I never really socialized much at work. I didn't really even leave my desk except when I had to, and when I did, I would do what I needed to do as quickly and efficiently as possible so I could get back to monitoring the tubes, reading science fiction magazines, and playing with my Nintendo DS. Sometimes I would wear headphones when I left my desk so I could pretend I didn't hear anybody and avoid talking to them. When I was forced to talk to people, I didn't say much, and would immediately go back to my desk when I was done doing what I was supposed to do, regardless of whether or not it seemed like somebody was done talking to me. I just didn't see any need to make friends with the people I worked with, and I didn't want to waste my time talking about the weather, sports, Jesus, TV shows, or any other inane bullshit people seemed interested in. My disinterest in talking to people stemmed less from a specific dislike for the people I worked with than from a general distaste for people.
There were, however, exceptions to this rule.
Some of the people I worked with I found truly disagreeable. Among them was a morbidly obese black woman who dressed very loudly and caked her face with many layers of clown/whore makeup every day. Her appearance was not the only loud thing about her, and I would often be forced to listen to her having long conversations with her friends in their normal indoor voices, which were the screams, yells, and cackles you would expect from people at a loud concert rather than a quiet office building. At least once, I turned my headphones up painfully loud, but was still unable to drown out the sound of her and another woman practicing their gospel singing at full volume.
The woman was somewhat crazy, and I had once heard from a girl my age about an altercation she had had with the woman. The girl was swearing, talking to her friend, when the woman put her face inches from the girl's face and engaged her in a yelling argument over her apparent lack of respect for herself. The girl asserted that she was "a grown-ass woman" who could talk however the hell she wanted to, which only served to make the woman louder and angrier.
I was, unfortunately, too friendly to be actively disliked. Despite my unwillingness to socialize with my coworkers, I would always help people with their retarded-person computer problems if they asked for my help. I would have preferred it if people thought I was an asshole and never tried to talk to me, but I gained a reputation as a quiet but friendly guy who was willing to help people when they were too goddamn inept to do incredibly basic tasks by themselves.
On several occasions, the loud woman came to my desk asking for computer help. Each time, she wanted me to go back down to her desk to help her. She was very slow-moving because of her girth, so I would be forced to endure extra moments of her talking to me. She would tell me about her teenage son's incredible musical skill, and how he played for a large number of incredibly famous acts, and how all kinds of guys really want her because she's so sexy. I never believed her. When we got to her desk, her problem would invariably be something so fucking stupid that it would shock me that somebody would give her a job sitting at a computer much of the day. I would save her file, or maximize her window, or whatever other stupid shit she needed, and then immediately go back to my desk.
I tried to avoid interacting with her more than I tried to avoid interaction with anybody else. When she did say something to me, it was often uncomfortable shit like, "You get more and more handsome every day", or trying to get me to come to her birthday party. I tried to be polite, but I was always very short and in a hurry to get back to my desk.
One day, I went downstairs to pick up my batch of work that should have been printing out at that moment, as it did every evening. The morbidly obese lady was standing near the printer with two other coworkers.
"They're not coming yet," she said.
"Oh," I replied, ready to go back upstairs.
She grabbed my hand. "Here," she said in her deep, manly voice, "let me show you."
I didn't need to be shown, and I sure as hell didn't need to have my hand held to walk 3 feet to the printer. My hand was limp as she clasped it and began waddling towards the printer.
And then my hand touched her butt.
"See?" she asked, gesturing at the empty printer with her free hand.
"Uh, yeah," I said, pulling my hand free. "I guess I'll check later," I said, and went back to my desk, wondering what the fuck just happened. Did she just pull my fucking hand into her butt? I asked myself.
It has been hypothesized that perhaps pulling my hand into her butt was just an unfortunate consequence of her being so fat that her butt took up so much space. That makes me wonder, how often do morbidly obese people "accidentally" touch their own butts? I will never know whether or not she intentionally made me touch her butt, but either way, she had no goddamn business grabbing my hand in the first place.
On my last day of working at that place, she stopped me as I was walking to my boss's desk, trying to bitch at me about doing too much work and raising the ludicrously low standards, which meant she actually had to do some work.
"You do all them boxes, and now Chris thinks we can all do that much. I can't. You need to..."
"This is my letter of resignation," I said, cutting her off and showing her the paper in my hand. "I don't have to take any shit at all from anybody here ever again."
She was clearly taken aback. "Oh," she said, "well, I was thinking I might have to do the same thing if things don't change around here."
"Yeah," I said, not trying to hide the contempt in my voice, "You do that." I walked away.
I'm so happy that I'll never have to see her again.
Showing posts with label lies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lies. Show all posts
1.3.07
The Smiths.
Beginning in fourth grade, I rode the short bus with retarded kids and crazy kids to another school district, where the high school had special programs to meet our needs. I was classified as "emotionally handicapped" because I was uncontrollable and my parents wouldn't let them drug me into submission, and I spent my days in a classroom with kids who lied compulsively, set fires, or just completely refused to do anything but make fun of darkies. They began integrating me into classes with normal kids, and by 7th grade, I wasn't in the crazy-kid class at all, but they still bussed me out there to go to school for some reason or another. On the bus in 7th grade is where I first met Jolene Smith.
I had heard of Jolene's brother, Aaron Smith, years before I met Jolene or even knew she existed. Aaron was in my sister's 5th grade class. Supposedly, he was older than I was (my sister was one grade below me), but incredibly tiny and spoke in a high-pitched squeak. He also wanted to fight almost everybody. My sister showed me a picture of him in her yearbook, and his head was huge, making his photo stand out among the rest of them. Maybe the photographer overcompensated for his small stature and zoomed in too much, which made him way too big instead of just right.
Jolene was weird. She was a couple years older than I was, and had a chin like a caricature of Jay Leno. She would tell stories of imaginary happenings, like weird Satanic rituals that happened late at night in the woods near her house. She told me I was too young to know about that stuff.
I don't know that her name really was Jolene, because sometimes she went by Renee. Maybe both names were hers, or maybe she just stole the name Jolene from the only other girl I've ever known with that name, who happened to ride our bus. Maybe it was kind of like the time that she stole my birthday.
Jolene found out that my birthday was coming up, and acted surprised and excited, and said that her birthday was on the same day. She told me she was making me a Ninja Turtles shirt, and I dreaded her giving it to me. I imagined wearing it on the bus, and changing it or covering it up immediately after arriving at school, so that nobody would see me wearing it. Fortunately, on my birthday, she just gave me a balloon. I didn't ask about the shirt.
Later, I found out that some other day was her birthday, too.
I started going to the school in my area in eighth grade. I never saw Jolene again, but there were rumors. Supposedly, she was seen in her front yard humping the guy who had been hired to paint their house. Another time, she was rumored to have done the same thing with a dog. Once, their house burnt down and everybody said that they had done it on purpose so that they could afford to send Jolene to a mental hospital.
Also, in eighth grade, on my first day of school, I finally met her brother, Aaron. He had the locker right next to mine. I recognized him from his giant-headed photo, and I knew it had to be him because he was tiny even compared to myself, and I had always been a really little guy.
This other guy who used to ride the crazy bus, Ron, started attending normal kid school that year, too. I ran into him, and he told me that Aaron wanted to fight me. Since my locker was right next to his, I asked him.
"Don't listen to him," Aaron squeaked at me. "Ron is full of shit!"
At some point in eighth grade, I heard somebody making fun of Aaron by saying, "Something smells like ketchup." I didn't get the joke, if there was one, but I started saying it every time I saw Aaron. For a couple weeks, he didn't react in any way to my taunts. One day by our lockers, I said it, and he punched me in the eye and ran away. It didn't hurt, and I was more shocked than anything. I started laughing, both because it was a surprise and because I didn't want anybody to think the kid had hurt me.
"You should have kicked his ass," a kid told me.
"Shit, man," I said, "I was so surprised, I had no time to react. That shit was funny. It didn't hurt."
The rumor about the Smiths was that they were all completely inbred and, as a result, they were all deformed and crazy. Their mom was said to be a huge fat lady, too big to even leave the house. A kid in my health class told me a story that he probably made up about visiting their house. He said there was dog shit all over the place, and while he was there, a dog shat on the floor again. They told him not to worry about it, and put a paper towel on top of it, and then sprinkled baking soda on top of the paper towel. He said they had a bunch of top of the line computers, too.
