Manic Winter - Chapter III

Chapter III - Hat Turned Backwards Yellin’ Cuss Words

          I made it to my rotten locker and quickly put all my things inside. I got my Consumer Economics book and walked through the dull, grey  halls with purple carpet all over to class. I really didn’t care that I was late. I’d rather do anything other than watch my teacher Mr. Garbage’s fat face talk on and on about money all day. Let me tell you, that was the only thing this guy cared about. Well, maybe that, and hitting on girls that are young enough to be his grand kids. It’s disgusting, I know. But here’s what really grinds my gears; this guy is so goddamn shallow it’s unbelievable. He’ll give all the pretty girls in class more attention than they can deal with and give them A’s on their papers and then he won’t even give the time of day to some of the homelier ones or even the plain ones. I mean, deep down, I’m shallow too, but not as bad as this guy. At least I hide my shallowness. And besides, he’s an adult; he is supposed to be respectable.

          But here’s what really gets me. Mr. Garbage himself is definitely nothing to gaze at either. He has this fat face with a thin mustache, and (get this) no eyebrows what-so-ever. Wow! He also sort of looks like a Rhinoceros. He must not own a mirror, I swear, because he’s conceited as Hell for being so ugly and having a crumby personality. I burst into the door. Everyone stared right at me.

          “So Mr. Stout,” he said, his double-chin flappin’ away. “Late again are we?”

          Okay first of all, this double-chinned douche bag wants to call me “Mr. Stout”? I don’t know who the Hell he thinks he is. Boy does that steam me up when they call me “Mr.” I’ll be honest, I’m a bit choleric when it comes to some things. Being called “Mr.” condescendingly or even a little sarcastically is one of them. It’s like they are offering you joke respect. And I’ll tell you this; receiving joke respect is much worse than receiving no respect at all. Hell, I’d rather have him call me an arrogant, rotten, conceited, dumpster-diving, prude than “Mr. Stout”. And that’s not even all of it. Then he goes on to say “Late again are we?” We? It’s not like I brought Queen Victoria or some other tramp along with me. He’s just saying “we” so he can sound all proper and cool. I wasn’t buying it. I didn’t even say anything to this guy. Just looking at his face was enough. I can just picture this guy chowing down on three Big Macs all at once. If I saw him, I would even approach him. I would say, “Hello, Mr. Garbage, whatcha eatin’ there?” He would say, “Goddamn Big Mac.” Grease would be just running down his chin and he would be making all sorts of chewing sounds. Ugh, you’d throw up if you had the same image in your head as I have in mine. Jesus…

          “So what were we up to this time?” he said. He was really trying to chew the fat with me now. You see, I had a different excuse every time I was late. I could really just pull them out of my ass. The Buddha says that you shouldn’t tell fibs, not even in jest. But I tell a Hell of a lot of fibs “in jest”. I always like to make up a fib and get a laugh or two from a nearby girl. It kills me.

          “I had to check the traps in my attic. We have an infestation,” I said right before I sat down.

          “An infestation of what, Jerry?” he said.

          “I don’t know. The traps were empty. You tell me Mr. Garbage,” I replied.

          A couple people laughed at what I said. This girl Tina who everyone thinks is quite a babe let out a gregarious laugh, but she’s always laughing gregariously at something or another. Either way, that always gets me going; when a girl laughs at one of my lies. However, in my opinion I don’t think this Tina girl is quite as hot as everyone says she is. In my opinion, she kind of has a man look. A girl should have a girl look, not a man look.

          “Alright I think that will be enough there Mr. Stout,” he said.

