In 4th grade, I took a 6th grade math class and a 6th grade science class. I spent most of the rest of the day in a room full of social retards who required extra supervision, lest we destroy something or cause a scene. As a class, supervised by our teacher, we also attended a 7th grade gym class, and also ate lunch with the seventh graders. We had to get our food and then sit with the rest of the class at a table with our teacher, who would shoo away the normal kids who tried to sit too close. It was during our lunch periods that I first noticed the racist tough guy.
I encountered lots of racist tough guys when I lived in Indiana. This guy was notable only in the fact that he was the first of his variety of people I ever encountered. I never had any direct interactions with him, but I learned through casual observation that he was, in fact, a racist tough guy.
When I'd sit at our guarded table in the cafeteria, I'd sometimes notice the racist tough guy. He had a mullet, and looked bigger and older than most of the other kids. He acted like a loud, obnoxious jerk, and the ladies seemed to love him. They giggled as he made fun of smaller students. I feared him, but I also got the feeling that he was cool as hell. He seemed awesome, and he commanded respect.
In 5th grade, our class got a different teacher, one who would let us go to lunch by ourselves. We still ate with the seventh graders. My friend Mike and I relished the freedom, though we never really interacted with any of the normal kids. I noticed that the racist tough guy was still in seventh grade, and I tried to stay away from him while I was in the cafeteria, because though I would have loved to be his friend due to his level of coolness, I was also pretty sure that, given the chance, he would fuck with me.
One day there was a loud rumor that a fight was taking place outside. We went outside, where most of the seventh graders had congregated, somehow without attracting the attention of any authority figures. There was an island of grass and two trees, surrounded by an easily-overstepped chain and pillar fence, in the middle of the sidewalk leading out to the parking lot. Kids circled the island and whispered about the two kids inside of the chain fence, who were moments away from extremely brutal 7th grade violence. One of the kids on the island was the racist tough guy.
Supposedly, at least one punch had been thrown before Mike and I arrived. Supposedly, it was a very loud punch. All we could see, though, were two kids standing around and not fighting. They weren't even doing the standard adolescent boy fighting dance, where two participants puff up their chests and try to intimidate each other by looking tough. Instead, one nerdy looking guy with glasses stood spitting on the ground, while the racist tough guy gestured wildly and swore loudly to his friends on the sidelines.
"Fucking motherfucker wants to fucking fuck some shit! Who does this motherfucker fucking think he is? I'm going to fucking kick his motherfucking ass!"
The swearing and the standing went on for a few minutes while we waited for violence, and then whispers of authority figures spread through the crowd and everybody dispersed.
There was a public pool in the same town where they bussed me to school. It was half an hour away, but it was the only public place to swim that we knew about, so my mom took my siblings and I there a few times. The racist tough guy was there one time.
I never saw the racist tough guy swim. He sat on the side of the pool, stretched out on a beach chair and surrounded by girls, and ranted loudly about the Mexicans who were at the pool that day.
"Fucking spicks! They need to put up fucking barricades to keep these fucking spicks out of here! I'm sick of the fucking spicks coming in here and fucking getting everything fucking dirty! Where are my motherfucking barricades?"
The girls surrounding him laughed at his racist tirade. At some point, they looked at my mom, who is Filipino, and the racist tough guy whispered something to the girls. They snickered, not really trying to hide the fact that they were obviously making some ignorant joke at her expense.
When we went home, my mom couldn't stop telling my dad about how horrible it was, and how she had never experienced anything like that in her life. It's not something that happens in California, where my mom had spent her entire life until moving to Indiana about a year before the incident. My dad just told her that people are ignorant assholes, and not to worry so much about those kind of people.
We saw the racist tough guy in public one more time, when I was in 6th or 7th grade. Our car had broken down at a gas station, and we were sitting in it and waiting for my dad. While we waited, the racist tough guy pulled up in his car. He was with a girl I recognized, and who I always thought seemed like a nice girl. The racist tough guy got out of the car and made a phone call on the payphone. He was loud enough that we could hear him in our car.
"I don't fucking give a fuck!" he yelled into the phone. "Motherfucking cocksuckers need to fucking learn what the fuck they're fucking doing!"
