My older brother and I would sometimes pick on our youngest brother.
Once we brought him to a forest and offered him slugs and worms to eat claiming they were "buggy fruit snacks" I don't recall if he ate them or not. I think so.
We also shut him up in a suitcase once. But then we let him out
My older brother and I would sometimes pick on our youngest brother.
Once we brought him to a forest and offered him slugs and worms to eat claiming they were "buggy fruit snacks" I don't recall if he ate them or not. I think so.
We also shut him up in a suitcase once. But then we let him out
Commercials confused me when I was a little kid. There would be a family, just doing normal things, when suddenly one of the adults would turn towards the screen and start talking about product X.
I somehow came to the conclusion that commercials where just something all adults did, so one day I decided to practice.
I went into my room, assembled some stuffed animals in a row, and started trying go tell them about toothpaste. As soon as I started stumbling over my words, not knowing what to say, I realized that I had probably gotten the wrong idea.
Thank God the only ones privy to my weird childhood idea was a teddy bear and a Kermit instead of my parents.
When I was like 19, there was this little child's bicycle that had been left to rot in Northport Park for like 2 years. Mark and I, in our infinite wisdom, chucked that bitch into the Long Island Sound. It was fucking hilarious. We got caught by the Parks Department though, who was enraged with us and demanded to know why we had thrown someone's bike in the water. After trying to explain that the bike had been abandoned since forever ago, his rage came to a full stop when I offered to climb down and retrieve the bike, which was in like 2 feet of water and I could see from the shore and could have easily been grabbed. He told us the Parks Department would deal with it, and sent us on our way.
We'd go back from time to time. The bike never moved. We'd laugh about it, and how fucking hilarious that still was.
It remained there until, after about 12 years of being in the shallow salt water, it finally suffered critical existence failure when the storm surges from Hurricane Sandy obliterated the thing against the fucking rocks.
I don't remember this next story myself but my mom still brings it up sometimes. At around the same year as the iron incident, while playing outside I got the brilliant idea of standing on my Radio Flyer wagon while it was sitting on the gravel driveway. As one would expect, it rolled out from underneath me and I landed chin-first onto the gravel. I still have the scar.
When I as about 7-ish, I tried to stand on my head on the guest room bed at my parents' old house where I was watching a recorded VHS of some Ludwig von Drake cartoon that apparently gave me the brilliant idea. Naturally I fell and launched myself off the bed, smacking myself in the face just half an inch from my left eye on the TV stand. It still amazes me that I didn't lose an eye, though at the time I thought for sure that I was going to given all of the blood. I still have that scar too.
I got mad at my mother once and told her I was going to run away from home.
I had my getaway all planned out. There was a Mexican restaurant down the street from our house, and it had a second story that was used for storage. My plan was to go to the restaurant, sneak past the greeter, and then live in the upstairs of this restaurant, eating leftover tacos and tortilla chips after everybody left for the night. And man, would my mom miss me! She'd cry every night and she'd be sorry for making me angry!
So I informed my mother that I was leaving. She offered to make me a sandwich.
That really took the incentive out of things, so I decided to just stay home.
I didn't have any friends so I just played Pokémon with my toys and pretended to go on adventures and shit because my family was poor and I didn't own the videogames until YuGiOh and Digimon were gaining popularity.
One time, when I was five, I was at my cousin's house and he and I were playing on the stairs (or, more specifically, the landing between the first and second floors). Anyways, we were singing the chorus to "Macho macho Man" and leaning dangerously close to the edge said landing (the first floor was twelve steps down). When I did it, you can kinda guess what happened. Landed into a pile of shoes and broke my nose on the way down.
And this one other time, I accidentally sat on my middle finger and didn't realize I did so until I saw a bruise underneath the fingernail.
I don't know how I managed to do it, but I'd seen a commercial or a trailer for "American Werewolf in London" when I was about five. I think it was an advertisement on Cinemax.
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I got it into my head that "American Werewolf in London" was a documentary and I fully believed that I was going to turn into a werewolf at the next full moon. I apparently drove my parents nuts because I would go into hysterics when the sun set. I would literally pray every night to not turn into a werewolf.
I suddenly realized that I was wrong one night when I looked right at the full moon and nothing happened.
Once, I packed up my Gameboy, some chips, and a book (essential survival equipment), and told my mom not to look for me because I was going to go out and find the Dragonballs.
My favorite recipes when I was a kid.
- Put croutons in a bowl. Cover with ranch dressing and bacon bits. Eat like cereal.
- Put M&Ms in a shallow bowl. Cover with water. Wait until the candy shell dissolves, then drink the sugar water and throw away the chocolate.
- Open pouch of taco seasoning. Eat taco seasoning. If taco seasoning is not available, substitute garlic powder or Molly McButter.
