Ninth grade was the last year that I had gym class, as it was the last year that it was mandatory. Once a week, after doing our daily calisthenics that we wouldn't actually do if the teacher wasn't watching, we'd go to the weight room for "weight training". We got to pick out our own workout routines, so for my friends and I, this meant grabbing the smallest free-weights, finding an isolated spot to sit, and only pretending to lift the weights when the teacher was looking or yelling at us.
One day in the weight room, we were sitting around, not lifting weights, and discussing the merits of various pen-and-paper role playing game systems.
"I think the to-hit-armor-class-zero system Dungeons and Dragons uses works so perfectly," I said, "it's not needlessly complex, like DC Heroes or the Palladium system."
"Yeah, THAC0 is good," Sean said, "I prefer it over the Palladium system, but Palladium does put out great content for their games. Rifts is great. I like using Palladium setting ideas, but with the Dungeons and Dragons system."
"You guys talking about systems?" a voice suddenly interjected. It was Danny Pitarms. He was an alright guy who we talked to occasionally, but he wasn't part of our nerd circle.
"Uh, yeah," I said, "RPG systems."
"My buddy has an awesome system in his car," he told us, "The subwoofer can throw a quarter 25 feet!"
"Um, cool?"
Danny seemed to be able to tell that we weren't particularly impressed. He wandered away and we quietly made fun of him briefly before continuing our conversation. We were better than him, because we were nerds, and he was just a dork.
Showing posts with label high school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label high school. Show all posts
4.2.08
Simon's $50 pound of weed.
This is, by far, my post popular post, receiving a bunch of views every day, but nobody has ever left a comment. You can do it anonymously. You should leave one. What is it you're looking for that brought you here? Did the title lead you to believe somebody had a pound of weed for sale, over the internet, for $50? Were you trying to figure out what a pound of weed is worth? (ProTip: Try THMQ.) Are you doing research for school? I can't, for the life of me, think of what else might be bringing so many clicks this way. Why don't you leave a comment and help end the mystery?
I first met Simon in 5th grade. He was a couple years older than me, several times my size, and a compulsive liar. On the bus, he would brag to me about how he had so much body hair that he had to shampoo his chest, pubes, and armpits, and how his flacid penis was the size of a full roll of paper-towels. Simon was clearly black, but would vehemently deny it, claiming to be a Mexican/Native American hybrid, despite looking like neither. He referred to black people as "colored people."
I considered Simon a friend, though this didn't prevent me from occasionally setting off his violent temper just for kicks. I learned that simply stating "I am God" would infuriate the religious kid, so it became something I enjoyed saying. Both of us were classified as "emotionally handicapped" and stuck in a classroom of other fire-starting crazies, and on several occasions, I witnessed the full power of his explosive rage, with screaming, book-throwing, and eventual restraint by all the adults in the room.
In 8th grade, I lost my "emotionally handicapped" label and stopped riding the short bus into the neighboring school district. I started going to the school I was supposed to, and Simon followed me the next year. I had no classes with him, but would sometimes talk to him in the hallway.
One day, Simon pulled me off to the side of the hall. He looked around suspiciously, and then leaned in close to my ear.
"I'm looking for a pound," he whispered.
"A pound of weed?" I asked in my normal voice.
"Shhhh! Yeah. Can you help me out?"
"Yeah, I'll see what I can do," I told him, and walked away.
As luck would have it, I had a friend in Spanish class who was a known pot dealer that had recently been busted by his mom. She had opened the trunk of his car to find it full of weed that he had grown in the woods. She was furious, and wanted him to get rid of it all immediately. For this reason, he had actually offered me a pound of weed at the crazy discount price of $100 just days before Simon's request. I declined, as I didn't smoke or have $100. When Simon asked for the pound, though, lights starting going off in my head. I didn't tell him about the offer, because I figured I'd pretend I was looking around, and then make some money brokering a deal for him. Even at the time, so many years ago, you could consider yourself well-connected to even get an ounce for $100, so anybody actually looking to make some money would have no problem dropping a few bills for a whole pound.
"Hey, Simon," I called out in the hallway a couple days later. He walked over to me.
"Yeah?"
"I found that pound you wanted," I told him.
"How much?" he asked.
"Three hundred bucks."
Simon rolled his eyes. "I already found one for fifty!" he said, walking away.
I told my friend in Spanish class about the failed transaction. We both agreed that Simon was completely full of shit.
The last time I saw Simon was one day when he showed up at school when I was in 12th grade. He spoke in a very soft voice and told me he was now a missionary. I didn't know whether or not to believe him, because nothing he ever said seemed to be true. I didn't really care, though. That guy was a jackass.
I first met Simon in 5th grade. He was a couple years older than me, several times my size, and a compulsive liar. On the bus, he would brag to me about how he had so much body hair that he had to shampoo his chest, pubes, and armpits, and how his flacid penis was the size of a full roll of paper-towels. Simon was clearly black, but would vehemently deny it, claiming to be a Mexican/Native American hybrid, despite looking like neither. He referred to black people as "colored people."
I considered Simon a friend, though this didn't prevent me from occasionally setting off his violent temper just for kicks. I learned that simply stating "I am God" would infuriate the religious kid, so it became something I enjoyed saying. Both of us were classified as "emotionally handicapped" and stuck in a classroom of other fire-starting crazies, and on several occasions, I witnessed the full power of his explosive rage, with screaming, book-throwing, and eventual restraint by all the adults in the room.
In 8th grade, I lost my "emotionally handicapped" label and stopped riding the short bus into the neighboring school district. I started going to the school I was supposed to, and Simon followed me the next year. I had no classes with him, but would sometimes talk to him in the hallway.
One day, Simon pulled me off to the side of the hall. He looked around suspiciously, and then leaned in close to my ear.
"I'm looking for a pound," he whispered.
"A pound of weed?" I asked in my normal voice.
"Shhhh! Yeah. Can you help me out?"
"Yeah, I'll see what I can do," I told him, and walked away.
As luck would have it, I had a friend in Spanish class who was a known pot dealer that had recently been busted by his mom. She had opened the trunk of his car to find it full of weed that he had grown in the woods. She was furious, and wanted him to get rid of it all immediately. For this reason, he had actually offered me a pound of weed at the crazy discount price of $100 just days before Simon's request. I declined, as I didn't smoke or have $100. When Simon asked for the pound, though, lights starting going off in my head. I didn't tell him about the offer, because I figured I'd pretend I was looking around, and then make some money brokering a deal for him. Even at the time, so many years ago, you could consider yourself well-connected to even get an ounce for $100, so anybody actually looking to make some money would have no problem dropping a few bills for a whole pound.
"Hey, Simon," I called out in the hallway a couple days later. He walked over to me.
"Yeah?"
"I found that pound you wanted," I told him.
"How much?" he asked.
"Three hundred bucks."
Simon rolled his eyes. "I already found one for fifty!" he said, walking away.
I told my friend in Spanish class about the failed transaction. We both agreed that Simon was completely full of shit.
The last time I saw Simon was one day when he showed up at school when I was in 12th grade. He spoke in a very soft voice and told me he was now a missionary. I didn't know whether or not to believe him, because nothing he ever said seemed to be true. I didn't really care, though. That guy was a jackass.
19.4.07
Crack Hedger's dog.
I was in 10th grade when I met Crack Hedger. It was the first day of school, and he was one of the incoming 7th graders riding my bus for the first time. My friend John and I were trying to talk to the new kids, and giving a couple of them new names. Most of the kids were obnoxious smartasses, but Crack seemed like a cool guy. His name was Joe, but we decided it would be Crack. Our logic was that Joe was white, and crack was white, and crack was also hilarious, so it was a good name.
I turned 16 that year, and my grandpa gave me my first car, a beat-up 1988 Dodge Colt, nicknamed the Chudmobile. The car was white, chud was white, and chud was also hilarious, so it was a good name. Crack offered to fix up my car stereo, for free, so I started going over to his house and letting him work on it. He put a new tape deck in, and installed an amp and some big speakers. He even built me a big speaker box to sit in the back of the car so I could drive around, bassing people out with a deep, low-end sound that made all the loose bits in my car rattle. All the parts came from a junkyard down the road from where he lived, and he said the guy who owned all the junk cars there told him he could take whatever he wanted.
Crack lived a few minutes away from me, in a house along a gravel road, with no other houses nearby. His place had an old bomb shelter and a lot of animals. As we started hanging out more, I got used to his dogs chasing my car as I drove away. I was scared of hitting them at first, but Crack told me just to drive and they would get out of the way. With time, my fear of running over one of his dogs subsided.
One summer afternoon, my friends and I decided to take a trip to the mall. There wasn't really any reason for it, but it was something to do. Living out in the middle of nowhere, the mall was a 40 minute drive away. I picked up John, and then went to go pick up Crack, the plan being to pick up my friend Sean next.
As we pulled away from Crack's house, his dogs started chasing my car, as they usually did. Like always, I just drove as if they weren't there, knowing they would get out of the way.
And then one of Crack's dogs ran right in front of my car.
