Discouraged Defiance

I never talked back...ever. I still don't, and probably never will because whenever I see other people talk balk to teachers, coaches and other adults I always get that awkward feeling that makes me wan't to leave the area. I don't like confrontation, and you'll never see me seeking it. This is a lesson I learned back in the sixth grade, a lesson I learned the hard way. In front of the entire sixth grade class...

Physical education, especially in elementary school, is a joke. I don't even need to explain why, because everybody knows that there has never been a single kid who has overcome his weight issue becasue of a rigorous P.E. course. My elementary school, Mountain Avenue Elementary, had a P.E. teacher named Ms. MeanLady. We had P.E. three days a week and every single time we would go I was scared crapless. To me, the ultimate mark of failure and humiliation came from having a teacher get mad at you. Ms. MeanLady was the last teacher in the world who you wanted mad at you. She could stare down a mountain lion and just by barking a single angry syllable, make it stab itself in the heart. So when one day in the sixth grade, she gave us the assignment to bring the fitness sheets we had been given to the next P.E. class, I was sure to make a mental note to not forget to do so. Well to no suprise of my own now that I look back at it, I forgot to bring the fitness sheet the next class. As I sat in my line while she took attendance I began to get really nervous and scared about what my punishment would be for forgetting. I wanted to run away. When she was done with attendance she stood up in front of the class and asked everyone who had remembered to bring their sheet to hold it up. "oh no oh no oh no oh no" I thought, "i'm done for, I just know it, there's no way out of this. what are they serving for lunch today? oh no oh no oh no." But then as I looked around I realized that only half the class had brought the fitness sheet, which means half of the class didn't. This sent joyous hope rushing to my heart.
If there is one thing that every school kid knows it is that there is safety in numbers. You know that if you didn't do your homework, as long as most people also didn't do it then you knew wouldn't get in trouble. There was no way that I would get in trouble with Ms. MeanLady if i was only one of twenty who didn't do as instructed. I could see that she was upset that so many people didn't bring the sheet but there wasn't really anything she could do. She got her clipboard and told everyone who didn't bring the sheet to come up and sign her paper.
Well, having been newly inspired by the mass defiance I had just witnessed and having a lesson on the signing of the Declaration of Independence fresh in my mind, I proudly walked to the front and pulled a John Hancock. I signed my name really big in all caps like this: JACOB WALTERS. I guess I did it to show that I was not ashamed of forgetting my fitness sheet and that I would not be intimidated by Ms. MeanLady and her very stong upper body. Class went on it's way without incident and pretty soon it was time to line up again so we could be dismissed.

When people ask if you could go back and change something about your life, what would it be, this is one of those times i would change. I knew something was up when she didn't immediatley dismiss us after we lined up. She took a long look at her clipboard and in her deepest most scariest voice said, "Where is Jacob Walters?" The four scariest words I have ever heard in my life.
I timidly rose my hand and her sunglassed eyes focused on my quivering, pudgy countenance.
"Come here." she said. I did. She took of her sunglasses and shoved the clipboard in my face. She pointed to my extremely large signature and asked, "What is this?" "My name." I replied. Then she really tore into me:
"Yes I can see that, this is depsicable, completely ridiculous. Look at how your classmates signed, nice and neat! This looks like a first grader wrote this! Who do you think you are? Thomas Jeffereson?"(I think she meant John Hancock, and I wanted to correct her but I didn't think it was a good time for a history lesson.) She went on for a bit and got right up in my face. She wasn't saying this quietly either, she was legitimately yelling two feet from my face in front of the entire class. I have never felt so humiliated. Not even when I farted while doing situps while the girl I liked was holding my feet was I as embarrased as that moment when Ms. MeanLady tore apart my dignity. She ended with an arm gesture and a sharp "Sit down!". I hung my head and walked back to my place.
It is this experience that made me promise that I would never yell at a little kid becasue it made me feel terrible, and really didn't accomplish anything at all. She wasted her time harshly yelling at a good kid and made him feel really bad inside. Maybe I was oversensitive but still, she was out of line.
I have however always been careful how I sign my name on things since then. The last thing I want is the bank teller yelling at me for writing like a first grader. Oh wait, that's right, normal people who aren't bitter becasue they are Elementary School P.E. teachers don't care how I write.