"Oh my god," my mom said, "What an absolute creep!"
"Don't you remember him?" I asked. "That's the racist guy from the pool."
My mom didn't remember his face, but it was definitely him. When he was done yelling obscenities at whoever he was talking to, he smashed the receiver on the phone a few times, and walked back to his car, where he continued to yell obscenities at the girl as he pulled away. She looked really passive, just blankly staring forward as he yelled. I felt bad for her.
Showing posts with label mullets. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mullets. Show all posts
27.3.07
3.1.07
Real men kill stuff.
Shortly after I moved out into the sticks in fourth grade, I came home and my dad had a surprise for me. I went into the backyard and peered into a big garbage can where my surprise waited. At the bottom of the can a small snake, probably barely longer than foot, lay passively coiled up. Having been a city kid my entire life up to that point, the sight of a wild animal thrilled me. I was excited to have a snake as a pet, but I was scared to touch it at first. I poked at it with a stick, and it flared its neck like a cobra and hissed.
I went inside and looked in a book about North American animals to figure out what kind of snake it was, and whether or not it was dangerous. I quickly learned that it was a hognose snake, which might strike if threatened, but would keep its mouth closed and not actually bite. Armed with this knowledge, I went back outside and picked it up without fear. I had a new friend.
A few weeks later I came home and my neighbor, a girl my age, told me that her dad had caught another snake. We went into my backyard with her sister, my sister, and my brother, and peered into the same garbage can. This snake was several times larger than the first, and far more aggressive, sliding up the plastic walls of the can in a desperate attempt to escape. We poked at it with a stick and it would attack, prompting us to jump back in fearful jubilance. After a few minutes of this, my dad came outside and my neighbor's mulleted dad walked over to our backyard. It was time for the spectacle to begin.
The children were told to step back, and my dad picked up the garbage can and dumped the snake out onto the ground. My neighbor's dad immediately struck at the snake with the sharp edge of a shovel. The first blow seemed to cripple the snake, bending it in the wrong direction. The second cut it cleanly in half. Both halves writhed around briefly before fully expiring.
For a year or so, I bought their rationale for killing the animal. They had said that they really had no choice, that it was under my neighbor's porch terrorizing their family and that it posed a serious threat. When it dawned on me how absurd their reasoning was, I was angry. The snake could have easily been let loose in any part of the large wooded area that surrounded our houses, and it would not have returned. What I was told was nothing more than some tough guy's excuse for killing something. I confronted my dad about it, and he maintained that it was something that had to be done. I've wondered if he really believed that, or if he was just trying to rationalize his role in it, as he had made other statements demonstrating his distaste for wantonly killing things.
I went inside and looked in a book about North American animals to figure out what kind of snake it was, and whether or not it was dangerous. I quickly learned that it was a hognose snake, which might strike if threatened, but would keep its mouth closed and not actually bite. Armed with this knowledge, I went back outside and picked it up without fear. I had a new friend.
A few weeks later I came home and my neighbor, a girl my age, told me that her dad had caught another snake. We went into my backyard with her sister, my sister, and my brother, and peered into the same garbage can. This snake was several times larger than the first, and far more aggressive, sliding up the plastic walls of the can in a desperate attempt to escape. We poked at it with a stick and it would attack, prompting us to jump back in fearful jubilance. After a few minutes of this, my dad came outside and my neighbor's mulleted dad walked over to our backyard. It was time for the spectacle to begin.
The children were told to step back, and my dad picked up the garbage can and dumped the snake out onto the ground. My neighbor's dad immediately struck at the snake with the sharp edge of a shovel. The first blow seemed to cripple the snake, bending it in the wrong direction. The second cut it cleanly in half. Both halves writhed around briefly before fully expiring.
For a year or so, I bought their rationale for killing the animal. They had said that they really had no choice, that it was under my neighbor's porch terrorizing their family and that it posed a serious threat. When it dawned on me how absurd their reasoning was, I was angry. The snake could have easily been let loose in any part of the large wooded area that surrounded our houses, and it would not have returned. What I was told was nothing more than some tough guy's excuse for killing something. I confronted my dad about it, and he maintained that it was something that had to be done. I've wondered if he really believed that, or if he was just trying to rationalize his role in it, as he had made other statements demonstrating his distaste for wantonly killing things.
