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.
Second Grade was one of the better years in my elementary school career, as it marked the beginning of my decade long transition from ‘generic, nose-picking, nap-taking, power ranger lovin’ child, to… well, something slightly more complex. You see, all Kindergarteners and First Graders are fundamentally the same, they all like the same things, they all act in the same hyper-retarded manner, and they all, for some mind-boggling reason, love the Power Rangers. Second grade was the grade where you became known for something slightly less shallow than how much you picked your nose, or how unfortunate your last name was. It was when you developed a personality, and the first age where you first started to show your true colors. I’m sure second grade was the first time that Neil Armstrong showed an interest towards walking on the moon, the time where Einstein first developed an affinity for nuclear-physics, and the time where a young Ted Kaczynski developed a penchant for sending bombs through the mail. And for the young Alex Traynor, well, he had a thing for making people laugh.
I honestly can’t remember my 2nd Grade teacher’s name, but I do remember that she was monstrously obese, so for the sake of this article, were going to refer to her as ‘The Blob’. The Blob was the first in the incredibly long line of incompetent teachers I would have in my public school career, and as they always say, you never forget your first. She was the kind of teacher who would constantly be late for school because she locked her keys in her car, and one time she forgot to tell the janitor to keep the heat on in the room over the weekend and as a result, the class gerbil froze to death. And even though I can’t remember her real name, she taught me something about myself I never knew before: I’m an idiot.
It was a pleasantly warm month of November for the mediocre state that is Connecticut, and unbeknownst to the whole rest of the world, a chain of events that would only minimally shape the life of a small freckled Irish boy was about to take place. My desk was located near the left corner of our humble classroom, and I sat next to my friends, Matas and Chris. While, I wasn’t close to being the class clown or anything, I was what you would call ‘the funny one’ in our group of friends. Not that I hadn’t dreamed of being the class clown though, since making people laugh has always appealed to me. And at that point in age, I figured that if I could make the whole class laugh at the same time, everyone would like me. And I was constantly looking for an opportunity.
Now, one fateful day, The Blob was checking homework when I decided it would be a great idea to, when she got to me, tell her a wildly absurd excuse as to why I didn’t have my homework, bask in the laughter of my fellow classmates, and then just as once as she’s about to reprimand me, shout “GOTCHA!”, and then present my thoroughly completed homework paper. Well, somewhere during the execution of that poorly thought out plan, something went terribly wrong.
Now “The dog ate my homework” is a joke excuse that’s been going around for ages, and in this day in age, I’m somewhat surprised when someone doesn’t recognize it. It’s even more surprising when someone believes it, because honestly, unless you rub bacon grease all over your homework and then dip it in a vat of chocolate pudding, chances are your dog won’t swallow your homework.
The teacher came up to my desk.
“Where’s your homework Alex?”
This was my moment in the sun, all I had to do was flawlessly pronounce four simple words, and I’d be the coolest kid in all of Pine Grove Elementary.
“The dog ate it.”
It was perfect, at that moment I felt that no joke could ever be told in a manner that could top that, and just as I started to see my classmates laugh uproariously and as I pictured what my life as Mr. Cool would be like, The Blob ruined everything,
“Really?”
Uh-Oh.
I wasn’t expecting that. Not once while I was formulating my scheme did I ever think of a back-up plan. I hadn’t even considered the logistics of a dog eating my homework, let alone pre-formulating a cover-up lie.
“Yeah…”
It was all I was able to muster out of my shocked little head.
“What kind of dog do you have?”
Now, I didn’t have a dog at the time, and asking a second grader to remember any singular breed of dog on a seconds notice is like trying to Google ‘google’(weird shit happens, trust me). My mind hit a blank.
“…”
“Alright, then what does your dog look like?”
Now, under normal circumstances I’d be able to come up with an imaginary description for an imaginary dog on the drop of a hat, but for some odd reason, I was still drawing a blank. It was about 5 seconds of blankly staring into The Blob’s triple-chinned face until I realized I should look for inspiration. I faced my attention towards the classroom bookshelf and saw two books that caught my eye. “101 Dalmatians” and “Clifford the Big Red Dog”. Now, even the most retarded of second graders (Booger) would have told her that their dog had spots and was a Dalmatian, but for some reason I went with Clifford.
“He’s red!” I shouted with triumphant enthusiasm.
I count that statement as among one of the dumbest things I have ever said.
“You have a red dog, well that’s odd, I’ve never seen a red dog before”
“Well, I hadn’t either before I saw him”
“What’s his name?”
“Clifford!”
I take my previous remark back, THAT’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever said.
Now, even a woman as incompetent as The Blob could tell I was an idiot.
“Let me guess, he’s big?”
“Oh yeah, he’s fucking huge!”
About a month prior she had decided to just ignore whenever I said my favorite word after she couldn’t successfully convince me of it’s evil ways.
“Do you have any other dogs”
“Yeah…”
“How many?”
“One Hundred and One... and they’re all Dalmatians!”
“…”
By that time, she had forgotten all about the homework and had begun to imagine me as a thirty five year old living in a cardboard box in an alley somewhere. That conversation changed the rest of my adolescent life, and now only upon reflection do I realize that I’m a terrible terrible liar. And while I could tell you about the time I convinced The Blob I was late for school because I was abducted by aliens, I’ll just leave you with a little advice: If you’re ever stuck in a tight conversational situation and find no possible way to redeem yourself, convince the other person that you’re insane, and hopefully they’ll forget what they were talking about.
3rd Grade – Mrs. Schwartz’s class
As a child, I was always what people would consider a ‘crybaby’. Lost my mom in a JC Penny? I’d lie in the fetal position and bawl. Found out the grocery store was sold out of Doritos? Weep hysterically and shout the F-word. For pretty much every mildly upsetting occasion there was a distinctive cry. And for the most part, that all changed in 3rd grade.
During my tenure at Pine Grove Elementary school, each year we went on a different field trip. In first grade, we went to a play. In Second grade, we went to an aquarium. And, in third grade, we went to Old Sturbridge Village.
Old Sturbridge Village is what they call a ‘living museum’, and it’s basically a replica of an 18th century colonial village, that hires actors to pretend that they’re really from 1785 and that they’ve never ever heard a cell-phone before (“WITCH!”). Now, these aren’t your normal actors though, they’re at the absolute bottom of the whole ‘actor’ hierarchy. Not only do they have to churn butter all day and deal with snobby third graders making fart jokes, but they have to pretend to like it. Also, since it was supposed to be a replica of 1700s New England, they didn’t have video games(X-treme Butter Churning, anyone?), which made me loathe the idea of ever stepping foot in Sturbridge. Needless to say, I would’ve rather gotten lost in one of The Blob’s many crevices for a year than get lost in Old Sturbridge Village for a day. And that’s exactly what happened (The Sturbridge Village thing, not the crevices thing).
Now, almost everyone in their public school career has had a teacher who hated teaching, but I’m sure only a select few have had a teacher who hated teaching as much as Mrs. Schwartz did. It seemed like she had genuinely liked teaching at some point in her life, but I guess that years of third graders calling her names and peeing on the seat in our classroom toilet wore her down. Initially, she masked her hatred of us, only muttering negative sentiment behind our backs. Eventually, she stopped giving a shit about us liking her and decided to yell at us on a weekly basis (or whenever she was having ‘the cramps’). She quit one week before school ended, right after she told the class that she “hated us” and that she was “moving to Vegas”. To this day, I’m still surprised her resignation speech didn’t involve a shotgun and a handful of dead third graders.
Getting away from Schwartz was the primary reason many of us were looking forward to that field trip, and when the day finally came, we all felt as if we were on top of the world (Well, I guess we actually were if you want to think about it in a technical sense). We all woke up extra early and had our parents drive us to school, and when we got there, Schwartz handed out a sheet of paper telling which students would be assigned to which chaperone. And luck had it; I was assigned to Mrs. Schwartz’s group. A field trip that had already seemed to me as appealing as jumping off a cliff and landing in a pile of John Tesh CDs, had somehow managed to get even worse. Also, for extra safety reasons, the school management had decided to employ the all reliable ‘buddy system’ within our subgroups. And luck had it, I was assigned with Booger, my old friend who I had decided to not hang out with anymore after he started saying the phrase “I like Pancakes!” way too much.