"Fuck! No!" I yelled as my car drove over the dog. There were two sickening thumps as each tire on the passenger side squished the dog.
We stopped the car and got out. The dog lay in a heap, twisted and whimpering.
"Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck, man," I said. As an animal-loving vegetarian kid, I was a bit freaked-the-fuck out.
"It's alright, man," Crack told me. He calmly scooped up the dog, a decently-sized Australian Shepard, and got back in the car. As we drove back to his house, the dog bit him and then puked on him.
We got back to his house and got out of the car. His dad and his grandpa came out of the house as Crack set the dog on the ground. I saw that it was dead, and started crying.
"It's alright, man," he told me. He didn't seem to care at all.
"I killed your fucking dog, man!" I said, wiping tears from my face.
"Shhh!" he whispered, not wanting the adults to hear me say "fuck."
His grandpa grabbed a shovel, and started walking out somewhere to dig a hole to bury the dog in. As he walked, a poodle started yapping at him and following close behind.
"Shut up, you son of a bitch!" the old man yelled, causing me to stop crying and start laughing.
Crack's sister came outside and saw my wet face.
"Are you alright?" she asked.
"Yeah."
"I've never seen a punk cry," she said.
We left again, picked up Sean, and went to the mall. I didn't really feel like going anymore, but we went, anyway.
I felt like shit for a week or so. My dad told me to get Crack a new dog, so I offered to do so. Crack declined, saying, "Don't worry about it, man. That dog was stupid as hell, anyway. Nobody cares."
Crack Hedger died four years ago today in a car crash. He was 19 years old.
I turned 16 that year, and my grandpa gave me my first car, a beat-up 1988 Dodge Colt, nicknamed the Chudmobile. The car was white, chud was white, and chud was also hilarious, so it was a good name. Crack offered to fix up my car stereo, for free, so I started going over to his house and letting him work on it. He put a new tape deck in, and installed an amp and some big speakers. He even built me a big speaker box to sit in the back of the car so I could drive around, bassing people out with a deep, low-end sound that made all the loose bits in my car rattle. All the parts came from a junkyard down the road from where he lived, and he said the guy who owned all the junk cars there told him he could take whatever he wanted.
Crack lived a few minutes away from me, in a house along a gravel road, with no other houses nearby. His place had an old bomb shelter and a lot of animals. As we started hanging out more, I got used to his dogs chasing my car as I drove away. I was scared of hitting them at first, but Crack told me just to drive and they would get out of the way. With time, my fear of running over one of his dogs subsided.
One summer afternoon, my friends and I decided to take a trip to the mall. There wasn't really any reason for it, but it was something to do. Living out in the middle of nowhere, the mall was a 40 minute drive away. I picked up John, and then went to go pick up Crack, the plan being to pick up my friend Sean next.
As we pulled away from Crack's house, his dogs started chasing my car, as they usually did. Like always, I just drove as if they weren't there, knowing they would get out of the way.
And then one of Crack's dogs ran right in front of my car.
"Fuck! No!" I yelled as my car drove over the dog. There were two sickening thumps as each tire on the passenger side squished the dog.
We stopped the car and got out. The dog lay in a heap, twisted and whimpering.
"Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck, man," I said. As an animal-loving vegetarian kid, I was a bit freaked-the-fuck out.
"It's alright, man," Crack told me. He calmly scooped up the dog, a decently-sized Australian Shepard, and got back in the car. As we drove back to his house, the dog bit him and then puked on him.
We got back to his house and got out of the car. His dad and his grandpa came out of the house as Crack set the dog on the ground. I saw that it was dead, and started crying.
"It's alright, man," he told me. He didn't seem to care at all.
"I killed your fucking dog, man!" I said, wiping tears from my face.
"Shhh!" he whispered, not wanting the adults to hear me say "fuck."
His grandpa grabbed a shovel, and started walking out somewhere to dig a hole to bury the dog in. As he walked, a poodle started yapping at him and following close behind.
"Shut up, you son of a bitch!" the old man yelled, causing me to stop crying and start laughing.
Crack's sister came outside and saw my wet face.
"Are you alright?" she asked.
"Yeah."
"I've never seen a punk cry," she said.
We left again, picked up Sean, and went to the mall. I didn't really feel like going anymore, but we went, anyway.
I felt like shit for a week or so. My dad told me to get Crack a new dog, so I offered to do so. Crack declined, saying, "Don't worry about it, man. That dog was stupid as hell, anyway. Nobody cares."
Crack Hedger died four years ago today in a car crash. He was 19 years old.
5.4.07
I was a teenage hax0r d00dz!!!!11
My family gained internet access via AOL in 1994, when I was in 8th grade. At first, my internet usage was monitored pretty strictly, and I got to fart around only occasionally and only for brief periods. Having seen a story on the news about the evils of the internet, I knew that there were instructions for various nefarious deeds readily available online, and when my parents weren't home, I would print out instructions on how to blow things up. My classmates and I found these tutorials endlessly fascinating, though we never actually made the effort or took the risk of blowing off our fingers. At some point, some careless student got a stack of printouts confiscated, my parents were contacted, and my internet access was cut off. My parents canceled AOL.
In 9th grade, I regained internet access, this time through a local phone company. The same company ran a dialup BBS that several of my friends had been accessing for some time, but I had never been able to enjoy due to it being outside of my local calling area. Now, I was able to connect to the BBS via telnet. I created a free account and began using it to email my friends, chat with locals (mostly making fun of them anonymously), and hack monsters to bits on the MUD (multi-user dungeon) they had.
I read an article in a book about how to send email from a fake address. It was a simple matter of connecting to a certain port of basically any server and then manually typing in the commands that an email program would normally do for you. You told the computer you were somebody else, and then you got to send an email as whoever you wanted to be. I sent my friends a bunch of emails from people I wasn't, and I was thrilled by the power it gave me. I wanted more internet power.
I started poking my nose in places it didn't belong. I'd use FTP to connect to anything I could and just look around at what files were there. I connected to my internet service provider's domain and was able to download their password file. I didn't know exactly what to do with it, but a simple internet search taught me that I could run it through some software to pick out passwords. I did, and though it was slow going and I didn't let the program run all the way through, I still found a handful of passwords. A group of people had chosen 12345 for their password, and another had chosen 54321. Clever. I compiled my own word list file to check against the password file, using only words relevant to our area, like school mascots. The program ran through much more quickly this time, and brought me more passwords.
I didn't do anything with the passwords I found, but I wanted more, anyway. I decided to give brute force attacks a shot. In other words, I was going to try guessing passwords. I logged in to the BBS and started looking through people's public profiles. One kid was a Mortal Kombat fanatic, so I correctly guessed that his password was mk. I logged in, changed his password, and started playing around. He had paid for his account, so he had more access to things on the BBS than I did. I ended up reverting his password when his brother logged in and started talking to me. They actually weren't mad about it, and the kid whose password I stole told me he'd be smarter about making up passwords in the future.
Still unsatisfied, I decided to get sneakier. I made another free account on the BBS and named it PW-DATA. Then, I picked random people on the BBS and sent them an email that purported to be from the sysop (the "system operator" of the BBS).
Within hours of beginning this, I had more passwords. I was surprised that less than half of the people who I sent messages to actually sent their passwords. Still, I was proud of myself.
One of people who sent me their password was a guy who I hated anyway, due to his being an obnoxious internet douche bag. When I got his password, I went through all of his emails. He had a lot of messages talking about the drugs he had and the drugs he was going to get. I also found a receipt from when he paid for his account. I took down his credit card information and used it to buy my own account. I sent him an email saying, "Don't fuck with me, I know things about you."
The account activation wasn't automated, and when I paid using his credit card, I didn't gain access to all of the things I was supposed to. I emailed the sysop, who activated my ill-gotten account. I finally had a paid account of my own.
A couple days later, I found that the account had been canceled, and the password for the guy's other paid account had been changed.
My password phishing account was still active, so I continued sending people email from the sysop asking for their passwords, and I continued getting passwords. For the most part, I didn't even log in to anybody's account, but I liked knowing that I could.
I sent my fake message to the kids from my school who used the BBS. They were, for some reason or another, all dirty, unpopular, and poor kids rumored to be inbred. I've never been able to understand why this was so. They came from different families, so it wasn't because they shared a computer. I knew very few people who were online at this point, but the poorest kids were among them. They were all too clever to fall for my ruse, though.
One of the kids, Aaron Smith, overheard me talking with a friend in gym class about my phishing endeavors. He told me that he was friends with the sysop, and that he knew it was me.
"It's fraud," he told me, "and it's a felony!"
I stopped phishing for passwords when Aaron told me the sysop was on to me. I never knew if the sysop actually knew, or if he only knew because Aaron overheard me and then told him it was me. I came home a few days after Aaron told me it was a felony, and my dad told me I wasn't allowed on the internet anymore. I guess Dwayne, the sysop, had called him. I was disappointed to have my internet access taken away, but relieved that I wasn't having charges pressed against me.