In 9th grade, Aaron was in my gym class, and had changed his name to Dan. My friend and I always called him Danly Smythe. He and I had a weird, adversarial quasi-friendship. Sometimes we would talk about the internet, because he was one of the few people at that point who was on it, and sometimes I would chase him around and try to stick him in the big net-bag they kept all the basketballs in.
Aaron spent a lot of gym periods on the bleachers instead of dressing for class. One day, after we did our daily calisthenics, I looked up and saw Aaron aggressively humping the bleachers. I pointed and laughed, and he yelled at me to shut up, and kept going as if nobody knew what he was doing.
Another day we had some sort of argument about something, and since gym was our last class of the day, Aaron ended up attacking me outside after school. I was standing with a few friends, casually talking, when Aaron appeared out of nowhere with some sort of crazy jump-kick-punch. I reflexively punched him in the face, and he ran off.
"Holy shit, that was fucking awesome!" said my friend, also named Aaron. He started telling people who missed it about how I had punched Aaron in the face, and how it was one of the best things he had seen. I wished he would shut up, and not tell anybody about it, but I didn't want to say anything and sound like a pussy. Even as a stupid 9th grader, I didn't see anything good about punching a tiny, possibly retarded kid in the face.
That was the last year that Aaron was in school. I never saw any of his family again, but I heard more stories. In driver's ed, my teacher told me that Aaron was in his class the year before. He said the kid drove like he had a death wish, and that he was the only kid who ever scared him with his driving. In 11th grade, my speech teacher said that her husband had once let their family take some fallen trees from their property for firewood, and that they kept coming back. She said they didn't really know how to say no to them, and would pretend they weren't home when they showed up. Jolene would peer into their windows, puffing hard on a cigarette.
My friend says he saw Aaron a couple years after high school. He wasn't sure if it was him, because instead of being really short, he was really tall, but he had the same face.
I had heard of Jolene's brother, Aaron Smith, years before I met Jolene or even knew she existed. Aaron was in my sister's 5th grade class. Supposedly, he was older than I was (my sister was one grade below me), but incredibly tiny and spoke in a high-pitched squeak. He also wanted to fight almost everybody. My sister showed me a picture of him in her yearbook, and his head was huge, making his photo stand out among the rest of them. Maybe the photographer overcompensated for his small stature and zoomed in too much, which made him way too big instead of just right.
Jolene was weird. She was a couple years older than I was, and had a chin like a caricature of Jay Leno. She would tell stories of imaginary happenings, like weird Satanic rituals that happened late at night in the woods near her house. She told me I was too young to know about that stuff.
I don't know that her name really was Jolene, because sometimes she went by Renee. Maybe both names were hers, or maybe she just stole the name Jolene from the only other girl I've ever known with that name, who happened to ride our bus. Maybe it was kind of like the time that she stole my birthday.
Jolene found out that my birthday was coming up, and acted surprised and excited, and said that her birthday was on the same day. She told me she was making me a Ninja Turtles shirt, and I dreaded her giving it to me. I imagined wearing it on the bus, and changing it or covering it up immediately after arriving at school, so that nobody would see me wearing it. Fortunately, on my birthday, she just gave me a balloon. I didn't ask about the shirt.
Later, I found out that some other day was her birthday, too.
I started going to the school in my area in eighth grade. I never saw Jolene again, but there were rumors. Supposedly, she was seen in her front yard humping the guy who had been hired to paint their house. Another time, she was rumored to have done the same thing with a dog. Once, their house burnt down and everybody said that they had done it on purpose so that they could afford to send Jolene to a mental hospital.
Also, in eighth grade, on my first day of school, I finally met her brother, Aaron. He had the locker right next to mine. I recognized him from his giant-headed photo, and I knew it had to be him because he was tiny even compared to myself, and I had always been a really little guy.
This other guy who used to ride the crazy bus, Ron, started attending normal kid school that year, too. I ran into him, and he told me that Aaron wanted to fight me. Since my locker was right next to his, I asked him.
"Don't listen to him," Aaron squeaked at me. "Ron is full of shit!"
At some point in eighth grade, I heard somebody making fun of Aaron by saying, "Something smells like ketchup." I didn't get the joke, if there was one, but I started saying it every time I saw Aaron. For a couple weeks, he didn't react in any way to my taunts. One day by our lockers, I said it, and he punched me in the eye and ran away. It didn't hurt, and I was more shocked than anything. I started laughing, both because it was a surprise and because I didn't want anybody to think the kid had hurt me.
"You should have kicked his ass," a kid told me.
"Shit, man," I said, "I was so surprised, I had no time to react. That shit was funny. It didn't hurt."
The rumor about the Smiths was that they were all completely inbred and, as a result, they were all deformed and crazy. Their mom was said to be a huge fat lady, too big to even leave the house. A kid in my health class told me a story that he probably made up about visiting their house. He said there was dog shit all over the place, and while he was there, a dog shat on the floor again. They told him not to worry about it, and put a paper towel on top of it, and then sprinkled baking soda on top of the paper towel. He said they had a bunch of top of the line computers, too.
In 9th grade, Aaron was in my gym class, and had changed his name to Dan. My friend and I always called him Danly Smythe. He and I had a weird, adversarial quasi-friendship. Sometimes we would talk about the internet, because he was one of the few people at that point who was on it, and sometimes I would chase him around and try to stick him in the big net-bag they kept all the basketballs in.
Aaron spent a lot of gym periods on the bleachers instead of dressing for class. One day, after we did our daily calisthenics, I looked up and saw Aaron aggressively humping the bleachers. I pointed and laughed, and he yelled at me to shut up, and kept going as if nobody knew what he was doing.
Another day we had some sort of argument about something, and since gym was our last class of the day, Aaron ended up attacking me outside after school. I was standing with a few friends, casually talking, when Aaron appeared out of nowhere with some sort of crazy jump-kick-punch. I reflexively punched him in the face, and he ran off.
"Holy shit, that was fucking awesome!" said my friend, also named Aaron. He started telling people who missed it about how I had punched Aaron in the face, and how it was one of the best things he had seen. I wished he would shut up, and not tell anybody about it, but I didn't want to say anything and sound like a pussy. Even as a stupid 9th grader, I didn't see anything good about punching a tiny, possibly retarded kid in the face.
That was the last year that Aaron was in school. I never saw any of his family again, but I heard more stories. In driver's ed, my teacher told me that Aaron was in his class the year before. He said the kid drove like he had a death wish, and that he was the only kid who ever scared him with his driving. In 11th grade, my speech teacher said that her husband had once let their family take some fallen trees from their property for firewood, and that they kept coming back. She said they didn't really know how to say no to them, and would pretend they weren't home when they showed up. Jolene would peer into their windows, puffing hard on a cigarette.
My friend says he saw Aaron a couple years after high school. He wasn't sure if it was him, because instead of being really short, he was really tall, but he had the same face.
25.12.06
Bill and Ted teach vocabularity.
My uncle brought my cousins and I to see Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure when I was eight years old, introducing me to two characters who I knew were completely awesome simply by the way they spoke. Years before Wayne's World, Bill and Ted were teaching kids to speak in a manner both impressive to their peers and bewildering to adults. By the time the sequel came out, my friends had turned me on to the smooth musical stylings of heavy metal, the preference of both Bill and Ted, so I was even more enamoured by the duo. I decided to do everything within my power to become as excellent as they were. Everything in my power turned out to be emulating their parlance by speaking in a stoner drawl and adopting their vocabulary, the meaning of their words derived only by the context in which they were used. To my friends in fifth grade, I sounded like a sly badass. To the educated adults around me, I sounded like a damn fool.
One day, a classmate of mine named Keith was telling me about some tragic events that had recently befallen his cousin. Keith was a compulsive liar, and by this time I knew of the fact because I had made up the name of an imaginary rap group that I supposedly listened to all the time, and he had told me that he had a bunch of their tapes. Still, I gave him the benefit of the doubt while listening to his tale. Keith told me about how his cousin had been sitting in his living room one night when a bullet had flown throw the window and into his face. He was still alive, but obviously not doing as well as he could have been on account of having been shot in the face. I seized the opportunity to demonstrate my excellent lexicon.
"Bogus," I said, indicating my displeasure with the notion of his cousin being shot in the face.
"No," said our teacher, who was sitting at her desk and listening in on our conversation. "That's not bogus at all. It's very real."
"Oh," I said, caught off guard. I thought for a moment and then pulled some more of Bill and Ted's vocabulary out of my bag of tricks. "That is non non non non non non non non heinous," I said, adding extra nons because the situation was extra terrible.
