Short Story / High School Humiliation
I ran up the steps as quickly as I could, trying to put distance between the enemy and myself. I attempted to blend into the crowd as fast as possible. Unnoticed, anonymous, and divorced from the actions that had just taken place.
My mother had just dropped me off for school. I had tried to explain to her that it would be just as easy for me if she wanted to drop me off a block before we got there, but she said it was no trouble. After all, she was a teacher at my high school.
She didn’t get it. The parents of cool kids did. Did she not care about her own flesh and blood? Association condemned me.
I was aware of the conspiracy. Aware, as every student is, that the students that sit on the steps at the front of the school are watching every child that is dropped off, noting that he does not have his own car, noting that his parents don’t drive a nice car, noticing what a loser the parent is, and informing the entire school via telepathy what a loser by proxy I am. If I had arrived five minutes sooner, with my own car, without parental supervision, I would be receiving telepathic messages right now.
Is the entire school staring at me? I come unglued and sneak a look down, just to check. Did I remember to put pants on today? Thank God. I had that dream again last night.
Actually, my mom is a substitute teacher. Any time a teacher ever got sick, she was the first person they called. She taught every single day of my high school career. Career is not quite the right word. Career implies that this is your chosen occupation. High School was four of the worst sixteen years of my life. Grades one through twelve and four years of college. Technically speaking, High School was years eight through eleven on my top eleven worst years of my life, right after Middle School and College. It may have been worse than elementary school, but I can’t really remember that far back. I just infer from my other academic experiences what a horror it must have been.
I only remember three events from all of elementary school. First, my second grade teacher was named Ms. Fails. I think I have said all I need to about her. Second, when I changed schools in the fourth grade, my new school was already doing long division. My old school hadn’t even started teaching division yet. Thus I was immediately dubbed “the stupid kid”. I guess that is incrementally better than having understanding, mature students that say to me, “Oh, your last school must have been in an underprivileged socioeconomic area on the wrong side of the tracks. We don’t think you are stupid, we pity you.” What value is pity when you are ten? I didn’t even like girls yet. I wanted to be a fighter pilot. Fighter pilots don’t need pity.
Third, I remember crying about some terrible wrong done to me and trying to explain to the teacher that when someone hurts someone’s feelings, that is much worse than actually causing them physical pain. (Fighter pilots cry when their feelings are hurt, but not if they get hit.) I received the telepathic message that at that moment the entire class rolled their collective eyes.
Maybe I was the stupid kid, but I still believe that is true.
My mom was the substitute teacher you hated. My best friend was in his Computer Science class one day when she subbed. A student wrote a program that printed out over and over again:
SANTA CLAUS KILLED THE EASTER BUNNY SANTA CLAUS KILLED THE EASTER BUNNY
SANTA CLAUS KILLED THE EASTER BUNNY SANTA CLAUS KILLED THE EASTER BUNNY
SANTA CLAUS KILLED THE EASTER BUNNY SANTA CLAUS KILLED THE EASTER BUNNY
That was a trip to the principal’s office and two weeks of detention for him. The telepathic message radiated through the school like the blast wave of an atomic bomb: “Brent’s mother is mean. Brent’s socks don’t match. Laugh for no apparent reason when he walks by.” I knew this to be true because when I walked by people, sometimes they laughed, and as any teenager knows, if people near you laugh, they are laughing at you. And they stared at my socks. I knew they were looking away when I looked at them, but I could feel their eyes on my ankles the moment I realized my socks didn’t match. Sometimes I caught them looking at me before they could look away. Just sometimes. This explained many of the people laughing and sneaking looks at me earlier. My mortification is complete.
As my best friend told me this tale of computing woe, I had my first out-of-body experience. My spirit drifted above me, holding in its cupped hands my pride, my honor and my dignity. It sailed upward until my school was a speck on the ground. Upward until my city was no longer visible. It kept going upward, never to return.