For the most part, I lost interest in such things after that. In 10th grade, I fooled around on MUSHes (sort of like MUDs without fighting), and figured out how to give myself complete God power over everything through a combination of social engineering and code manipulation. Other than that, the draw of secret knowledge and forbidden power was never strong enough to combat the fear of losing my internet access again.
In 9th grade, I regained internet access, this time through a local phone company. The same company ran a dialup BBS that several of my friends had been accessing for some time, but I had never been able to enjoy due to it being outside of my local calling area. Now, I was able to connect to the BBS via telnet. I created a free account and began using it to email my friends, chat with locals (mostly making fun of them anonymously), and hack monsters to bits on the MUD (multi-user dungeon) they had.
I read an article in a book about how to send email from a fake address. It was a simple matter of connecting to a certain port of basically any server and then manually typing in the commands that an email program would normally do for you. You told the computer you were somebody else, and then you got to send an email as whoever you wanted to be. I sent my friends a bunch of emails from people I wasn't, and I was thrilled by the power it gave me. I wanted more internet power.
I started poking my nose in places it didn't belong. I'd use FTP to connect to anything I could and just look around at what files were there. I connected to my internet service provider's domain and was able to download their password file. I didn't know exactly what to do with it, but a simple internet search taught me that I could run it through some software to pick out passwords. I did, and though it was slow going and I didn't let the program run all the way through, I still found a handful of passwords. A group of people had chosen 12345 for their password, and another had chosen 54321. Clever. I compiled my own word list file to check against the password file, using only words relevant to our area, like school mascots. The program ran through much more quickly this time, and brought me more passwords.
I didn't do anything with the passwords I found, but I wanted more, anyway. I decided to give brute force attacks a shot. In other words, I was going to try guessing passwords. I logged in to the BBS and started looking through people's public profiles. One kid was a Mortal Kombat fanatic, so I correctly guessed that his password was mk. I logged in, changed his password, and started playing around. He had paid for his account, so he had more access to things on the BBS than I did. I ended up reverting his password when his brother logged in and started talking to me. They actually weren't mad about it, and the kid whose password I stole told me he'd be smarter about making up passwords in the future.
Still unsatisfied, I decided to get sneakier. I made another free account on the BBS and named it PW-DATA. Then, I picked random people on the BBS and sent them an email that purported to be from the sysop (the "system operator" of the BBS).
Dear BBS user,
We've been experiencing some problems with our password database, and because of this, your account may be in danger of becoming inaccessible. Please send a message to PW-DATA containing only your password.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
Dwayne, the sysop
We've been experiencing some problems with our password database, and because of this, your account may be in danger of becoming inaccessible. Please send a message to PW-DATA containing only your password.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
Dwayne, the sysop
Within hours of beginning this, I had more passwords. I was surprised that less than half of the people who I sent messages to actually sent their passwords. Still, I was proud of myself.
One of people who sent me their password was a guy who I hated anyway, due to his being an obnoxious internet douche bag. When I got his password, I went through all of his emails. He had a lot of messages talking about the drugs he had and the drugs he was going to get. I also found a receipt from when he paid for his account. I took down his credit card information and used it to buy my own account. I sent him an email saying, "Don't fuck with me, I know things about you."
The account activation wasn't automated, and when I paid using his credit card, I didn't gain access to all of the things I was supposed to. I emailed the sysop, who activated my ill-gotten account. I finally had a paid account of my own.
A couple days later, I found that the account had been canceled, and the password for the guy's other paid account had been changed.
My password phishing account was still active, so I continued sending people email from the sysop asking for their passwords, and I continued getting passwords. For the most part, I didn't even log in to anybody's account, but I liked knowing that I could.
I sent my fake message to the kids from my school who used the BBS. They were, for some reason or another, all dirty, unpopular, and poor kids rumored to be inbred. I've never been able to understand why this was so. They came from different families, so it wasn't because they shared a computer. I knew very few people who were online at this point, but the poorest kids were among them. They were all too clever to fall for my ruse, though.
One of the kids, Aaron Smith, overheard me talking with a friend in gym class about my phishing endeavors. He told me that he was friends with the sysop, and that he knew it was me.
"It's fraud," he told me, "and it's a felony!"
I stopped phishing for passwords when Aaron told me the sysop was on to me. I never knew if the sysop actually knew, or if he only knew because Aaron overheard me and then told him it was me. I came home a few days after Aaron told me it was a felony, and my dad told me I wasn't allowed on the internet anymore. I guess Dwayne, the sysop, had called him. I was disappointed to have my internet access taken away, but relieved that I wasn't having charges pressed against me.
For the most part, I lost interest in such things after that. In 10th grade, I fooled around on MUSHes (sort of like MUDs without fighting), and figured out how to give myself complete God power over everything through a combination of social engineering and code manipulation. Other than that, the draw of secret knowledge and forbidden power was never strong enough to combat the fear of losing my internet access again.
15.3.07
Jeremiah was a fat kid.
I met Jeremiah in homeroom in eighth grade. He was a fat kid, and only friends with half of the circle of miscreants I sat with. I didn't realize this until I suggested hanging out with him after school, and my friend told me, "No, I don't like that fat kid." I sometimes called him "Buttcrack" behind his back, because his buttcrack was often visible when he sat down. On at least one occasion, I came up behind him and dropped a pencil into it. He didn't think it was funny, but I did.
Jeremiah invited me over to his house after school one time, so I rode his bus home with him. As we got closer to where he lived, I noticed that none of the houses were particularly nice, and I knew that a lot of the people who lived in that area had to be really poor. Jeremiah lived in a two-story house on the edge of a river. There was no siding on the house, and the insulation was clearly visible. I wondered if it was a temporary or permanent condition, but I didn't ask. When we got to his house, his sister, who was in the same grade as us and who had also ridden the bus home, disappeared into her room. Jeremiah's little brother was home, and wanted to hang out with us. For a while, we threw things into the river. We threw rocks at first, and then started throwing toys and half-empty aerosol cans and other assorted garbage into the water.
"Do you smoke?" Jeremiah asked.
"Sometimes," I said. I didn't, but I didn't want to sound like a square.
Jeremiah got a pack of cigarettes from inside and we walked into the woods with his brother. We each took a cigarette from the pack. I thought it was weird that Jeremiah's little brother was smoking. He was in 3rd or 4th grade.
"Don't you inhale?" Jeremiah asked.
"Yeah," I said, sucking on the cigarette and blowing the smoke out. I couldn't figure out what they were doing that I wasn't doing.
When we were finished, we went inside and Jeremiah offered me some Kool-Aid. He handed me a cup and went to the fridge to get the Kool-Aid.
"This cup is dirty," I said. The bottom was crusty and brown. Jeremiah got me another cup, but it had the same problem. I looked at more cups from the cabinet, and they were all crusty and brown in the bottom.
"It's not dirty," he said, "We drink a lot of tea."
I drank my Kool-Aid quickly, trying not to think of the bottom of the cup.
Jeremiah and I got in trouble for making fun of a kid on my bus named Jeff. I don't remember how it started, but we found ourselves in the office, being interrogated by the vice-principal. When we left the office, I suggested we drew comics about how Jeff and the vice-principal were gay lovers. We showed each other our comics at the end of the day. Mine had lots of tiny panels and was fairly graphic, despite being cartoony. Jeremiah's comic was a couple of stick-figures interacting in a couple of giant panels. I told him we should draw some more. The next time, his panels were tiny and I could tell he was doing his best to emulate my style. I thought it was cool.
In 9th grade, Jeremiah made friends with my sister, and would frequently write her notes. She told me that they were stupid, because he would make up ridiculous acronyms and expect her to know what they meant. She'd always have to ask.
"What is S.Y.A.L.A.M.T.?" she'd ask.
"You don't know? See you at lunch at my table!"
In 9th grade, I began my drift away from my obnoxious friends and began hanging out with nerdier kids. Jeremiah and I remained casual acquaintances, and he was still in my homeroom until I was reassigned in 11th grade due to my complete inability to tolerate our teacher. Jeremiah always wanted me to smell his fingers in the morning. Some guys do that to brag about getting laid. Jeremiah did it to brag about smoking cigarettes, and sometimes weed, before school.
In 10th grade, I was riding home with a group of friends, and they wanted to stop at Jeremiah's house. His mom had made up an excuse to get Jeremiah out of school early that day, because his older brother had shot a deer and they needed Jeremiah to put his name on it. His brother had already killed as many as he was legally allowed to. When we stopped at his house, we all got out of the car to look at a deer his brother had killed. It was laying in the back of his pickup truck. My friend Jason poked it in the eye with his finger until some goo came out, and then wiped his finger on me.
"He's a vegetarian," Jason told Jeremiah's brother.
"Really?" he asked.
"Yeah," I said.
"I'm sorry to hear that," he said.
"That's what I said!" Jason said, and everybody laughed except me.
In 11th grade, Jeremiah and this other kid, Nick, were talking in homeroom about their plans to go hunting over the weekend while tripping on Jimson weed. Having done very minimal internet research on the subject, I knew this was a terrible idea.
"You can't have a good trip," I told them, "Only a bad one. You'll hallucinate and think everything you're seeing is real."
