Rucker Classic: High School Paper
Today’s blog entry is a Rucker Classic. What you are about to read is a paper that I wrote in the 11th grade and I’m still trying to figure out why. I’m assuming the prompt was something like “Write whatever you want and don't worry with correct grammar or punctuation.” Nevertheless, it’s pretty funny so enjoy. And it may look long, but believe me it reads very fast; it's written at like a 2nd grade level.
It was the last day of school. Well, not the LAST day, I had 2 more years to endure, and that was only of middle school. I hadn’t really heard anything about what high school was like, I just knew there couldn’t be anything worse than how it was now.
Middle School. Supposed to be fun right? None of the babyness of elementary school, but not near as hard as high school. My best friend, Jason, had gone to school with me since we were four years old; our moms shopped together, and our dads worked together. Jason and I also played on the same soccer team that both of our dads coached. Both Jason and I were going to attend Aunt Jemima Junior High in May Pearl, Texas. Yes. That’s what I said. AUNT JEMIMA JUNIOR HIGH. What kind of school is named after a food product?! Anyway, with a name like that, the bizarreness of my year was sure to follow. Day one of school, each child’s picture is taken and fastened onto a button the size of a grapefruit which served as our “ID.” Along with our photo was a photocopied printout of Aunt Jemima smiling and pointing at our face. Needless to say, our uniforms also had Aunt Jemima in perfect view. When Jason and I got assigned our classes, we unfortunately weren’t in the same homeroom. He got Ms. Forester, who was apparently the COOLEST person on earth; she was the science teacher, so they go to have experiments all the time. I, not surprisingly, got Mrs. Hernandez-Nyguen-Smith. I’ll go ahead and call her Mrs. HNS to save ink. Yes, Mrs. HNS had indeed been married three times, but didn’t feel like removing her ex husbands from her memory, so she just kept ALL of their names.
The first thing we did in class was listen to HNS struggle through the roll. I HATED roll call because no teacher in the history of my six whole years in school had EVER pronounced my name right. The first part was fairly easy, T-O-P-H-E-R. But my last name was not such a walk in the park. Haizehncleilavichnick. Properly pronounced as HI-ZIN-CLAIL-A-VICH-NICK. You can’t IMAGINE how long it took some teachers to say that. There was a record; one time I had a sub in the fifth grade that took all the way from first lesson until after lunch to get it right, just because he refused to let me tell him how to say it. Apparently he majored in “Word Linguistics” (which I’m not really sure exists at any college) and did not need the help from a child like me to read something. Anyway, back to the real story here. HNS was a CRAZY WOMAN. CRAZY I tell you. Rumor has it she once ate five meals from the lunchroom in one day. No one could confirm, however if she indeed was able to digest all five meals before regurgitating.
After we got through roll call (which incase you were wondering, she only took 3 minutes and 40 seconds to say my name; which was pretty good based on past results, we had our first lesson, mini computers. If you don’t know what mini computers are, think of the most confusing way of teaching a child to count, and then make it fifty times more confusing by using squares and dots. At one point in time, while I fumbled with my laminated “computer” and tissue paper dots, I could see out of the door into Ms. Forester’s room, where Jason was making a volcano out of Playdoh that oozed strawberry smoothie out of the top into coconut-shell cups for each kid. It was like they were having a Luau on the first day of school, and I was drawing on paper like a two year old.
When I got home from school that day, I went to Jason’s house to ride bikes with him. All he would do was talk about how fun his beach party was in Ms. Forester’s class. He also told me that the next day was going to be Dinosaur Day, which they would get to see actual dinosaur eggs and go on a dig to find bones. That was fine! At least I got to have the knowledge of counting with only a piece of paper and four small dots… UGH, who was I kidding. I was seriously ticked off. Needless to say, the rest of the school year was like this. Jason would update me every day of the first semester on how his underwater party went, or what they got for their Christmas present from their teacher (which, by the way, was a gift certificate to my favorite store IN THE WORLD, Comic Warehouse). Sadly, all I had received from my teacher was a four-inch-wide binder of practice SAT tests and a pencil with my misspelled name engraved on it.
I did thankfully make a friend that semester though, Janiqua, whose biggest accomplishment in life was meeting the real Aunt Jemima (I never told her that was actually just our principal dressed up for Halloween). Me and Janiqua were tight. Gradually during second semester, I would go over to her house instead of Jason’s, and Janiqua and I would “flow” with her latest beat that she made with her new computer system. I got so good at it that I gave myself the name, “Topher McFlow.” I don’t think Janiqua thought it was cool though because every time I said it she turned the other way like she didn’t know me. In fact, I really can’t remember her ever actually speaking to me at school, she’d always have a confused look on her face and say she didn’t know me when I would approach her at lunch. Maybe she just didn’t recognize me without all of my cool Fubu clothes on that I would change into after school. But ya, as you can tell, my experience in sixth grade was pretty interesting, and I didn’t even go into all of the times we were evacuated from the school due to “Food Displacement Purposes,” which really meant Mr. Johansen had “displaced” his food in the main hallway, making it a hazard for children to walk in.
As the second semester came to a close, Jason started coming back over to my house, and we were best friends again. Apparently Ms. Forester was now Mrs. Hernandez (YES, she did marry one of HNS’s ex husbands) and was now expecting a baby. Jason had the PE coach Mr. Berg for the remainder of the year, and all they did in class was a combination of Pilates and Yoga to “strengthen the mind and the body.” I had also drifted apart from Janiqua. She stopped returning my calls and ever since I got the bling bling around my neck and spinners on my bicycle, she for some reason wouldn’t answer the door when I came over.
But really, if you’re looking for some life lesson or moral to this story, there really isn’t much of one. It’s more of just letting you know don’t let whatever class you’re in mess up your friendship; you’re still the same people just one of you has a cooler teacher.
posted by Rucker at 12:09 PM
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