7th Grade – Smith Middle School
In grades K-6, you couldn’t meet a more hard-working and eager to learn “mathletic” genius than the young Alex Traynor. In grade 7, that all stopped. It gave birth to the underachieving slacker known as the Alex Traynor of today. The Alex Traynor who sleeps till 3 in the afternoon, reacts unfavorably to the prospect of getting up and putting on pants, and who hasn’t really deeply cared about anything since before the new millennium.
Part way through the year I came to the stunning realization that I didn’t give a shit. Now, I didn’t stop bathing and pick fights with random strangers, instead, I stopped doing my homework, became an insomniac, did arguably retarded things because I was “bored”, and stopped paying attention to most of what they teach in skool,
While, arguably, I would’ve stopped giving a shit regardless, it’s possible a number of conditions led to this enormous waste of potential:
1. The Friends
As kids begin to venture towards puberty and beyond (“There’s hair everywhere!?!”), social groups and friend circles begin to become increasingly polarized. What once was a giant friend circle where everyone held hands, sang songs, and finger-painted, was suddenly fractured into many different groups with many different characteristics. While the groups become more intricate with age, their early stages are a good indication of their characteristics:
The people who like sports – This social group enjoys watching sports, playing sports, betting on sports, and jerking each other off in the showers.
The nerds – This group enjoys lying about what the jocks do in the showers, Lord of The Rings, and Graphing Calculators.
The skateboarders – This is the clique advertisers market “eXtreme Go-Gurt” to.
The girls that wouldn’t go out with me – This clique consisted of every girl at Smith Middle School. Man, were they well organized.
At the onset of 7th Grade, due to my extreme shyness and questionable fashion sense (technically it was my Mother’s fashion sense), I was grouped in with “The Nerds”. Even though we didn’t have a hell of a lot in common other than our devoted love of The Lord of The Rings movies (I only like them for the non-nerdy reasons, like shit blowing up and people getting stabbed and junk) they weren’t that bad of a group to hang out with.
But, I partially blame my time being a “nerd” as the reason I no longer give a shit. Being surrounded by a bunch of overachievers who unwaveringly gave a shit affected my motivation in a very negative way. All of them busted their asses staying up late nights to get straight A’s in a Grade that doesn’t really matter in the long run unless you fail. Sure, some of them are going to Ivy League Universities in the fall, but what will that do for them, I ask? Sure, in 10 years they might all be millionaires with supermodel girlfriends, but that takes hard work and dedication, and honestly, in 10 years I’ll have gained something from slacking off that cannot simply be accomplished by going to an Ivy League University: A really high score in Tetris.
2. The Teachers
7th Grade was one of the first years where I had teachers that I actually liked. Now all of them may have been pretty bad at actually “teaching” me things, but they instilled in me some basic values that are far more important than knowledge of Early World History, and, the, benefits, of, proper, punctuation, usage. They were important to the complete obliteration of my academic ambitions because they taught me to love things other than chemistry, history, and math. Although it’s not what they might have planned, they shifted my interests away from academia, and towards personality.
Mr. Falcigno – Bald, and sporting a key-ring bigger than the janitor’s, Mr. Fal, the science teacher, was one weird mother fucker. Aside from his complete refusal to say the word “No” (in favor of adopting a robot voice and saying the word “Negative”), Mr. Fal was actually pretty cool. Now, I don’t really remember anything of what we learned in his science class, but he did teach me one important lesson I’ll always remember: Be eccentric.
Mr. Fal was one of the most eccentric people I had ever met, and while eccentricity is not always laugh out loud hilarious, it’s always amusing. Every day he would do at least one weird thing that confused somebody:
One day he brought in one of those electronic talking fish that were so popular in the late 90’s and sang to it for a few minutes. On Arbor Day, he pretended to be a tree. He would occasionally slip into and out of a foreign accent to throw us off. Once when I fell asleep in class he put one of those emergency fire safety blankets over me and whispered, “You better be dreaming about Physics or I’m going to have to wake you up.” One day, he announced to the class that he had to leave to go to a conference and we could spend the rest of the period doing whatever we wanted without a substitute teacher. After we all finished cheering, he started teaching us basic chemistry and pretended he never said anything.
Mr. Fal was, at the time, a hero of mine, and he made me fall completely in love with doing incredibly odd things that confused people. ¡Estoy escribiendo esto en español!