          I didn’t say anything else after that. I didn’t even want to talk to this guy at all, really. He began to just go on with class as usual. I didn’t even get any more chances to throw in a smart remark. Before you knew it, class was over. My next class was English with Mr. Slum. Mr. Slum wasn’t so bad in my opinion. I think he’s actually a pretty smart guy in all actuality. He just doesn’t show it that much. I bet if he really wanted to, he could say something intelligent every time he opened his mouth, but he doesn’t want to. Maybe he doesn’t want people to think he’s smart. He might even be a little bit like me in some ways. The truth about me is that deep down, I’m not really smart at all. But I pretend like secretly I am really smart. I’m really convincing, I use big words all the time. But on the actual surface I act stupid. It’s deceptive as Hell, I know. I act this way because I’m trying to teach people something; use a little bit of reverse-reverse psychology you see. I act stupid on the surface and I’m actually stupid at the core also. But people never accept things on the surface; they have to look into things like there is some secret meaning to everything, like everything is a crappy, stupid koan. So I bet people analyze me and think, “Oh he’s just trying to act stupid, but he’s really smart.” That’s where I trick them right there. If they went one step deeper they would realize I’m not really smart at all. They wouldn’t even have to go one step deeper, really. If they just accepted the fact that I appear not all that bright, then, well, I really must be not all that bright. In fact, I doubt that there are that many genuinely smart people in the world to begin with. I’m definitely not one of them. If I was smart, I could describe my thoughts and have them make sense. I can’t even do that.

          In Mr. Slum’s class we had just watched this movie about this girl who got raped but no one would believe her. They believed her story was nonsense. It was a pretty heavy topic for an English class. They say that rape is a crime of rage, not sex. Sometimes people are so pissed off and horny that they just go ballistic. It’s sad that people don’t have a little more control over their emotions. You start getting angry thoughts in your head and pretty soon they grow and grow and the next thing you know your hat is turned backwards and you’re raping some girl right on top of a goddamn pinball machine yellin’ cuss words. Some people are just plain unscrupulous.

          “Now what would you do if you were having sexual intercourse with a girl and suddenly she started yelling rape, rape!” Mr. Slum asked the class leaning back in his chair.

          “Jerry, what would you do if that happened to you,” said Brittany quietly as she gazed in my direction. Brittany was this Barbie doll type with the personality of a glazed donut. I mean really. She’s smoking hot and always giving me these silly seductive looks, but she is just not my type. Either way, I got a kick out of the question.

          “I would leave the area and tell an adult who I can trust,” I said. I thought that was an adequate answer. I mean that’s what I would do, really. I mean, I’ve never gotten sexy or anything. But if I did and some girl started yelling “rape” I would just quickly leave the area without causing a scene and tell a fireman or a librarian or something. They’d know what to do. I’m not going to jail over some crazy girl who’s got it out for me.

          There was also this other girl named Patty in my English class that I used to be crazy about. The key words there being ‘used to be’. But she didn’t even laugh at what I said. That got to me. Whenever I say something funny in that class I always look to she if she laughs or not. When we were watching the movie I said, “If they had kept that bitch in the kitchen making breakfast none of this would’ve happened.” I meant it jokingly, of course; the man could have easily raped her while she was in the kitchen making breakfast. But boy did that crack her up. However, Mr. Slum got sore with me for saying such a serious cuss word aloud in class. I only said bitch one time though; I don’t think he likes cuss words as much as me…

          After English class I headed towards Zoology with Mrs. Satan. Her real last name kind of sounds like Satan and she’s also a very austere, difficult teacher, so that’s what we humorously called her. She wasn’t exactly the type of teacher that you hated, but boy did she know how to intimidate you. There was this one time that I did a project for her class. I had to design a model of a DNA strand. Deoxyribonucleic acid. One time I dropped the acronym DNA lightly in front of some dumb man, my grandma’s husband, and he said to me, “Oh yeah? Deoxyribonucleic acid?” I thought to myself, “Wow there, big word, impressive, man” I wasn’t impressed.

          Well, anyway, I made this model of DNA with gumdrops and toothpicks and everything and the model itself was perfect. But there was one problem. The whole thing had to be color coded. Mine was color coded, it really was, but we also had to have a note card that had the colors written down and what molecule they corresponded to. I made one mistake writing down the wrong molecule next to the wrong color and Mrs. Satan took one point right off for every single gumdrop that was that certain color on the model, leaving me with a D+. I was furious. That’s when I started to think she might actually be a Satan. Afterwards I took the model apart and just munched on the gumdrops, pissed off as Hell.

          Today in class we were continuing our dissection of pig fetuses. It was definitely something I did not enjoy. Whenever I started dissecting these pig fetuses, I could never help imagining what their lives would have been like if they were born and grew up on a farm. The life of a pig wouldn’t be so bad. I mean, you wake up in the mud, eat out of a trough, carouse with the local pigs and farm animals, chat about the wife and kids, and go back to bed in the mud. It’d be quite the life I would think. Very Zen, just the way I like it. I’m always working towards a Zen lifestyle.

