Useless Junk You Can Learn in Spanish
an excerpt

You know those times when you can’t help but stare? Those times when you know that you really should look away, but no force in the universe seems able to drive you to do it? This was one of those times.

Kirsten, who had come into the room beside me, seemed just as dumbfounded as I. We stood together, and looked at our “site director”, taking in the sight, and immediately wishing to erase it from our minds.

She was, in a word, butch. In a phrase, she looked more like a man than a woman. Her hair was curly, and cut in what seemed to be a bob, which is not a good style for a person whose hair is that thick, that poofy, and that curly. Instead of a bob, the result of this was more of an afro. Her plump face sat on a neck that was virtually nonexistent. But the first thing I noticed was the light blue, pinstriped set of overalls that she was clad in, from head to toe (more or less). The look was completed by sock-and-sandle-covered feet— feet the size of shoeboxes. I had never seen another, either man or woman, dressed in such a manner.

“Hello!” she said excitedly. “Welcome to Boy’s and Girl’s Club!”

Of course, I thought. She was probably another one of those college students who, as if they didn’t have enough on their plate already, decided to pile on a bunch of middle school children.

----

It was common knowledge that I fancied Maverick Wilson, and that I had for quite a while. Call me horribly blunt, but I was actually the one who informed him of that in the first place.

What was it about him that plunged me head-over-heels in love with this boy? He wasn’t exactly the most attractive of guys, but he was acceptable. Well, for one thing, he was certainly taller than me. Standing at about five-foot-ten, he towered over the majority of the students in the eighth grade. This was surely a plus. His hair was his other positive physical trait. It was brown and had a bit of life. It flopped over his forehead and really did look fairly gorgey porgey. Nevertheless, he was no Clay Dean.

No, I am most certain that it was his stellar personality that drew me in. He was funny, had incredible taste in music (as demonstrated the previous day by his Without a Trace remark), and he was insightful.

Mave had his own opinions, and he certainly wasn’t afraid to make them known. In fact, I believe that his motto, his belief that he based his life on, was something along the lines of “if no one is disagreeing with you, you aren’t thinking hard enough”. It was almost as if he lived purely to get into heated debates and arguments with the people around him, and to prove his points correct.

Yes, this is what it was that attracted me to Maverick Wilson, after all. And I hated every moment of it.

----

I have decided to make a list of the transgendered. The list, as of now, is made up of the following:
1) Mrs. Nieto (Were you aware that, literally translated, her name means “Mrs. Grandson”?)
2) Man Lady (But was there ever any doubt?)
3) Carrie

Yes, this was all the note consisted of. I passed Kirsten in the hall later that day, and I slipped it into her hand. As I hurried off to my next class, so as not to be late, I heard her shout after me, “I sat with rednecks, you know!”

----

“Now,” Mrs. Glochin said, and I turned my attention back towards her. She was now proudly holding a white piece of printer paper in her hands. “What is this?”

She asked this as if, in eighth grade, our entire class was absolutely brainless.

Several students muttered the word “paper”.

“Yes!” Why was my life so horribly full of overenthusiastic people? “And it is three-dimensional, right?”

Those same few students nodded their heads and said, “Yes” under their breaths.

“And because it’s three-dimensional, I can hug it, right?”

My eyes quickly widened, and I stared at Elise. I felt my jaw drop a few centimeters. If I had to watch this woman hug a piece of paper…

She proceeded to do so.

I looked away.

----

I have decided that Mave as a psychologist would be a very strange thing indeed. I would imagine that the conversation would go something along these lines:

The client would be crying all over the place, and in between sobs, she would say, “And then, Dr. Wilson, he told me that he didn’t want to date me anymore! And, Dr. Wilson (sob), I just don’t know what to do!”

Then, Mave (or, in this case, let us refer to him as “Dr. Wilson”) would offer a few kind words (just a few), and the sobbing would persist.

After a bit, Dr. Wilson would get frustrated, and scream at the client, “Damn you! Pull yourself together, woman!” And that would be that.

As you can see, Mave and Dr. Phil would get along very well.

---

They say that as you’re dying, your life will flash in front of you, right before your eyes. This is what happened to me; I saw, at hyper speed, the past few weeks of school, from my conversation with Mave in which he revealed his desire to become a therapist at some point in his life, to Kirsten’s decision that he had the potential to be very good friends with— Dr. Phil!

“I’m dying, I’m dying!” I barely heard myself screaming. Before I knew it, I was lying on the floor, thrashing around slightly. It seemed to take me a while to realize that I wasn’t actually dying— that I was, in fact, just fine… Better than fine, at that!

“What was that?” my mother asked in a worried, nervous voice, stepping through the doorway, and seeing me sprawled on the floor.

“Er,” I stammered, “Nothing.” I stood up and dusted myself off. “Just an, er, English exercise. Supposed to, um, stimulate creative juices or something. I was, er, trying it out. You know, just to see how it worked?” I said this all very uncertainly, off of the top of my head.

She raised her eyebrows at me. “They teach the strangest things in school these days...” Her voice trailed off, as she turned and exited the room. Apparently, she didn’t need to know for sure that I didn’t have any broken limbs or anything.

I had a very supportive family, did I not?

----

“Is she okay?” Kirsten asked me, scrunching up her eyebrows. “She looks like she’s having a seizure.”

“That’s always a comforting thought,” I told her in a philosophical voice. “It’s always good to know that your friend may be going brain-dead.”

“Is a seizure the same thing as going brain-dead?”

“She’s dressed up as Oprah. It may as well be.”

----

I hate school. I mean, I used to tolerate it— hell, I used to like it. But then, when you really get down to it… It just plain sucks. I mean, what have you got to look forward to?

Waking up at six o’clock every morning? Oh yeah. Because we’d definitely do that if we weren’t forced to.

And the learning… Oh yeah. That’s clearly the best part. Is it not enough that we show up before the sun comes up every morning? And now we’ve got to pack our brains with this useless junk they call “learning”.

I can understand why we would want to know English and even early math for later in life, but the rest of this is just utter crap! Here’s a list of the things that we could really live without:

1) Algebra (Because honestly… Who’s going to need a bloody quadratic equation to buy a sandwich? Not me, that’s for sure.)

2) Spanish (Well, if they taught us useful information, I can see how we might be able to use it. But at this point in my life, after nearly fourteen years of being alive, I am almost 100% sure that I have never spoken the words “What a drag!” all in one sentence, in that order.)

3) History (It happened. We know it happened. We don’t need to know that it happened. End of story.)

4) Science (As far as I’m concerned, as long as I wake up in the mornings, and as long as my computer works when I press the power button, I don’t care exactly how it happens. I just don’t.)

----

“You know what I want to do?” Kirsten asked me softly, breaking the silence. Without waiting for an answer, she said, “Remember last year when we were making plans for ways to get kicked out of Vitamin World?”

I remembered it well. There had been many notes passed back and forth between us during history class in which we tried to develop a fool proof plan that would get us kicked out of the drugstore. We had come up with many possibilities, but had never really bothered to try them out.

I smiled at her, knowing exactly what she was thinking. “You want to get kicked out of Vitamin World,” I told her.

“Yeah,” she said, confirming my statement. “I want to get kicked out of Vitamin World.”