15.8.06
Hey, taco. Taaacooooooooo. Hey. Hey. Taacoooo.
Halfway through fourth grade, our class got a new kid. He was much bigger than myself, probably older, and had a mullet. His name was Mark, and on the rare occassion when he would actually show up to school, he would put his head down on his desk and sleep for most of the day. A few times he entertained the class by having crazy freak-out tantrums, throwing books and yelling, and teachers would have to sit on his back and restrain him. Every time he did that, we would all scoot backwards in our desks away from the action as we watched the chaos unfold. Once they got him restrained, another teacher would usually escort the rest of us to the library while they dealt with him.
Mark sat behind me when he came to school, and he gave me my first taste of good old fashioned Midwestern racism. He was also the first guy to demonstrate to me how racist people are idiots who can't tell one group of darkies from the next.
"Hey," he'd whisper. "Hey. Hey. Taaaaacooooo. Hey, taco. Taco! Taaaaaacccccoooooo!"
Sometimes this would go on all day long. Once, he even called me "refried beans," but it probably proved too difficult to say because he only said it once.
It was so bizarre to me, I didn't even realize he was trying to make fun of me, and I never responded. I guess if I had known, I could have told him I was half Filipino, but it probably just would have confused him. I'm sure he wouldn't have known to call me Lumpia instead of Taco.
Mark sat behind me when he came to school, and he gave me my first taste of good old fashioned Midwestern racism. He was also the first guy to demonstrate to me how racist people are idiots who can't tell one group of darkies from the next.
"Hey," he'd whisper. "Hey. Hey. Taaaaacooooo. Hey, taco. Taco! Taaaaaacccccoooooo!"
Sometimes this would go on all day long. Once, he even called me "refried beans," but it probably proved too difficult to say because he only said it once.
It was so bizarre to me, I didn't even realize he was trying to make fun of me, and I never responded. I guess if I had known, I could have told him I was half Filipino, but it probably just would have confused him. I'm sure he wouldn't have known to call me Lumpia instead of Taco.
11.6.06
The Fighting Mullets
When I was in high school, there was a trio of brothers who had a reputation as being some really bad motherfuckers. Their hobbies were well known, as they were vocal about their endeavors: they liked to get really trashed, and they also liked to fight. All three of them had mullets, and would walk the halls with their hands in their pockets and their chests puffed out, terrorizing the small and the weak.
My experience with them was limited, but noteworthy in the fact that I feared them. After high school, I never saw any of them, and I heard very little. This is a documentation of what I knew about the brothers, ending with the last thing I ever heard regarding them, which was that one of them ended up dying of a gunshot wound to the head.
The oldest brother was the meanest. He was a few years older than I was, but only one grade ahead. When I started school, there was a hallway my friends and I would avoid because if we went that way, old mullet and his buddies would either knock the books out of our hands, or shove us into lockers. Technically, they'd never really shove us so much as they would shove one of their huge friends into one of us smaller guys, and it would be our bodies that went crashing against the lockers.
I once had in-school suspension and had to spend the entire day in the corner of a math teacher's class. At some point, old mullet had that teachers class. When he saw me in the corner, unable to even get up without permission, he picked up two chalkboard erasers and started hitting me with them, covering my clothes and hair with chalk dust. Being a tiny little guy, I couldn't do shit about it.
The middle brother was quiet, and by any measure the least mean. He was in the same grade as his older brother, and was once in my biology class. He hung out with the same group as old mullet, but as far as I can recall, he never did any of the shoving or book-knocking. In fact, I only ever heard him speak one time. Standing in a lunch line, I once heard him to remark, "Crack some fuckin' skulls."
There was another violent redneck in my homeroom named Derrick who liked to regale us with tales of horrific animal abuse. He was also good friends with the mullet brothers, and once told us a story illustrating a day in the life of these loving characters.