More like Wiki-speed-ia.

Of all the injustices that I have been served with during my attendance at public school, the worst one is not being allowed to use Wikipedia as a source for research. I don't think my teachers understand how much the quality of my work would incerease if I could just cite the bastion of knowledge that is the wiki-verse. My research papers would be done in ten minutes if Wikipedia were allowed. My time after school is spent like this:
20% -napping
15%- staring at the wall
25%-napping
40%- Wikipedia

As you can see from the, I guess you could call it a chart, above, the majority of my time is spent on Wikipedia. I will literally go onto wikipedia and search for random things that I want to know more about. For instance, today I looked up "the two dollar bill" and the plots of all the "Saw" movies cause I wanted to know what they were about but didn't want to actually watch them. EVERYthing is on wikipedia. It is the one stop shop for fun facts and a bioggraphy on Chris Farley. Whenever I watch a movie and don't understand the plot, I'm ok with it because I know I can just go onto wikipedia afterward and read the plot synopsis. Just the other day I ruined the ending of "American History X" for myself because at the last comercial break I went onto Wikipedia and looked it up. And you know what? What wikipedia said would happen is exactly what happened! Not credible! HA! If it wasn't credible then how did it correctly relay the ending of a hit film hmmmm?

Basically my point is that because I can't use wikipedia as a source I am procrastinating my reasearch paper by writing this blog post. I'm also not doing the laundry I need for tomorrow, but that's because I'm a little bit afraid of the washing machine. It makes weird noises and it's dark in the garage and the cat sometimes scratches me when I go in there and it just puts a lot of stress on me when I'm trying to wash clothes and my leg is bleeding and I cant see anything cause it's dark and I end up putting milk in the washer instead of detergent and my mom gets mad at me and yells in spanish and I go to my room and I try to take a nap but then I remember that I have a reasearch paper due so I go on the computer and just end up on wikipedia learning how the show "Boston Legal"* was conceptualized.

*worst show ever created.

Mistake = An unmarried piece of beef.

Sometimes I wish I could be walking down the street and I would pass by a park bench and there would be an old man sitting on it. He would be wearing and old man coat and scarf and one of those old timey hats and he'd have a pipe and his hair would be white and he would beckon me over to sit next to him. I would do so and he would proceed to give me fantastic life lessons based on his own experiences and we would have a stimulating disscussion on life in general and its purpose. However I feel that I am fairly safe in my assumption that this will never happen, due to the lack of park benches and old british men in my area. I think the reason that I want this to happen is because I always feel like I need guidance for myself. It could also be that there is something psychiatrically wrong with me but I'm always too afraid to go see the psychiatrist at my school. (who I recently discovered exsisted.)
I realized recently that I would have to be my own old man. Nobody in my life is going to call me over to their park bench and help me learn from their mistakes in life. I have to call myself over to my park bech(or in this case, the armchair in the living room) and learn from my own mistakes. What mistakes do I make? quite a bit actually. I have a top five list of my mistakes that I think have the most to be learned from:

1. Walking behind the swingset.
2. Eating too much food at the Golden Corral
3. Eating at the Golden Corral in the first place (my sister said it was a classy buffet...ya, nothing classier than a 300+ pounder taking the Advert for endless shrimp a little too literally.)
4. Sharky Mcsharkington (long story)
5. Introducing myself as Poo P. Pants at a Coprophobia convention

These definitley aren't the only mistakes I've made, just the ones that have interesting stories behind them, which will be the topics for my posts for the next couple of weeks.(expcept for #4, that story has to be told in person.) I do this with the hope that you won't make the same mistakes I did.

and also with the hopes that you google coprophobia.

Sincerely yours,
Poo P. Pants