Hmmmm, I wonder what could go wrong in a pretend 1700s village eighty miles away from home with staff members who hate their jobs and the tag team duo entrusted with the glorious duty of making sure I didn’t die consisted of a 65 year old woman who hated my guts, and a retarded kid who, apparently, really liked pancakes.
It took us an hour and a half on a ridiculously hot school bus to travel all the way up to Sturbridge. When we got off the bus a rather unattractive woman wearing a bonnet and a frilly old dress came onto our school bus.
“Now children, this isn’t an ordinary school bus, it’s a time machine! When you step off this bus, you’ll find yourself in the year 1795!” she said rather enthusiastically.
“Bullshit!” I thought quietly to myself, “If this school bus was a time machine, we’d probably be doing something more constructive right now, like killing Hitler, or giving Nintendo 64s to the slaves”
“I want you all to have a fun time back in ol’ Sturbridge, and remember don’t get lost!”
Instantly, a bad feeling came over me and I started to panic. All of the other ‘field-trip-welcomers’ I had met said something along the lines of “If you get lost, come to the front desk or talk to an adult”; something definitely wasn’t right when a place’s policy on lost children consisted solely of “Don’t get lost”. I almost started crying right there.
We shuffled off the bus in a disorganized 3rd grader way, and formed into our respective groups. There were 6 people in Mrs. Schwartz’s group: Becca (The class bitch), Christina (Teacher’s pet), Ross (The weird kid who would eat anything for the right price), Feldman (The obnoxious Jew), Booger (The kid with the lowest IQ in the class), and me (The kid with the highest IQ in the class).
Schwartz had this look on her face as if she hated 1700s style villages just as much as I did (and probably as much as this guy), and wanted to get the day over with as soon as possible.
The day started out like any other boring field trip, we did some sight-seeing, we walked around a lot, Booger made an off-color remark about Feldman’s extremely large nose, and I started to daydream (primarily about me going back in time and killing Hitler). It was around noon when we found our way over to the local tavern. The pretend barkeep gave us a speech about the importance of the local tavern in the late 1700s, the barkeep’s assistant made an offensive remark about me (the Irish 8-year old) being in a bar in the middle of the day, and then my group was gone. I’m not completely sure how it happened, but I look down for a second, and when I look back up everyone in my group had left. And it isn’t like I had wandered off, or ran away; I was standing in the same exact position. I started to cry, a deep blubbering cry.
“They left me” I tried to whisper out beneath the crying.
I looked around the room and everyone was staring at me.
“Hey, we’re not out of imaginary beer yet, drunky!” joked the bartender’s assistant.
I stood there crying for about twenty minutes, no-one even bothering to cheer me up. Eventually I ran out of tears and regained the ability to walk, but decided to wait in the tavern for another ten minutes anyway. I figured that once they realized I was missing, they’d come looking for me in the last place they saw me, but after a half an hour of waiting I came to the harsh realization that they weren’t coming back.
So I started to walk around. I really had no place to go, I just felt like walking. On the surface, I tried to convince myself that I’d find another group and be taken in as one of their own, but deep down I assumed I’d be stuck in the year 1795 forever. I tried to feel betrayed at the fact that my group left me alone to die (well, technically just to live in the 1700s, but they all knew I would’ve killed myself without some serious Sonic The Hedgehog time anyway), but it’s not like I wasn’t expecting it, they all pretty much hated me for good reason. Becca pretty much hated everyone, Ross was upset that my sophisticated jokes had become significantly funnier than him eating worms, Feldman resented me because I had a bigger house than he did, Christina resented my good looks (alright this one’s a lie, I had no idea why she hated me), and Booger, well, he didn’t hate me, he was just retarded.
About fifteen minutes after I had begun my glorious walking journey to nowhere in particular, my tear ducts told me that they had regained their ability to make me look like a fool. I told myself to resist the urge, that it was no use. And for the first time in my life, that actually worked.
To this day I’m still surprised that the first time I was ever able to stop myself from crying, came at a time where I felt my death (suicide) was imminent. I experienced a rush of self-empowerment at this newfound ability to stop the tears that had previously plagued my over-privileged-white-kid life.
Suddenly, my metaphorical shield of self-imposed misery was lifted and I was able to see the sole benefit of being 80 miles away from home in a shitty living museum: no-one knew who I was.
The rest of my day was spent as follows:
- Running into colonial townhouses, yelling “Fuck You!”, and then running away.
- Spending all of the money my mother gave me for the day on rock candy, and then throwing it up a few minutes later.
- Explaining the benefits of modern machinery to the local Blacksmith, and then basking in his feelings of inferiority and crushed self-worth.
- Telling the pretend mayor that the real mayor of Sturbridge, MA was replaced by a town council in 1934, and then basking in his feelings of inferiority and crushed self-worth.
- Asking the townspeople where they kept their slaves.
- Demonstrating to the town postman how my Nike™ Sneakers were more versatile than the shoes he wore, and then watching his mouth gape open when he found out that little neon lights lit up in the back of the shoes whenever I took a step.
- Hiding behind an arriving school bus and then yelling out “Then where’s the flux capacitor?!”, after the field-trip greeter gave her whole time-travel speech.
- Sneaking into the town church and yelling, “My name is Feldman and I’m Jewish!”
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Well, I’ve been away from the group for about 3 hours now…”
“Really?”
“Yeah…”
“Oh… Well, next time don’t get fucking lost!”
Although I wouldn’t completely conquer my predisposition towards crying until 7th grade when I accidently took the wrong bus, Sturbridge Village taught me how to not be such a pussy, and how much fun it is to be a dick to people who will never learn your name. Now, if you were to ask me again whether I’d rather spend a day lost in Sturbridge Village, or a year stuck in one of The Blob’s crevices, the answer would be easy… actually, wait… which crevice?
1st half of 4th grade – Paddock Road Elementary, Omaha, NE
“You’re moving?!”
“Yeah”
“Where to?”
“Nebraska”
“What’s Nebraska?”
“What’s Nebraska?” is a question I first received 8 years ago. And 8 years after the fact and with a little firsthand experience, I still have no fucking clue just what the hell Nebraska is. Sure, it is a state, and I did live there for 6 months, but saying I know what Nebraska is, is like Elton John saying he knows what a vagina feels like. Sure, he did come from one, and he spent 9 months living there, but that was a long time ago, and vaginas are long in his past. I’m from Connecticut (home to gigantic mansions, luxurious public facilities, and primarily, rich white kids), and deep down I’ll always be a Connectikitten (that’s my term, back off, bitches). Moving to Nebraska was a fun excursion (like when Elton John said he was ‘bi’ in the mid 70’s), but ultimately I belonged in Connecticut (and Elton John belongs in another man’s asshole?)
Now, some might assume that since I lived in Omaha only a short time, that it’s not that memorable of an experience. Not only did it give me a boost in self-confidence and a mild sense of purpose, Omaha taught me how to do something that’s changed my life: Pander to the lowest common denominator. Whether its fart jokes, pee jokes, crude sex jokes, or just donkey fuckin’ jokes, if it wasn’t for Omaha, I wouldn’t be telling them today.
I said goodbye to every friend I had ever made in July of 1998, and embarked upon a halfway cross country road trip with my parents, grand-parents, brother, and dog Max all stuffed into a 1997 Jeep Grand Cherokee. We arrived 7 days later and I would go on to describe the trip as ‘very corny’ (that was a pun; we saw a lot of corn on our way there). After the summer was over, I was introduced to Paddock Road Elementary School, a K-6 Elementary school with a playground, one long hallway, and a luxurious “gymnacafetorium”.
Within the first day, it became very clear that I didn’t fit in. For one main reason: I was the smartest person in the entire state. Sure, there may have been times when an exception could be made (such as a plane of normal people flying over the state), but for the most part, I had learned more in my previous 4 years of education than most Nebraskans learn in their lives.
Throughout the day, I could practically watch my prospective friendships shatter whenever I would utter a word they didn’t understand (“Stop using such big words!” “Big words? You consider ‘because’ to be a big word?” “What the fuck does that mean?!”). By the end of the week, I didn’t have a single friend, that is, until I lowered my threshold of “acceptable” friends, and met Logan.