In the rural area where we lived, there were this things called sandburs. They were like tiny balls of vegetation velcro whose barbed hooks made them attach easily to skin, and were painful to remove. They grew on stalks so that passing animals would inadvertently pick them up and deposit the seeds elsewhere.
Derrick, laughing so hard he could barely speak, told us how the brothers would hanging out, shirtless in the summer heat, when the oldest mullet had taken a stalk of sandburs and smashed it into his unsuspecting youngest brother, embedding lots of them deep within his back. A good laugh was enjoyed by all, save the guy with hundreds of tiny barbed thorns buried in his flesh.
The youngest mullet was few years younger than I was. By the time he arrived on the scene at my school, the oldest one had dropped out, but the new one was ready to take his place as the meanest mullet around.
Young mullet hung out with a crowd I generally identified as the Nazi stoners. They were basically the same crowd the older mullets rolled with, only younger. They were loud, they liked getting trashed, and they were total assholes.
On the way out to the bus one day, the Nazi stoners were spitting into the wind. Young mullet spat and it came dangerously close to me, prompting a laugh from the whole group. One of them yelled, "You fucking faggot!"
"Faggot!" echoed young mullet.
"Yes," I told him, figuring I might get my ass kicked but wanting to piss them off, "I'm gay!"
His smile dissolved into a sneer. He curled one hand into a fist, and then punched his other hand, growling.
Needless to say, I was very impressed.
I don't know what ever became of old mullet or young mullet, but I do know what happened to middle mullet after high school.
Middle mullet graduated and joined the army. The war in Iraq was still a couple years away, so they cleaned him up and sent him home.
He was a changed man. He once lived for no reason other than to get fucked up. Now he didn't do any drugs.
One day he got into a huge fight with old mullet. They fought like they had never fought before, trying to break each other's faces as if they were strangers.
When it was over, middle mullet cleaned the kitchen floor with a toothbrush.
And then he went to his room and shot himself in the head.
My experience with them was limited, but noteworthy in the fact that I feared them. After high school, I never saw any of them, and I heard very little. This is a documentation of what I knew about the brothers, ending with the last thing I ever heard regarding them, which was that one of them ended up dying of a gunshot wound to the head.
The oldest brother was the meanest. He was a few years older than I was, but only one grade ahead. When I started school, there was a hallway my friends and I would avoid because if we went that way, old mullet and his buddies would either knock the books out of our hands, or shove us into lockers. Technically, they'd never really shove us so much as they would shove one of their huge friends into one of us smaller guys, and it would be our bodies that went crashing against the lockers.
I once had in-school suspension and had to spend the entire day in the corner of a math teacher's class. At some point, old mullet had that teachers class. When he saw me in the corner, unable to even get up without permission, he picked up two chalkboard erasers and started hitting me with them, covering my clothes and hair with chalk dust. Being a tiny little guy, I couldn't do shit about it.
The middle brother was quiet, and by any measure the least mean. He was in the same grade as his older brother, and was once in my biology class. He hung out with the same group as old mullet, but as far as I can recall, he never did any of the shoving or book-knocking. In fact, I only ever heard him speak one time. Standing in a lunch line, I once heard him to remark, "Crack some fuckin' skulls."
There was another violent redneck in my homeroom named Derrick who liked to regale us with tales of horrific animal abuse. He was also good friends with the mullet brothers, and once told us a story illustrating a day in the life of these loving characters.
In the rural area where we lived, there were this things called sandburs. They were like tiny balls of vegetation velcro whose barbed hooks made them attach easily to skin, and were painful to remove. They grew on stalks so that passing animals would inadvertently pick them up and deposit the seeds elsewhere.
Derrick, laughing so hard he could barely speak, told us how the brothers would hanging out, shirtless in the summer heat, when the oldest mullet had taken a stalk of sandburs and smashed it into his unsuspecting youngest brother, embedding lots of them deep within his back. A good laugh was enjoyed by all, save the guy with hundreds of tiny barbed thorns buried in his flesh.
The youngest mullet was few years younger than I was. By the time he arrived on the scene at my school, the oldest one had dropped out, but the new one was ready to take his place as the meanest mullet around.
