When I was a student in junior high and high school, one of my classmates was a fellow by the name of Tim. Yes, he had a last name, but - in the interest of protecting his privacy and avoiding the possibility of a nasty letter from a fellow I've not seen or heard from in nearly 30 years - I'll keep it to myself.

Tim was quite a character; he wore his blond hair in the exact same style as Moe Howard of the Three Stooges, and when he spoke he sounded a little like Foghorn Leghorn with just a touch of Truman Capote. (And if you think the description sounds odd, all I can say is that you should have heard this kid's voice; I'm sure it probably had something to do with puberty.) The thing I remember most about Tim is that he was the dictionary definition of the class clown. Pranks and mischief were more than just a way of life; they defined his very being.

We were all a pretty silly bunch at that age, as I recall, particularly when we were in the seventh and eighth grades. (Oh, some of the stories I could tell...) But in a class full of boys - and even a fair number of girls - that aspired to leave our mark on Bradley Central School by raising such behavior to a genuine art form, Tim truly stood head and shoulders above the rest of us. Sometimes literally, such as the day in the seventh grade when he stood on another boy's shoulders and hid his kid sister's battery-powered bubble blowing machine in the air conditioning vent over Mr. Roselli's desk...

Most of Tim's tomfoolery was relatively benign, such as the aforementioned bubble machine incident or that time he climbed up on another teacher's desk before study hall and stuck the contents of an entire box of No. 2 pencils in the ceiling tile above her chair. When the teacher came into the room and somehow failed to notice all those bright yellow Swords of Damocles hanging above her, Tim managed to stage a fake sneeze and knock all his books off his desk with such force that the impact of the books hitting the floor caused most of the pencils to rain down upon the teacher's head.

Other times, though, Tim’s mischief could be downright mean and hateful. He once started a false rumor that one of our classmates had been killed the night before in an auto accident, then sat back and laughed at the reaction of those students who burst into tears when this other fellow showed up for school without a clue as to what was going on. Probably the worst thing he ever did involved the theft of a certain cheerleader's undergarment during gym class, which was then hidden in the glove compartment of a teacher's car...

The thing that separated Tim from the rest of us was that he never seemed capable of turning it off. The rest of us realized that sometimes we had to take things a little more seriously; it had been a lesson driven home more than anything else by all those pop quizzes we kept getting in our sixth grade algebra class when Mr. Crabtree got fed up with all the fooling around.

But not our Tim, no sir. He seemed to take any admonitions that he should behave as some kind of personal challenge. When teachers or parents or classmates would start trying to get him to knock it off, he would ramp up the level of mischief that much more. And the angrier other people became, the more mean-spirited the mischief generally became.

Over time most of us figured out that hanging out with this guy on a regular basis was probably only to get us in trouble too and learned to keep our distance as much as possible.

I found myself thinking about my old classmate Tim recently while reading about the latest exploits of one of our state legislators.

You might have heard of the incident earlier this month involving State Rep. Sally Kern (R-Oklahoma City) and the rally she held at the state capitol, in which she unveiled her so-called "Proclamation of Morality." The event drew some national attention as well as the ire of those who were offended by Kern's holier-than-thou pontificating.

Not all of that ire came from Democrats and liberals. Brenda Jones, another prominent OKC Republican, said in a letter to the state party chairman (quoted in the Journal Record) that Kerns' inflammatory rhetoric is an embarrassment to "not only Oklahoma but the entire Republican Party."

And an editorial in the Tulsa World, which from what I've seen generally skews towards the conservative, had this to say about Kerns: "You were not hired to be my pastor. Get on with your job, and I'll mind my own soul, thank you, as will all Oklahomans. There are, I'm sure, empty pulpits out there with congregations eager to lap up your version of a small, petty, tyrannical God."

The mental image I found myself conjuring up when reading about Kern's manufactured media event was that of my old classmate Tim, and others like him I have known: the class clowns who try to continually use humor to try and get around the fact that they didn’t do their homework or finish that book report or study for the semester exam.

Or who all too often say or do mean-spirited things in the hopes of keeping that spotlight shining down in their direction, instead of illuminating someone or something a little more worthy of such attention.

Or even the spoiled little brat who constantly rants and raves and holds her breath to get what she wants.

Kern is, indeed, an embarrassment. To Oklahoma, and to Christianity. But I'd like to think she may soon find herself learning the same lesson my old classmate Tim did all those years ago: that the more she acts out, the more likely it is that even her friends will want to keep their distance.