But, at times I get nostalgic; will I ever miss the world of forced education? Maybe someday I’ll be a 35 year old working for a paper factory, dreaming of being a young and stupid third grader again. And the worst part is, I can never come back. Well, unless I want to spend a couple of years getting a teaching degree, or want to sneak in and risk being perceived as a dirty dirty old man.
And while it’s true that I haven’t really learned anything intended in the curriculum since third grade, really, when has public education actually been about education? If I’ve learnt anything these past twelve years, it’s how to deal with people. How to not be annoying. How to not act too pissed off when you get un-invited from a birthday party. How to lie convincingly. How to make people laugh. Why I should give a shit about what I choose to wear in the morning. Why I shouldn’t tell a girlfriend she’s fat. Why I should be nice to kids who might someday become mass murderers. Why someone pooping in a urinal is so funny. Why I shouldn’t fuck people over. How to pretend you give a shit when other people are talking. And most importantly, It taught me who the fuck I am.
But that knowledge didn’t come overnight folks, it took me thirteen years (four of which I was still wetting the bed during). And so, I’m about to share with you thirteen years of experiences, bad choices, ruined friendships, oh, and why someone shitting in a urinal is so memorable. Sit back, relax, and try not fall asleep. Hell, you might even learn something.
Kindergarten- Mrs. Bacon's Class
“I don’t want to go to school,” I said to my mother, “Why can’t I just stay home forever?”
“Because if you go to school, you’ll become smart like me, and then you can do whatever you want when you grow up.” she replied.
“I just want to watch Barney,” I stated.
“Well, if you stay home you’re not going to be an astronaut when you grow up…”
Eventually I caved to her idle threat, but in retrospective, I get the feeling that my time in Kindergarten would’ve actually been better spent watching Barney, because unless NASA decides to get drunk and raffle off tickets to space, I ain’t gonna be no damn astronaut.
In Mrs. Bacon’s class, our time was pretty evenly split between sleeping, building block towers, and learning how to write our names. While not exactly the pinnacle of intellectuality, I do remember having fun. Well, at least I had fun for a little while that is.
In November of 1994 I received my first nickname, a nickname that would last at least four months. I’m not really sure who it was that decided it would be a fun idea to give everyone in the class a nickname, but if I ever found out, I would shank that person in the ear.
As kindergarteners, you could tell our intellectual abilities by what we chose to call each other. My best friend was called ‘Booger’, and I was called ‘Potty Traynor’.
When it came time to give the both of us nicknames, we both were sort of enthusiastic at the prospect of being known by names other than ‘Alex Traynor’ and ‘Brett Thompson’. They gave Brett the nickname ‘Booger’ first, obviously he was sort of pissed off at this, but I guess he should have thought better than to pick his nose when it was nickname deciding time. It took them a while longer to come up with my nickname, since I dressed appropriately, wasn’t considered weird, and currently wasn’t either a.)Picking my nose, b.)Shitting my pants, or c.)Peeing. The best they had on me was that my last name was a noun.
“Hey everybody! Let’s call him Lion Traynor!”
“You’re kidding me? Lion Traynor? I like Lion Traynor, geez, if you want to come up with something abusive, you should call me Potty Tra……… shit.”
And so it was, Potty Traynor was born. The nickname haunted me for the next four months, almost completely destroying my chances of having a girlfriend that year (Since I doubt anyone would be enthused about telling their friends that their new boyfriend’s name is ‘Potty’). But thankfully Potty Traynor didn’t last long, as it was replaced by a new and more flattering nickname: Elvis.
It started out as any other day, we said the pledge of allegiance, we built some block towers, we wrote our names a few times, and then a woman walked into the room. We didn’t get many visitors, so our full attention was directed towards the strange woman. She explained that she was the director of art at our school and that she was auditioning roles for our class play.
She started giving away roles in the play like they were STD’s in a brothel. She assigned a couple of girls as dancers, a few of the guys as baseball players, before she got to the lead role in the play, Mr. C. We were doing a play on the letters of the alphabet (What did you expect?), and Mr. C stood for Mr. Cotton Candy, and for some inexplicable reason, Mr. Cotton Candy looked and acted exactly like Elvis Presley. She gently explained the nature of the role, and then started asking for volunteers. After about ten seconds of absolute nothingness, it looked as if no-one was going to volunteer. Then all of a sudden, up darts my friend Drew’s hand. Now, it was a well known fact that the girl I had a crush on in that class had a little thing for Drew, so not to be shown up, my hand darted up as well. I had never considered acting before that moment, but there was no way I was going to let Drew get all the attention. After my hand went up, well, Booger’s hand went up too, and I’m not completely sure what his reasoning was, although I did find out a few years later that he was slightly mentally retarded.
There we were, the three of us standing in front of the whole classroom eagerly awaiting instructions from the teacher lady. She pulled out a boom box she brought from another classroom and put on ‘Jailhouse rock’ and then told us to ‘Twirl around’. So, there we were, standing in front of our fellow classmates twirling around like three retards (technically there was only one). I quickly took notice of how fast Drew was twirling and made sure I did it twice as fast. She gave out a couple more useless commands, and for each one I did it better than Drew. She then gave out her final command (which now makes me realize that all of those other commands were mere foreplay), she told us to ‘shake our hips’, which Elvis was notorious for.