Young mullet hung out with a crowd I generally identified as the Nazi stoners. They were basically the same crowd the older mullets rolled with, only younger. They were loud, they liked getting trashed, and they were total assholes.
On the way out to the bus one day, the Nazi stoners were spitting into the wind. Young mullet spat and it came dangerously close to me, prompting a laugh from the whole group. One of them yelled, "You fucking faggot!"
"Faggot!" echoed young mullet.
"Yes," I told him, figuring I might get my ass kicked but wanting to piss them off, "I'm gay!"
His smile dissolved into a sneer. He curled one hand into a fist, and then punched his other hand, growling.
Needless to say, I was very impressed.
I don't know what ever became of old mullet or young mullet, but I do know what happened to middle mullet after high school.
Middle mullet graduated and joined the army. The war in Iraq was still a couple years away, so they cleaned him up and sent him home.
He was a changed man. He once lived for no reason other than to get fucked up. Now he didn't do any drugs.
One day he got into a huge fight with old mullet. They fought like they had never fought before, trying to break each other's faces as if they were strangers.
When it was over, middle mullet cleaned the kitchen floor with a toothbrush.
And then he went to his room and shot himself in the head.
7.6.06
Ray Gay is NOT a musical genre.
"Hey, Ray, do you like reggae music?"
"Shut up!"
"I'm serious, like Bob Marley. You like Bob Marley? That's reggae."
"Shut up!"
"Dude, I'm just talking about reggae, I want to know if you like Bob Marley. You know, reggae."
"Miss Sharon! He's calling me gay!"
Sharon, my bus driver in 6th grade, told me to shut up.
"There's no such thing as reggae music," she told me, "I know you just made that up to make fun of Ray. If you keep talking about it, I'm going to write you up and you'll get kicked off the bus."
This was the same bus driver who also knew, for a fact, that I was a Christian and not a Buddhist, as I had claimed when she tried to alter my disruptive behavior by playing the Jesus Card. She knew this to be fact because "Buddhas have dots on their heads." The truth was that I was neither.
Ray was this guy who was older and bigger than I was, and had a mullet. He once puked on the bus, on a day when the driver made me sit with him for lack of seats, prompting me to jump over our shared seat. It smelled like dog food, so I'm pretty sure it must have been corned beef hash. I was friends with this guy for a while, but then he got caught fondling a retarded girl, and I didn't like him anymore. It wasn't that I really cared whether or not he liked Bob Marley, it's just that I thought it was a way I could push his buttons and not get in trouble for it. I wasn't calling him gay, I was just asking a simple question about his musical preferences.
After I was told I couldn't speak of this imaginary music form, I went to a teacher to write me a note to give my bus driver. She did, and I gave it to Sharon that afternoon.
"That doesn't say ray gay! That says re-jay! And you're still not allowed to talk about it!"
In the cafeteria the next day I was discussing my defeat with my friends, telling them about how Ray and the bus driver don't believe that reggae is a sort of music.
"What'd you say about Ray?" asked some random kid walking by. I explained the story to him.
"You better not be talking about Ray Milhouse!" he said.
"No, I'm talking about Ray Watson, who rides my bus and doesn't believe reggae is a kind of music."
"Oh, man, you're calling Ray Millhouse a fag? He's gonna kick your ass!"
"No...whatever."
A week later, during gym class, the boys and girls were segregated. The girls had to go do some girly exercises or something, and the boys had to play dodge ball, shirts vs. skins. Ray Millhouse and I were both put on the skins team.
During the first game, I was hit by a ball pretty quickly and I had to wait on the sidelines. Moments later, a shirtless, mulletted Ray Millhouse appeared at my side, along with the kid from the cafeteria who told me Ray would kick my ass.
"I heard you called me a faggot."
"No," I told him, trying to explain the situation about Ray Watson and Bob Marley. Halfway through a sentence, he punched me in my bony chest. I groaned. The other kid laughed.
"You're sorry, aren't you?" he asked me, pushing me against the wall.
"Yeah," I said, and got punched in the chest again, his knuckles bouncing off my sternum.
"Ok...now...we're...settled..." he said, punctuating each word with another punch.
