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In 1997, after months of begging and pleading with my parents, they finally let me make the transition from boarding school to public school.
I’ve been a “problem child” with decent grades and a drug problem since 5th grade, so it was only natural they chose boarding school over military school because: A) I’m a pussy and they knew I would get beaten up and raped daily by black kids; and B) I’m from an upper-class family in Connecticut so it’s already expected that I attend private school.
Don’t get me wrong; boarding school was a great place for a teenager, minus the whole academia and organized-sports thing. It’s full of hot horny blonde chicks from upper-class families…the weed is always top-shelf…the parties at private estates in Nantucket were always stocked with booze and cocaine from a friend’s old shithead brother at an Ivy League college…it’s connection-based so no matter what you’ll have a golden ticket in life…there are very few minorities there so you never feel threatened or get beaten up for lunch money…it’s such a white place that all the kids have golden retrievers back home named Bailey and Baxter and Dudley…and having a boarding school as a place of study in high school looks great on college applications.
My problem was that I hated school and organized sports (even though I received a scholarship to play lacrosse at a college in Virginia) and wanted to live a normal teenage life with my shithead friends. I liked working a job and making money, driving a car, skateboarding, rap, and graffiti, so basically I was just like every other small-town wigger in the suburbs, only I knew I would attend college and leave town for good.
So the night before my first day at school arrives. I already had a crew of degenerate friends that I met over the summer skateboarding, so we paged each other and talked on the phone. Our plan was to meet up before school, smoke a bowl, and hang by some lockers to scope out the freshman girls we wanted to slay.
The first day of school arrives. I get up and take a shower. Like most pimply teenagers I used Clearasil face wash every morning to cure the beard of zits on my chin. I went to squeeze out some Clearasil from the tube and nothing came out. I tried again. Nothing. Finally I shook the tube and squeezed with all my force and watched in slow motion as a glob of Clearasil flew in my eye. It forced my eye shut! I panicked and tried to wash it out. It stung like a fucking bitch and now my eye was blood-red, twitching in shock, and half-closed. I also wore contacts so I could only put one in, and since I was new to wearing contacts my eyes were still tear-filled when I put them in, and since I have blue eyes with astigmatism they were always red and irritated, making me blink more than the normal person. Not off to a good start yet.
My clothing was a mix of shitty small-town raver meets skateboard wigger meets preppie asshole, so I got dressed in my finest Nautica windbreaker with Nautica matching hat, size-40 jeans and Nike Air Maxes, and I headed downstairs for breakfast. My eye was still twitching and I made noises from the pain. Time for school. Fuck. It didn’t look cool like a black eye or being really baked. I looked like a porn star who took a load of acid jizz in her eye.
I met up with two friends in the woods and smoked some shitty weed, hoping that would cure the pain. They laughed at my red, twitching eye. A few Polo Sport cologne sprays on our shirts and it was time to venture into my new territory of public high school. I headed in to see the dean of the school to get my homeroom number and schedule. The dean was suspicious of me. I reeked of Polo Sport and weed cologne, had a bloodshot irritated teary eye from my contact and another eye completely blood-red and twitching. Making noises that I was in pain didn’t help.
I looked at the paper and saw homeroom L27.
I made the trek from his office to the homeroom. I figured this was the room because I was in the “Ludlow” section of the school. I opened the door and the teacher greeted me a little too politely. I think that she might have thought I was retarded, because at that time I looked like a fucking mess and was all disoriented because I could barely see. She asked my name, I said Brendan, eyes twitching and teary. She led me to a table and helped me get into my chair when suddenly this fat bald retarded girl with Down syndrome wearing a Looney Tunes jean jacket says, “Hey, Bwendan.” It turns out this was my next-door neighbor from childhood! (She used to break into our house when we were kids just about every weekend. My dad wakes up at 5AM and they never locked the door. I’d come down to watch TV and there she would be, next to my dad on the couch eating hot-dog rolls with ketchup watching the Disney Channel. It haunts me to this day.)
I looked around the room and noticed a bunch of kids that looked like all the cripples and retards from South Park when it dawned on me—I’m in a homeroom for the special-needs kids. I got up and asked the teacher if I was in the right room. I showed her my paper and she said “This is 27, you’re in L27 down the hall! Homeroom is about to start so let’s all walk down there together.” At my high school they integrated the special kids with the normal kids to make them feel like they were one of us. They usually just lead the class in prayer or made announcements, but mostly they just made noise.
The Down Syndrome Brigade and I made the voyage to my real homeroom, dropping special kid after special kid to their classrooms. We made it to L27—three of us and me. We had the bald neighbor with Down syndrome, a kid who looked like the drawing of the fat kid from The Far Side, me (who looked like Arnie from What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?), and a mongoloid named Caleb who would steal backpacks and walk down the hall with them.
The door opened and my homeroom teacher greeted us with excessive friendliness. The special-needs teacher showed my paper to him and said, “This one wandered in to my room as well; he’s yours now.” I was wondering if she thought I was a retard, too. The teacher introduced him to us. My old neighbor said to the teacher, “This is Bwendan” and patted me on the back. He said “Hello, Brendan” and kept looking at my twitching red eye that was now watering since I had no time to put drops in it. I said “Hi.” He told us to grab a seat.
Of course I didn’t know a single person in my homeroom and of course the only seats available were next to each other were for Caleb and me. Everyone seemed to remember Caleb from last year, so they moved their backpacks over to protect them from his far reach and retard strength…except me.
As the teacher was doing the roll call, I looked over and saw Caleb’s long arm reach over and try to grab my backpack. I quickly tugged it back. This went on for a few minutes until I busted out, “HEY YOU FUCKING RETARD, I’M GOING TO PUNCH YOU IN THE FUCKING HEAD IF YOU DON’T STOP!”
Everyone in the room turned around and stared at us. He successfully got ahold of my bag and got up flinging it around and I sat there with a blushing red face full of anger and embarrassment to pair with my twitching half-closed eye and making noises only someone in pure discomfort would make.
The teacher did not find this amusing. He pulled me into the hallway and we had a chat. He then sent me to the dean’s office where I had to explain my situation and talk my way out of it. I was already off to a great start in public school. Everyone including my homeroom teacher thought I was in the special-needs program, I called a retarded kid a retard, then threatened to fight him, and I had two nonfunctioning eyes.
Within a year I was sent back to boarding school for being a piece-of-shit teenager with a pot problem, got kicked out of school, was sent to public school (again), got kicked out of my house and stopped going to school, talked my way back into getting a diploma, and was accepted into art school, naturally, to act like even more of a retard.
Hello. I feel as if I’ve watched you grow up before my very own eyes.
I feel more than obligated to buy you some snack packs and grade-a fruit roll ups.
nigga please
Awesome. Honesty makes it funnier. You do animation?
i miss the old stuff, wheres the .blogspot material from yester-year?
This is terrible.
@gobacktoschool submit some writing since you think you can obviously write a better column. Go for it, let’s see what you can come up with.
Gosh, we have such a similar past… I too dressed (embarrassingly enough) like that. I too went to boarding school and private school and got myself kicked out so i could go to public school. Barely graduated