve spent hours discussing these transgressions with Mr. Cordes, the principal of the public school I attend.
I’m humming a song from the new Partridge Family album as I head to Principal Cordes’ office to discuss my latest wickedness: According to my fourth-grade history teacher, I’ve announced my desire to be a woman.
“Come in, Bobby!” Principal Cordes calls out when I arrive.
No one calls me “Bobby,” which I remind Principal Cordes every time I see him, and which he always ignores.
“You know why I’ve asked you here, right?” he says, as I settle onto the vinyl sofa in his spartan office.
I glance around the room. “For some decorating advice?”
This is our schtick. Principal Cordes pretends to care about my welfare, and I make believe he’s the straight man in a comedy routine about a naughty kid who’s forced to talk ... to a creep.
Principal Cordes ignores my response and holds up a piece of paper. “Mr. Cole showed me this,” he says. “Apparently you think it’s funny to want to be a woman.”
I used to call Mr. Cole by his first name, Carlton, until Principal Cordes made me stop. Mr. Cole is one of those sad adults who wants kids to like him. He ends each quiz with a nonsense question, a clumsy attempt at being “cool.”
“What’s George Washington’s favorite meal?” Mr. Cole asked last week, on a quiz about the Siege of Yorktown. “What’s your dad’s first name?” he had asked the week before.
Normally I answer these questions with as much scorn as I can muster, because this last question on the quiz is a freebie; no response is considered “wrong.” George Washington’s favorite meal was Hamburger Helper, I had replied. My father’s name was Liberace, I’d written.
The final question on yesterday’s quiz about Valley Forge was classic Carlton Cole: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
This week, I decided to answer Mr. Cole’s silly question with the truth: When I grew up, I wrote, I wanted to be Ann Moses.
Ann Moses had the best job in the whole world. She was the editor of Tiger Beat, a glossy magazine full of pin-ups and stories about the grooviest TV stars and rock singers. As far as I could tell, Ann got paid to hang out with David Cassidy and Bobby Sherman and Donny Osmond and then go back to the Tiger Beat offices and write about the fun times she had just had with our “faves.”
I’d long worried about how, as an adult, I was ever going to find a job that suited me. Hanging out with faves seemed like something I could do.
I already had the wardrobe. Unable to find clothing in Phoenix department stores like what the Brady Bunch and the Osmonds wore on TV, I had convinced my mother to make them for me. Armed with the latest issues of Tiger Beat, Mom and I would head off to Hancock Fabrics, where I chose the loudest, most psychedelic material I could find. Back home, Mom would cut tissue-paper patterns based on photos of Eve Plumb’s elephant bells and Jermaine Jackson’s groovy plaid dashiki. She even made me an exact replica of the navy vest-and-bell-bottoms costume the Partridge Family wore when they sang each week on their television show. I wore it to school on my 9th birthday, adding a gold ascot that matched my ruffled dress shirt.
While Principal Cordes is droning on about how little boys should want to be astronauts or firefighters when they grow up, I am daydreaming about my own ideal future. I would move to Hollywood and go to work at Tiger Beat, just like Ann Moses. After spending the morning hanging with Sally Field on the set of “The Flying Nun,” I’d meet Patty Duke for lunch at Trader Vic’s and then dash across town for a quick drink at the Brown Derby with Davy Jones. Back at Tiger Beat’s Hollywood Boulevard office, I’d trade stories about faves with Ann while our production staff began laying out my next scoop.
I think about explaining all this to Principal Cordes, but I know it’s pointless. He wants me to be a basketball player, and what I want is to interview Danny Bonaduce about his favorite color.
Eventually, Principal Cordes stops talking.
“Look,” I say. “This is all a misunderstanding. Ann Moses is a cool lady who works at a magazine, and I want that kind of work one day, too. The magazine part, not the lady part. Also, Ann and I are going to be friends when I grow up. And guess what? We have the same birthday! I know because I read it in Tiger Beat!”
Principal Cordes arches an eyebrow.
I give up trying to get this old guy to hear me.
“I was just making a joke,” I mumble, defeated. “I guess Mr. Cole didn’t get it.”
My grade school principal sighs. “When it comes to your future career plans,” he says, handing me back my history quiz and pointing to the door, “maybe set your sights a little lower.”
As I head back to class, I notice that Mr. Cole has marked my Ann Moses answer “incorrect.”
It’s 50 years later, and I’m out for my morning walk. Several blocks ahead I spot the grey slump block grammar school I attended a half-century ago. As I head toward it, I’m humming along to the Partridge Family album playing in my AirPods.
The phone in my pocket rings, and I answer it.
“Hey!” Ann Moses says, right into my ear. “What are we doing for our birthday?”
I laugh out loud. “You know I’m making you a blood orange olive oil cake and coming over to your place for lunch!”
Ann thinks my cake will go great after the veal shank she’s planned for our annual birthday dinner at her home in Gilbert, where she lives now. Last year she made grilled shrimp, and I baked us a pistachio cream cake. The year before that, Ann gave me a set of bright orange kitchen canisters she’d had in her Hollywood apartment during her Tiger Beat days. I’ve looked at those canisters every day since and thought, “I am friends with Ann Moses. She gives me vintage Tupperware.”
While I walk, Ann and I talk about our husbands and compare notes on achy joints and the turmoil caused by our new president. She tells me about the Donny Osmond documentary she’s been asked to appear in, and I complain about the cover story I’m writing for the newspaper where I’ve worked for 30 years. It’s not Tiger Beat, but it pays the bills.
“What do you want me to make with that veal shank?” Ann asks. She’s a really good cook; her entrees are even better than her profiles of teenage pop superstars.
“Can I have some of your polenta?” I reply. “You make the best polenta.”
“Is polenta your all-time fave dish?” she asks.
And then, Ann Moses and I burst out laughing.
Take that, Principal Cordes.
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