"Yeah," Jeremiah said, "It's going to be fucking awesome!"
I couldn't do anything to dissuade them, so I just worried all weekend that I would come back to school to find out that one of them had shot the other. I never heard anything more about the event, so I assumed they never went through with it. I didn't mention it, fearing that if they hadn't already done it, they might decide to give it a whirl.
Another time, Jeremiah and Nick asked if I wanted to go snipe hunting. They said all you had to do was shine a light into a bag at night, and a bird called a snipe would run into the bag. I had heard about this before, in a book of urban legends. I told them it wasn't true, but they insisted that it was.
"The best part," Jeremiah told me, "is once you get the snipe into a bag, you can bash the bag against something until it's dead."
In 12th grade, having been moved to a different homeroom, I barely talked to Jeremiah at all. He hung out with Nazi stoners who hated me. There was a rumor that a friend and I were gay lovers, which turned me into social poison. Jeremiah's little brother told my girlfriend that "your boyfriend is the gayest kid in the school." Still, Jeremiah, perhaps because he was never particularly popular, even in the shittiest of shitty social circles, was always cool with me.
One morning before class, as I sat on a bench in the hallway talking to a friend, Jeremiah stopped to say a few friendly words. He was walking with a Nazi stoner who I had never talked to, and whose last name sounded like "Sodomizer." Sodomizer's brother had called me a sand nigger, and had also professed his desire to fuck my sister. While I spoke to Jeremiah, Sodomizer glared at me.
"Fucking faggot!" he yelled, as soon as they had turned around and started walking away.
"No, he's cool," Jeremiah said.
"That's not what I heard."
Jeremiah came up to me one morning and told me he was growing weed in his basement. I was glad to hear this, because for some reason or another he owed me some. Having done minimal research on the internet, I knew a little bit on the subject. Mainly, I knew that you needed a specialized lamp if you wanted to grow indoors.
"What kind of light are you using?" I asked him.
"I'm not using one," he said.
"Um, plants need light, dude."
"Not weed !" he told me, and walked away. I asked him later how it was going and he said it never grew. I acted surprised.
I saw Jeremiah once, a few years after we had graduated. I was at our old high school, watching a football game, because my brother was involved in some school-related thing. He was a candidate for homecoming king or something. I saw Jeremiah arrive, followed closely behind by the girl who was his girlfriend as long as I can remember. He was fatter, had a shaved head, and a ridiculously long Z.Z. Top-style beard. I don't think he saw me, which was good, because I didn't want to talk to him.
Jeremiah invited me over to his house after school one time, so I rode his bus home with him. As we got closer to where he lived, I noticed that none of the houses were particularly nice, and I knew that a lot of the people who lived in that area had to be really poor. Jeremiah lived in a two-story house on the edge of a river. There was no siding on the house, and the insulation was clearly visible. I wondered if it was a temporary or permanent condition, but I didn't ask. When we got to his house, his sister, who was in the same grade as us and who had also ridden the bus home, disappeared into her room. Jeremiah's little brother was home, and wanted to hang out with us. For a while, we threw things into the river. We threw rocks at first, and then started throwing toys and half-empty aerosol cans and other assorted garbage into the water.
"Do you smoke?" Jeremiah asked.
"Sometimes," I said. I didn't, but I didn't want to sound like a square.
Jeremiah got a pack of cigarettes from inside and we walked into the woods with his brother. We each took a cigarette from the pack. I thought it was weird that Jeremiah's little brother was smoking. He was in 3rd or 4th grade.
"Don't you inhale?" Jeremiah asked.
"Yeah," I said, sucking on the cigarette and blowing the smoke out. I couldn't figure out what they were doing that I wasn't doing.
When we were finished, we went inside and Jeremiah offered me some Kool-Aid. He handed me a cup and went to the fridge to get the Kool-Aid.
"This cup is dirty," I said. The bottom was crusty and brown. Jeremiah got me another cup, but it had the same problem. I looked at more cups from the cabinet, and they were all crusty and brown in the bottom.
"It's not dirty," he said, "We drink a lot of tea."
I drank my Kool-Aid quickly, trying not to think of the bottom of the cup.
Jeremiah and I got in trouble for making fun of a kid on my bus named Jeff. I don't remember how it started, but we found ourselves in the office, being interrogated by the vice-principal. When we left the office, I suggested we drew comics about how Jeff and the vice-principal were gay lovers. We showed each other our comics at the end of the day. Mine had lots of tiny panels and was fairly graphic, despite being cartoony. Jeremiah's comic was a couple of stick-figures interacting in a couple of giant panels. I told him we should draw some more. The next time, his panels were tiny and I could tell he was doing his best to emulate my style. I thought it was cool.
In 9th grade, Jeremiah made friends with my sister, and would frequently write her notes. She told me that they were stupid, because he would make up ridiculous acronyms and expect her to know what they meant. She'd always have to ask.
"What is S.Y.A.L.A.M.T.?" she'd ask.
"You don't know? See you at lunch at my table!"
In 9th grade, I began my drift away from my obnoxious friends and began hanging out with nerdier kids. Jeremiah and I remained casual acquaintances, and he was still in my homeroom until I was reassigned in 11th grade due to my complete inability to tolerate our teacher. Jeremiah always wanted me to smell his fingers in the morning. Some guys do that to brag about getting laid. Jeremiah did it to brag about smoking cigarettes, and sometimes weed, before school.
In 10th grade, I was riding home with a group of friends, and they wanted to stop at Jeremiah's house. His mom had made up an excuse to get Jeremiah out of school early that day, because his older brother had shot a deer and they needed Jeremiah to put his name on it. His brother had already killed as many as he was legally allowed to. When we stopped at his house, we all got out of the car to look at a deer his brother had killed. It was laying in the back of his pickup truck. My friend Jason poked it in the eye with his finger until some goo came out, and then wiped his finger on me.
"He's a vegetarian," Jason told Jeremiah's brother.
"Really?" he asked.
"Yeah," I said.
"I'm sorry to hear that," he said.
"That's what I said!" Jason said, and everybody laughed except me.
In 11th grade, Jeremiah and this other kid, Nick, were talking in homeroom about their plans to go hunting over the weekend while tripping on Jimson weed. Having done very minimal internet research on the subject, I knew this was a terrible idea.
"You can't have a good trip," I told them, "Only a bad one. You'll hallucinate and think everything you're seeing is real."
"Yeah," Jeremiah said, "It's going to be fucking awesome!"
I couldn't do anything to dissuade them, so I just worried all weekend that I would come back to school to find out that one of them had shot the other. I never heard anything more about the event, so I assumed they never went through with it. I didn't mention it, fearing that if they hadn't already done it, they might decide to give it a whirl.
Another time, Jeremiah and Nick asked if I wanted to go snipe hunting. They said all you had to do was shine a light into a bag at night, and a bird called a snipe would run into the bag. I had heard about this before, in a book of urban legends. I told them it wasn't true, but they insisted that it was.
"The best part," Jeremiah told me, "is once you get the snipe into a bag, you can bash the bag against something until it's dead."
In 12th grade, having been moved to a different homeroom, I barely talked to Jeremiah at all. He hung out with Nazi stoners who hated me. There was a rumor that a friend and I were gay lovers, which turned me into social poison. Jeremiah's little brother told my girlfriend that "your boyfriend is the gayest kid in the school." Still, Jeremiah, perhaps because he was never particularly popular, even in the shittiest of shitty social circles, was always cool with me.
One morning before class, as I sat on a bench in the hallway talking to a friend, Jeremiah stopped to say a few friendly words. He was walking with a Nazi stoner who I had never talked to, and whose last name sounded like "Sodomizer." Sodomizer's brother had called me a sand nigger, and had also professed his desire to fuck my sister. While I spoke to Jeremiah, Sodomizer glared at me.
"Fucking faggot!" he yelled, as soon as they had turned around and started walking away.
"No, he's cool," Jeremiah said.
"That's not what I heard."
Jeremiah came up to me one morning and told me he was growing weed in his basement. I was glad to hear this, because for some reason or another he owed me some. Having done minimal research on the internet, I knew a little bit on the subject. Mainly, I knew that you needed a specialized lamp if you wanted to grow indoors.
"What kind of light are you using?" I asked him.
"I'm not using one," he said.
"Um, plants need light, dude."
"Not weed !" he told me, and walked away. I asked him later how it was going and he said it never grew. I acted surprised.
I saw Jeremiah once, a few years after we had graduated. I was at our old high school, watching a football game, because my brother was involved in some school-related thing. He was a candidate for homecoming king or something. I saw Jeremiah arrive, followed closely behind by the girl who was his girlfriend as long as I can remember. He was fatter, had a shaved head, and a ridiculously long Z.Z. Top-style beard. I don't think he saw me, which was good, because I didn't want to talk to him.
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.
28.12.06
Eric Candleass.
I first encountered Eric Candleass when I was in eighth grade. I was talking to a friend during a passing period before class, in the classroom where his next class was about to take place. Suddenly, somebody kicked me in the ass. I turned around and saw a tall, skinny kid leering down at me. I laughed nervously, hoping the assault was in jest. I had never seen the kid before, and thus had no reason to believe that he'd have a problem with me.