I met Logan when we were partnered together for “Cafeteria Duty”(Omaha Legislators decided to lower the school budget, eliminating the funding for Cafeteria Workers, so the school administration utilized the next best thing: Fourth Graders!), and we started hanging out most of the time after that. Our friendship was based mainly around desperation. I was the new kid who had an incredibly large vocabulary, therefore, I was shunned. Logan gave everyone the creeps, and was possibly retarded, therefore, he was shunned. We didn’t have very much in common. I liked Star Wars, while Logan really really liked professional wrestling (and it wasn’t like he was a casual fan of the World Wrestling Federation either; he was fucking infatuated with that crap [to the point where he would throw chairs across our classroom]). Now, while Logan may not have been the perfect friend for me, I was desperate… and he had a Nintendo 64.
For two whole months, I almost exclusively hung around Logan, and in the time I got to know him I learned two things valuable to increasing my position in the social hierarchy.
1. Don’t use big words.
2. Farting is hilarious.
2. Farting is hilarious.
Eventually, I implemented those teachings into my everyday speech pattern, and my social status began to steadily increase. Within time, I had almost completely morphed into a semi-retarded “Omaha-approved” version of myself. Here are some examples:
Regular Alex: “This Nintendo 64 game is awesome”
Omaha Alex: “Let’s play some football!”
Regular Alex: “Ew, somebody just farted”
Omaha Alex: “Hahahahahahahaha”
Regular Alex: “I think that the socio-economic impact of 19th century Poland drastically altered the current monetary system”
Omaha Alex: “Let’s play some football!”
After a month of Omaha Alex, I had at least 5 new friends (with at least 3 of them being people who didn’t practice Wrestling moves on me [not competitive wrestling moves either, painful WWF chair-throwing wrestling moves]). And suddenly, in early December something happened that would promote me to near celebrity status at Paddock Road Elementary. I remembered this rhyme:
Old Macdonald sitting on a bench
Picking his balls with a monkey wrench
Wrench got hot and burned his balls
Peed all over his overalls
Went to the doctor, and the doctor said
“Gee, Old Mac, but your balls are dead”
When I die, bury me
Hang my balls on a cherry tree
When they’re ripe, take a bite
Don’t blame me if you barf all night.
In a day, I became the most popular kid in my class, possibly even the most popular kid in Nebraska. All because I “Created” (I didn’t actually make it up, people just assumed I did and I “forgot” to correct them) that rhyme.Picking his balls with a monkey wrench
Wrench got hot and burned his balls
Peed all over his overalls
Went to the doctor, and the doctor said
“Gee, Old Mac, but your balls are dead”
When I die, bury me
Hang my balls on a cherry tree
When they’re ripe, take a bite
Don’t blame me if you barf all night.
From then on, life in Omaha was great. I’m not exaggerating that that stupid rhyme made me god-like at Paddock Road (I’m actually pretty confident that if the kids had to choose between me and a reincarnated Jesus, and I recited that rhyme, they’d totally forget about the whole “dying for your sins” thing). A lot of things changed after that rhyme, here are some of the more notable:
- Girls who normally wouldn’t speak to me were hitting on me like I was every member of the group “Hanson” rolled into one.
- I was made quarterback in the recess football pickup games, even though I had a terrible throwing arm, and thought football and soccer were the same thing until I was 8.
- Whenever anyone would fart, the whole class would look towards me. If I laughed, the fart was officially funny.
- Other students started to imitate my uniquely patented style of dress: Jeans and T-shirts (although it’s possible they would have worn that stuff anyway)
- A few of them actually let me teach them how to spell “Connecticut” (It sure ain’t “Kinettikut”)
- I was exempt from all sleep-over “cage matches” (They would lock you in a large closet with the class “big dumb idiot” [Logan], and he would wrestle you until either: A. Time was up or B. You died.)
- I got to mop the tables in Cafeteria Duty (which, trust me, was the only job that didn’t involve dirty plates and a gigantic hose)
And then I moved back to Connecticut.
The memory of Omaha means a lot of different things to me. Other than the thought of a great alternate future in Omaha being the bane of my existence, my stint in Omaha was an essential stepping stone in shaping the very person I am today. Aside from all the great fart jokes it taught me (*fart*), it taught me that I have no problem acting like an idiot as long as people like me for it. Which for the most part, is an indispensible part of who I am.
*FART*
heheheheh….
hahahahahha…
HAHAHAHAHAH!
Oh shit, that still gets me every time.
Hilarious.
2nd half of 4th grade – Mrs. Bliss’ Class
During every person’s young life, there are certain adult concepts one must grasp before venturing onto adulthood. I refer to these concepts as the “big four”: Sex, Death, Abortion, and Racism. The revelation of these concepts can be quite jarring to a child, since they disrupt the child’s view of reality, and each revelation is a significant emotional milestone. I remember them all very clearly:
Sex: 3rd grade (“So babies don’t come out through the belly button?!”)
Death: 6th Grade (“Mommy, why is that hobo not moving anymore?!”)
Abortion: Last week (“They do what to the what-what?!”)
And finally Racism: 4th Grade.
In December of 1998 I moved to my current place of residence, Glastonbury, CT. Upon moving to Glastonbury, I’ve met many people who’ve influenced me a great deal, but none of them have influenced me as much as Charles Sims: The first black person I had ever met.
Now, I had seen black people before, mainly through TV and the movies (Lando Calrissian!), but I had never actually seen one up close and personal before. I would characterize my initial reaction as: shocked (“He’s like a big gigantic bar of chocolate!”). Although, eventually the shock wore off and I began to notice his skin color less and less.
Now, I’d like to tell you all how Charles and I overcame racial barriers and became good friends who frolicked through meadows and celebrated diversity together, but I can’t do that, because of one main reason: Charles was an asshole. He was probably the meanest kid I had met thus-far in my life.
Initially I had tried making friends with him, but it quickly became clear that we hated each other and what we both stood for. He resented my cocky arrogant 4th grade attitude (he kicked my ass in basketball after a week of me advertising my “mad skills” [I had thought for a little while that I was really good at basketball after I beat everyone in Omaha at it. Turns out, everyone in Omaha ‘really sucks’ at basketball, while I just merely ‘suck’]), while I resented the fact that he didn’t like Pokémon (I mean, come on, they’re tiny monsters that you catch in balls! What’s not to love?). Our dislike of one another grew and grew, until one fateful day in March of 1999, when it all came to a climax:
For the first three hours of the day, Charles and I were going at it like usual. He was taunting me, and I was taunting him back. Things didn’t escalate until recess. I was trading Pokémon cards with the rest of the class, when Charles walks up to the group.
“Cheat any more kindergarteners out of their Pokémon cards again today, Potty Traynor?”
Charles had just picked a fight, by crossing two gigantic 4th grader lines that you just do not cross. First of all, he had criticized the well-respected 4th grader practice of deceiving the younger kids into trading more valuable cards for significantly less valuable cards (“Look how shiny this one is! It’s obviously worth like a bazillion dollars!”), something shunned upon by the community (lest our secret get out). Secondly, he had called me “Potty Traynor”. Thems was fightin’ words.
I knew I had to come back with something huge, something both funny and relevant enough to win back the respect of the trading circle. I had to do something unprecedented, give Charles Sims a nickname. I searched my brain rapidly for some pop-culture reference to connect the name ‘Charles’ to.
“Go to hell, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory!”
Everyone gasped.
In retrospect, I realize how incredibly racist calling a black man “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” is, but at the time, I had no clue.
I stood there smiling for a few moments until I realized that I was the only person smiling.
“Oh crap, I must’ve screwed something up”, I thought to myself.
I realized that I needed to fix my botched joke.
“I mean, go to hell, Charlie and the Shit Factory!”
“Ah, now that’s better,” I thought.
But no-one else started to smile. I looked around the group, who had been collectively silent for a minute, and I looked at their awkward, stunned faces until I reached the face of my friend Andrew, who was nodding disapprovingly.
That was the exact moment I grasped the concept of racism.
