It's A Wonderful Life
by Jon Shik

I have never met a person so amazing that I would consider erecting a thirty foot Jell-O statue in my backyard depicting him single-handedly stultifying every cynical molecule in my body. I have met people who deserved to have their heads stuck in a blender while I stood by grasping a straw and a glass. If I had my way, all of those who deride members of our evolved species for showing any signs of intelligent life would be the first in line for my blender, and the stigma attached with actually possessing a functioning brain would be transformed into a form of worship. My feelings of general dislike for the collective human populous have been sprouting like a foul weed in what was once the quaint soul of a grinning ìsmall talker' who enjoyed a pleasant chat about how much doing 'stuff' sucked. I never felt particularly attached to anything that breathes and I always secretly plotted to assassinate any girl who colored in the lines. My days are spent planning my eventual escape from my hometown and every event which I comment upon gives me another reason to keep digging with my plastic spoon. And so the days go, with the nights ending all too shortly.

When my digital rooster spewed the annoying chatter of a d.j. who some how forgot that he was the host of a music station, I nearly woke up. It took the urgent screams of my perpetually late and irate mother along with the entrance of the entire London Philharmonic into my cramped bedroom to finally pry my eyes open to the 75 watts of electrified tungsten that mockingly forced me from the glory of slumber. Once awake I dragged my Godzilla-like tail from under the warm covers.

My first steps left me wishing I actually had a Godzilla-like tail, because it would have been helpful in establishing equilibrium. My floor, coated with layer after layer of sedimentary artifacts such as dirty laundry from the second grade, was always a focal point of my parents daily lecturings. It was as if they believed that not folding laundry was a sign that I would one day become an insane serial killer. I can see it now, "Ma'am, were there ever any signs that your son might eventually dismember the bodies of 67 nuns and then fricassee their limbs?"

"Well," my mother would thoughtfully pause. "Aside from his perpetual need to separate himself from his peers and his constant evil commentary, he never did fold his laundry...."

As I walked to the bathroom, I felt like Adam and Eve as they were evicted from their Malibu beach house for picking their noses. Once in the room of taboo bodily functions, I inspected the new mountain range of zits which had formed since my last narcissistic mirror moment. Since the toothpaste tube had been reduced to a crumpled mass of chaffing dental Drano, I decided that since I was not planning on letting any of my wonderful classmates give me an oral inspection, it was not necessary that my molars be polished. Dodging mine fields of sibling induced leg hair stubble, I stumbled back to my room.

I chose my conformist flesh coverings for the day and gave myself a 10 out of 10 on the Radness Cool Scale. I was a bronking buck ready to show myself in public.

"Honey Bunny, your wholesome six course breakfast is ready, take your time if you feel the need. Hugs and kisses," my Cleaveresque mother clad in apron and bursting with positive energy called.

Actually, her breakfast summoning went something like this, "Get your lazy rear down stairs, I'm running late!"

I quickly threw all of my text books filled with the endless monotone voices of anal puppets of the curriculum into my old backpack. Filing into the kitchen, I opened the cupboard and thought about repeating this hellish routine for the rest of my life. The chosen cereal box held the potential troops of trade marked sugar coated sugar that would be forced by the apathetic hand of gravity into the acidic depths of my stomach, which was I must boast a fine tuned digesting machine. I always love the randomness of the daily condemning of a bowlful of cereal particles. Just knowing that I had the power to separate a desired amount of cereal flakes from their relatives and without feeling remorseful, annihilate them with my machine gun salivary glands, was enough to cause me to form the day's first smile. After I massacred a bowl of cereal, I readied myself for another mindless day of social posturing, and pretending to enjoy being friendly.

I hate the bus. I am forced to wait outside whether the Eskimos run inside slaughtered whales for warmth, or the dayís forecast calls for nuclear holocaust. Every day that I enter my school bus, I feel surer and surer about my school bus personality theory. Barring a bus filled solely with crash test dummies, a school bus unconditionally forces the world's five main personality types to jump like kamikaze pilots from the woodwork. First is the mystic who blankly stares out of the window. Then there is sadist who always find someone to torture. Next there is the insecure follower who is always willing to egg on the sadist. After that comes the attention deprived wise guy who is always willing to blow up a condom and send it like a punctured balloon flying all over the bus for a laugh. Finally comes the weak willed torturee who finds a personal hell among his or her bus riding buddies, this is also a person who is usually different in some fashion, maybe possessing an extra eye or extraordinary intelligence that alienates them from their lower bell curve brethren.

As usual, the bus came to a screeching halt in front of my driveway twenty minutes late. I could see it approaching a million miles away because of itís yellow exterior. It was so bright that a blind alien could see it from a planet six-hundred billion light years away. Stepping into the yellow cucumber whose pricks were in the inside, I awarded Wes the bus driver with an evil glare as I searched for an isolated seat. I never really connected with Wes. Maybe that was because the only thing I ever heard him say was in reaction to the glue sniffing fracas of '94. He simply stared at the wrong doers and said, "No horseplay." That was it. No, "I am going to prosecute." No, "Let me have a sniff." Just a phlegmatic, "No horseplay."