Mr. Giroux - Part Math Teacher, part World War II Lieutenant, Mr. Giroux scared the crap out of each and every one of us. Now, we all liked the man a great deal, but his teaching style, for lack of a better word, is best described as “intense”. Generally I don’t like teachers who throw chalk and erasers at you if you fall asleep; Mr. Giroux was the exception. He made me fall head over heels in love with violence. Now, not murderous violence, or even incredibly violent violence, but funny violence. The kind where somebody gets hit really hard with a thrown eraser and instead of crying or getting angry, starts laughing. Like in Jackass™, when they crash into various objects whilst in a shopping cart, or in America’s Funniest Home Videos, where, really, anything happens. Mr. Giroux opened my heart and soul to the joys of somebody getting hit really hard with something, and for that, I thank him.
Mr. Moynihan – Part History teacher, Part retarded hobo, Mr. Moynihan deeply disturbed each and every one of us. Whether it was his constant wheezing, or the fact that he claimed to be in love with a 30,000 year old skeleton, Mr. Moynihan, as opposed to being occasionally eccentric, was a complete weirdo 100% of the time. He had this kind of presence that emphasized just how incredibly different he was from everyone else. He thought differently, he talked differently, and would just be abstract in every sense of the word. But, one thing is certain, he was damned funny (even if I was the only one who recognized it.) I learned three things from Mr. Moynihan; 1. Be different, 2. Weird is funny, and 3. If you’re going to be weird enough to piss your students off, check your morning coffee for laxatives.
3. Television
Long ago, Television and homework had an epic battle over the attention span of Alex Traynor, and in 7th Grade, a winner was declared. Now, I’ve been watching the ol’ boob tube for the vast majority of my life, but 7th grade was the year when I decided that the big shiny box of entertainment was more important than, well, most of my other responsibilities.
My chief reason for initially quitting homework was quite simple: TV is funner. Though now I have a lot more reasons to not want to do Homework (porn), I still come back to my honorary third parent: Television. I’ve learned more things from TV than I have from 13 years of public school, namely, if you get hit by something, shout ‘Doh’, and, if you see Chris Hansen, run.
Also, a lifelong dream of mine has been to get on TV (and not just on Dateline: To Catch a Predator this time), so actually sitting down and paying attention to TV may help with that.
4. Insomnia
If you’ve ever met me in person, it becomes frighteningly apparent that I don’t get a lot of sleep. 7th Grade marked the beginning of my many years of insomnia. Now, I’m not exactly sure how my inability to sleep started, and I’m not sure why it continues, but I am sure of one thing: sleep deprivation fucks things up.
Aside from the zombie-ification process that occurs with being awake for three days straight, another unfortunate side effect of sleep deprivation is the boredom that comes with being the only person awake in the middle of the night. During the period of time after Late Night with Conan O’Brien ends and before the sun comes up I’ve done some pretty stupid things out of boredom:
- One night I emptied the contents of my backpack into my microwave and created a small electrical fire. I’d like to be able to have a good explanation for this, but I was rrreeeaaalllyy bored.
- Towards the end of the year, I’d sneak out of my house and take a series of 2 A.M. trips to my condo complex’s swimming pool. During one of these trips, my bathing suit fell off in the process of jumping into the pool. And since it was 2 A.M. and pitch dark, I was unable to find it again, and had to walk home through a heavily populated condo complex ass naked. What makes the story even worse is that my dad happened to be awake when I was arriving home. Walking through the front door naked and catching my father gasp and give me a look to the effect of, “We will never speak of this again” was one of the most painful experiences of my life.
- Word of advice: Never shave your pubic hair.
- I kept a number of poorly-written journals during 7th grade that I wrote in while awake in the middle of the night. They contained my thoughts on girls I thought were cute, things that made me laugh, and incredibly violent stick figure drawings. The journals were all destroyed years later upon realization that I come off as a retarded lunatic while sleep deprived.
- One time, I took all the food and shelves out of my refrigerator and crawled in there to see if the light really went off when the door was shut. Problems arose when I found out how difficult the door was to push open from the inside.
In retrospect, my new philosophy worked out incredibly well, seeing that I practically slept in every class I took from 7th grade forward and still got into college (Hooray for the SAT’s!)In conclusion, 7th Grade changed my way of thinking and paved the way for more massive changes of perspective in the future (Specifically, the next chapter.)
8th Grade – Smith Middle School
Everyone has a year that defines them. The year where a person changes from who they once were to who they are now. The year when you ‘grow up’, although not strictly in the traditional sense (you can still watch SpongeBob and laugh at fart jokes.) 8th Grade was the year I found my sense of purpose and it marked the emergence of the Alex Traynor you all know and love today.
After the summer break, I arrived back at Smith Middle School with a newfound confidence. I was a different guy. The shy, quiet Alex Traynor was a thing of the past. I finally let most people, not just my friends, see me as someone more than just Mr. generic pre-teen. I talked the way I thought, instead of holding back. And most importantly, I made people laugh. I was the funny guy.