Then the two of them walked away. I never spoke to either one of them again. I did find a paperback book about monsters with RAY MILLHOUSE written on the inside cover, though, and I kept it, 'cause fuck that guy.
After high school, Ray Millhouse had a job working at local campground. He parked a company pickup truck at the top of a hill, and left it in neutral. He got fired when it rolled into the lake at the bottom of the hill.
The last time I heard Ray Watson even mentioned was towards the end of high school. Apparently he had a mean pitbull, and rode a Harley around harrassing people until they wanted to kick his ass, at which point his mom would call the cops.
"Shut up!"
"I'm serious, like Bob Marley. You like Bob Marley? That's reggae."
"Shut up!"
"Dude, I'm just talking about reggae, I want to know if you like Bob Marley. You know, reggae."
"Miss Sharon! He's calling me gay!"
Sharon, my bus driver in 6th grade, told me to shut up.
"There's no such thing as reggae music," she told me, "I know you just made that up to make fun of Ray. If you keep talking about it, I'm going to write you up and you'll get kicked off the bus."
This was the same bus driver who also knew, for a fact, that I was a Christian and not a Buddhist, as I had claimed when she tried to alter my disruptive behavior by playing the Jesus Card. She knew this to be fact because "Buddhas have dots on their heads." The truth was that I was neither.
Ray was this guy who was older and bigger than I was, and had a mullet. He once puked on the bus, on a day when the driver made me sit with him for lack of seats, prompting me to jump over our shared seat. It smelled like dog food, so I'm pretty sure it must have been corned beef hash. I was friends with this guy for a while, but then he got caught fondling a retarded girl, and I didn't like him anymore. It wasn't that I really cared whether or not he liked Bob Marley, it's just that I thought it was a way I could push his buttons and not get in trouble for it. I wasn't calling him gay, I was just asking a simple question about his musical preferences.
After I was told I couldn't speak of this imaginary music form, I went to a teacher to write me a note to give my bus driver. She did, and I gave it to Sharon that afternoon.
Sharon, Reggae is a real style of music, originating in Jamaica. You can hear it on the show Northern Exposure. Mrs. McKinney
"That doesn't say ray gay! That says re-jay! And you're still not allowed to talk about it!"
In the cafeteria the next day I was discussing my defeat with my friends, telling them about how Ray and the bus driver don't believe that reggae is a sort of music.
"What'd you say about Ray?" asked some random kid walking by. I explained the story to him.
"You better not be talking about Ray Milhouse!" he said.
"No, I'm talking about Ray Watson, who rides my bus and doesn't believe reggae is a kind of music."
"Oh, man, you're calling Ray Millhouse a fag? He's gonna kick your ass!"
"No...whatever."
A week later, during gym class, the boys and girls were segregated. The girls had to go do some girly exercises or something, and the boys had to play dodge ball, shirts vs. skins. Ray Millhouse and I were both put on the skins team.
During the first game, I was hit by a ball pretty quickly and I had to wait on the sidelines. Moments later, a shirtless, mulletted Ray Millhouse appeared at my side, along with the kid from the cafeteria who told me Ray would kick my ass.
"I heard you called me a faggot."
"No," I told him, trying to explain the situation about Ray Watson and Bob Marley. Halfway through a sentence, he punched me in my bony chest. I groaned. The other kid laughed.
"You're sorry, aren't you?" he asked me, pushing me against the wall.
"Yeah," I said, and got punched in the chest again, his knuckles bouncing off my sternum.
"Ok...now...we're...settled..." he said, punctuating each word with another punch.
Then the two of them walked away. I never spoke to either one of them again. I did find a paperback book about monsters with RAY MILLHOUSE written on the inside cover, though, and I kept it, 'cause fuck that guy.
After high school, Ray Millhouse had a job working at local campground. He parked a company pickup truck at the top of a hill, and left it in neutral. He got fired when it rolled into the lake at the bottom of the hill.
The last time I heard Ray Watson even mentioned was towards the end of high school. Apparently he had a mean pitbull, and rode a Harley around harrassing people until they wanted to kick his ass, at which point his mom would call the cops.
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