Chris Haight's Story

CHRIS HAIGHT, who started at MLC in its first year, sent in this very funny piece recounting an occurrence he remembers taking place in 1969 or 1970. "Wheezing now!" reported Layla (formerly Wende) Eriksen, of her laughter on reading and remembering the incident. If anyone still has the film that was made, please let us know !!

A Uniquely Typical Day at MLC

The events of another day at MLC come back to me surprisingly clearly considering that this particular day I was coming down with a fever and was by the end of the day fuddled with that peculiarly hazy febrile consciousness, though strangely this was in many ways a typical day at MLC in spite of my foolishly having ignored the incipient signs of mounting fever, probably because it was one of those stony euphoric fevers that wasn’t at all unpleasant, and that day I’d gone blithely about my business without realizing how increasingly impaired I was.

Chris Haight, at left in glasses, in a 1969 photo from his brother's MLC high-school graduation party

I’d had a lot of errands to run, and as MLC was flexible to the point of indifference about attendance there was no impediment to my walking downtown (about a mile from school) and doing whatever I had to do. On this day two kids wanted to come along: Chris Colie, one of my usual buddies, and Rodney Howell, a kid I didn’t usually hang around with but who was amusing and good company. (Rodney was the younger brother of Doug Howell, my brother Steve and his girlfriend Nancy Woodruff’s buddy.) Rodney was in rare form that day.

One of my errands was to buy a swimsuit (Couch School, which housed MLC, had an Olympic-sized swimming pool in the basement), and I’d decided to get a simple Speedo, one of those skimpy brief swimsuits that competitive swimmers wore. We three went into Meier & Frank and up to the men’s sports clothes department, where a young female salesclerk asked what she could do for me. I told her I wanted a Speedo, and as she showed me what they had, Rodney started a line of facetious patter. He noted how skimpy the suit was and said to her with mock delicacy: What if my friend here isn’t sufficiently equipped to fill the suit out the way it is on the mannequin or the model in the photograph? What would you recommend in that case? Do you sell padding that could be used for that purpose? And Rodney carried on in that vein, at first startling the saleswoman whose face flushed, but eventually charming her and making her laugh, largely at my expense.

Meanwhile my fever was coming on and I was commencing to feel a little at sea, though I hadn’t yet realized the extent of my mental impairment. We finished my errands. I needed a few more things from Meier & Frank: a bathing cap (swimming pool filters being what they were in those days, kids with long hair—girls and boys—were required to wear swim caps), and then I had to pick up a few things elsewhere, so we ran around on my errands, crossing them off the list as accomplished: I bought 8mm film for my movie camera and 35mm film for my still camera, and picked up my new glasses from the optometrist, checked the pawnshops for guitars, which I’d been on the lookout for since, after buying my still camera, I’d saved another couple hundred dollars of my paper route money toward purchase of an electric guitar. By the time we got back to school I was mildly euphoric with fever, though insistent on carrying on, oblivious to my subtly altered state of mind.

On this day it happened that some MLC kids were making a movie in one of the second-floor classrooms. A number of us were interested in filmmaking, and these young filmmakers were shooting a scene in which a girl (played by the lovely covetable Wende Eriksen) was supposed to be kissed and embraced by a boy, and when I happened along it seems all the potential male actors were too inhibited, self-conscious or intimidated to take on the male role opposite Wende, but I in my encroaching febrile euphoria immediately enthusiastically assumed the role. The director gave me the barest description of my character’s required action, and the camera rolled. I approached Wende, wrapped my arms around her and planted my lips on hers in a passionate, openmouthed kiss, which I’m sure quite startled her. Then the fever, which’d lowered my inhibitions sufficiently to allow me to assume the part and play it so assertively, suddenly undermined my equilibrium and I lost balance and began falling forward while continuing to kiss and embrace Wende, who toppled backward under the force of my 110 pounds, and we fell in slow-motion and hit the floor, or rather she hit the floor with a whump and I landed softly—it seems to me—stretched out atop her. But Wende was so taken by surprise with the kiss, the embrace and the fall that she remained relaxed throughout—though no doubt everyone else in the room was in a panic—and hit the floor so exactly flat on her back that it softened the fall as a cushion of trapped air escaped from between the hardwood floor and the hollow of her back and we settled there gently, entirely unscathed. It was only then, lying on the floor on top of Wende, both of us laughing hysterically, I realized I wasn’t entirely in my right mind, that I was in fact utterly addled with fever. It could only’ve been for that reason I’d had the nerve to grab Wende and kiss her, camera rolling, though with just enough presence of mind to stay in character, fulfilling the film’s narrative requirements: I was, after all, at fifteen, a confirmed cinéaste.

(Chris Haight, 2025)