While sitting in class, hundreds of thousands of joke ideas come to my head, most of them shit, but at least 20 of them are mildly funny, some better than that. 8th Grade was the year I actually started to say them out loud, instead of giggling to myself or whispering them to a friend. And for the most part, people thought I was funny. I had never gained that type of mass acceptance before, and I was absolutely thrilled to think that people I had never even formally introduced myself to thought I was funny.
And then, one fateful day in Miss Scarola’s English class we were given an assignment. We were told to create a short story on the topic of our choosing and read it to the class. Being the twisted fuck I am, I wrote a story about a suicidal squirrel named Skippy. While others may find writing a short story and reading it to a classroom to be a trivial experience, it marks an important milestone in the life of Alex Traynor.
It’s important because it introduced me to “The need.” The compulsive need to make a room of complete strangers laugh. I had made the class laugh before but after reading my story, I felt a certain compulsion to do it again. I became inclined towards making people laugh, or at least trying. It became who I am.
Skippy was also important, because, by response, it was the single funniest thing I had ever done up until that point. People were laughing hysterically during my nervous reading of it and people talked about it all week. Sure, they probably forgot about it the next week, but the effects of that reading lasted much much longer for me.
Reading over the story again today, I’m surprised at how much of it I still find funny. Sure, there a quite a few jokes that fall completely flat today, but for something I wrote at 3 A.M at age 13, it’s pretty good.
In lieu of actually including the whole story, I present you with a condensed version, containing actual lines taken from the story in bold:
Skippy The Suicidal Squirrel
The Condensed Edition
Skippy was an ordinary squirrel that lived an ordinary life; he ate acorns, climbed trees, and had a severe case of ADHD. Skippy is wandering through Central Park one day when he stumbles upon “a mysterious brown liquid” (that’s all the explanation I gave) and suddenly becomes freakishly intelligent. He thought of things he hadn’t thought of before; he finally came to his senses and realized that OJ did it; I mean come on, DNA evidence doesn’t lie. He then goes home to his fellow squirrels, who are quite freaked out by the sight of the ‘new’ Skippy. They ran away faster than my uncle when the cops show up. Skippy realized that he was now permanently different, and he would never be the same. His heart sank faster than an anorexic Vietnamese midget carrying a Taco Bell Chalupa, being thrown into an eternal pit of doom! (Not that that’s a personal experience or anything….) Skippy then realizes that suicide is the only reasonable option , so he climbs to the top of a tall building and jumps off. He remembered that he was a flying squirrel. Skippy then tries to fly into the side of the building but accidentally flies into an open window and lands on a pillow. Next, he tries to kill himself in another hilarious way, that’s, unfortunately, too stupid too mention. The chance of that happening is equal to the chance that this Short Story will cure the common cold and win a Nobel Peace Prize. While still in the apartment he flew into, Skippy hears the door opening, and in enters a pair of Mafioso stock brokers who argue over one of them investing a lot of money in Enron until one pulls out a gun and shoots the other. After that, Skippy takes the gun and shoots himself with it. He later wakes up in a dumpster near the river. Apparently he had just shot his leg off. Skippy wanders toward the Hudson River and looks at his reflection in the water. He looked like an unfortunate combination of Disney characters. After this, Skippy starts to get really hungry. “Self-cannibalism!” thought Skippy. He becomes instantly enamored by the taste of himself and starts a fire in a nearby park to cook himself with. He then hears a loud roar come from a nearby forest. He hid behind a bush and saw a huge bear in a ranger hat and blue jeans. It was the infamous “Smokey” the forest fire prevention bear. Smokey proceeds to maul the shit out of Skippy, but stops when he sees that Skippy isn’t struggling at all. Disparaged by this, he asks, “What the hell’s your problem?! You’re ruining this for the both of us!” Skippy’s amazed by the fact that Smokey can talk and inquires as to where Smokey got his talking powers. “What powers? All it took was a dictionary and the motivation of the US government pointing a gun to my head” They then get into a prolonged verbal fight using “Yo Momma” jokes I stole from the internet. “Yo momma so stupid she thought the Nazis were saying "Hi! Hitler" By the time the insult fight was over, the flames from the forest fire had engulfed Smokey, and he died from the thing that he spent his whole life trying to prevent. After the unfortunate death of Smokey, Skippy reevaluated his life and realized that it was worth living after all. He wanted to run and jump through the forests and live his life to the fullest. And then Skippy was run over by a drunk driver.
THE END!!!