"No," said our teacher, "It's very heinous."
"Oh," I said, and then remained silent. From that point on, I only imitated Bill and Ted when safely out of the earshot of adults, who I guessed simply weren't cool enough to know what the hell I was saying.
One day, a classmate of mine named Keith was telling me about some tragic events that had recently befallen his cousin. Keith was a compulsive liar, and by this time I knew of the fact because I had made up the name of an imaginary rap group that I supposedly listened to all the time, and he had told me that he had a bunch of their tapes. Still, I gave him the benefit of the doubt while listening to his tale. Keith told me about how his cousin had been sitting in his living room one night when a bullet had flown throw the window and into his face. He was still alive, but obviously not doing as well as he could have been on account of having been shot in the face. I seized the opportunity to demonstrate my excellent lexicon.
"Bogus," I said, indicating my displeasure with the notion of his cousin being shot in the face.
"No," said our teacher, who was sitting at her desk and listening in on our conversation. "That's not bogus at all. It's very real."
"Oh," I said, caught off guard. I thought for a moment and then pulled some more of Bill and Ted's vocabulary out of my bag of tricks. "That is non non non non non non non non heinous," I said, adding extra nons because the situation was extra terrible.
"No," said our teacher, "It's very heinous."
"Oh," I said, and then remained silent. From that point on, I only imitated Bill and Ted when safely out of the earshot of adults, who I guessed simply weren't cool enough to know what the hell I was saying.
5.9.06
Morgan loves my girlfriend, hates me.
I first became aware of Morgan during my senior year in high school. For half an hour a day, I sat in my homeroom class being bombarded by the mandatory youth advertising program called Channel One, and that's where I first encountered him. Morgan was a couple years younger than I was, so my homeroom couldn't have been his officially, but since he was good buddies with the teacher, he was in there every single day. Since it was an art room, Morgan would try to impress me with his low-quality artwork, expensive possessions, and various lies. I always found him to be obnoxious, but I was too nice to do anything other than listen to his incessant stream of bullshit.
"Check out my portfolio," he said one day, holding up a large, flat, leather case for carrying his artwork around. "It was almost two hundred dollars!"
"Nice," I said, not wanting to point out that owning an expensive case doesn't make one a decent artist.
Another time, he tried to feed me a completely absurd line of bullshit about how he was paid thousands of dollars, flown to California, and given a contract to "design surfboards" for many more thousands of dollars. I nodded, said "Wow," and pretended to believe him. I didn't see any real reason to shoot the poor guy down.
I tolerated Morgan's attempts at friendship for a few months. I never initiated conversation with him, but would humor him when he talked to me. He was a sycophant, and would act like everything I said or did was completely awesome, the only exception being the time he saw a 666 written in marker on the inside of my sweatshirt, and remarked, "That stuff is retarded." Morgan's attitude towards me changed abruptly when he found out I was involved with a girl who I later found out had rejected him.
"Hey, you know who likes you?" he said one day, laughing, "Sara Wiscowicz."
"I like her, too," I said.
Morgan's smile instantly faded and was replaced by a frown. He looked away from me and back down at his art project that he was working on.
"No comment," he uttered, as if I had asked him for a statement on the matter. He didn't talk to me for the rest of the homeroom period.
The very next day, a guy in my math class told me that Morgan, who rode his bus, had been talking about me on the way to school.
"He was going on and on about how much he hates your web page, saying you're retarded and stuff," the guy told me. Back then, I had a page that was virtually identical to this one, but with more boring day-to-day bits that nobody who didn't know me would be interested in, and more talk about smashing capitalism by means of excessive condiment procurement. It was a personal blog, though nobody called them that back then.
During homeroom, Morgan launched into a poorly-thought out tirade against me.
"Hey, I looked at your web page," he said.
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah," he said, "It's retarded! It doesn't make any sense!"
"Why not?" I asked.
"You say there's capitalism in America! There's no capitalism in America! You should go to Europe! They're fighting wars over there over capitalism!"
Sitting at my table were three European foreign exchange students, whose mouths literally dropped open when Morgan said this.
"Are you serious?" I asked, shocked that somebody could have made it to tenth grade and still be dumb enough to say something like that. He was very serious, though, and for the next five minutes, he kept repeating the same points over and over: your web page is retarded; your web page makes no sense; and there is no capitalism in America, but they are fighting wars about it in Europe. I made some feeble attempts at correcting him, but he was getting so worked up that the teacher told him to calm down and just get the fuck away from me.
For the rest of the year, until I graduated, my friends and I were locked in a ridiculous cycle with Morgan. First, he'd make fun of or threaten one of us with his "fists of steel," then we'd make fun of him, then he'd tell on us and we'd be called to the office, where they told us not to bother him. And then he'd immediately start the cycle over again.
I don't know what ever happened to the guy, but I still have a promotional magnet with a picture of his mom on my refrigerator. I just think it's funny.
"Check out my portfolio," he said one day, holding up a large, flat, leather case for carrying his artwork around. "It was almost two hundred dollars!"
"Nice," I said, not wanting to point out that owning an expensive case doesn't make one a decent artist.
Another time, he tried to feed me a completely absurd line of bullshit about how he was paid thousands of dollars, flown to California, and given a contract to "design surfboards" for many more thousands of dollars. I nodded, said "Wow," and pretended to believe him. I didn't see any real reason to shoot the poor guy down.
I tolerated Morgan's attempts at friendship for a few months. I never initiated conversation with him, but would humor him when he talked to me. He was a sycophant, and would act like everything I said or did was completely awesome, the only exception being the time he saw a 666 written in marker on the inside of my sweatshirt, and remarked, "That stuff is retarded." Morgan's attitude towards me changed abruptly when he found out I was involved with a girl who I later found out had rejected him.
"Hey, you know who likes you?" he said one day, laughing, "Sara Wiscowicz."
"I like her, too," I said.
Morgan's smile instantly faded and was replaced by a frown. He looked away from me and back down at his art project that he was working on.
"No comment," he uttered, as if I had asked him for a statement on the matter. He didn't talk to me for the rest of the homeroom period.
The very next day, a guy in my math class told me that Morgan, who rode his bus, had been talking about me on the way to school.
"He was going on and on about how much he hates your web page, saying you're retarded and stuff," the guy told me. Back then, I had a page that was virtually identical to this one, but with more boring day-to-day bits that nobody who didn't know me would be interested in, and more talk about smashing capitalism by means of excessive condiment procurement. It was a personal blog, though nobody called them that back then.
During homeroom, Morgan launched into a poorly-thought out tirade against me.
"Hey, I looked at your web page," he said.
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah," he said, "It's retarded! It doesn't make any sense!"
"Why not?" I asked.
"You say there's capitalism in America! There's no capitalism in America! You should go to Europe! They're fighting wars over there over capitalism!"
Sitting at my table were three European foreign exchange students, whose mouths literally dropped open when Morgan said this.
"Are you serious?" I asked, shocked that somebody could have made it to tenth grade and still be dumb enough to say something like that. He was very serious, though, and for the next five minutes, he kept repeating the same points over and over: your web page is retarded; your web page makes no sense; and there is no capitalism in America, but they are fighting wars about it in Europe. I made some feeble attempts at correcting him, but he was getting so worked up that the teacher told him to calm down and just get the fuck away from me.
For the rest of the year, until I graduated, my friends and I were locked in a ridiculous cycle with Morgan. First, he'd make fun of or threaten one of us with his "fists of steel," then we'd make fun of him, then he'd tell on us and we'd be called to the office, where they told us not to bother him. And then he'd immediately start the cycle over again.
I don't know what ever happened to the guy, but I still have a promotional magnet with a picture of his mom on my refrigerator. I just think it's funny.
23.8.06
Cable is Mexican for the F-word.
When I moved from the coast to the middle of the country when I was 10, I had to learn to adjust my way of speaking to match the local dialect. Slang that I had previously used frequently served only to confuse and bewilder my classmates, who also referred to soda as 'pop', as if they were all thirsty for a tall, refreshing glass of their dad.
When somebody did something particularly spiteful or mean, I would say, "That's cold blooded," but I always said that particular phrase with an accent that I had picked up from my cousins, who I had learned it from. To my new friends, it sounded as if I was saying "That's cah-blay." To this day, when I try to say the phrase like I used to, I can't really understand how they got cah-blay out of cold-blooded. If anything, it sounded like cole-bluht.
Since my entire fourth grade class consisted of compulsive liars, and since they couldn't understand what I was saying, one of my classmates took it upon himself to not only define it, but to inform the teacher about it as well.