"Ha ha ha!" he said, mocking my laughter with a sneer. He shoved me, saying, "You fucking faggot!"
"Whoa, Eric, what's the problem, man?" asked another student.
"I fucking hate that little fucking faggot," he said, as I made my way to the door. "Yeah, get the fuck out of here!" he said.
I didn't know why he hated me, but he was bigger than I was and I learned to avoid him. I didn't have any more encounters with him that year, except for an occasional shout of "Hey, faggot!" as I walked down the hall.
Our school was both a junior and a senior high school. For the most part, the two groups of students were segregated for the majority of the day. In 9th grade, we began to share hallways with the older kids. Some of the older kids, mostly racist burnouts who I referred to as the Nazi stoners, made a sport out of shoving each other into smaller students or knocking the books out of their hands. One day, I was the pin in one of their human bowling games, and ended up being slammed into Eric. He started shoving my violently as the Nazi stoners laughed.
"I was pushed!" I pleaded.
"I don't care!" he shouted in my face, shoving me again, much to the delight of my tormentors. I scurried away as quickly as I could.
That same year, I started getting into zines, small photocopied magazines produced mostly by individuals and traded through the mail. Many of the zines I was receiving had poetry in them, so my friends and I somehow ended up starting a short lived routine of 'Poetry Minute' in the locker room after gym class. We would stand on a bench, read a couple poems, and then move on to our next class. I never noticed Eric at Poetry Minute, but one day after Poetry Minute he noticed me, dialing in the combination to my locker with a stack of zines in my other hand.
"What you got there?" he asked.
"Nothing," I said, knowing he wasn't being friendly.
"Doesn't look like nothing," he said, and tried to grab my zines. I resisted, and he grabbed me by the throat. My friend Aaron pulled him away from, saying, "Leave him alone."
"Fucking faggot!" Eric said as he walked away.
Every Friday in gym class we swam. One Friday, I was one of the last people to finish getting dressed, but my friend Sean was slower still and standing at his locker. The only other person in the part of the locker room we were in was Eric, who was in the other gym class that occurred at the same time as ours.
"Come on, Sean," I said as I walked towards the exit to the pool area. "What's taking you so long? Are you shaving your legs or something?"
I don't know what possessed me to say that, but it was a subtle jab at Eric. Rumor had it that he shaved his legs, because they were always really smooth. More likely it was because, despite being really tall, he hadn't fully hit puberty.
I walked to the exit to the pool area, where everybody was congregated and waiting for the teacher to unlock the door. I started talking to one of my friends, and then was shoved hard from behind. I slammed into my friend, and we both went crashing into the soda machine and then down to the floor.
"What the fuck did you say?" Eric yelled in my face as I got up from the floor. He towered over me, and I stood there, half-naked and scared, completely unsure of what to do. Fortunately, a big kid named Jeremy grabbed Eric from behind and carried him, squirming, out of that part of the locker room. "I'm going to kill that fucking faggot!" he yelled on the way out.
My friend Rick decided to fight Eric when we were in 10th grade. I don't remember exactly what his motivation was, but I think Eric had stolen something from him. When I heard about his intentions, I was jubilant, and followed the crowd down the hall as Rick attempted to start a fight. The kids who walked with us hated Eric, too, which surprised me because I thought I was the only one that had had problems with the guy. Rick would periodically shove Eric as we walked, and Eric would turn around and look at him, and then continue walking. Rick wasn't a particularly big guy, but he was a wrestler, and not nearly as skinny as I was. Apparently Eric wasn't that tough when it came to people closer to his own size.
At some point a bald kid named Jamie said, "Man, I would never shave my legs!" Eric turned around and pushed Jamie. Jamie was unfazed, saying, "Get the fuck off me!" Eric continued on his way, and we followed him, with Rick still periodically shoving him.
A short guy name Jason gently nudged Eric with his shoulder, quietly saying, "Come on, Eric." This time, Eric stopped. He grabbed Jason and put him in a headlock, and then Rick started punching Eric in the face. Before I even had time to know what was going on, Eric was on the ground, and a couple of kids were kicking him. For some reason I was carrying a plastic banana on a plastic string that I had found in the gym, and I began swinging it at him. Eric got up, and the fight went crashing into a classroom, where a bewildered teacher gasped and stood in shock for a moment before breaking up the scuffle. I noticed an older student, one of the tough-guy Nazi stoners, holding Rick by his shirt collar and telling him if he ever jumped in on a fight again, he would beat his ass.
When I walked to lunch later that day, Eric and a bunch of his big, tough-guy friends were standing outside of the cafeteria. They puffed out their chests and snickered at my friends and I as we walked by, but they didn't do anything.
Almost everybody involved in the fight was suspended for a week, including at least one kid who they claimed had encouraged the fight, even though all I remember him doing was following the crowd and waiting for something to happen. The only person who was there but wasn't kicked out was myself, and I had been physically involved, though just barely. I wondered later why I had chosen to hit him with a plastic banana, which weighed less than a pound and which he almost definitely did not feel at all. Perhaps, despite my intense hatred of the kid, I was still reluctant to actually hurt somebody. Maybe the fact that he was outnumbered and on the ground made me momentarily pity him. I don't know.
I was able to avoid Eric for the rest of the year, and then again for the next. His distaste for me no doubt never subsided, and my contempt for him never went away. I once overheard him in 11th grade bragging about how he had "fuckin' stomped a fuckin' bird" to death before school, and showing his buddies the gore leftover on his shoes.
On the first day of our senior year, I was walking around the cafeteria with a friend of mine. He stopped briefly to talk to somebody who was sitting at the same table as Eric.
"Look at this fucking faggot!" Eric said when he noticed me. I was a huge Misfits fan at the time, and wore my hair in their trademark devilock style, with my bangs combed to a point in front of my face. Eric, ever the opportunist, began making fun of my hair, saying, "You think that's fucking cool or something? It looks like you have a wad of fucking chud hanging off of your fucking face!" I stood there with my friend and didn't say anything. Eric threw some food at me, and then we walked away. For the rest of the week, I daydreamed of breaking his face with a food tray. In retrospect, I probably should have assaulted somebody who fucked with me at some point during school. Even if I had ended up getting my ass kicked, in the long run I probably would have had to endure less of that sort of bullshit.
Apparently Eric had beaten up some kid during the summer before school started, and now he felt like a huge badass. Not that huge of a badass, though, because his new target was still a scrawny kid named me. He started messing with me regularly, calling me a faggot and a spick, tripping me in the hallway, and claiming he was going to come to "Spick Town" to beat my ass. The thing is, I'm half-Filipino and half-white, not Hispanic, and I never lived in the area he referred to as "Spick Town," which didn't even really have any Hispanic people living in it, anyway. Furthermore, he was friends with a couple Mexican kids, and his skin was darker than mine. I had always assumed he was mixed himself, despite his white supremacy and pasty siblings.
Taking a cue from The Kids in the Hall movie Brain Candy, my friend Pat and I had begun a campaign of shouting, " I'm gay!" at random people, both to befuddle them and to enrage the homophobes, of which there were many.
"Hey, I'm gay!" Pat shouted at Eric one day as he walked by.
"Hey, I'll kick you!" Eric told him.
"I'll kick you in the nuts!" said Pat.
Eric turned around. He got in Pat's face. More accurately, he put his chest in Pat's face, as Pat was a small, short kid, and Eric still towered over everybody. I stepped closer, indicating that I had Pat's back if things escalated to physical violence.
"I'll kick your fucking ass!" he said, "You and your fucking little spick friend here!"
"Paul's not even Mexican," Pat said, "He's Filipino, and he doesn't live in Sumava, either."
"Oh, he's a fucking spick, alright, and I'll come to fucking spick town and I'll fucking kill all you little fuckers!" His face was contorted in rage, and little beads of white spit were forming at the corners of his mouth. He looked so ridiculous, I couldn't help laughing a little. A few people were watching to see what would happen, among them my brother, a seventh grader only recently introduced to our friendly school.
"You wear that Insane Clown Posse shirt everyday," Pat said, "and they rap about killing racist people."
"Do you see me wearing it now, you little fucking faggot? I'll fucking kill all of you little faggots!"
My friend Jeff turned to me and asked, "Did he just call you a faggot?"
"I believe he did," I told him. What happened next surprised the hell out of me, because I didn't realize that we were close enough friends for him to stick up for me the way he did. He got in Eric's face.
"Who the fuck do you think you are, fucking with people like this?" he asked, inches from Eric. Jeff wasn't a particularly big guy, but he was bigger than either Pat or myself. Eric was still taller, though.
"I'll fucking take all of you!" Eric growled through clenched teeth, his body literally shaking with rage and anticipation.
Throughout the entire confrontation, I was ready for things to get violent. I wasn't sure of the outcome, but I knew that if it came to blows Eric would be facing at least three of us. Somehow, though, the situation diffused itself and we went on to our next class. Eric continued to call me a spick and make threats, and I feared being caught by him alone, as I probably would have been doomed.