Here's one for the record books. The following story and its references are true, though I'm obscuring names and exact locations to protect the innocent (and guilty).
Years and years ago, I went to this one middle school. If you're not familiar, Long Island's middle schools are such a giant clusterfuck of mismanagement that we actually have DASA training, yearly, as a mandatory thing. For the uninitiated, DASA is the Dignity for All Students Act. This is a law that essentially mandates that educational professionals can't fucking ignore acts of bullying and violence. If you're wondering why this became a law, it's because educational professionals in NY chose to ignore this particular problem until there was a rash of high profile suicides.
Just so you have some context of what we're getting into here.
So this middle school then. A bigger clusterfuck of a mismanaged dipshit-fest you would never find. The teachers were openly corrupt and would constantly abuse their authority - the kind of horse-shit that they'd never get away with even half a decade later. We're talking openly lowering grades on papers and shit to keep kids below a certain grade average, suspending kids for ridiculously small offenses, and so on. This is atop brain-dead policies the district was fucking infamous for, such as an infamous (and equally asinine) policy that stated that if two kids got in a fight - even if one did nothing but get their asses kicked, both would get in equal trouble. Welcome to a situation where a kid would be beaten up and put in ISS (in-school-suspension) with his attacker, because that's how this district's logic worked.
I was a smart kid, but not very social. I had a few close friends and I had some level of faith in the system at this point.
That would pass quickly.
Many, many times I got to watch as I did everything I was supposed to - avoid fights, get teachers/aides when there was trouble, do my schoolwork, etc - and it wasn't enough. I learned over the course of the two years I attended that miserable excuse for a district that the system was not your friend, few, if any of the teachers could be trusted, and that if the school could find some way to do something incompetently, it would. Always. Forever.
Which brings me to the centerpiece of this tale, the vice-principal of the school. A man who was given his position despite no qualifications whatsoever, he was solely given the job because of who he knew and before it, was the metal shop teacher - a class no longer taught at the school. A bigger fuck-up at managing children I have never met in my entire life, and that's counting my nearly ten years working in this field as a Transportation specialist who has seen some stupid, stupid things.
This man was, in the immortal words of Maddox, as dumbfuck as shit in a pant. If you want a run-down of some of his exploits prior to this incident, click the spoiler tag. When I say he's the kind of employee no school would ever have now, I fucking mean it.
Once, two students during 4th-period Lunch got in a food fight. Nobody knew who was responsible, and nobody would admit to causing it. His solution? Suspend the back half of the entire cafeteria, where the food fight took place, for the lunch period. The following day. Not only did this not catch the offending party (believe me, after this, the offender was found damned fast by the other students, who wanted to fuckstart the offender's head), but it successfully got across that the VP cared more about looking important than actually doing anything of relevance.
Banned running, most ball games except basketball and intramural football, handball, and pretty much any outdoor activity during lunch breaks. Suspend anyone who insisted on doing things like climb trees, play games like tag or dodgeball, etc. Complain afterwards when every kid worth their shit doesn't even bother going outside.
Suspended kids pretty much on a whim. He was infamous for it, often coming to classes of kids who were suspected of wrongdoing and moving them to ISS, apropos of nothing. No oversight, no accusation, no discussion of facts - just physically dragged them to ISS. Again, the kind of shit he could never get away with now.
Directly connected to #3, would randomly put kids in random rooms and lock them in for lunch detentions if the main ISS room was booked up (which it always was). Usually this was a conference room. Sometimes it was an office not currently in use. In one incident that made me an overnight celebrity, he locked me in the PA room, which is a soundproof room with a large console connected to the Public Announcement system. The microphone was plugged in. I used it to broadcast an announcement that the Vice Principal was a piece of shit. That was a good day.
Habitually relied on people who were as fucked-up as he was. Had an administrative assistant who once, when he pulled his "get to ISS because I said so" shit, and I responded by pointing out that he had never actually accused me of anything, in a violation of my rights, grabbed me by the lapels, lifted me into the air, slammed me into a wall, and stated "you son of a bitch, you have no rights." My mom rather disagreed with this notion when I told her, and he was disciplined by the district for this horse-shit.
Had a fucking major attraction towards my mother, who personally wanted to stab him in the face. Was constantly doing things to try to get her to come to the school and his attraction towards her was about as subtle as OPL's affections towards Megan. Note that this VP was also married, the twisted fuck. Even my mom brought this shit up in an official meeting (see #.
See #6. I used to bring my Hamster into school once a week for my Bio class (we were studying mammals). Once, he claimed I brought the Hamster in when I shouldn't have, and confiscated it, refusing to return said pet until my mom showed up at the school (she worked on literally the opposite end of the island). Mom eventually went over his head and called the main Principal, who forced the VP to hand over the Hamster.