I realized that somehow I had to mend all the racial harm I had caused and I had to do it fast. My strategy was to call Charles one last nickname. Although this time it would be an innocuous, racially-sensitive nickname, to prove that I only meant the other mean nicknames in a strictly non-racist way.
“Go to hell, Charlie Brown!”
As confident I was in my third try at a comeback, once I heard yet another collective gasp, my thought process went as follows:
“Everyone loves Charlie Brown, there’s no way anyone could think that’s racis… brown… oh shit... RUN!”
I ran and hid behind the playscape until recess was over
Eventually my new nickname, “Racist”, faded and it took backseat to another (“The A-Trayn”, given to me by a gym teacher), but the remnants of my supposed racism lingered for weeks. That was, until Charles realized that I wasn’t a member of the KKK, but rather one of the most socially inept people he had ever met. From then on, things weren’t as tense with Charles, although last time I checked, he was still an asshole (Pokémon rule!). I’ll conclude this chapter with a little advice: Never ever call anybody “Charlie and The Charlie Factory”, even if their name is Charlie and they do own a chocolate factory, because there’s a good chance that they’re black or know someone who’s known a black person at any point in their life and could be touchy about it.
5th Grade – Mr. Sturm’s class
Throughout history, nothing has been as feared and dreaded as “the class project”. For centuries, nay millennia, civilizations have risen and fell to the beck and call of the so-called “class project”. Here are some notable examples:
Class projects in history:
Rome – 88 BC – Students are asked to get into groups and create a large model out of clay. On the day the project is due, Julius Caesar’s group stabs him in the back (not literally [this time]).
Nazareth - 0 D.C (During Christ?) – Students are asked to create a fictional belief structure and promote it. Jesus founds Christianity.
Outer Mongolia – 1173 AD – Students are asked to pick an ordinary daily occurrence and make a science experiment out of it. Genghis Khan kills seven Persians and tries to relate it to Physics.
Germany – 1902 AD – Students are asked to write an essay on their favorite season. Hitler kills seven Jews and tries to relate it to Physics.
Seattle, WA – 1953 – Students are asked to create a diorama of Colonial Pennsylvania. Jimi Hendrix gets really high and forgets to do the project.
Glastonbury, CT – 2000 AD – Students are asked to invent a helpful product to address an everyday need. Alex Traynor makes a fool of himself.
In 5th Grade at Buttonball elementary, every student is required to participate in what I refer to as “5th grade inventions” A class-wide project where every 5th grader is asked to “invent” something. How did the projects turn out, you ask? Exactly as well as you’d expect: utter shit. But that’s what happens when you ask a bunch of 11-year olds to come up with innovative ideas. Half of them invent useless crap, and the other half forgets to do the project.
To illustrate just how bad these “inventions” were, I’ll venture back in time and review the most noteworthy:
________________________________________
Inventor: Alex TraynorWhat it’s called: “The Portable Air Conditioner Shirt!”
What it really is: A poorly constructed shirt made out of plastic and hot glue, with a pocket for ice cubes, and a makeshift Soda Can drainage system.
Intended Use: To cool you off in the hot summer heat.
Actual Use: To make you look like an idiot.
What it looked like:
Did it actually work: Nope, it leaked everywhere. Also, since I made it out of stiff, rugged plastic, it wouldn’t move enough to allow anyone to actually fit in it.
What the inventor was thinking when he had to present his project to the class: “Please don’t ask me to demonstrate it, please don’t ask me to demonstrate it”
Verdict: Useless Crap.
Usefulness: 1 Creativity: 6 Ease of Use: 1 Practicality: 1 Overall: 3
Inventor: Charles Sims
What it’s called: “The Squirt Bottle I bought at Wal-Mart”
What it really is: A squirt bottle Charles bought at Wal-Mart
Description: The title pretty much says it all; Charles bought a squirt bottle, and then invented the squirt bottle he bought.
How was it made: Paraphrased from Charles’ display, “How I made my invention: Step 1 – I bought my invention. Step 2 - I brought my invention to school. Step 3 – I got thirsty and drank from my invention..”
Verdict: Ignoring the fact that Charles didn’t bother to hide that he didn’t “invent” anything, it was still probably the most functional invention of them all.
Usefulness: 8 Creativity: 0 Ease of Use: 9 Practicality: 8 Overall: 2
Inventor: Nick
What it’s called: “The Pencil Box Opener”
What it is: A complex contraption made out of pencils, paper-clips, and gum. Once you press down the “switch”, pull the lever, crank the pulley, and push the other switch, your pencil box is opened.
What’s easier: Actually opening your pencil box.
Time it took Nick to make: 4 minutes.
If Nick were to make a commercial advertising his invention: “Do you enjoy opening your pencil box? You do! Well, do you like opening it so much that you wish you could spend thirty minutes a day trying to figure out how to open it? You do! With ‘The Pencil Box Opener’ all your dreams are answered!”
Verdict: Crap.
Usefulness: 0 Creativity: 3 Ease of Use: 0 Practicality: 0 Overall: -6
Inventor: Frank Hickey
What it’s called: “The Underwater Pocket!”
What it was supposed to be: A waterproof pocket to store your valuables in while you went swimming.
What it turned out to be: A plastic bag with stickers all over it.
Verdict: Crap.
Usefulness: 0 Creativity: 4 Ease of Use: 1 Practicality: 0 Overall: 0
Inventor: J.J
What it’s called: “J.J’s Dog Food”
What it really is: A brand of Dog food made almost exclusively out of clay.
Was it only a prototype and not an actual invention: Yes.
Does that mean it won’t kill dogs if they ate it?: No.
Verdict: J.J is a sick fuck dog murderer.
Usefulness: -7 Creativity: 5 Ease of Use: 5 Practicality: -37 Overall: -84
Inventor: Lauren
What it’s called: “Safety Star”
What it really is: An “On-Star” knock-off that’s placed in the center of the steering wheel of a car.
Are you telling me that Lauren actually built a computer and then welded it into a car: Nope, she was the only person who got to “draw” (I use quotations because it was a crappy drawing) her invention.
And you’re still bitter about it?: Hell yes I am. I slaved for a month putting hot glue onto my invention, and that whiny little bitch got away with a fucking drawing!
It was almost 8 years ago, maybe you should see a therapist, you psycho: Shut the fuck up, it’s a very touchy subject for me.
How so?: Well, first of all, getting over the fact that she only drew it, where would the airbag go?
You make a good point: Damn straight I do.
You have a lot of violent thoughts toward Lauren, don’t you: Maybe.
Usefulness: 0 Creativity: 0 Ease of Use: 0 Practicality: 0 Overall: Negative Five Million
________________________________________
Another thing I learned in 5th Grade (as opposed to learning that hot glue + plastic = useless crap) is why I shouldn’t over-react so much. Now it may come as a surprise that I’ve had a longstanding history of over-reacting, and beside from a few isolated incidents, (“I told you to not put lettuce on my fucking cheeseburger you Fast-Food piece of shit! Do you know how much money I make on my paper route?! Enough to buy and sell your ass into slavery! Fuck you! And fuck your fucking lettuce!”) over-reacting is mostly in my past.Frank (The inventor of The Underwater Pocket!) and me started to become friends towards the end of the year, when we co-created the recess playground game “Booboo Monkey”. It consisted of one person being “Booboo Monkey”, while everyone else was an animal control officer. The aim of the game was for the animal control officers to track down Booboo, and use excessive force when necessary (or unnecessary). Basically the game was just a big excuse to beat the crap out of Frank. Eventually, the game was banned by the teachers after things started to get out of hand (I threw a chair at him), but just because the game was banned didn’t mean the bond between me and Frank just died out. For weeks our friendship grew. And then, it happened.
I’d like to state upfront, the following: Birthday parties are the bomb, yo. The “birthday party” is the place to be when you’re in grade school. Being invited to one is an almost surreal experience, like being personally touched by God (or Allah, Buddah, Zeus, or Tom Cruise) himself. Grade School Birthday Parties are quite possibly the most awesome kind of parties you’ll ever attend (with the notable exception of Toga parties). Whether it was the exciting locations (generally it was always Laser Tag), or the cake, there was something about birthday parties that had me absolutely nuts as a child.