He disappeared a couple months into the school year. I think he got sent to the "alternative school," though I was never really sure of the purpose of the place. Maybe it was for assholes who couldn't behave like civilized humans, or maybe it was for kids who couldn't do their homework. Either way, I was glad never to have to see that guy again.
"Ha ha ha!" he said, mocking my laughter with a sneer. He shoved me, saying, "You fucking faggot!"
"Whoa, Eric, what's the problem, man?" asked another student.
"I fucking hate that little fucking faggot," he said, as I made my way to the door. "Yeah, get the fuck out of here!" he said.
I didn't know why he hated me, but he was bigger than I was and I learned to avoid him. I didn't have any more encounters with him that year, except for an occasional shout of "Hey, faggot!" as I walked down the hall.
Our school was both a junior and a senior high school. For the most part, the two groups of students were segregated for the majority of the day. In 9th grade, we began to share hallways with the older kids. Some of the older kids, mostly racist burnouts who I referred to as the Nazi stoners, made a sport out of shoving each other into smaller students or knocking the books out of their hands. One day, I was the pin in one of their human bowling games, and ended up being slammed into Eric. He started shoving my violently as the Nazi stoners laughed.
"I was pushed!" I pleaded.
"I don't care!" he shouted in my face, shoving me again, much to the delight of my tormentors. I scurried away as quickly as I could.
That same year, I started getting into zines, small photocopied magazines produced mostly by individuals and traded through the mail. Many of the zines I was receiving had poetry in them, so my friends and I somehow ended up starting a short lived routine of 'Poetry Minute' in the locker room after gym class. We would stand on a bench, read a couple poems, and then move on to our next class. I never noticed Eric at Poetry Minute, but one day after Poetry Minute he noticed me, dialing in the combination to my locker with a stack of zines in my other hand.
"What you got there?" he asked.
"Nothing," I said, knowing he wasn't being friendly.
"Doesn't look like nothing," he said, and tried to grab my zines. I resisted, and he grabbed me by the throat. My friend Aaron pulled him away from, saying, "Leave him alone."
"Fucking faggot!" Eric said as he walked away.
Every Friday in gym class we swam. One Friday, I was one of the last people to finish getting dressed, but my friend Sean was slower still and standing at his locker. The only other person in the part of the locker room we were in was Eric, who was in the other gym class that occurred at the same time as ours.
"Come on, Sean," I said as I walked towards the exit to the pool area. "What's taking you so long? Are you shaving your legs or something?"
I don't know what possessed me to say that, but it was a subtle jab at Eric. Rumor had it that he shaved his legs, because they were always really smooth. More likely it was because, despite being really tall, he hadn't fully hit puberty.
I walked to the exit to the pool area, where everybody was congregated and waiting for the teacher to unlock the door. I started talking to one of my friends, and then was shoved hard from behind. I slammed into my friend, and we both went crashing into the soda machine and then down to the floor.
"What the fuck did you say?" Eric yelled in my face as I got up from the floor. He towered over me, and I stood there, half-naked and scared, completely unsure of what to do. Fortunately, a big kid named Jeremy grabbed Eric from behind and carried him, squirming, out of that part of the locker room. "I'm going to kill that fucking faggot!" he yelled on the way out.
My friend Rick decided to fight Eric when we were in 10th grade. I don't remember exactly what his motivation was, but I think Eric had stolen something from him. When I heard about his intentions, I was jubilant, and followed the crowd down the hall as Rick attempted to start a fight. The kids who walked with us hated Eric, too, which surprised me because I thought I was the only one that had had problems with the guy. Rick would periodically shove Eric as we walked, and Eric would turn around and look at him, and then continue walking. Rick wasn't a particularly big guy, but he was a wrestler, and not nearly as skinny as I was. Apparently Eric wasn't that tough when it came to people closer to his own size.
At some point a bald kid named Jamie said, "Man, I would never shave my legs!" Eric turned around and pushed Jamie. Jamie was unfazed, saying, "Get the fuck off me!" Eric continued on his way, and we followed him, with Rick still periodically shoving him.
A short guy name Jason gently nudged Eric with his shoulder, quietly saying, "Come on, Eric." This time, Eric stopped. He grabbed Jason and put him in a headlock, and then Rick started punching Eric in the face. Before I even had time to know what was going on, Eric was on the ground, and a couple of kids were kicking him. For some reason I was carrying a plastic banana on a plastic string that I had found in the gym, and I began swinging it at him. Eric got up, and the fight went crashing into a classroom, where a bewildered teacher gasped and stood in shock for a moment before breaking up the scuffle. I noticed an older student, one of the tough-guy Nazi stoners, holding Rick by his shirt collar and telling him if he ever jumped in on a fight again, he would beat his ass.
When I walked to lunch later that day, Eric and a bunch of his big, tough-guy friends were standing outside of the cafeteria. They puffed out their chests and snickered at my friends and I as we walked by, but they didn't do anything.
Almost everybody involved in the fight was suspended for a week, including at least one kid who they claimed had encouraged the fight, even though all I remember him doing was following the crowd and waiting for something to happen. The only person who was there but wasn't kicked out was myself, and I had been physically involved, though just barely. I wondered later why I had chosen to hit him with a plastic banana, which weighed less than a pound and which he almost definitely did not feel at all. Perhaps, despite my intense hatred of the kid, I was still reluctant to actually hurt somebody. Maybe the fact that he was outnumbered and on the ground made me momentarily pity him. I don't know.
I was able to avoid Eric for the rest of the year, and then again for the next. His distaste for me no doubt never subsided, and my contempt for him never went away. I once overheard him in 11th grade bragging about how he had "fuckin' stomped a fuckin' bird" to death before school, and showing his buddies the gore leftover on his shoes.
On the first day of our senior year, I was walking around the cafeteria with a friend of mine. He stopped briefly to talk to somebody who was sitting at the same table as Eric.
"Look at this fucking faggot!" Eric said when he noticed me. I was a huge Misfits fan at the time, and wore my hair in their trademark devilock style, with my bangs combed to a point in front of my face. Eric, ever the opportunist, began making fun of my hair, saying, "You think that's fucking cool or something? It looks like you have a wad of fucking chud hanging off of your fucking face!" I stood there with my friend and didn't say anything. Eric threw some food at me, and then we walked away. For the rest of the week, I daydreamed of breaking his face with a food tray. In retrospect, I probably should have assaulted somebody who fucked with me at some point during school. Even if I had ended up getting my ass kicked, in the long run I probably would have had to endure less of that sort of bullshit.
Apparently Eric had beaten up some kid during the summer before school started, and now he felt like a huge badass. Not that huge of a badass, though, because his new target was still a scrawny kid named me. He started messing with me regularly, calling me a faggot and a spick, tripping me in the hallway, and claiming he was going to come to "Spick Town" to beat my ass. The thing is, I'm half-Filipino and half-white, not Hispanic, and I never lived in the area he referred to as "Spick Town," which didn't even really have any Hispanic people living in it, anyway. Furthermore, he was friends with a couple Mexican kids, and his skin was darker than mine. I had always assumed he was mixed himself, despite his white supremacy and pasty siblings.
Taking a cue from The Kids in the Hall movie Brain Candy, my friend Pat and I had begun a campaign of shouting, " I'm gay!" at random people, both to befuddle them and to enrage the homophobes, of which there were many.
"Hey, I'm gay!" Pat shouted at Eric one day as he walked by.
"Hey, I'll kick you!" Eric told him.
"I'll kick you in the nuts!" said Pat.
Eric turned around. He got in Pat's face. More accurately, he put his chest in Pat's face, as Pat was a small, short kid, and Eric still towered over everybody. I stepped closer, indicating that I had Pat's back if things escalated to physical violence.
"I'll kick your fucking ass!" he said, "You and your fucking little spick friend here!"
"Paul's not even Mexican," Pat said, "He's Filipino, and he doesn't live in Sumava, either."
"Oh, he's a fucking spick, alright, and I'll come to fucking spick town and I'll fucking kill all you little fuckers!" His face was contorted in rage, and little beads of white spit were forming at the corners of his mouth. He looked so ridiculous, I couldn't help laughing a little. A few people were watching to see what would happen, among them my brother, a seventh grader only recently introduced to our friendly school.
"You wear that Insane Clown Posse shirt everyday," Pat said, "and they rap about killing racist people."
"Do you see me wearing it now, you little fucking faggot? I'll fucking kill all of you little faggots!"
My friend Jeff turned to me and asked, "Did he just call you a faggot?"
"I believe he did," I told him. What happened next surprised the hell out of me, because I didn't realize that we were close enough friends for him to stick up for me the way he did. He got in Eric's face.
"Who the fuck do you think you are, fucking with people like this?" he asked, inches from Eric. Jeff wasn't a particularly big guy, but he was bigger than either Pat or myself. Eric was still taller, though.
"I'll fucking take all of you!" Eric growled through clenched teeth, his body literally shaking with rage and anticipation.