Now, if you were to walk into that classroom at that very moment, you would see one of the most unsettling things you’d ever see, and then you would probably call the police and ask for an investigation. You see, as Kindergarteners, none of us really knew what ‘humping’ was. Therefore we couldn’t separate the fine distinction between ‘shaking your hips’ and ‘humping the sky’. Now picture three oblivious 5 year olds furiously humping invisible women in front of a classroom of more confused 5 year olds, while a bunch of adults laughed their asses off, all set to the tune of ‘Jail-house Rock’. What took place that day will surely go down in history as the most blatantly homosexual audition in the history of auditions. Not even the auditions for Moulin Rouge could top this one.
So there I was, little 5 year old Alex Traynor shedding off his former innocence and doing something 30 year olds could possibly get arrested for. And, I make no understatement when I say this, it went on for a full minute and thirty seconds. Frankly, because our teachers were too busy laughing to tell us to stop. Thankfully, the rest of the class had no idea either that what we were doing was so very very wrong, so I was spared of any embarrassment.
A couple minutes later the teacher announced that I had the role. Furiously humping my way to the top. I was high as a kite, that is, until two weeks later when the play came up. I’ll spare you the gruesome story, but just picture the audition, in front of 500 more people, oh, and me dressed up like Elvis.
Come to think of it, Kindergarten sucked.
1st Grade - Ms. Conn's class
Ms. Conn had long brown hair, with blond highlights, and it did this thing that curled at the end. She had this kind of reassuring smile that gave of the general vibe of “I don’t really care who peed on the seat, I just want to know so I can teach whoever’s responsible how to aim”. She always brought in candy for us, and she was really nice. But, most importantly, she laughed at my jokes, the key to my heart. I had a crush.
And looking back at our class photo, and her less than enthusiastic responses to my journal entries, it’s kinda hard to see what I saw in her way back then. Basically, what it chalks up to is the fact that I needed a crush. It was a period in time where I was just coming to grips with the realization that the ex-woman-of-my-dreams turned out to be a dirty dirty whore, and my last teacher Mrs. Bacon was considerably less than appealing. I guess Ms. Conn was the right girl at the right time, she was nice to me, she had a car, and she was under the age of 75 and never lost her dentures during the middle of class.
I’d like to say that something ever happened between me and Ms. Conn, but unfortunately for all of the boys in that class who pined over her, she wasn’t a child molester. Although, even when we got actual confirmation of this (Booger asked her out), that didn’t stop our pining. What can we say, we were hopeless romantics.
Although most every guy in that class wanted to marry her, I know of one who didn’t. His name was Gus, and he was the first actual gay person I ever met. Now sure, I have no actual confirmation of his sexual orientation, but the fact that he hung out with all of the girls in that class was confirmation enough for me. You see, when you hang out with exclusively women, and are over the age of 13, there’s the distinct possibility that you’re boning each and every one of them. But when you’re in first grade and choose to hang out with all girls, no doubt about it, you’re gay.
Now, I didn’t know what ‘gay’ was back then, and it wasn’t until third grade when I started listening to a lot of ‘Village People’ music did my mother finally explain the concept to me. So, at this time, he was just plain old Gus, not being persecuted for his sexual orientation whatsoever. And me and Gus were friends.
We didn’t have very much in common other than the fact that his sister was on my brother’s baseball team, and we hung out playing tag and other stuff while their games were on. Of course we could have just watched the games with our families, but I’ve always hated baseball, and Gus… well, Gus was gay. We had fun during those baseball games, and we developed sort of an unlikely friendship.
Which is why it might come as a shock when I tell you that I consider Gus as one of the single worst influences on my life. He taught me something that rid me of my sense of common decency, and made me the enemy of parents everywhere (and no, it isn’t anything gay).
F-U-C-K, just four simple letters that have gotten me into so much unbelievable trouble over the years. Sure, they are just four letters (all of them they teach in school), but apparently when you put them all together in that order, they’re evil.
Now, Gus had a very morbid sense of humor, so instead of coming up to me and saying, “There’s this word, fuck, that when you say it, people get mad at you”, he came up to me and said, “I’ll pay you 25 cents to go up to the board and write F-U-C-K”.
Obviously, I accepted the proposition like a cheap hooker, never doubting for a minute that Gus wasn’t a complete dick. As soon as it was up, the rest of the class started giggling like 1st graders normally do, and as I wondered aloud what was so funny, I was interrupted. By a deafening scream.
It was my fiancée, Ms. Conn.
“WHO IN HEAVEN’S NAME DID THIS?”
Instantly everyone in the room pointed at me, including Gus.
Needless to say, Gus was no longer my friend. (“Et tu, Gus?”)
Ms. Conn whisked me out of the room, and started yelling. Even after I explained the situation, she didn’t stop yelling.
Needless to say, I was no longer attracted to her.
Eventually she calmed down, and then sentenced me to one of the longest timeouts ever. Also, the bitch called my mother, which resulted in the most awkward conversation in the history of awkward conversations.
“Honey, you know what you did in school today was very very bad, don’t you?”
“What, writing ‘fuck’ on the board?”
*Gasp* “Honey, don’t say that.”
“Why the fuck not you fucking fucker?”
Needless to fucking say, first grade fucking sucked.
Click here for part fucking two.
1 comments:
write a book please :)
Learning all bout the life of someone you don't know is way more interesting than reading about someone like.. Elvis. It makes me feel like more of a stalker.
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