It was on a Monday when Frank started handing out invitations for his birthday party, which was to be held at LaserQuest™ (the happiest place in the Greater Hartford Area!) on Friday. Throughout the day my excitement was at an all time high picturing myself shooting younger kids with a laser gun (and by ‘laser gun’ I mean ‘real gun’ and by ‘younger kids’ I mean ‘Nazis’). I couldn’t have been more psyched about going to a birthday party, and at the end of the day, Frank was handing out invitations to my friends Mike and Dylan when I decided to join the conversation, to get my invitation:
“Hey guys! Laserquest is really cool…”
Awkward silence.
“Yeah, I like all the lasers and stuff”
Awkward silence.
“It’s all like laser-y!”
I start laughing at my own, really bad joke.
“So… yeah, it’d be cool if I could go there, you know…”
“Yeah, about that, you’re kind of not invited”
“Wh-wh-wh-WHHAT!?!?
Though that may seem like an exaggerated re-imagining of my response, I remember actually pronouncing each part of that.
Frank went on to explain that he could only invite a limited number of people, and unfortunately I didn’t make the list. I was understandably upset and bitter, so out of curiosity I decided to find out just who “made the list”. And, after I conducted my official poll, I found out exactly what Frank meant when he said “Limited Number of People”. Frank invited 25 people to his birthday party. 25 fucking people! Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I wasn’t one of the elusive 25. Now, if he could only invite 5 people, I wouldn’t have been surprised, but 25?! Come the fuck on! (Yes, I’m still bitter) [Side Note: Eventually I found out that the only 2 people Frank knew that weren’t invited were: Me and Charles Sims (We could have spent the afternoon together, celebrating racial harmony!)]
Now, at that point, I was under the impression that just because Frank didn’t invite me to his party, didn’t mean I wasn’t actually gonna go to the party. I figured that if I persisted long enough, Frank would either change his mind or just decide to not have a birthday party altogether (If I don’t have fun, don’t no-one have fun) So, for the next week, I bugged the living shit out of him. I started by subtly hinting at what I wanted (such as gently whispering “Invite Alex to LaserQuest” in his ear and then running away) and then I took out the big guns: I started to beg.
And by the day of the party, nothing had worked, so I decided to use plan B: Temper Tantrum. Now, like all of my other pre-pubescent temper tantrums, this one has been repressed, and cannot be recalled without either A. a bottle of Scotch or B. Lots of Therapy. But, since I assume it was similar to all my other temper tantrums, just assume the day ended with the following:
1. Tears.
2. The F-Word
3. Thrown objects
4. Knife Wounds
But, the over-reacting didn’t just end with the temper tantrum, oh no, it continued onto the bus ride home. I enlisted the help of my possibly-retarded Latin neighbor Steve to make Frank’s life a living hell. That afternoon, me and Steve hatched all sorts of kooky revenge schemes, most of which we didn’t follow through on (Steve was too chicken to take a dump on his front lawn), but the one scheme we did follow through on still has me cringing to this day.
The single worst prank phone call of all time:
Frank’s Mom: “Hello?”
Me: “Hi, is Frank there?”
Frank’s Mom: “Yeah, may I ask who is calling?”
Me: “Alex”
*Mother gets Frank*
Frank: “Hello?”
*To the tune of the song “All-Star” by the band Smashmouth.*
"Somebody once didn’t
Invite me to their party
So I called them up
and hung up on them"
"Somebody once didn’t
Invite me to their party
So I called them up
and hung up on them"
*click*
Reasons why that was the worst prank call of all time:1. Never ask for the person you want to prank, just go with whoever answers.
2. Don’t fucking give them your name.
3. Calling someone just to hang up on them is retarded enough, but calling them to inform them that you’re about to hang up on them is a billion times worse.
4. Smashmouth sucks.
5. Don’t be retarded, just, don’t
Instantly after the phone call, I felt a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, and I realized just how retarded and misguided my attempts at retaliation were. Now, while the phone call didn’t have any direct consequences other than giving me an inability to look Frank in the eye for the next month, I still regard it as one of the dumbest and most ill-informed things I’ve ever done. And from that feeling of deep regret on, I’ve tried to limit my over-reacting to when it’s completely necessary (“What do you mean you don’t ‘Supersize’ things anymore!? You fucking fast food piece of shit, if I want my damn order of fucking French fries Supersized I damn well better get them supersized! I can buy and sell your ass into slavery! White slavery!”)
6th Grade – Academy School
6th Grade was a year of giant change, because not only did it mark my first year out of Elementary school, but it also marked my transition from Alex Traynor: Skinny White Nerd to Alex Traynor: Badass Motherfucker (some are still actually debating that). Academy School was a 6th Grade only public school with the purpose of transitioning students to Middle and High School. It was located right in front of the town Sewage Treatment Plant (I’m not shitting you [pun intended]), and because of that, it constantly smelled like dog shit.
Nathan Xu lived in the same apartment complex as I did, and aside from just being an annoying Asian kid whom I hated, he served a much larger purpose in the life of Alex Traynor than you’d imagine. He made me into a man (get your mind out of the gutter, sicko)
After my parents got divorced (Two Christmases!) me, my mom, and my bother moved where every newly divorced family moves: an apartment complex! “Colonial Village” Apartments is quite possibly one of the worst places to live in Glastonbury. But don’t just take my word for it, here’s a review I found off of apartmentratings.com:
“The guy who runs this place is not a nice man; he seems like an ex-convict who will kill you if you complain about your apartment. The parking is horrible, there are never any spaces. The washers are broken and it's just a trashy place.”
On top of those amenities, there was a pool (Although swimming in the pool is not recommend, since I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to yell “Someone took a dump in the pool!” on one hand).
The only things worthwhile about Colonial Village were the kids who lived there. During my time there, I became very close friends with the neighborhood children, and we formed somewhat of a bond that lasts till this day. Among the members of the group were: Me (the skinny freckled nerd), Tony (the dumb Italian), Kerry (the Tomboy), Carol (The Asian girl with an Australian accent), and Kristy (the girl who took a dump in the pool).
Nathan moved to Glastonbury in the middle of 6th grade, and instantly, he became one of the gang (mainly because he had a Nintendo). But, after a while, we all began to hate Nathan, for one main reason, he irritated the shit out of us. So, while we all continued to hang around Nathan (we liked videogames), that didn’t stop us from making fun of him directly to his face.
So, for about a month, I vented my frustration through insults about his girly voice and his uncanny resemblance to North Korean Dictator, Kim Jong Il. And then it all started to change. He started to get pissed off, and after insults he’d vaguely threaten me (my guess is his mom made him attend a “Be Assertive” seminar). Then, one day, I had had enough.
Me, Tony, my brother, and Nathan were all hanging around my house one afternoon, when I make a particularly funny joke about Nathan (“Shut up… Kim Jong Gay”). Then, Nathan takes his threatening to the next level, he puts his tiny Asian fist up to my face (a gesture so characteristically un-threatening it scared the crap out of me). And that’s when I lose my cool.
What took place next will forever go down in history as the most pathetic ass-kicking of all time.
With his fist in my face, I let the inner rage within me unleash. Since all of the fighting techniques I knew I learned from wrestling videos Logan showed me in 4th grade, I figured that the best course of action was to pin him down (either that, or throw a chair, but there were no chairs). So I decided to tackle him, but since I had never actually tackled anyone before it ended up in execution being more like, “a gentle hug that results in both of us falling over”.
When I got him on the ground and knocked his glasses off, I knew the fight was pretty much mine. But, I figured I’d get a few punches in before I let him run away, just for good measure (and because I pretended he actually was Kim Jong Il). Now, at the time, my punches were actually more like “weak fisted slaps”, but, for some reason, they actually seemed to be hurting him quite a bit. And after about 30 seconds of “punching”, Nathan threw a wrench into the equation that caused serious ethical questions to enter the brain of 6th Grade Alex.
He started to cry. Which raised the question, “Is this really what I want to be doing with my life? Beating the crap out of a tiny crying Asian kid?” So, I let the delusions of me beating up the leader of North Korea out of my head, and walked away. He got up, pick up his glasses, muttered something to the effect of “You’ll be sorry”, and then ran home.