Throughout the entire confrontation, I was ready for things to get violent. I wasn't sure of the outcome, but I knew that if it came to blows Eric would be facing at least three of us. Somehow, though, the situation diffused itself and we went on to our next class. Eric continued to call me a spick and make threats, and I feared being caught by him alone, as I probably would have been doomed.
He disappeared a couple months into the school year. I think he got sent to the "alternative school," though I was never really sure of the purpose of the place. Maybe it was for assholes who couldn't behave like civilized humans, or maybe it was for kids who couldn't do their homework. Either way, I was glad never to have to see that guy again.
31.10.06
Kiser and the jar of pee.
In 11th grade, I took what was supposed to be my last year of high school math. It was a total blowoff class, a very basic math class that was essentially free credits for me. I didn't do any of my homework and never studied, but I was able to pass it just by taking the tests. Unfortunately, it turned out that my guidance counselor, who was working his last year at the school, didn't know what he was doing, and I would end up having to take another math class the next year.
My teacher was a dude named Kiser, a first year teacher with a very young face and incredibly timid demeanor. His first year of teaching would also be his last, and in retrospect I feel terrible about the role I played in helping drive him away from the profession. I'm convinced, though, that even if I hadn't contributed to the shit he had to deal with, he still would never have made it as a high school teacher. Students walked all over him all day long.
My friend Jason and I used to cause trouble for him on a daily basis. We'd do things like turn a desk sideways, and then stand in front of it pretending that we were too utterly confused by the sideways desk to do any work or listen to him. I would sometimes sneak out of class and wander the halls, something I didn't dare do in any other class. Jason used to smoke pot in his class and blow the smoke into a cabinet near his desk, which did next to nothing to mask the odor. Afterwards, he'd go talk to Kiser with his eyes glazed over and his breath reeking of ganja, and Kiser would never do anything about it. We weren't the only ones in my class who gave him shit, though, it was pretty much a team effort, with nearly the entire class contributing. Within a month of teaching, he had already been in trouble twice for things that we had collectively convinced him were OK to let us do: going to lunch five minutes before anybody else was let out of class, and walking around outside on the cross country track (half the class came back completely stoned). As a general rule, nobody listened to Kiser, and everybody did whatever the hell they wanted.
Kiser used to let us get into groups to do our homework, but nobody ever did their homework, instead opting to talk and goof off. One day, the group I was in was snacking on a jar of pickles that one of our classmates had stolen from the home economics room. When the pickles were gone, somebody remarked on the similarity between the color of pickle brine and that of urine.
"Let me see that," I said, taking the jar. I put in under my desk and unzipped my pants. Everybody in my group started laughing, and even though I hadn't been serious to begin with, I decided it might be a good idea to actually pee into the jar. My group convinced me that it was, indeed, a terrific idea. I couldn't pee in front of people, so I stuck the jar in my pocket and asked Kiser if I could go to the bathroom. Generally, students were never allowed to go to the bathroom in any class, except in the case of a dire emergency, but Kiser had a policy of letting people get one bathroom pass per grading period. In actual practice, though, some of just got up and peed whenever we damn well felt like it.
I walked to the bathroom with the jar bulging from my pants, worried that some teacher might see it and ask what was in my pocket. I was even more scared on the way back, because there was no way I was going to be able to explain why I was carrying a jar of warm pee. Fortunately, nobody saw me.
When I got back to class, everybody in my group was silent as I sat down. They looked at me, and I looked at them. When I took the jar of pee from my pocket and set it on the desk, they erupted into riotous laughter. Pee is almost always hilarious.
The bell for lunch rang a couple minutes after I had set the jar of pee on my desk. My classmates encouraged me to bring it with me, or at the very least leave it on my desk, since we were coming back to that class after lunch, anyway. I was too scared, though, so I threw it in the trash on the way out.
About a month later, I asked Kiser if I could go to the bathroom.
"No," he said, "You already used your bathroom pass for this grading period."
"What?" I asked, feigning incredulousness, "When? I never went to the bathroom this grading period!"
"Yes, you did," he said, "Do you remember the pickle jar incident?"
"Are you trying to imply something?" Jason asked.
"Yeah, what are you implying?" I asked, doing my best to sound completely offended.
"Nothing," he said, "I'm just saying you guys were eating pickles that day."
The last thing I heard about Kiser was that he had grown a huge beard and become a missionary. Poor guy. High school kids are such dicks.
My teacher was a dude named Kiser, a first year teacher with a very young face and incredibly timid demeanor. His first year of teaching would also be his last, and in retrospect I feel terrible about the role I played in helping drive him away from the profession. I'm convinced, though, that even if I hadn't contributed to the shit he had to deal with, he still would never have made it as a high school teacher. Students walked all over him all day long.
My friend Jason and I used to cause trouble for him on a daily basis. We'd do things like turn a desk sideways, and then stand in front of it pretending that we were too utterly confused by the sideways desk to do any work or listen to him. I would sometimes sneak out of class and wander the halls, something I didn't dare do in any other class. Jason used to smoke pot in his class and blow the smoke into a cabinet near his desk, which did next to nothing to mask the odor. Afterwards, he'd go talk to Kiser with his eyes glazed over and his breath reeking of ganja, and Kiser would never do anything about it. We weren't the only ones in my class who gave him shit, though, it was pretty much a team effort, with nearly the entire class contributing. Within a month of teaching, he had already been in trouble twice for things that we had collectively convinced him were OK to let us do: going to lunch five minutes before anybody else was let out of class, and walking around outside on the cross country track (half the class came back completely stoned). As a general rule, nobody listened to Kiser, and everybody did whatever the hell they wanted.
Kiser used to let us get into groups to do our homework, but nobody ever did their homework, instead opting to talk and goof off. One day, the group I was in was snacking on a jar of pickles that one of our classmates had stolen from the home economics room. When the pickles were gone, somebody remarked on the similarity between the color of pickle brine and that of urine.
"Let me see that," I said, taking the jar. I put in under my desk and unzipped my pants. Everybody in my group started laughing, and even though I hadn't been serious to begin with, I decided it might be a good idea to actually pee into the jar. My group convinced me that it was, indeed, a terrific idea. I couldn't pee in front of people, so I stuck the jar in my pocket and asked Kiser if I could go to the bathroom. Generally, students were never allowed to go to the bathroom in any class, except in the case of a dire emergency, but Kiser had a policy of letting people get one bathroom pass per grading period. In actual practice, though, some of just got up and peed whenever we damn well felt like it.
I walked to the bathroom with the jar bulging from my pants, worried that some teacher might see it and ask what was in my pocket. I was even more scared on the way back, because there was no way I was going to be able to explain why I was carrying a jar of warm pee. Fortunately, nobody saw me.
When I got back to class, everybody in my group was silent as I sat down. They looked at me, and I looked at them. When I took the jar of pee from my pocket and set it on the desk, they erupted into riotous laughter. Pee is almost always hilarious.
The bell for lunch rang a couple minutes after I had set the jar of pee on my desk. My classmates encouraged me to bring it with me, or at the very least leave it on my desk, since we were coming back to that class after lunch, anyway. I was too scared, though, so I threw it in the trash on the way out.
About a month later, I asked Kiser if I could go to the bathroom.
"No," he said, "You already used your bathroom pass for this grading period."
"What?" I asked, feigning incredulousness, "When? I never went to the bathroom this grading period!"
"Yes, you did," he said, "Do you remember the pickle jar incident?"
"Are you trying to imply something?" Jason asked.
"Yeah, what are you implying?" I asked, doing my best to sound completely offended.
"Nothing," he said, "I'm just saying you guys were eating pickles that day."
The last thing I heard about Kiser was that he had grown a huge beard and become a missionary. Poor guy. High school kids are such dicks.
12.9.06
Flo: professional gangsta rapper.
There was a retarded kid at my high school who everybody called Flo. I always assumed he got the name because of his imaginary rhyming skills, but I later found out that it was actually short for Florence, which was his real name. Flo would walk around the cafeteria, taking peoples' trays up to the conveyor belt when they were done eating. Every so often, though, for absolutely no reason, he would decide not to take a person's tray up, and ask, "What am I? Your nigger?" A friend of mine hypothesized that the whole tray-taking routine was nothing more than a ruse that would give him an excuse to say that once in a while.
The true awesomeness of Flo wasn't the fact that he'd usually save you a trip across the cafeteria to drop your tray off. No, the true awesomeness of Flo was that he would "rap." If you gave Flo a few coins, he would generate several lines of gangsta-rap cliches that almost never rhymed.
"I was walking down this street. I had my hoes at my side. And then I saw this nigger. So I capped him in the ass. Damn! Payback's a bitch!"
I always wondered if Flo actually thought he could rap. People were enthusiastic about his raps, and encouraged him by giving him their pocket change, but his raps always ended with the table of people listening to him laughing enthusiastically, and Flo walking away with their empty lunch trays. I didn't know whether or not I should feel sorry for him, but I gave him a fair share of nickels and dimes for his trouble. It was undeniably entertaining as hell.
"I got a fat sack of weed. I got cash money and a gun. Don't mess with me on the street. I'll pull out my gat!"