"Paul keeps saying cah-blay," he said, loudly enough so that I could hear him, "and it's Mexican for the F-word."
The teacher knew he was completely full of shit, and made stuff up constantly, and I didn't get in any trouble, even though I kept saying it.
When somebody did something particularly spiteful or mean, I would say, "That's cold blooded," but I always said that particular phrase with an accent that I had picked up from my cousins, who I had learned it from. To my new friends, it sounded as if I was saying "That's cah-blay." To this day, when I try to say the phrase like I used to, I can't really understand how they got cah-blay out of cold-blooded. If anything, it sounded like cole-bluht.
Since my entire fourth grade class consisted of compulsive liars, and since they couldn't understand what I was saying, one of my classmates took it upon himself to not only define it, but to inform the teacher about it as well.
"Paul keeps saying cah-blay," he said, loudly enough so that I could hear him, "and it's Mexican for the F-word."
The teacher knew he was completely full of shit, and made stuff up constantly, and I didn't get in any trouble, even though I kept saying it.
25.7.06
Mr. Lame loves Jesus, hates nerds.
Mr. Lane, my sixth grade science teacher, was incredibly popular. When an assignment was given in my English class to write a letter to any teacher, the vast majority of them went to him. He was considered to be way cool by most of the students, the exception to the rule being any social outcasts or people smart enough to see through his bullshit. He hated me, and I hated him.
He loved to tell awful jokes that the cool kids just ate up. I didn't find him particularly funny, and he once booted me out of class for laughing too loudly at one of his wisecracks. I guess I wasn't subtle enough in my effort to make fun of him and everybody in my class who thought he was a real laugh riot.
"I told you before not to do that," he said as I was walking out. It wasn't true.
He loved using his clout to push his self-righteous moral guidance on the class. There was a poster on the wall that was a montage of people involved in various outdoor activities. He loved to point out how he had conspicuously used a marker to black out a cigarette that one of the people on the poster was holding. There was also a story he told, which I later realized was probably entirely made up, about how he had never broken a single law, except for one isolated incident. He was driving with his wife and kids, and was the only car stopped at a light at an empty intersection. Somebody approached his car, offering him handfuls of drugs, and Mr. Lane had floored the accelerator, running the red light and saving his family from certain doom.
Mr. Lane liked to talk about God, and even though I was at a public school, he got away with it because we were in the middle of nowhere, and nearly the entire student body consisted of a mix of Christians, other Christians, and some more Christians. Oh, and me. This may have been where his distaste for me originated, as he was a member of one of the bat shit crazy denominations of Christianity that considered Dungeons and Dragons to be the work of the devil. I was an awkward nerd, and my handful of friends I had made by carrying around my D&D books with my school books.
"Is this for a class?" he asked me one day, spotting a hardback tome emblazoned with a picture of a guy fighting a dragon sitting on top of my science book.
"Uh, no," I said, wondering if there was some awesome class that somehow involved Dungeons and Dragons.
"Don't bring it back to my class," he said.
I sat, dumbstruck, wondering what his problem was. I asked around later and found out that many people there honestly believed that Dungeons and Dragons was completely "Satanic", though nobody could explain exactly why. Annoyed, I began stopping at my locker before his class to drop off my D&D books, and stopping again after his class to pick my books back up. Prior to that, I carried most of what I needed with me all the time to minimize the number of trips I made to my locker.
One day I had a small paperback book sitting on my desk. It wasn't a Dungeons and Dragons book, but it had a picture of a guy with a sword fighting some kind of monster on the cover. I learned that day that the "Satanic" label applied to basically all fantasy fiction.
"I thought I told you not to bring that stuff to class anymore," he said, pointing at my book. He made me go put it in my locker.
Every day, students that didn't have band or choir practice had an hour-long study hall to work on their homework, or read if they didn't have any. The teachers all took turns doing study hall duty, which consisted of sitting there and making sure nobody acted like an idiot. In Mr. Lane's case, it also included making jokes, flirting with 12 year old girls, and harassing nerds.
I had just made a new friend, when this guy I had never spoken to saw me hauling around a Dungeons and Dragons book. He didn't have any homework, or just didn't feel like doing it, so I let him look at a couple of my D&D books during study hall. He sat towards the front of the class, and when he unfolded a big dungeon map, I knew Mr. Lane was going to see him and say something crazy. Moments later, my prediction came true.
"Is that for a class?" he asked.
"No," the kid said.
"Put it away and don't bring it back," he said.
He loved to tell awful jokes that the cool kids just ate up. I didn't find him particularly funny, and he once booted me out of class for laughing too loudly at one of his wisecracks. I guess I wasn't subtle enough in my effort to make fun of him and everybody in my class who thought he was a real laugh riot.
"I told you before not to do that," he said as I was walking out. It wasn't true.
He loved using his clout to push his self-righteous moral guidance on the class. There was a poster on the wall that was a montage of people involved in various outdoor activities. He loved to point out how he had conspicuously used a marker to black out a cigarette that one of the people on the poster was holding. There was also a story he told, which I later realized was probably entirely made up, about how he had never broken a single law, except for one isolated incident. He was driving with his wife and kids, and was the only car stopped at a light at an empty intersection. Somebody approached his car, offering him handfuls of drugs, and Mr. Lane had floored the accelerator, running the red light and saving his family from certain doom.
Mr. Lane liked to talk about God, and even though I was at a public school, he got away with it because we were in the middle of nowhere, and nearly the entire student body consisted of a mix of Christians, other Christians, and some more Christians. Oh, and me. This may have been where his distaste for me originated, as he was a member of one of the bat shit crazy denominations of Christianity that considered Dungeons and Dragons to be the work of the devil. I was an awkward nerd, and my handful of friends I had made by carrying around my D&D books with my school books.
"Is this for a class?" he asked me one day, spotting a hardback tome emblazoned with a picture of a guy fighting a dragon sitting on top of my science book.
"Uh, no," I said, wondering if there was some awesome class that somehow involved Dungeons and Dragons.
"Don't bring it back to my class," he said.
I sat, dumbstruck, wondering what his problem was. I asked around later and found out that many people there honestly believed that Dungeons and Dragons was completely "Satanic", though nobody could explain exactly why. Annoyed, I began stopping at my locker before his class to drop off my D&D books, and stopping again after his class to pick my books back up. Prior to that, I carried most of what I needed with me all the time to minimize the number of trips I made to my locker.
One day I had a small paperback book sitting on my desk. It wasn't a Dungeons and Dragons book, but it had a picture of a guy with a sword fighting some kind of monster on the cover. I learned that day that the "Satanic" label applied to basically all fantasy fiction.
"I thought I told you not to bring that stuff to class anymore," he said, pointing at my book. He made me go put it in my locker.
Every day, students that didn't have band or choir practice had an hour-long study hall to work on their homework, or read if they didn't have any. The teachers all took turns doing study hall duty, which consisted of sitting there and making sure nobody acted like an idiot. In Mr. Lane's case, it also included making jokes, flirting with 12 year old girls, and harassing nerds.
I had just made a new friend, when this guy I had never spoken to saw me hauling around a Dungeons and Dragons book. He didn't have any homework, or just didn't feel like doing it, so I let him look at a couple of my D&D books during study hall. He sat towards the front of the class, and when he unfolded a big dungeon map, I knew Mr. Lane was going to see him and say something crazy. Moments later, my prediction came true.
"Is that for a class?" he asked.
"No," the kid said.
"Put it away and don't bring it back," he said.
3.7.06
I got fired, so I have to work.
Megan was neither intelligent nor physically attractive. In fact, I had previously thought that she looked somewhat deformed; she lacked a proper chin and had the slightly droopy eyes of a burnout. She was racist in an ignorant but innocent country girl way, and had a boyfriend who was racist in a mean redneck way. Megan had no problem lying to him constantly as she fooled around behind his back with any guy willing to talk to her. I know I never would have started talking to her at all had I not been really drunk at a friend's party. She sat with me, completely sober, and listened to me ramble on for hours, and then wrote her phone number on my hand before she left. I probably never would have called her had I not just broken up with my girlfriend of almost three years, but some female company sounded nice.