Five minutes later, I found out what he meant by, “You’ll be sorry”. His mom came over to my house and yelled at my mom (who was significantly more proud than she should have been). The kicker is: his mom threatened to call the police if it were to happen again (a fairly baseless threat, since it wasn’t “assault” as much as it was “an unconventional massage”)
Now, while most people would laugh that kind of a victory off, it got into my head. For a while, I actually thought I was a strong, macho man, instead of the skinny Irish boy I really was. That lead to many troubling self-revelations:
- I assumed I was astoundingly strong, only to come to a shocking realization otherwise when my Grandmother beat me at an Arm-Wrestling Match
- For years, I told people that I worked out “all the time”. Now do I realize that none of them actually believed me.
- I always assumed they picked the strongest people last in dodge ball.
- I thought I had “6 Pack Abs” and was stunned when I realized that my “abs” weren’t actually “abs”, but rather “ribs”.
- I thought I could take on kids that were bigger than me. I miss not having scars.
1. Ignore the last paragraph. I am an ass-kicking machine.
2. Don’t fuck with me, cause I will beat you up (Only applicable to tiny Asian 6th Graders)
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.
Freshman Year – Glastonbury High School
In August of 2003, I had finally arrived at Glastonbury High School; the beginning of the end of my lengthy career in public school. GHS is your average high school; chock full of puberty, insecurity, depravity, and most importantly, assholes (literally, and figuratively). The school itself houses more than 2,000 students, a gym, a pool, an elevator for the handicapped kids, and a vending machine that never works. On the whole, GHS is your average New England High School.
I had always thought (and still kinda do) that ‘maturity’ was just a term older people made up to make themselves seem superior to younger people in their own minds. Now, while this still rings true when the elders throw around the insult “You’re acting Immature!” – Like when you ride a go-kart around the neighborhood in your underwear, or when you fall asleep during a funeral - the term ‘maturity’ takes upon a new meaning when you actually do mature. The word “Immaturity” has been linked to the words “stupid” and “reckless”, but those assertions are false, at least in my mind. “Maturity”, to me, means “responsibility”, and not in the sense of wearing a seatbelt when you drive 90mph down the highway (naked), but in the sense of responsibility for your legacy. The question, “When I die, what do I want people to remember about me?” comes to mind. 9th Grade was the year I started to mature.
Anyway, halfway through the year, something happened so inane and trivial that it could only change the course of Alex Traynor’s life forever:
Somebody took a dump in the urinal.
On Tuesday, March 3rd, 2004 (I’m probably making that up), my life changed forever. Throughout the day, I started over-hearing strange whispers about something in the urinal. So, I inevitably went there to check it out, and there it was: dookie, in the urinal. Instantly, thousands of questions sprung to my mind, among them:
1. Who did it?
2. Why?
3. Did a confused girl wander into the boy’s bathroom?
4. Why was it smeared against the back of the urinal?
5. Does that mean that somebody had to poop in their hand first and then transfer it to the urinal?
6. What did the perpetrator have to gain by this action?
7. Seriously, who would do this?
8. Are the Russians behind this somehow?
9. Why do I care so much?
10. Will I ever forget this?
The only one of those questions I’ve been able to get an answer to is #10. And the answer is a resounding no. I will be telling my grandchildren this story. Chances are, I’ll be telling this story on my deathbed, whether or not anyone wants to hear it.
It was just something about the sudden sighting of human feces in the wrong receptacle that shocked my fragile 9th Grade mind to the core so much that I could never possibly forget it. It opened my mind to new ways of thinking, and instilled a sense of abstract appreciation that exists to this day.
I stood staring at the shit for about a minute until someone else walked into the bathroom. Not wanting to look like some weird, feces-obsessed perv, I ran back to my table as fast as I could, and sat in remote silence, pondering my legacy, through mostly existential questions:
- Will anyone remember anything I do?
- Could I potentially be happy without any influence?
- Do I even care what I’m remembered for as long as I’m remembered?
- If I fell down in a forest, would anybody hear me?
- I told people I wanted to die with a “rocket up my ass,” because it would, quote: “get me in the papers.”
- I told people that on the last class of the last day of high school, I would pull down my pants, poop, get up, leave, and never come back.
- I once jumped over the Grand Canyon on a Razor™ Scooter.
- I lied about the last bullet-point.
- Occasionally, I drive on the wrong side of the road and talk in an English accent to freak people out.
- I speak mostly in sentence fragments.
- Like this.
- I once jokingly said, “9/11 was the most hilarious thing to happen since the holocaust!”
- I took this photo.
Sophomore Year – “Hell”
Everybody has a year when all of the lessons they’ve learned in previous years go completely and utterly ignored. Sophomore year was that year for me. The year where I, in many ways, regressed intellectually and as a person.
Now, while the vast majority of my grade school career was spent suckling off the taxpayers’ teat in public school, there was one notable exception: In 10th Grade I spent one month at boarding School. Now why was I in boarding school, you ask? For four main reasons:
1. Just like in 8th grade, I hardly ever attended school. So they told me to leave.
2. When I did actually go to school, all I did was sleep and pretend to have better things to do.
3. I was incredibly reclusive during this point in time, and my parents wanted to get me out of the house.
4. I was too sexy that most teachers claimed I was a distraction to all the girls in the class(not true, but for the sake of my ego, let’s just pretend it is)
And with that brief explanation, begins Alex Traynor’s one month adventure in: Boarding School!
Now, while I still remember the name of the boarding school, for the purposes of this article, we’re just going to refer to it as, “Hell.”
My miserable time in Hell is best divided into three main chapters:
1. Social Alienation:
Social acceptance is really a crapshoot wherever you go. There’s no telling if you’re going to be surrounded by friends, or by people who hate your guts. And in Hell, most of the people hated my guts:
David Safdie – Me and David started out as buddies, but our relationship quickly deteriorated when I realized he was an Orthodox Jew. Now I was fine with David being Jewish, but seeing that I learned all of my racial tact from ‘South Park’, it really didn’t come off that way. Apparently, he didn’t see the humor in my awesome Hitler impression.
Josh Levin – To this day, I can count Josh Levin as easily, the most incompetent person I have ever met. Now, I can go on and on for days about just how frighteningly incompetent Josh is, I’ll leave it at the example that rings foremost in my mind:
Josh liked to sleep in the nude. And I slept in the bunk above him. One morning, I woke up as usual and jumped off my top bunk, only to land on a very naked Josh Levin who had apparently rolled off the bed the night before. So, I hit his body at full force and fall flat on my face, while he’s screaming bloody murder. Then he gets up, still completely naked, and starts yelling at me, accusing me of jumping on his naked body on purpose. Now, while I was on the floor, ignoring the yelling, and writhing in pain from the impact, Josh decides to kick me in the ribs to get my attention. Once I regained the ability to speak, I was able to shout out, “Put on pants!” The following response from a very naked Josh will forever be embedded in my brain, “What are you talking about?! Pants have nothing to do with this! This is about you jumping on top of me; don’t try to change the subject you little shit!” Eventually, my other roommates woke up and were finally able to break it to Josh that he was naked, and yelling and kicking me for no apparent reason. A week later, this was Josh’s apology: “Sorry for peeing in your hamper last week, I was really mad after you jumped on me...” Prior to that apology, I had no idea he peed in my hamper.
Andrew Something – Self-described as “Avril Lavigne’s Biggest Fan”, need I say more?
Mike Kaplan – Quite possibly one of the most disgusting people I have ever met. Mike Kaplan is what you get when “the-kid-on-the-playground-who-will-eat-anything-for-a-dollar” grows up.
Richard Cooch – I didn’t actually speak to Richard Rodney Cooch much, but I remember him not liking me after I discovered that the shortened version of his name was “Dick Rod Cooch”
2. My first and last foray into giving a shit about politics:
I’ve never actually been an overly political person (well, despite running for president), but this was especially true in my earlier years (where I had actually thought Dick Cheney was the announcer on The Price Is Right until 2002.) In Hell, my longheld policy of political inaction changed rather suddenly with the announcement of Two Words: Free Pizza.