The last time I saw Flo was on the last day of eleventh grade. Instead of making us go to class and showing us movies, which was the usual last day of class routine, they let all the students go outside. I sat with Flo and a group of friends on the bleachers on the far side of the football field, away from the meddling eyes of authority figures. One of the substitute teachers, only a few years older than the graduating class, was walking around the track that circled the football field with two female students. Every time they'd walk by, we'd all make semi-loud, but vague, comments about how he was going to get laid. On the fourth or fifth time around the track, Flo decided he would join in on the fun. Unfortunately, the art of subtlety escaped poor Flo, but he did his best.
"Hey!" he screamed at the top of his lungs, "You fucking faggot! You're going to fuck them in the fucking ass!"
We all started laughing uncontrollably. The substitute teacher turned around momentarily, puffing out his chest like he was going to beat up a retarded kid, which made us laugh even harder. They walked away, and a few minutes later a different teacher came and told us we weren't allowed to sit on those bleachers since there was nobody there to supervise us.
The true awesomeness of Flo wasn't the fact that he'd usually save you a trip across the cafeteria to drop your tray off. No, the true awesomeness of Flo was that he would "rap." If you gave Flo a few coins, he would generate several lines of gangsta-rap cliches that almost never rhymed.
"I was walking down this street. I had my hoes at my side. And then I saw this nigger. So I capped him in the ass. Damn! Payback's a bitch!"
I always wondered if Flo actually thought he could rap. People were enthusiastic about his raps, and encouraged him by giving him their pocket change, but his raps always ended with the table of people listening to him laughing enthusiastically, and Flo walking away with their empty lunch trays. I didn't know whether or not I should feel sorry for him, but I gave him a fair share of nickels and dimes for his trouble. It was undeniably entertaining as hell.
"I got a fat sack of weed. I got cash money and a gun. Don't mess with me on the street. I'll pull out my gat!"
The last time I saw Flo was on the last day of eleventh grade. Instead of making us go to class and showing us movies, which was the usual last day of class routine, they let all the students go outside. I sat with Flo and a group of friends on the bleachers on the far side of the football field, away from the meddling eyes of authority figures. One of the substitute teachers, only a few years older than the graduating class, was walking around the track that circled the football field with two female students. Every time they'd walk by, we'd all make semi-loud, but vague, comments about how he was going to get laid. On the fourth or fifth time around the track, Flo decided he would join in on the fun. Unfortunately, the art of subtlety escaped poor Flo, but he did his best.
"Hey!" he screamed at the top of his lungs, "You fucking faggot! You're going to fuck them in the fucking ass!"
We all started laughing uncontrollably. The substitute teacher turned around momentarily, puffing out his chest like he was going to beat up a retarded kid, which made us laugh even harder. They walked away, and a few minutes later a different teacher came and told us we weren't allowed to sit on those bleachers since there was nobody there to supervise us.
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.
5.7.06
The eighteen year old eighth grader.
Jeremy came to my school when I was in twelfth grade and he was in eighth. I was 18 at the time, and so was he. He was a tall, skinny kid who the loud racists would always harass for being "too black", despite the fact that he was a pasty white kid. I never talked to him, but he seemed like an alright guy.
Dave was a guy from my grade, who I had never gotten along with. I met him in eighth grade, when he had told me that seventy five percent of all black people were in jail. Another time, for no reason, he had grabbed me by the shirt and yelled in my face that he was going to kick my ass. Dave was among the most vocal critics of Jeremy, and had apparently been trying to start a fight with him since he began attending our school. Jeremy always declined.
One morning while waiting for school to begin, I saw a huge crowd of people run towards the cafeteria. Very few things can make teenagers swarm in such a manner, so I assumed somebody must be fighting. I got up and ran, following the crowd.
The cafeteria was silent except for the packing sounds of Jeremy pounding Dave's face. The fight, as far as I could tell, was entirely one sided, with Dave covered in his own blood and trying to block Jeremy's blows. The fight was very brief, and was broken up by the principal. I later heard some students claim that Jeremy had punched the principal, but I certainly didn't see anything like that.
Dave was hustled off somewhere to be cleaned up, and Jeremy was being lead to the office.
"You fucking racist people. You fucking racist people. I never wanted any of this shit," he said, walking slowly, his hands dripping with Dave's blood. He looked genuinely saddened by what had happened. I felt bad for him because the Nazi stoners used to mess with me, too, but I was never big enough to smash one of their faces in. He was going to get kicked out of school basically because of their constant harassment.
"Come on, Jeremy, let's go," said one of the teachers who had shown up. He spoke very softly in a manner that made me wonder if he was sympathetic to Jeremy's plight.
"I didn't want any trouble...all you fucking racist people..." he said, walking into the office.
Jeremy was 18, so the police came to school and arrested him. I never saw him again, but Dave was back in school the next week.
A few years ago, Jeremy was charged with bludgeoning two people to death with a hammer during a robbery. He was found not guilty. He has three tear drops tattooed on his face that people say represent three lives that he has taken.
Dave was a guy from my grade, who I had never gotten along with. I met him in eighth grade, when he had told me that seventy five percent of all black people were in jail. Another time, for no reason, he had grabbed me by the shirt and yelled in my face that he was going to kick my ass. Dave was among the most vocal critics of Jeremy, and had apparently been trying to start a fight with him since he began attending our school. Jeremy always declined.
One morning while waiting for school to begin, I saw a huge crowd of people run towards the cafeteria. Very few things can make teenagers swarm in such a manner, so I assumed somebody must be fighting. I got up and ran, following the crowd.
The cafeteria was silent except for the packing sounds of Jeremy pounding Dave's face. The fight, as far as I could tell, was entirely one sided, with Dave covered in his own blood and trying to block Jeremy's blows. The fight was very brief, and was broken up by the principal. I later heard some students claim that Jeremy had punched the principal, but I certainly didn't see anything like that.
Dave was hustled off somewhere to be cleaned up, and Jeremy was being lead to the office.
"You fucking racist people. You fucking racist people. I never wanted any of this shit," he said, walking slowly, his hands dripping with Dave's blood. He looked genuinely saddened by what had happened. I felt bad for him because the Nazi stoners used to mess with me, too, but I was never big enough to smash one of their faces in. He was going to get kicked out of school basically because of their constant harassment.
"Come on, Jeremy, let's go," said one of the teachers who had shown up. He spoke very softly in a manner that made me wonder if he was sympathetic to Jeremy's plight.
"I didn't want any trouble...all you fucking racist people..." he said, walking into the office.
Jeremy was 18, so the police came to school and arrested him. I never saw him again, but Dave was back in school the next week.
A few years ago, Jeremy was charged with bludgeoning two people to death with a hammer during a robbery. He was found not guilty. He has three tear drops tattooed on his face that people say represent three lives that he has taken.
29.6.06
The oblivious punk rock nerd.
It was senior year in high school I was decked out in full punk rock regalia: safety pins, obscure band t-shirts, spikey hair, and a fuck-you attitude. I was sitting alone at a table in the library when a girl walked in. She was a gorgeous black haired girl who I had always had a crush on since eighth grade, but could never bring myself to talk to. I was horribly awkward, and thought she was way out of my league.
There were plenty of places to sit, but she walked to my table and sat down next to me. I stared into my book, pretending I somehow didn't even notice her arrival.
A couple minutes passed, and she began to sing.
"Bam bam bambam, buh bam bam bambam, I wanna be sedated!" she sang. The Ramones. My heart fluttered. She was singing a song from the fucking godfathers of punk rock. Within seconds, I suddenly found her even more attractive than I had before.
She kept singing while I pondered what I should do. Should I join her? I know this song, I thought, I should just start singing, too.
I tried to make my voice work, but I was gripped with the kind of terror you feel in nightmares when you realize you can't even open your mouth to scream. She finished singing, and my mind raced thinking of things to say. Sitting next to me was a girl I had always been into, and I had a great excuse to talk to her. She liked the Ramones, I liked the Ramones. It seemed perfect. I just had to think of what to say.
I sat there until the bell rang, just thinking. I never said anything. I don't think I ever ended up talking to her.
There were plenty of places to sit, but she walked to my table and sat down next to me. I stared into my book, pretending I somehow didn't even notice her arrival.
A couple minutes passed, and she began to sing.
"Bam bam bambam, buh bam bam bambam, I wanna be sedated!" she sang. The Ramones. My heart fluttered. She was singing a song from the fucking godfathers of punk rock. Within seconds, I suddenly found her even more attractive than I had before.
She kept singing while I pondered what I should do. Should I join her? I know this song, I thought, I should just start singing, too.
I tried to make my voice work, but I was gripped with the kind of terror you feel in nightmares when you realize you can't even open your mouth to scream. She finished singing, and my mind raced thinking of things to say. Sitting next to me was a girl I had always been into, and I had a great excuse to talk to her. She liked the Ramones, I liked the Ramones. It seemed perfect. I just had to think of what to say.
I sat there until the bell rang, just thinking. I never said anything. I don't think I ever ended up talking to her.
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.
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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