          Pretty soon everyone in class was in their respective groups, working on the fetus. Nate and Ryan were in my group. Nate was a pretty cool guy. He is pretty tall and he really extenuates it by standing up very straight. He has a protruding brow, but it doesn’t make him look like a Neanderthal or anything. It just defines his face nicely. He is actually a pretty handsome guy; I’m secure enough to say that. He also always looks like he is surveying the place, like he has to make a plan or something. I don’t have a clue what kind of plan he’s making, but he is definitely thinking about something. I didn’t really know too much about Ryan, on the other hand. We weren’t really that good of friends at the time. He is pretty quiet and mellow though; I did know that about him.

          “So let’s do this,” said Nate. He always pretends like doing this dissecting stuff doesn’t gross him out, but I think it does. It really grosses me out.

          “This is exactly what I wanted to see this morning. You come to school and it’s nothing but stomachs and small intestine.” I couldn’t help but be a tad sarcastic.

          I looked through the manual that pointed out all the parts we were supposed to be dissecting. Boy did that get boring in a hurry. I then decided I’d try and pull their leg a bit.

          “Let me tell you guys a story,” I said.

          “Goddamnit Jerry, why don’t you pay attention instead of screwing around all the time?” Nate was scolding me. Some nerve this guy had.

          “Seriously, I have a good story to tell,” I said enthusiastically. I actually didn’t, though. I just wanted to shoot the shit a little bit. In fact, I just wanted to push Nate’s buttons. I’ll be honest here; sometimes I get a kick out of doing things people tell me not to do. Actually more than sometimes, a lot of the time. Most times, actually. I don’t know why. It’s just got to be one of those guilty pleasures that you can’t seem to help. I didn’t even wait for him to give me permission to start running my mouth.

          “There once was a man from Ireland who wanted to come to America in search of a better life.”

          “Jerry, just shut up and give me a hand, wouldja?” I think I was starting to strike a nerve or two.

          “He won a ticket in a card game with some hoodlums and derelicts. A ticket to America. That goddamn ticket just made his day, man. He just couldn’t wait to get out of his crumby town and start a new life in America; land of the free, home of the...”

          “Ryan, would you get me the scalpel, we have to…”

          “The day he set sail for America,” I interrupted. “Was the happiest day of his whole life. As he boarded the ship, he saw a hummingbird fly by.”

          “For Chrissake, we’re trying to do some work here,” said Nate, obviously agitated.

          “When he got off the boat and set foot on American soil, he was on cloud nine,” I said. I really didn’t know what being on cloud nine meant, but it sounded pretty damn cool. I’ve realized sometimes it doesn’t even matter what the Hell you’re talking about, as long as you make it sound pretty cool.

          “It was in that moment that a hummingbird flew by. He decided to find a nice place to stay. He looked all around and what not for the nearest hotel. He then saw a hotel with a picture of a hummingbird on the front door. Interesting, he thought to himself. He went inside and asked about rooms, but they were all full,” I explained. I wonder if they had any idea where I was going with this.

          “They did however have a janitor’s closet with a cot in it. The man said he would take whatever they had. They led him to the room, and when they opened the door, a hummingbird flew out of the room. He got a good night’s rest and woke up refreshed the next morning.”

          “Will you quit yappin’? Nobody’s listening to your goddamn excuse for a story what-so-ever,” Nate said.

          I guessed that I would just have to talk louder.

          “The next day, he awoke to the janitor opening the door. The janitor took one look at him and said, ‘WHAT IN THE SAME HELL ARE YOU DOING IN MY CLOSET!?!’” I shouted as if I was ablaze.

          That just broke the damn camel’s back right there.

          “You are so fucking crazy I can’t even stand it,” Nate said shaking his head.

          The nerve of this guy, to call me crazy. I was just trying to tell him an intriguing story and he just flips his lid. Sometimes I might just be trying to impress everyone when I talk about too much nonsense, but other times I am just testing them to see how much nonsense they can put up with without slitting my throat. It’s a pretty strange game that we all play in our daily conversational dance.