For several weeks, we hung out all the time. She would get off work, go hump her boyfriend and clean up his apartment, and then come see me. I didn't feel guilty about anything I did, because her boyfriend was a Nazi. I was worried he might find out and kick my ass, but she assured me that he would never find out. Sweet girl. It didn't bother me too much that she would give her phone number to guys when she was out with me, or that she fooled around with nearly all of my friends, because she wasn't mine to begin with. I was happy to have a girl to make out with, and I thought she looked hot when she'd wear my jacket, covered in patches and spikes and safety pins. She was my fake punk girl.
"Do you want to go to a punk rock show?" I asked her one day, "The Queers are playing with Screeching Weasel in a couple weeks. It's going to be great."
"I don't know, I'm kind of scared. Do girls go to those things?"
"Yeah, lots of them. It's going to be a lot of fun. The Queers are the best."
"Alright," she said, "I'm in."
I had been having bad luck going to shows only to learn that they were sold out, so I bought tickets as soon as I could. I wasn't going to risk missing my chance at seeing The Queers and hanging out with Megan on the same day. It was going to be great.
The night before the show, I called her.
"Hey, you ready for that show tomorrow? It's gonna be so fucking great."
"Well," she said, hesitating, "I got fired yesterday, so I have to work."
I didn't care that I had bought her a ticket she wasn't going to use. I ended up selling it to some kid outside of the show when we got there. I did, however, care that she couldn't even be bothered to make up an excuse that made any sense at all. Fucking bitch!
I never spoke to her again.
For several weeks, we hung out all the time. She would get off work, go hump her boyfriend and clean up his apartment, and then come see me. I didn't feel guilty about anything I did, because her boyfriend was a Nazi. I was worried he might find out and kick my ass, but she assured me that he would never find out. Sweet girl. It didn't bother me too much that she would give her phone number to guys when she was out with me, or that she fooled around with nearly all of my friends, because she wasn't mine to begin with. I was happy to have a girl to make out with, and I thought she looked hot when she'd wear my jacket, covered in patches and spikes and safety pins. She was my fake punk girl.
"Do you want to go to a punk rock show?" I asked her one day, "The Queers are playing with Screeching Weasel in a couple weeks. It's going to be great."
"I don't know, I'm kind of scared. Do girls go to those things?"
"Yeah, lots of them. It's going to be a lot of fun. The Queers are the best."
"Alright," she said, "I'm in."
I had been having bad luck going to shows only to learn that they were sold out, so I bought tickets as soon as I could. I wasn't going to risk missing my chance at seeing The Queers and hanging out with Megan on the same day. It was going to be great.
The night before the show, I called her.
"Hey, you ready for that show tomorrow? It's gonna be so fucking great."
"Well," she said, hesitating, "I got fired yesterday, so I have to work."
I didn't care that I had bought her a ticket she wasn't going to use. I ended up selling it to some kid outside of the show when we got there. I did, however, care that she couldn't even be bothered to make up an excuse that made any sense at all. Fucking bitch!
I never spoke to her again.
15.6.06
Marty and the contraband.
Through the complex bartering system used by the denizens of the fifth grade, I somehow ended up with a small pocket knife. When we were young, knives are very appealing simply because we weren't supposed to have them. Also, they were good to have in case we ever found ourselves trapped in the wilderness, struggling to survive against the forces of nature. My knife was dirty, small, and dull, but I chose to believe it was a useful tool nonetheless.
The goods possessed by young traders like ourselves were always in a transitory state. Most things brought to school were not held on to long by one person. It was only natural that at some point Marty would want my knife. He traded me a sack of ninja turtles for the folding blade.
On the day our transaction occurred, Marty also acquired another piece of contraband from another of our friends, Wayne, who offered Marty a cigarette lighter. Again, another incredibly useful item should one find themselves in a situation where death is on the line.
Death is seldom on the line in 5th grade, though, so Marty did what he could to utilize both items to the best of his ability. He went into the closet in our classroom and called my name in a hushed voice, signalling for me to watch him. He was about to perform an act of ultimate bravery. Marty set the handle of the knife on fire with the lighter.
"What's that?" the teacher's aide asked. "It smells like something burning!"
We were all inconsistent back-stabbers back then, occasionally defending our friends, and occasionally reveling in their misfortune. This would be one of the latter. I jumped from my seat and ran to the closet. Marty had thrown the knife under a pillow and was fanning the air, trying to make it less visibly smoke-filled. I picked up the pillow and grabbed the knife, which had partially melted into the floor.
"Marty set this knife on fire!" I shouted, gleeful.
Without hesitation, Marty pointed his finger at me and screamed that I had done it.
The teacher's aide had seen me run into the closet after she had smelled the smoke, so I assumed there was no possible way she would believe Marty. I was wrong. She brought us both down to the vice principal's office, and gave him the burnt knife and the lighter, which she had found under a coat in the closet. Marty was already sobbing like a little girl, while I was simply angry. Marty tearily continued to claim that I had done it, while I continued to tell him what really happened.
"Maybe I should call the police and have them fingerprint the knife. Is that what you want? Do you want me to call the police?"
"Please! Please!" sobbed Marty, "Please don't call the police! Oh my god, please!"
Even in 5th grade, I knew he wasn't going to call the police. I told him that he should.
"Oh my god, please, please, no!" pleaded Marty.
"Please, call them, Marty set the knife on fire and I shouldn't be in here. Call them so I don't have to be in trouble for something I didn't do anymore."
We sat in the office for the entire remainder of the day. Marty never confessed, and the vice principal never called the cops.
A week later, I got called into the office again. The vice principal said he had interviewed Wayne, and "I know the whole story now, I just want to hear it from you."
I stuck to my story, though I never told him that the knife was at one point mine, and before that it had belonged to Wayne. That didn't really seem necessary.
Neither one of us ever got in any trouble besides the day in the office. I stopped being Marty's friend, though, and he wasn't allowed to trade stuff with us anymore.
The goods possessed by young traders like ourselves were always in a transitory state. Most things brought to school were not held on to long by one person. It was only natural that at some point Marty would want my knife. He traded me a sack of ninja turtles for the folding blade.
On the day our transaction occurred, Marty also acquired another piece of contraband from another of our friends, Wayne, who offered Marty a cigarette lighter. Again, another incredibly useful item should one find themselves in a situation where death is on the line.
Death is seldom on the line in 5th grade, though, so Marty did what he could to utilize both items to the best of his ability. He went into the closet in our classroom and called my name in a hushed voice, signalling for me to watch him. He was about to perform an act of ultimate bravery. Marty set the handle of the knife on fire with the lighter.
"What's that?" the teacher's aide asked. "It smells like something burning!"
We were all inconsistent back-stabbers back then, occasionally defending our friends, and occasionally reveling in their misfortune. This would be one of the latter. I jumped from my seat and ran to the closet. Marty had thrown the knife under a pillow and was fanning the air, trying to make it less visibly smoke-filled. I picked up the pillow and grabbed the knife, which had partially melted into the floor.
"Marty set this knife on fire!" I shouted, gleeful.
Without hesitation, Marty pointed his finger at me and screamed that I had done it.
The teacher's aide had seen me run into the closet after she had smelled the smoke, so I assumed there was no possible way she would believe Marty. I was wrong. She brought us both down to the vice principal's office, and gave him the burnt knife and the lighter, which she had found under a coat in the closet. Marty was already sobbing like a little girl, while I was simply angry. Marty tearily continued to claim that I had done it, while I continued to tell him what really happened.
"Maybe I should call the police and have them fingerprint the knife. Is that what you want? Do you want me to call the police?"
"Please! Please!" sobbed Marty, "Please don't call the police! Oh my god, please!"
Even in 5th grade, I knew he wasn't going to call the police. I told him that he should.
"Oh my god, please, please, no!" pleaded Marty.
"Please, call them, Marty set the knife on fire and I shouldn't be in here. Call them so I don't have to be in trouble for something I didn't do anymore."
We sat in the office for the entire remainder of the day. Marty never confessed, and the vice principal never called the cops.
A week later, I got called into the office again. The vice principal said he had interviewed Wayne, and "I know the whole story now, I just want to hear it from you."
I stuck to my story, though I never told him that the knife was at one point mine, and before that it had belonged to Wayne. That didn't really seem necessary.
Neither one of us ever got in any trouble besides the day in the office. I stopped being Marty's friend, though, and he wasn't allowed to trade stuff with us anymore.
Compulsive liars.
A few days ago, I started a blog called Various Lies about, well, lies. I got the idea when I was wondering what the compulsive liars I've known would write if they had their own blog. The response has been pretty positive, and I assume it's because plenty of other people have known similar folks with a need to tell outlandish lies.