I usually tried to keep my early morning interactions with others limited to "Hi's" and "Byes," occasionally commenting on what a glorious morning it was. Today was no different. Staring at the graffiti covered hind side of the seat in front of me, I thought about all of the teen angst that had been relieved upon it. I wondered how many kids had vomited on the very spot which my butt now occupied, and most importantly, I wondered why Mike "The Boner" Johnson now approached. To every overzealous cheerleader at my school, he was an Adonis to be put upon a higher pedestal than God. To me he was a hairy ape, and his followers were nothing more than monkeys who were content to spend their days eating the ticks and lice off of his hairy back. As the token sadist on my bus, he commanded a ridiculously high amount of respect and adulation. When he picked his nose, you asked if he would deal you out a piece of the pie. When he expelled flatus, you inhaled deeper than my glue sniffing bus driver. Today his unevolved brain was some how focused upon my unwavering eyes.

As if he expected me to cower, he plopped down on my seat, too close for comfort. When I heard a grunt bellow from his gruff innards, I knew he was pissed about something. I wondered why he was always so hasty to communicate with his fists. Maybe it was because his mental dictionary consisted of two phrases, "Good Boner," and "Boner mad." Ahhhhh, the qualities which dictate how you are treated in junior high, who you are treated by, and what number you are on any given person's list of people most likely invited to a pretzels and Coca Cola party, are warped even by The Artist Formerly Known As Prince's standards.

"You are sitting in my seat!" he snorted.

Thoughts of his head in my blender fluttered around my under witted over brawned head. Trying to sound as suave as James Dean, and as brilliant as Socrates, I urbanely uttered, "What do we really own?"

He paused for a moment, uhhhh, I mean 12 minutes, as if trying to comprehend the word "what." I must have struck a nerve because the crowd that had gathered, started chanting in a perfectly synchronized and harmonized soprano, "All hail the brilliant Face Boy (Is there anything so wrong with me being named Face Boy?), lets make him some lemonade!"

Actually the reactions of the mob, were pretty unified, and arguments about the terms of my impending doom spurted out from random mouths. In a censored tone, someone yelled, "Come on Boner, do impolite things to the unhip lad!"

I shot a pleading glance at the sole voice of reason Wes, but he was to busy ridding his belly button of navel lint to notice my exponentially escalating misfortunes. All of a sudden, a sound which I would under normal circumstances dread but now blessed, screeched from brakes which were pirated from the burnt out shell of a WWII tank and cost effectively thrown next to the wheels of the battered bus, foretold of our arrival at the land of wonderful learning opportunities.

Like a hypnotized therapy patient who is suddenly awaken by the snap of a finger, the raging throng of blood thirsty passengers methodically filed off the bus, when we came to a complete stop next to the curb at school. Once Boner was left without an audience, he let go of my collar, and we both proceeded into the school. All the while, I internally damned him. The first thing that greeted me as I entered through large double doors was a banner proudly proclaimed our schools motto: "When you wake up in the morning, you are already a winner!"

Proceeding further, I felt marooned in a sea of turbulent ignorance. My life raft was the though of one day ruling the property and minds of all within these hellish walls as an upstart dictator. All of the sudden with the utmost sincerity, every student, teacher, janitor, and escaped pedophile posing as a student whirled around, looked me in the eye, heartily smiled and exclaimed, "Hi Face Boy, it's great to see you!" Then broke as a spotlight shone upon me and all the lights dimmed, I ripped off my shirt revealing the chest hair of a burly lumberjack and beautifully belted out the lyrics to "Zippity Doo Da" as turtles dressed as loaves of bread parachuted from the ceiling. Actually, not one person even acknowledged my presence, except for a group of identically dressed females who mockingly chucked, "Face Boy's fly is down!"

If pop culture were flammable, all that would be needed to cause an atom bomb caliber explosion would have been the utterance of the word fire. As if we had a Gap operating in the cafeteria, each kid was sporting the latest in conformist fashion. No outfit was ever worn twice by any of my fashion plated peers. Everywhere they insecurely made conversation. With attention spans as short as the genitalia on a male pygmy shrew [Author's Note: The pygmy shrew is mouselike in appearance, but have longer pointed snouts, small ears, and tiny eyes. Shrews are found in North and Central America, and the extreme northwestern tip of South America. Because of their high metabolism, they must eat about 2/3rds of their body weight a day. They are the world's smallest living mammals, and have the smallest genitalia of all living mammals, which is why I use their pitiful length to describe the length of my peer's attention spans.] their conversations would morph from a conversation about how much every thing sucks, to what lame thing their mom cooked for dinner the previous night.