Again, See #6. Called mom constantly with every single update he could possibly think up about what a problem child young Jaimas was because gods forbid, he was drawing spaceships in class instead of paying attention, or because he chewed on a piece of paper as part of a joke and that was somehow disruptive. She got so many of these calls that HR was threatening to take disciplinary action against her if the calls didn't stop. VP insisted these updates were crucial. Mom goes over his head, to the Superintendent of Schools; threatens lawsuit; brings up creepy stalker-esque attraction to her by VP. Calls stop overnight.
In the vein of #8, attractive female students were known to get away with slaps on the wrist from this asshole. I've been told he had a few cases of sexual harassment under his belt with some of the Secretaries as well, though I never looked into this personally. Classy.
For literally 2 years, I had the displeasure of watching this pompous administrative fuckface personally be involved with making my life, and the lives of several people I cared about, a living hell. I'd watched repeatedly as this asshole run this school as his own personal fiefdom, and I was grateful I'd never again have to come back to this shithole. Kiwis, I have never known an environment that oppressive and that horrid to be around.
At the end of my 7th grade year, however, I was transferring to another district, and with that, there was something I had to do before I left. Something big. Something justified. I wanted vengeance. Nothing destructive, nothing violent. I wanted to get him for what he did, in the only way I could, and I worked out a plan.
I had a backpack that I got at camp a few years previous. This backpack was rubber-lined, and had a drawstring neck, which meant that it could hold pretty large objects, and was completely waterproof. That year, for my birthday, my Uncle had given me a Super Soaker XP75, a pretty big - but rather short-barreled - water gun that was the first in the XP series. Even better, it could be taken apart. The entire thing was extremely compact when disassembled, and when fully worked out, was good to go. Even better, the XP75 would handily fit in the backpack in both modes.
The plan was extremely simple. Attend my last day of school normally. At the end of the school day, go to the bathroom. Use the faculty bathroom on the second floor, which was almost never locked and had proper water faucets. Assemble XP75. Load with hot (not scalding, just hot) water. Hide weapon in backpack.
Commence operation.
Taking a winding path, I went outside via the music wing, and, unslinging my backpack, walked over to the VP's window as I had done countless times before when I was trying to get him to do his fucking job. I pulled very close to the window, my bag below the lip of the windowsill, and opened the bag, knocking on the window. He opened it and we made small talk about the end of the year as I reached into my backpack, just out of view, wrapped my hand around the grip of the Super Soaker, and waited for my moment. Finally getting the top of the gun past the lip of the pack, and finding a good pause in the conversation, I interrupted him one last time.
"By the way, there's something really important I needed to tell you before I go!" I said dripping with false nicety.
"What's that?" He asked.
"This is for two years of hell, you son of a bitch!" And with that, I opened fire through the window.
I nailed him right in the groin and sputtering, he ran out the room as I hosed him down. The assassination completed, I stowed the weapon, swung my pack onto my back, and walked across the football field towards the shopping center. "Nicely done," I thought. "Evil is punished."
About halfway there, I heard a loud impact. It was him. He had kicked the music wing door open in a fit of rage, and he was now running my way, bald head red as a traffic light.
Fleeing, I ran as fast as my legs could carry me. I originally ran for a hole in the fence - only to see, to my horror, that the hole in the fence was being occupied by some of the same assholes I had fought with all year. I didn't fancy my chances getting past them with the VP in hot pursuit. Panicking, I broke off to the right, my heart pounding in balls-out terror, and quickly wound up in a corner as I approached the chain-link fence.
Running on pure adrenaline, I climbed the fence after throwing my pack over it, got to the top, threw myself over, and landed hard, right as he was about to catch up to me. He wasn't able to climb it, and I had a few precious moments. I forced myself, painfully, to my feet, grabbing my pack with one hand, and ran for all I was worth, running past the shopping center, looking back when I got about halfway across the lot.
The chase wasn't over.
I looked and he had forced his way past the hole in the fence. With him closing on me rapidly, I took a hell of a gamble and ran through oncoming traffic. He hesitated, waiting for the red light, and I hauled ass to the parking lot of the nearby gas station, rounded the corner, and hid in a bush near a block of stores. He followed, ran right past my position, and after looking for me for about a minute, left. I breathed long and painfully as I saw him cross the street, feeling in all the world like I'd just escaped with my life. I remember staying in that bush for what felt like an hour, but was really only 20 minutes or so, before I began the long walk home.
At five years old, I decided I wanted to be a professional wrestler. I used to run around my house shirtless because "wrestlers didn't wear shirts." I also drew Mario "comics." The only one I can remember doing looked something like this:
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