My memories of 4th grade seem to indicate every guy I knew back then was a pathological liar. The only girl liar I've ever known was also in my 4th grade class. Her lies were tales of being a backup singer and dancer for the New Kids on the Block, and having their babies nightly. The guys all used to regale each other with tales of their relatives with access to secret knowledge and technology. I remember the military theme being a wealth of amazing lies. The funniest part was that one kid would hear a lie, and then claim to have known about it, and then add a new lie to the original one.
"Your dad worked on the machine-guns-mounted-on-spy-dogs project? Dude, my uncle's dog kept winning all these dog shows for being so smart, and then one day these government guys knocked on his door in the middle of the night and recruited his dog to be one of those spy dogs. I swear to god."
Good lies shared some key elements. A classic technique was the inclusion of a citation from an unverifiable source like an uncle, anonymous friend, or "this guy I know." Many lies had an element of truth to add to their legitimacy. Other times, 'facts' were invented simply because they sounded like they might be true to an uninformed audience.
"The daddy-long-legs is actually the most venomous kind of spider, but it has no fangs to bite with."
As we grew older, most kids stopped telling lies. I remember my transition from liar to non-liar quite well. I came home from a friend's house, and made a comment about how they made their own glue traps to catch flies by smearing honey on the windowsill.
"At least he's creative," my mom said to my dad. I knew I was busted, and that was the end of making stuff up for no reason.
There was some amount of lying in middle school, but the real compulsive liars were starting to disappear by that time. Usually, middle school lies were to save face. If you didn't want to get in a fight, you could make up a story about beating up some kid nobody had ever heard of. Everybody would want to leave you alone if they believed you were a badass. I also remember kids like Jimmy Harrison asking kids like me if they were virgins. We were all virgins at that age, but there was still no correct answer to the question. A yes would get you mocked for being a virgin, and a no would get you mocked for being a liar. I tried to claim to have had brief sex with a girl during the summer, but Jimmy and his pals made fun of me, calling me a liar, before launching into a bunch of lies about the women they've had.
In high school, there were still kids who were compulsive liars. My theory is that nobody ever called them on their shit. I've also noticed personality traits that all of compulsive liars I knew in my later school years had. Every single one of them, when not telling outlandish lies, would kiss your ass all day long. If you hang out with a liar, they'll laugh hard at your every joke, hang onto your every word, do whatever you say, and think absolutely everything you do is the coolest shit in the world. Another thing I've realized about them is the fact that every single one of the liars I knew in high school, without exception, was either the only boy or the oldest boy in a family. My theory is that having an older sibling around would have prevented a kid from being a compulsive liar by calling them on all of their lies.
A friend of mine recently ran into one of the guys we knew from school, and he was still telling crazy lies. I guess if a person is still telling lies in high school, it shouldn't be that shocking that they're still doing it as adults. I still can't get over it, though.
UPDATE: Lew has posted a brand new story on the grown man telling lies in the comment section for this post.
My memories of 4th grade seem to indicate every guy I knew back then was a pathological liar. The only girl liar I've ever known was also in my 4th grade class. Her lies were tales of being a backup singer and dancer for the New Kids on the Block, and having their babies nightly. The guys all used to regale each other with tales of their relatives with access to secret knowledge and technology. I remember the military theme being a wealth of amazing lies. The funniest part was that one kid would hear a lie, and then claim to have known about it, and then add a new lie to the original one.
"Your dad worked on the machine-guns-mounted-on-spy-dogs project? Dude, my uncle's dog kept winning all these dog shows for being so smart, and then one day these government guys knocked on his door in the middle of the night and recruited his dog to be one of those spy dogs. I swear to god."
Good lies shared some key elements. A classic technique was the inclusion of a citation from an unverifiable source like an uncle, anonymous friend, or "this guy I know." Many lies had an element of truth to add to their legitimacy. Other times, 'facts' were invented simply because they sounded like they might be true to an uninformed audience.
"The daddy-long-legs is actually the most venomous kind of spider, but it has no fangs to bite with."
As we grew older, most kids stopped telling lies. I remember my transition from liar to non-liar quite well. I came home from a friend's house, and made a comment about how they made their own glue traps to catch flies by smearing honey on the windowsill.
"At least he's creative," my mom said to my dad. I knew I was busted, and that was the end of making stuff up for no reason.
There was some amount of lying in middle school, but the real compulsive liars were starting to disappear by that time. Usually, middle school lies were to save face. If you didn't want to get in a fight, you could make up a story about beating up some kid nobody had ever heard of. Everybody would want to leave you alone if they believed you were a badass. I also remember kids like Jimmy Harrison asking kids like me if they were virgins. We were all virgins at that age, but there was still no correct answer to the question. A yes would get you mocked for being a virgin, and a no would get you mocked for being a liar. I tried to claim to have had brief sex with a girl during the summer, but Jimmy and his pals made fun of me, calling me a liar, before launching into a bunch of lies about the women they've had.
In high school, there were still kids who were compulsive liars. My theory is that nobody ever called them on their shit. I've also noticed personality traits that all of compulsive liars I knew in my later school years had. Every single one of them, when not telling outlandish lies, would kiss your ass all day long. If you hang out with a liar, they'll laugh hard at your every joke, hang onto your every word, do whatever you say, and think absolutely everything you do is the coolest shit in the world. Another thing I've realized about them is the fact that every single one of the liars I knew in high school, without exception, was either the only boy or the oldest boy in a family. My theory is that having an older sibling around would have prevented a kid from being a compulsive liar by calling them on all of their lies.
A friend of mine recently ran into one of the guys we knew from school, and he was still telling crazy lies. I guess if a person is still telling lies in high school, it shouldn't be that shocking that they're still doing it as adults. I still can't get over it, though.
UPDATE: Lew has posted a brand new story on the grown man telling lies in the comment section for this post.
14.6.06
The fake crack.
In second grade, I found some coursely ground salt in the pantry and decided to convince my classmates that it was crack. I knew what crack was supposed to look like from drug awareness ads and the like, and I thought the salt looked close enough, though perhaps a bit small. I put some into a clear plastic bag, like I had always seen it pictured. When I brought in on the bus, I waited until everyone was aboard before I pulled it out.
"Look," I said, "I have crack."
Everybody looked at me incredulously. The general consensus seemed to be that I didn't actually have crack. I decided to prove them wrong. The problem was that I had no idea how crack was used, nor what its effects would be on the user.
I opened the bag, pulled out a pinch of the fancy salt, and put it in my mouth, trying not to visibly cringe as it overpowered my taste buds. I chewed it up and swallowed it.
"Yeah," I said, "This is some good crack."
"Look," I said, "I have crack."
Everybody looked at me incredulously. The general consensus seemed to be that I didn't actually have crack. I decided to prove them wrong. The problem was that I had no idea how crack was used, nor what its effects would be on the user.
I opened the bag, pulled out a pinch of the fancy salt, and put it in my mouth, trying not to visibly cringe as it overpowered my taste buds. I chewed it up and swallowed it.
"Yeah," I said, "This is some good crack."
8.6.06
Hanging out with Kenny.
I had just moved to a new town, and was living with my girlfriend at her mom's house. We were both actively searching for jobs, and she landed one working nights in the dildo and porn store at a nearby strip club. Not wanting to be stuck with her mom and her mom's boyfriend, I asked her if she had any friends I could hang out with while she was at work. She said she knew this guy named Kenny I could hang out with. Being new to the area, I had no idea that the only reason she picked Kenny was because she had no friends on account of being completely fucking crazy. Kenny was the only other person she really talked to, and she probably only talked to him because she was a sociopath and he was a pathetic loser who was completely in love with her.
We picked up Kenny on the way to her job, where she was to be dropped off and picked up hours later. In the meantime, I was supposed to hang out with Kenny all night. When Kenny lumbered out of his house, I was in awe of his girth. He was a hulking figure, nearly as wide as I am tall, and towered over me. He also dressed to impress, wearing a button-up shirt printed with a graphic of a dragon and smelling of urine and heavy perspiration.
We dropped the girl off at the strip club, and then it was just us guys. Kenny held his seat belt in place in case the cops were out, because he couldn't make it actually fit around him.
"So, what is there to do around here?"
"Uh, Idunno."
The problem was that Kenny had absolutely no life. He had no friends. He had no job. He was a 20 year old high school dropout who did nothing but sit at home playing Evercrack, eating, and reeking of stale pee.
