More About Steve Vaughan

So, since I’ve already violated about ninety-nine privacy rules by posting his name and occupation, I figured I’d go ahead and tell you a story about my school mate Steve.

In the eighth grade (Eighth grade? Maybe ninth? I can’t remember, for goodness sake, that was about a bazillion years ago before I killed all my brain cells with alcohol) it was a well-known fact that you had to dissect a frog in Biology class. I’m not a vegetarian, or any kind of animal-rights activist, so while I had no problem with dissecting a frog in theory, it still wasn’t something I was particularly looking forward to doing. I mean …. just kind of ….. ewww, gross.

So on the very first day of eighth grade (Eighth? Ninth? We’ll go with eighth, for the sake of the story) I approached Steve, who I had known for years, and who was not only a really great guy, but who was also one of the smartest boys in our class. Approached him with an offer he couldn’t refuse: If he would agree to be my lab partner for the frog dissection, and do all of the actual dissecting himself, I would agree to write and type the entire report and he wouldn’t have to do any of it, and then we’d split the credit for both.

Steve thought that was a good idea, so we agreed to work together when the time came. And because I am a paranoid freak very organized, I would remind him of our arrangement on occasion throughout the year. Each time, he would affirm that yes, HE would do all the dissecting, and I would do all the writing and typing. It was a fool-proof plan, no?

Um, no.

The day of the dissection arrived, and I showed up to school confident and happy with my genius plan. I mean, my gosh, with Steve Vaughan, one of the smartest boys in eighth grade as my lab partner, how could I go wrong?

Well, I’ll tell you how. A little thing called the stomach flu got in the way.

Steve showed up to Biology that day looking, well, a little peaked, to be honest. He smiled gamely, if weakly, at me … picked up the scalpel …. made one incision into that little formaldehyde Kermit ….. and threw up all over the table.

OK, that’s an exaggeration. There was a door from the biology room to the attached outdoor courtyard, and he at least made it outside before throwing up. But still ---- major chunk blowing, coming out of my lab partner, who was now completely worthless. So much for my fool proof plan.

Can you guess who got stuck dissecting the entire damn frog by herself??? Yep, yours truly, while dainty, delicate, I-feel-a-little-queasy-Steve had to lie-down for the rest of class.

(Ironically, it wasn’t near as bad as I thought. And I went on to dissect two cats in college without trauma, so I guess I wasn’t horrifically scarred after all.)

Anyway, fast forward to our 10-year high school reunion. The reunion committee sent out surveys beforehand for people to fill out, then complied the surveys into a memory book for the reunion. Not anything snooty about how much money do you make, or name three significant ways you’ve made the world a better place ….. more like, “Where could we find you on a Friday night?” and “Name one thing you refuse to eat.” (In fact, I helped with the survey and some of the answers we got were hysterical …. But, another post for another day.)

One of the questions was “Name your three favorite school memories” and I briefly re-capped the Steve-Vaughan-throwing-up-on-frog-dissection-day-tale, much to Steve’s chagrin. In fact, I believe his exact words to me afterwards were, “You’re never going to let that go, are you? It was the stomach flu, I’m telling you, the FLU!” And I although I believe him completely, what kind of eighth grade lab partner would I be if I didn’t take every opportunity to re-tell the story and embarrass him?

Including telling it now, to all you peoples of the Internet.

And THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is why I will never receive free gift cards from Steve, despite the fact he is now Chief Financial Officer of Sonic Corporation. Because he couldn’t hold his cookies on dissection day, and I will never let him forget it. That's just the kind of friend I am.