Don and Doof

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Don’s hanging with his friend, also named Don, but for clarity’s sake, let’s call the friend by his last name, Duferschand, or Doof as he is often called. It’s a hot summer day and they are riding their skateboards through what they think are the abandoned corridors of their high school. The school doors are open because one wing is used for Art School for children of varying ages, and another is used for Summer School. Don and Doof will be freshman there in two months. Both will spend time in the summer school wing.

Anyway, they’re skateboarding up and down the hallways, whoopin’ and hollerin’ up a storm because they think they have the whole building to themselves. The smooth tiled floors and arched ceilings, combined with rows and rows of closed lockers, amplify the ball bearings of their wheels by at least a factor of ten. The lockers, too, prove too much a temptation. Doof has the bright idea to take a stick he’s found somewhere and rattle it off the locker handles, making the ruckus borderline deafening.

Admittedly, the high school’s a big place, and the teachers teaching art and remedial whatever hardly hear them, but hear them they do, since it is July and there’s no air conditioning, and all the windows and doors are open. These men are just doing this for a paycheck, and no one wants to be there, and I can’t blame them. Someone sends someone to see someone at the main office, and while Don and Doof are speeding up on their second lap, the principal, grumbling over some headache-inducing paperwork, is informed of their presence.

Just past the gym the duo spot a bald angry man stepping out of a room about twenty or thirty yards in front of them. Momentum will do little but stop them right at the fuming man’s feet. “Oh, shoot,” Don says, realizing their predicament. The man carries an air of authority about him, and both Dons know they’re in trouble.

But Doof has a plan. “Hey, Don,” he says, under his breath as their boards slow them down before the apoplectic principal, “whatever you say, don’t give him your real name. We can’t get in trouble that way.”

“Okay,” Don says.

After a five minute verbal lashing, the principal falls into well-known routine. “What are your names?” he demands, pulling out a small ringed notebook and a pen from his chest pocket. He points at Duferschand first.

“Ron MacDonald,” Doof says. They just came from Mickey D’s, so that’s the first name that pops into his head.

The principal scratches it down, then turns to Don. “And what’s yours?” he hisses.

Don’s mouth drops open, and for an agonizing moment he’s helpless. Whatever you do, don’t tell him your real name …

“Don Duferschand,” he says.