We finally decided we'd hit the video arcade first. On the way there, Kenny tried in vain to impress me by telling me he could rap all the lyrics to a Limp Bizkit album. When I wasn't interested in hearing him rap, he went on and on about Everquest, filling me in on all the most mundane details.
"Well, you have your bronze pieces, and you get 10 of them and it's worth one silver piece, and then you get 10 of them and it's worth one gold piece. Oh man, do you realize how much a horse costs in Everquest? I've been questing for hundreds of hours a week, and I'm not even close! There are these monsters, and..."
Since he seemed into computer RPGs, I asked him if he ever played oldschool paper Dungeons and Dragons. He told me he and his older brother had tried it, but couldn't get into it. I assume it wasn't visual enough, or took too much thought. They were, however, avid fans of Yu-Gi-Oh.
Yes, a 20 year old and his older brother collected and played Yu-Gi-Oh.
We got to the part of town where the arcade was, and there we ran into another problem. Kenny didn't know where it was. This would be a recurring theme throughout the night. Kenny, despite having lived there his entire life, didn't know where fucking anything was, and he was going to be my navigator for the night. Wonderful.
We found a structure to park in and wandered some streets looking for the arcade. While we walked, Kenny bragged about how all he needed was a thin denim jacket, while I was freezing my ass off in a big coat. We ended up asking somebody where the arcade was.
"Across the diag," she said.
I asked Kenny where the diag was, and if it was a long walk. Apparently we were right next to the diag, but it was an incredibly long walk and we needed to go back to the car so we could drive to a different parking structure. I later found out that the diag is a very short walk, probably less than the equivalent of two city blocks.
We got to the arcade, which was Kenny's idea, where he told me he didn't have any money. Annoyed, I decided we'd spend 10 bucks and then leave.
When we left the arcade and went back to the structure, I asked Kenny if he minded taking the stairs instead of the elevator, because it was closer. I may have asked because subconsciously I knew he would have a hard time with it, and I was already really annoyed with this guy. He told me he didn't mind taking the stairs, he did it all the time.
On the way up, he paused, panting heavily, and pretended to wonder what some unintelligible graffiti on the wall said.
We started driving around again, trying to figure out what to do next. Kenny was really thirsty, and wanted me to stop at a gas station and buy him something to drink. What's a guy like Kenny drink, you ask? A two-liter bottle of Coke, and a two-liter bottle of cream soda. Hell, if somebody is nice enough to agree to buy you something to drink, you need to take advantage of it. When Kenny got back in the car, he made a failed attempt at opening the cream soda, spraying it all over my car. Moments after the soda explosion, there was a loud breaking noise, and the seat Kenny was sitting in snapped backwards from his girth. This would be the first of no less than 3 chairs of mine that Kenny broke. He would later go on to break a recliner and a papasan, the latter of which I was always scared of breaking, and I'm a really skinny guy.
Predicting that Kenny would want me to buy him food at some point, I decided we should go dumpster diving at some pizza places, which he was easily able to direct me to. If you're unaware, most pizza places have a policy of throwing away full pizzas in the box if the order is somehow messed up. The boxes are used to keep track of how many pizzas are made. I asked Kenny if he had any problem eating some free, clean, dumpstered food, he said he didn't. When we found pizza, he ended up eating a whole pepperoni pizza and a full order of cheese bread, minus the two or three pieces that I had. He later went on to tell somebody that this was "the worst thing" he ever did.
Unsure of what to do next, we decided to go to one of the many 24-hour superstores surrounding us. We wandered around the store aimlessly. At some point, we passed the books, where I noticed this book I had seen there before and briefly glanced at. It was a book written by a supposed child-abuse victim, but the entire book, from what I saw, read like some kind of twisted internet torture fetish fan fiction. I told him I thought the book was bullshit written to capitalize on peoples' morbid curiosities.
"No," he said, "It's all true. That guy was on Oprah."
"So?"
"Do you honestly think somebody would go on Oprah and lie?"
"Yeah, to sell books."
"No, no. They had a police officer there to back it up. Do you think a police officer is going to lie?"
"Are you serious? You don't think cops lie?"
"You can't just go on TV and lie! I saw him on Oprah! You're so cynical!"
I was awestruck. Not only did this guy watch Oprah, but he believed every word she or anybody on her show ever said. He didn't believe it was even possible that somebody would lie on TV, and I was just an incredibly cynical bastard. No wonder the guy loved that Eminem movie so much. He was convinced it was the true story of his life. I had to ask him about that, and once again I was told I was very cynical for not believing some story about a famous person.
Bored, we drove off to another 24-hour superstore. At this one, we walked to the furniture section and sat down on a couch. A few minutes later, a plainclothes security guy came and told us we had to move. Kenny got up, and I moved to the adjacent couch. Rent-a-cop glared at me.
"Come on, man," Kenny pleaded.
"If I'm going to buy a couch here, I need to know that it's comfortable."
Rent-a-cop said nothing, he just kept glaring at me while Kenny continued to plead with me like a little baby. I finally gave in just so he would shut the fuck up.
We went back to visit my girl, hard at work selling sex dolls and rubber vaginas to guys who all claimed they were novelty gifts for friends. I perused the pornography selection while Kenny went to the counter to talk to his only 'friend.' He thought I was out of earshot when he started bitching about the music we were listening to in the car the whole time.
"He just kept playing it!" he said.
I was going through a death metal phase at the time, and so the music was loud, abrasive shit that most people, including the current version of myself, cannot listen to for very long, if at all. The thing is, though, I had asked him what he thought about it, and he had told me that he really, really liked it. What the fuck?
When we left, I turned the death metal up louder as we drove to yet another 24-hour superstore. We wandered around the store, and I tried to get him to stop in the furniture section to just relax. He was too scared of security, even when I told him they couldn't do anything to us for testing out furniture we might buy.
When it was finally time to pick up my girl and drop him off, I was so relieved.
A person reading this might think I'm being excessively hard on Kenny. Sure, he was an idiot and a huge loser, but so what? It's sad, and we should feel sorry for people like Kenny. I shouldn't be talking shit about him on the internet, giving people actual quotes from him like, "Sometimes when I eat a whole pizza, I feel fat."
I used to feel that way about Kenny. I felt bad for him after hanging out with him, and I felt bad for him for pretty much all of the time I knew him, despite his attempts to make moves on my lady. I thought he was a pitiful excuse for a human, which he is. I feel fully justified calling him a goddamn motherfucker, though. Allow me to explain why.
At the end of my relationship with that girl, she was living in my apartment and contributing absolutely nothing. She wouldn't help pay the bills, she wouldn't help pay rent, and she wouldn't lift a finger to help keep the place clean. She would hang out with Kenny all day while I was at work, letting that sniveling worm kiss her ass and make her feel great all day, and then she'd come back and sleep at my place. She didn't work. She didn't go to school. She did spend all of my money, though. And she was an mean, evil, and completely crazy fucking bitch on top of that.
When I told her she had to move out, the two of them had me arrested on false charges and then robbed my apartment while I was locked up. I was eventually cleared of the charges, but being cleared of charges doesn't mean you get back all the time or money you lost because of them.
I hadn't seen Kenny in a few years, but he was working at a store where I went to buy something. I left as soon as I saw him and never went back to that store.
We picked up Kenny on the way to her job, where she was to be dropped off and picked up hours later. In the meantime, I was supposed to hang out with Kenny all night. When Kenny lumbered out of his house, I was in awe of his girth. He was a hulking figure, nearly as wide as I am tall, and towered over me. He also dressed to impress, wearing a button-up shirt printed with a graphic of a dragon and smelling of urine and heavy perspiration.
We dropped the girl off at the strip club, and then it was just us guys. Kenny held his seat belt in place in case the cops were out, because he couldn't make it actually fit around him.
"So, what is there to do around here?"
"Uh, Idunno."
The problem was that Kenny had absolutely no life. He had no friends. He had no job. He was a 20 year old high school dropout who did nothing but sit at home playing Evercrack, eating, and reeking of stale pee.
We finally decided we'd hit the video arcade first. On the way there, Kenny tried in vain to impress me by telling me he could rap all the lyrics to a Limp Bizkit album. When I wasn't interested in hearing him rap, he went on and on about Everquest, filling me in on all the most mundane details.
"Well, you have your bronze pieces, and you get 10 of them and it's worth one silver piece, and then you get 10 of them and it's worth one gold piece. Oh man, do you realize how much a horse costs in Everquest? I've been questing for hundreds of hours a week, and I'm not even close! There are these monsters, and..."