Pizza is my favorite food, as it has always been. Not even my genetic urge to consume more and more potatoes and Lucky Charms could help me overcome my infatuation with pizza. Pizza is the greatest food on earth. Some say that it was invented by the Italians. I say that is false. Pizza is so perfect that I could only have been invented by Scarlett Johansson’s left nipple. I enjoy all types of pizza, with many different toppings, and in all of its different forms (regular, bagel, Hot Pocket, and calzone.) My love for pizza knows no bounds, as this paragraph has been proof.
I supported John Kerry in the 2004 election. Not because of his position on the Iraq war, not because he opposed privatizing Social Security, and not because he supported increasing the minimum wage. I supported John Kerry because his campaign gave out a lot of free pizza. And most of the time, it was really good.
On my third day in Hell, an advisor urged me to join a few extracurricular activities, and looking through the list, only one caught my eye:
Ultimate Frisbee Club Enjoy some fun with a Frisbee!
Chess Club The game of champions!
Bird Watching Club Come look at Birds!
The Young Democrats Club FREE PIZZA!
So, obviously, I showed up at the first Young Democrats meeting of the year.
There were three people there: myself, the aforementioned Mike Kaplan, and some fat chick. We all ate the pizza in relative silence, assuming that the Young Democrats would disband after the pizza was gone, until the optimistic teacher who set up the meeting told us that we were all invited to a John Kerry rally the following day. When asked, “Will there be pizza?” the teacher responded, “Of course, there’s always pizza.” I was sold.
At the next meeting I was elected president of The Young Democrats (basically because no-one else gave a shit), and I worked out a plan that had the three of us going to a different John Kerry party/fundraiser/get-together every night until the election. Me and the others ate delicious free pizza courtesy of the Democratic party every night of the week, and all we had to do was pretend to give a shit about politics and say “George Bush really sucks” when asked any question.
And after two weeks, when it seemed my scam was at the top of its game, I did something stupid enough to fuck it all up:
I became President of The Young Republicans.
At the time I equated: Young Republicans + Young Democrats = Pizza^2, and for a time, it worked that way. I was eating free pizza two meals of every day, and it was awesome. Until, someone realized what I was doing.
Turns out, you can’t be president of two rivaling organizations without someone noticing. The members of both organizations argued that this was “a conflict of interest” and that I “was only in it for the pizza”. My counterargument was, “How can it be a conflict of interest, since, when has this not been about the free pizza?”
Ultimately, both groups impeached me because they were jealous of my pizza-getting savvy, and there was nothing I could do to appeal, I was out.
On the rebound, I started The Young Green Party Club, but quit after a week since I was the only member (no-one else was willing to stoop low enough to go to the Green Party parties), and the parties mostly offered shitty vegetarian pizza.
Depressed at the new lack of pizza in my life I was considering drawing up plans to rob a Pizza Hut, that is, until something much worse took place.
3. The Minivan “Incident”:
One would assume that the time when I was 5 and “air-fucked” an audience of 500 dressed as Elvis would be the low point of my life. But, that coveted spot would later go to what I affectionately refer to as “The Minivan Incident.”
Desperation is what makes the world go round, and it’s the driving force between such products as station wagons, Old English malt liquor, and rubber vaginas. My time in Hell was fueled by a rampant desperation to go home. And that desperation was bad, comparable to the levels of desperation where crack whores start to look appealing
From my third day in Hell on, I started scheming for a way to get out. And after about a month of being unsuccessful, I had had enough.
As you learned from the ‘Social Alienation’ chapter, I didn’t get along much with my dorm-mates. We fought constantly and had very little in common. Well, except for one thing: A game we had made up (or just conveniently stolen, I don’t remember) called “Extreme Pillowfighting.”
Extreme Pillowfighting is remarkably similar to pillowfighting, with the main notable difference being that we were actually beating the shit out of each other, unlike 14 year old girls at slumber parties. We put on heavy metal music with a strobe-light, got our pillows, and started whacking each other with them until we bled. Half of the time we played without the pillows, and most of the time, someone was seriously injured. The reason we even bothered to call the game “Extreme Pillowfighting” after we had ditched the pillows was to fool our ignorant dorm adviser (who thought any game with the word “Pillowfighting” in it was inherently gay, and the worst thing that could happen was one of us would get AIDs)
Well, one night Extreme Pillowfighting got kinda out of hand, and I’m not sure exactly how it happened, but about 25 minutes into the game I was kicking Josh Levin in the throat and screaming, “this is for my hamper!” Eventually other people got involved (before I had the opportunity to murder Josh) and broke up the game(fight.) But, no-one was able to calm me down.
I had had enough of Hell, and had decided to escape. So I did what any reasonable 15 year old would do: I tried to steal a car.
I didn’t start out with that decision though, and for a half an hour, I started running towards home (actually, I only ran for about thirty seconds and then walked the rest of the time because I’m perpetually out of shape.) I made it about a mile before they realized I was running away, and as soon as they did, they chased after me, in one of the School’s minivan’s.
They pulled the minivan past me about 100 feet, got out, and tried to convince me to come back to the school. I responded with something along the lines of “Fuck You.” We argued for a little bit, until I saw my break: They left the car running. Upon this realization, I broke out into a mad dash past the administrators and into the seat of the neon Ford WindStar.
At that point in my life I hadn’t learned how to drive a car, so I did what they did in the movies: Shifted it into drive and put the petal to the metal. That was not a good idea, mainly because before I knew it I was going 80mph head first into a tree and I had no idea where the brake was. Eventually I turned to avoid the tree and took the petal off the metal until I coasted to a stop. And while I was stopped after nearly killing myself, a sudden realization came to my head:
I WAS STEALING A MINIVAN!
Not only did I realize that this was a crime, but I realized that this was probably the lamest crime ever. In the eyes of the law it was the same exact thing as stealing a Ferrari, except, I wasn’t stealing a Ferrari, I was stealing a neon Ford Windstar with a dented hood. Just as felonious, twice as lame.
I started to cry. And not just because I had nearly beaten to death a kid for peeing in my hamper. And not just because I desperately wanted to go home. But, mostly, because I was going to go to jail for stealing a minivan. From then on I would be a laughingstock; I would be “the mini-van guy.” I’d be derided daily in all the local newspapers. Women would laugh at me, and men would spit on me. My parents would disown me. And I would probably die a virgin. Well, except for all the anal rape that was sure to come my way in prison. Right before they put me in the electric chair.
Faced with that frightening future looming in the horizon, I realized I had to right the situation. I left the car and walked back with tears in my eyes to where the administrators still stood, and had this conversation
“Where’s the car?” they asked.
Which prompted me to bawl uncontrollably, “It’s sooo shitty”
“Is it alright?” they had asked.
“No! It’s a fucking Neon minivan, It’ll never be alright” I managed to utter.
“Did you crash it?” they replied.
“No, but I wish I had” I said.
The day after the incident, I had figured the police would come and take me away for my little joyride, but the administration never pressed charges (probably because pressing charges would only bring attention to the fact that they all drove minivans), they just kicked me out.
So, in the end, the incident did actually get me out of Hell, but at what cost? I ALMOST STOLE A MINIVAN!
After Hell, I went back to my sweet sweet life of poor attendance at Glastonbury High School, where I would finish my adventures in public education.
Junior year of high school
Junior year was a remarkable year for me. Remarkable in a way that none of the years before it had been. Junior year was when my life was made complete. When the missing piece was added to my soul. In junior year I met my first love:
A crappy white Station Wagon nick-named, “The Awesome-mobile”
Although, I didn’t meet my first love at the onset of Junior year; I had to pass a test first. A test that would determine the amount of girls that would hang around me just to use me (which I’m A-OK with): The Drivers test.
Now, unlike most of the kids my age, I wasn’t particularly psyched about driving. Mainly, because cars go fast, and I’m a pussy. Well, not a complete pussy, but after almost having driven a stolen minivan into a tree, I had lost my appetite for going faster than 12mph.
Though, eventually, my need to get of the house and, you know, socialize helped me overcome my fear of things that go ‘Vrroom’ (Except vacuum cleaners, I was never afraid of them.) Also, I realized that driving was the only reasonable method of transportation (*cough*This mean you, Motor Scooter*Cough*) since teleportation machines hadn’t been invented yet (although, they might by the time you read this, Mr. Future)
At my dad’s behest, I enrolled in the school’s 30 hour Driver’s Ed course. Which is basically an extended review of all of the ways you can die in a car crash.
