One year before I was a student in English Composition II, I was a student in a senior-level high school English class. The major topic for that spring was an all-out study of William Golding’s classic, The Lord of the Flies, part of which involved me composing an “in character diary” as well as a short essay (maybe three or four pages). Golding’s novel struck a nerve and I ended up quoting bits of it in high school and – apparently – into college (though I doubt I was ever in a position to chant “kill the pig, cut her throat” in conversation, polite or otherwise).
What with the memorable character of Piggy still fresh on the mind, I came to college and during my first semester discovered a modern-day Piggy working behind the pizza counter in the Belvedere-Agora cafeteria. In my mind, Piggy looked like the young boys from The Far Side cartoons: dumpy-looking children with striped shirts tightly fit over a balloon-shaped frame and wearing glasses with thick, clear lenses that may (or may not) hide pea-sized eyes. This too described Piggy in the cafeteria, though this “young man” had elected to add “facial hair” into the already burgeoning equation. It wasn’t pretty – but his annoyed grunts waving the pizza spatula around were always worth a laugh. Someone had put him on pizza patrol and there was no way he lettin’ anyone walk away with both an entrée and a slice of pizza on the same tray. Sucks to that rule...and yeah, sucks to his assmar while we’re at it, too.
Also versed in The Lord of the Flies was fellow student Michael Arthur who I had met my first semester on campus through a mutual acquaintance. Late into that semester I had tried ordering pizza for dinner, only to get read the riot act because I couldn’t have two main courses at the same time. It might have been an important statute in the cafeteria code but it sounded asinine coming from this student.
By now it was the spring semester and in Comp II, Ms. Fontaine directed us to pick something – practically anything – from the realm of literature and compose a ten-or-so page essay on some aspect of it. We had done minor writing assignments most of that semester but this major essay came midway into the course and would serve as a sort of mid-term project. Honestly, I was a bit lazy and therefore got permission to revisit The Lord of the Flies – careful of course to not mention that a huge chunk of my essay would come from something a year old. Oh, yeah: other requirements for this essay included that we read the completed text aloud to the rest of the class and that we create a one-page capsule review to share. At the end of the project each student would have 25 or so one-page write-ups that would go on to become – surprise! – potential test material.
Somewhere along the way genius struck. If this was to be a presentation then I needed something that grabbed everyone’s attention, something memorable. My topic was to be the symbolism behind the names and traits of the characters – Ralph and Jack, Simon and so on – of which Piggy always seemed the popular one for various reasons. (I’m sure the fat, loud, nerdish types are popular literary stereotypes.) What better way to introduce the character of Piggy then by interviewing him about his time on the island and his encounters with the other characters! (Never mind the fact he never leaves the island....) And what better person to portray Piggy than that guy serving pizza in the cafeteria?
Alas that was not to be and so I asked Michael if he’d be interested in this plum role. As soon as he agreed – and I like to think it wasn’t a difficult sell – I began drafting just how this would play out.
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Piggy
(Simmerlein)
The Fringe
From the album Chardonnay
1997