By: Alexander “Danger” Traynor
Yes folks, it was a dumb story about a suicidal squirrel haphazardly trying to kill himself that told me what I wanted to do for the rest of my life: Be funny.
After that, making people laugh got easier confidence wise, and although I would eventually get on people’s nerves for trying to be “too funny” (read: annoying), the year greatly helped me improve my skill and learn from my beginner’s mistakes. And halfway through the year, I was on top of the world. I was the happiest I had been for a long time and things were looking good.
And then I stopped showing up.
For the last half of the school year, I showed up approximately seven more times. Just, suddenly, one day I didn’t go to school for a month, and then I came back for one day, and then stopped showing up again.
Up until now, I’ve never told anyone what I was actually doing during my extended vacation from school. Always giving a sarcastic answer when asked. And now I’m finally ready to reveal the true answer to the world in this very article: I did nothing.
Yes that’s right, I stayed home, and did nothing. I didn’t come down with the plague, I didn’t move to Tahiti, I didn’t run over a nun and go to prison, I didn’t get accepted into Harvard 5 years pre-maturely, and I didn’t join a rock band and start touring Europe. I sat at home on my couch and watched TV.
What started out as a one-day vacation to get away from the stress that school caused, turned into a week of absence, which turned into months of blatant truancy. And I’ve never told anyone why I felt like not coming to school for half a year either, partially because I’m not 100% sure why, and partially because it didn’t, and still doesn’t, make a lot of sense.
I can basically chalk it up to two reasons:
1. I had a minor stress induced breakdown and my absence from school eventually turned into habit, making it harder and harder to stay back in school.
2. The same lesson I learned last chapter: TV is funner.
Now, my truancy (anti-social tendencies) would never get this bad again, but I did take away from the experience a lesson (Albeit, a very stupid and counter-productive lesson.) I learned something I like to refer to as “The joy of absence.” It’s a stupid philosophy that I’ve lived the past five years by (Yes, even though I agree it’s stupid and counter-productive, I don’t plan on completely ditching it any time soon.) Basically, whenever you feel slightly inclined towards not showing up to a responsibility, act on that urge, and not show up. You can do whatever you want in that absence: watch TV, sleep, hang out with friends, go to a movie, sit in the corner crying, drive 90 Mph on the highway, teach a small child from Paraguay how to dance, really, anything you could possibly feel like doing except what you’re supposed to do works fine. Here, let me describe it like I’m doing an infomercial for my philosophy:
Have a hard test you don’t feel ready to take? Stay at home!
Do you have slight back pain? Go back to sleep!
Break up with a girl in your Geometry class lately? Avoid her by not showing up!
Get a detention and think not showing up the day of will get you out of it? You thought right!
And although absence has fucked me over a lot in the past (more on that in tenth grade), I’ve had a shitload of fun with it too, especially during my 8th grade “reclusive period.”
List of fun things I did instead of show up in 8th grade:
- Rode my motor-scooter all around town and did various delinquent things, such as riding to the local supermarket, taking handfuls of candy, eating them in the store, and then walking out without paying.
- Pool parties! (by myself)
- Riding my scooter to school, banging on the windows of the classes I should have been in, and then riding away.
- The Price is Right!
- Day-Dreaming about moving to Tahiti, getting accepted to Harvard 5 years early, running over a nun, and joining a rock band and touring Europe.
- Indoor Baseball. (My mom still kinda hates me for this one)
- Listening to punk rock all day and jamming out on air guitar.
- So many more things it’s hard to list them all.
There were none!
That’s absolutely the best part of this story. How I intentionally skipped half a school year, and not only passed on to the next grade, but wasn’t punished whatsoever. Now, no-one’s willing to easily believe that this actually happened, but it’s possibly the most frighteningly true thing in this entire article. Although, getting off the hook wasn’t exactly simple. It wouldn’t have been possible if not for two main circumstances:
1. The amount my parents were willing to argue on my behalf.
2. Smith Middle School’s reluctance to have to deal with the problem (Me) itself for a whole ‘nother year as opposed to just handing the problem down to the next guy in line (Glastonbury High School) to deal with.
They realized that if they were to hold me back, my absence, and my parents constant bitching, would probably just continue. They felt that the easiest way to get out of the whole situation was to illegitimately pass me in all the courses I was failing due to absence, and then to metaphorically fuck Glastonbury High School up the ass.
Because the next four years would completely suck balls for Glastonbury High School.
To Be Continued…
2 comments:
post the unabriged story.
whaile you are at it write a book.
Id buy it.
of course (sp?) you dont know who I am, so you will never know if id really follow up.
Mwahahahahahah!
good shit.
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