A fresh beat similar to ebonics was how thoughts were communicated at my school. "Dude, gaz somtíang ups in yo phat mouf," would have been how I would have had to say the phrase, "Sir you have a piece of broccoli stuck between your incisor and your first molar," if I felt like being understood. I always felt like I had to decode the encrypted messages spoken to me. In fact I believe that somewhere within the dank walls of our fine learning establishment is being held captive the uncultured lexicographer who is distantly related to Webster. Surrounding the dictionary vanguard were a group of my chums who were forcing him to erase words which they did not understand from future editions.

As usual I sought refuge in the library. Today, a Beethoven reincarnate was masterfully stroking one of the few asthmatic computers in our library--whoops--I mean Media Center or MC. Every thing at my school had some sort of formal acronym lending name, such as the DAC or District Activities Center known as the DAC, or the theater known as the Large Room Filled With Chairs and a Stage, more commonly know as the LRFWCS. There was also the parking lot, more correctly known as the Perfectly Flat Pavement Which Looks Up the Skirts of All the Female Automobiles All Day Long, or the PFPWLUSAFAADL. Our school also contained a gymnasium called the Training Center for Surviving the Inevitable Riots of Really Pissed Postal Workers Each Wielding Ham Sandwiches Through Guerrilla Warfare or the TCSIRRPPWEWHSTGW.

Anyway this boy typed on. When I got close enough, I forced the words, "Would you like to see my phallic unit, uhhhh, I mean my miniature mass produced Eiffel Tower replica souvenir?"

Looking up at me as if I were some sort of half human, half musk ox hybrid, he phlegmatically said, "Judging by the decibel undulations of your voice, and the mathematical function which represents your word choice as applied to a geometric sequence, I would be forced to wager that you are slightly insane."

I could not help but notice that the phenomenon of a dog owner coming to look and act like their dog, also applied to prepubescent teens and their computers. As if cutting off his oxygen supply, I reached around his computer and pulled the plug saying, "Oh yeah, well everything that you have ever accomplished within the bounds of the microchip has just been turned into digitally enhanced flatulence. Like a human who has solved the timeless conundrum which is the secret of life, by organizing lint from their pocket into the shape of a kidney bean, and is heartbroken about how meaningless his quest was, the boy gave a deep sigh, looked at me as I had looked at Boner, and slumped down into his cold metal chair.

He shrunk before my hind looking eyes as I hurriedly departed from the land of the paper lice. My next destination was the gentleman's rest room. I recognized that this was in fact not a female bathroom because the girlís room had a picture of a man who had swallowed a triangle on the door. A plume of cigarette smoke engulfed my face as I opened the door. "Yes!" I giddily whispered as I realized that this would be a terrific opportunity for me to practice me anti-drug DARE, tactics. Two glassy eyed teens slouched against the poor wall (people who do bad things during life are reincarnated as the walls enclosing the boy's bathroom at a junior high). I found it rather odd that these very beings who made their lifeís goal to conform to none of society's overbearing standards ended up living their lives as the helpless pawn of a Mercedes driving cigarette mogul, who conformed to the ideal of boundless capitalism.

I must have been nervous because before the two friendly tykes even had a chance to open their mouths, I tapped my well trained broken record technique, and began spastically shouting, "NO , NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!" at the top of my lungs. I think I surprised them because two tobacco snacks simultaneously plummeted from two gaping jaws.

My cheeks were more intensely colored than the flame that lit their cancer sticks, and as I meekly departed, I could hear one say to the other, "Gosh, I was about to offer him some lobster thermador!" A little saddened that I was not able to experience the ecstasy which accompanies flushing the toilet, I felt overjoyed at the fruits of my two encounters of the morning. Realizing school was about to commence, I headed towards first hour.

I was Dorothy marching off towards the emerald city which was only a fictitious sick joke, mockingly told by a bunch of conspiring midgets and a transvestite who traveled in a bubble. It was the sick joke that attending school, dotting the "i's" and crossing an elephant with a suitcase (The punch line to the joke of "What do you get when you cross an elephant with a suitcase?" is rated "L" for lameness and is "a trunk.") would eventually make me a happy, polite, law abiding citizen. Like someone who rips off my arm and calmly says, "It's for your own good." I was to sit and listen to teachers babble about how much success depends on knowing who shot the Duke Ferdinand and his lovely wife, and how that affected the antlers of caribou in Alaska. Everyone knows that success depends upon knowing who shot JR, and that a Brannock Device is the name of the ingenious machine used to measure one's foot at the shoe store. I felt as if I were being prepared for some mystical world of happy endings and freebies. I had been led to believe that to board a New York City subway, I would have to sing my multiplication tables to the classic tune Mary Had a Crack Fed Monkey, while the personal human turnstiles would warmly applaud, ask my destination while giving me a foot massage, and then wish me a pleasant ride.
return to the sub-subbasement.