A list of things I learned in Drivers Ed:
- Don’t drive drunk.
- Don’t drive high.
- Don’t drive both high and drunk.
- Don’t drive naked.
- Unless you’re really hot.
- Hydroplaning doesn’t exist.
- Except, of course, when it does exist.
- And kills you.
- You can’t drive a car into a lake.
- Unless it is also a boat.
- Stop signs are red.
- You should stop when you see them.
- I mean, really stop, not just go through the motions of stopping.
- Someone could die that way.
- Drivers Ed was reaaalllllyy boring.
And then finally, it was the moment of truth (well, actually, we waited for 5 hours at the DMV, but that’s beside the point.) I was introduced to the one person who would decide whether or not I would have a license (and consequently, whether girls would hang around me just to use me or not): an 80 year old German guy who I can only imagine was a Nazi at some point during his life.
The test itself was over in 15 minutes, and even though I made about 7 major mistakes, I passed anyway (probably because I wasn’t Jewish.) An hour later, I was handed my license, and all was perfect in the world.
And then, things got even more perfect, I met my first love (actually, my dad bought my first love, but it sounds creepier when I say that for some reason.) Now, at first I was a bit apprehensive about having to drive The Awesome-Mobile, but eventually, the feeling of imminent death passed, and we fell in love.
Now, I’ve already wrote about my love for the Awesome-mobile, so I won’t elaborate on the bond that tied our lost souls together. Instead, I’ll tell you about what that shitty Station Wagon did for my life:
It allowed me to love.
My heart of stone was turned into a giant heap of Jello Pudding. I gave hugs to random strangers, stopped kicking puppies, and donated a crapload of money to charity. (Alright, none of that was true, I just had nothing better to write.)
The Awesome-mobile was my best friend¸ and I loved it like a crackwhore loves crack. Eventually, it died, and I moved on to my next car (A minivan called “The Not-As-Awesome Mobile”), but I would never forget my first car, and the year in which I drove it.
Senior year of High school
Senior year was the end. Not just of my public school career, and not just of my adventures in education. But the end of life as I knew it.
Throughout the year, I was split in two. There was an overwhelming part of me that just wanted the whole thing to be over with. And another part of me that was incredibly fucking terrified.at the prospect of suddenly being thrust out into the real world (like when I was thrust out of my Mother’s womb 18 years prior [except slightly less placenta.])
Although I made no secret of my terror (oftentimes becoming hysterical in the middle of the hallways screaming, “Why does it have to end? I don’t wanna grow up! Nobody loves me!”), there still existed in me a great sense of denial.
Denial of the fact that, whether I liked it or not, I would have to leave. That I would have to move on, forget all the petty high-school stuff I had been used to, and grow up. So, I just pretended I didn’t. Which worked for a while, until the year started to end.
And thoughts of helplessness at the prospect of no longer being legally mandated to be anywhere plagued my mind:
What will I do when I’m gone?
Can I handle that?
Exactly how homeless am I going to be?
And even though I’d never actually liked going to school, I didn’t want to leave. Mainly because it was the only environment I had ever truly known. I was afraid to let go.
So, I coped with my fear the only way I knew how: nostalgia. I was as nostalgic about public school as anyone who’s still in public school can be (so, I wrote this article).
And aside from the constant nostalgia, panic attacks, and the petty teenage stuff that goes along with High School, nothing incredibly important happened.
Before I knew it, I was graduating.
Sitting in a silly blue gown with a silly blue hat in the blistering heat, I waited for my name to be called so I could receive my fake diploma ( I had to make up a few classes in summer school [mainly, because I like to sleep] before I got the real one.) And, as I was sitting there, our class’s “Graduation Speaker” came up to the podium and delivered his speech. Which made me resentful, mainly because the speech I had written was rejected. So, I’ll end this article, and my adventures in Education, with the speech I had written, which I think sums it all up pretty nicely:
Glastonbury High School Football Rules!
A speech by: Alex Traynor
Ladies and Gentlemen, Class of 2007, I stand before you today, not as a guy standing on a podium, but as one of you. Brothers and Sisters in the class of 2007.After today, the class of 2007 will live on only in spirit, as we’ll all move on with our lives. 15 years from now some of you will be doctors. Some of you will be lawyers. And I know at least 7 of you that may very well be homeless. But it’s not about the pursuit of our inevitable futures that keep us moving from day to day. It’s about the people we meet and the experiences we have.
Now, most Graduation Speakers use the art of ‘analogy’, often comparing graduating classes to blossoming flowers, or something fruity like that. As your graduation speaker, I promise to not analogize, because the Glastonbury High School Class of 2007 is much more complicated than a blossoming flower, or something fruity like that. Each and every one of us is unique, and for the most part, not all that fruity.
For the past 13 or so years, we’ve bonded together, more than I previously thought a group of 500 self-absorbed teenagers ever could. We’ve been through it all together:
The good times: When the school’s power went out and they let us go home.
The bad times: Every time the school’s power didn’t go out.
The sad times: 9/11.
And the downright miserable times: The day when my hair looked shitty and I didn’t notice it until 6th period.
We’ve all grown up together. From frightened, bed-wetting toddlers, to frightened, bed-wetting adults. Or is that just me? Out in the crowd lies my first best friend, my first girlfriend, the first person to beat the shit out of me, and the first person to make make me realize what this is all about. I feel like I know all of you, since you’ve all impacted my life a great deal.
Whether it’s the teachers who hated me, or the janitors who loved me. The girls who went out with me: all 4 of you, or the girls who turned me down: the rest of you. The black people I was unintentionally racist to, or the white people I was intentionally racist to. All of you have impacted my life more than you could’ve imagined.
At the end of the summer, we’ll enter the next phases of our lives. Some of you will be going to community college, and some of you will be going to real college. But we’ll always remember the times we had at good ‘ol Glastonbury High.
What makes this day so bittersweet is that I have to say goodbye to each and every one of you. I have to say goodbye to my best friend in 5th grade, and to the guy who picked on me in 7th grade. To the dude who crapped in the urinal, and to the girl who gave a handjob to everyone on the football team.
Now I have some confessions to make:
First of all: I didn’t know what our school’s mascot was until last year. A Tomahawk? Really? We’re named after a weapon?
Secondly: I was “absent” from school so many times, the nurses thought I had come down with Fake AIDs.
Thirdly: I'm actually pretty drunk right now.
And finally: I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.
Also, I stole that last line from The Lord of The Rings.
In conclusion, GHS Class of ’07… Fuck you!
Epilogue
It’s August 28th 2007, the first day of classes at Glastonbury High School. Alex Traynor, exhausted from staying up the last night playing videogames, walks into homeroom and passes out on his desk. A teacher comes up to him.
"Didn’t you graduate last year?" She says.
Alex pauses for a moment to think. "Oh yeah"
"Then why are you still here?" she replied.
"…I don’t know. Habit?"
"Go home"
"Really? I can just go home? Like that?"
"Yeah"
"Hooray!"
So, Alex picked up his new backpack, with his new school supplies, and ran to his car and drove home. Where he would eat cheetos and watch Bugs Bunny in his underoos for the rest of his days. Well, until he went to college, that is.
And finally: I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.
Also, I stole that last line from The Lord of The Rings.
In conclusion, GHS Class of ’07… Fuck you!
Epilogue
It’s August 28th 2007, the first day of classes at Glastonbury High School. Alex Traynor, exhausted from staying up the last night playing videogames, walks into homeroom and passes out on his desk. A teacher comes up to him.
"Didn’t you graduate last year?" She says.
Alex pauses for a moment to think. "Oh yeah"
"Then why are you still here?" she replied.
"…I don’t know. Habit?"
"Go home"
"Really? I can just go home? Like that?"
"Yeah"
"Hooray!"
So, Alex picked up his new backpack, with his new school supplies, and ran to his car and drove home. Where he would eat cheetos and watch Bugs Bunny in his underoos for the rest of his days. Well, until he went to college, that is.
The End. (Fucking Finally)
1 comments:
Wow, that was an amazing story. It totally made my day. good stuff :D
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