Since he seemed into computer RPGs, I asked him if he ever played oldschool paper Dungeons and Dragons. He told me he and his older brother had tried it, but couldn't get into it. I assume it wasn't visual enough, or took too much thought. They were, however, avid fans of Yu-Gi-Oh.
Yes, a 20 year old and his older brother collected and played Yu-Gi-Oh.
We got to the part of town where the arcade was, and there we ran into another problem. Kenny didn't know where it was. This would be a recurring theme throughout the night. Kenny, despite having lived there his entire life, didn't know where fucking anything was, and he was going to be my navigator for the night. Wonderful.
We found a structure to park in and wandered some streets looking for the arcade. While we walked, Kenny bragged about how all he needed was a thin denim jacket, while I was freezing my ass off in a big coat. We ended up asking somebody where the arcade was.
"Across the diag," she said.
I asked Kenny where the diag was, and if it was a long walk. Apparently we were right next to the diag, but it was an incredibly long walk and we needed to go back to the car so we could drive to a different parking structure. I later found out that the diag is a very short walk, probably less than the equivalent of two city blocks.
We got to the arcade, which was Kenny's idea, where he told me he didn't have any money. Annoyed, I decided we'd spend 10 bucks and then leave.
When we left the arcade and went back to the structure, I asked Kenny if he minded taking the stairs instead of the elevator, because it was closer. I may have asked because subconsciously I knew he would have a hard time with it, and I was already really annoyed with this guy. He told me he didn't mind taking the stairs, he did it all the time.
On the way up, he paused, panting heavily, and pretended to wonder what some unintelligible graffiti on the wall said.
We started driving around again, trying to figure out what to do next. Kenny was really thirsty, and wanted me to stop at a gas station and buy him something to drink. What's a guy like Kenny drink, you ask? A two-liter bottle of Coke, and a two-liter bottle of cream soda. Hell, if somebody is nice enough to agree to buy you something to drink, you need to take advantage of it. When Kenny got back in the car, he made a failed attempt at opening the cream soda, spraying it all over my car. Moments after the soda explosion, there was a loud breaking noise, and the seat Kenny was sitting in snapped backwards from his girth. This would be the first of no less than 3 chairs of mine that Kenny broke. He would later go on to break a recliner and a papasan, the latter of which I was always scared of breaking, and I'm a really skinny guy.
Predicting that Kenny would want me to buy him food at some point, I decided we should go dumpster diving at some pizza places, which he was easily able to direct me to. If you're unaware, most pizza places have a policy of throwing away full pizzas in the box if the order is somehow messed up. The boxes are used to keep track of how many pizzas are made. I asked Kenny if he had any problem eating some free, clean, dumpstered food, he said he didn't. When we found pizza, he ended up eating a whole pepperoni pizza and a full order of cheese bread, minus the two or three pieces that I had. He later went on to tell somebody that this was "the worst thing" he ever did.
Unsure of what to do next, we decided to go to one of the many 24-hour superstores surrounding us. We wandered around the store aimlessly. At some point, we passed the books, where I noticed this book I had seen there before and briefly glanced at. It was a book written by a supposed child-abuse victim, but the entire book, from what I saw, read like some kind of twisted internet torture fetish fan fiction. I told him I thought the book was bullshit written to capitalize on peoples' morbid curiosities.
"No," he said, "It's all true. That guy was on Oprah."
"So?"
"Do you honestly think somebody would go on Oprah and lie?"
"Yeah, to sell books."
"No, no. They had a police officer there to back it up. Do you think a police officer is going to lie?"
"Are you serious? You don't think cops lie?"
"You can't just go on TV and lie! I saw him on Oprah! You're so cynical!"
I was awestruck. Not only did this guy watch Oprah, but he believed every word she or anybody on her show ever said. He didn't believe it was even possible that somebody would lie on TV, and I was just an incredibly cynical bastard. No wonder the guy loved that Eminem movie so much. He was convinced it was the true story of his life. I had to ask him about that, and once again I was told I was very cynical for not believing some story about a famous person.
Bored, we drove off to another 24-hour superstore. At this one, we walked to the furniture section and sat down on a couch. A few minutes later, a plainclothes security guy came and told us we had to move. Kenny got up, and I moved to the adjacent couch. Rent-a-cop glared at me.
"Come on, man," Kenny pleaded.
"If I'm going to buy a couch here, I need to know that it's comfortable."
Rent-a-cop said nothing, he just kept glaring at me while Kenny continued to plead with me like a little baby. I finally gave in just so he would shut the fuck up.
We went back to visit my girl, hard at work selling sex dolls and rubber vaginas to guys who all claimed they were novelty gifts for friends. I perused the pornography selection while Kenny went to the counter to talk to his only 'friend.' He thought I was out of earshot when he started bitching about the music we were listening to in the car the whole time.
"He just kept playing it!" he said.
I was going through a death metal phase at the time, and so the music was loud, abrasive shit that most people, including the current version of myself, cannot listen to for very long, if at all. The thing is, though, I had asked him what he thought about it, and he had told me that he really, really liked it. What the fuck?
When we left, I turned the death metal up louder as we drove to yet another 24-hour superstore. We wandered around the store, and I tried to get him to stop in the furniture section to just relax. He was too scared of security, even when I told him they couldn't do anything to us for testing out furniture we might buy.
When it was finally time to pick up my girl and drop him off, I was so relieved.
A person reading this might think I'm being excessively hard on Kenny. Sure, he was an idiot and a huge loser, but so what? It's sad, and we should feel sorry for people like Kenny. I shouldn't be talking shit about him on the internet, giving people actual quotes from him like, "Sometimes when I eat a whole pizza, I feel fat."
I used to feel that way about Kenny. I felt bad for him after hanging out with him, and I felt bad for him for pretty much all of the time I knew him, despite his attempts to make moves on my lady. I thought he was a pitiful excuse for a human, which he is. I feel fully justified calling him a goddamn motherfucker, though. Allow me to explain why.
At the end of my relationship with that girl, she was living in my apartment and contributing absolutely nothing. She wouldn't help pay the bills, she wouldn't help pay rent, and she wouldn't lift a finger to help keep the place clean. She would hang out with Kenny all day while I was at work, letting that sniveling worm kiss her ass and make her feel great all day, and then she'd come back and sleep at my place. She didn't work. She didn't go to school. She did spend all of my money, though. And she was an mean, evil, and completely crazy fucking bitch on top of that.
When I told her she had to move out, the two of them had me arrested on false charges and then robbed my apartment while I was locked up. I was eventually cleared of the charges, but being cleared of charges doesn't mean you get back all the time or money you lost because of them.
I hadn't seen Kenny in a few years, but he was working at a store where I went to buy something. I left as soon as I saw him and never went back to that store.
5.6.06
The Man, The Mystery
Recently, my buddy doug ran into this guy we knew from high school, Tony. He snapped a picture of him, which I am now sharing with you.
I barely knew the guy. He was in my 9th grade science class. During a discussion on leaches, he interjected, "Getting leaches on you is cool." Our teacher started laughing and said, "Yeah, if you want hickeys all over your body!" He went on to tell the class, to our further amusement, that he had gotten covered in leaches while he was swimming under some bridge to pack explosives underneath it, like some sort of ultra-awesome commando on an important mission from the president.
A year or two after high school, I drove my dad to an auto shop so he could pick up his car. While I was waiting to make sure his car was ready, this guy with a huge, unkempt lumberjack beard stepped out of the shop. He had a big piece of metal in his hand, and was staring at me like he knew me. It took me a few seconds to realize it was Tony.
He came up to my car and showed me the piece of metal in his hand. It was long and flat, in no way symmetrical, and one edge had been sharpened into a jagged edge. There was fabric or tape wrapped around the base, so one could hold it without slicing themselves.
"I make swords," he told me, "It's what I do."
He went on to tell me that he worked in the auto shop, where apparently they didn't mind if he spent his time looking like the unabomber and making prison-style shanks. He also said that with his beard he could get into any bar, despite being underage, and that I should stop by the motel where he lived to hang out sometime.
"Room 28, man, I'm always there!"
I never saw him or heard about him again.
When Doug ran into him, Tony filled him in on some of the more recent events in his life. Apparently that shop where he was working was owned by his dad, and Tony was in the process of purchasing it from him. Working as a sword smith/auto mechanic had been incredibly profitable for him, and when he was arrested for driving under the influence, he had a stretch limo pick him up from the police station within 15 minutes.
I think tomorrow I'm going to quit my job and look for a new career in the crazy guy industry.
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