I have missed my spirit in the intervening years, but I hold onto the hope that one day I will read in the local paper a small story on page B17 that mentions in an off-handed way that the entire graduating class of 1990 was wiped out by a strange virus of unknown origin. I believe that on that day my spirit will return, restoring my face from an acne-stressed crimson to a smooth piece of marble with a pasty white tone that matches the rest of my skin color. I even sometimes wonder if, on that day, my hair will turn a dark shade of brown, rather than the pale white it is today. I might even grow that half inch that I need to reach six feet.
And pecs. My chest will swell six inches, much like Bruce Banner transforming into the Incredible Hulk.
A chiseled chin? It could happen.
And maybe, just maybe, I will stop having that dream. It would be nice to go a day without checking to see if I remembered to put on pants.
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I was pulled into your story from the get go. I felt your pain throughout as well. Recapturing the torturous high school years of my own. I know of the laughs and the heads that turn away leaving you to wish you could just die today.
As you, I do not remember elementary school. I think that high school was so traumatic that I blocked much of it out.
The horror of being the new kid at school, the geek, the loser, and even the freak.
I wore nice clothes but they were not Guess and just as you I wish, “that one day I will read in the local paper a small story on page B17 that mentions in an off-handed way that the entire graduating class of 1990 was wiped out by a strange virus of unknown origin.” For that is the year I graduated as well.
High School reunions I never will go, even though they invite me and say how they cared. I wish they would ignore me like they did way back then.
Enough of my ramblings and back to your story…
Your story was very well-developed with unified paragraphs, very well organized. The narration and content emphasis was awesome.
The most impressive was the coherence of the entire piece!
Awesome Job!
Peace,
Contessa
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I think your point here was to stop living in the past, and finally be happy or at least at peace with your formative years. Personally, I can tell you there was a girl who threatened to beat me up at least once a week, and I never knew why. I liked your piece. It was poignant in its simplicity. It also sounds to me like you have taken some of that insecurity with you into adulthood. The line “it would be nice not to have to check to see if I put on pants” makes me think that, although older, you still possess insecurities. Or, maybe, you were just trying to be funny, and that really was a clever line.
I think you have the begining of a longer piece here. This first part is good. As a victim of this type of behavior, I recognize much of what you are describing. The laughing when someone walks by, the strict criteria other kids judge others by and the hatred of substitute teachers (I have experience on both sides).
I feel you could write more and expand this into a very good story. Keep writting and good luck.
I think that that’s a really good story, it connects to teenagers who have parents as teachers and get embaressed anyways. I like the description of when your mom subbed for that teacher and your first out-of-body experience. It also has a good narriative hook, it draws the reader in really well and I wouldn’t change much to this pice.
Right now I’m laughing at how true it is.
Highschool is no joke and the kids probably do have telepathic powers,I mean the minute something happens to you the whole school knows in a matter of minutes.
Especially something embarrassing.
I think its realistic yet funny story.
I hope you can add more to it .
Good luck!
Can you say, “total identification”!
I loved the way this was written, and the closure at the end. I do wonder what you will do with it.
If I had to critique any of it, I’d have to say it gets a tad confusing at first when he is talkking about his best friend and his mother and the virus. I read a second time, and it made perfect sense, but if you wanted to edit anything, I’d say it should be that.
Otherwise, I loved it!!!!
to her that it would be just as easy
- too many articles and little words it doesn;t flow. use “It’d” etc.
you need to arrest the reader with more character info from the off -n you are going straight into this person’s angst without engaging the reader.
nobody wants to hear about “Some person X’s angst”.
But they might want to hear about the angst of a well-defined character who we can identify with.
yeah basically it is all too pessimistic from the off, which is boring. you need to give and go. give us the personality in a more personalised way, and then make us feel for you.
nobody gives a stuff about this person;s inner dialogue until we are on THEIR side.
so concentrate on getting us on THEIR side and then we’ll empathise, but not before.
otherwise pass me the prozac and i’ll go read something uplifting insatead.
i canp;t decide if the atomic bomb metaphor is melodramatic or good.
it appears awkward within the otherwise trivial context of the piece.might be wrong though.
oh and until the chisselled chin i thought this was a chick – make the sex clearer.
This is a brilliant piece of work demonstrating the preditary nature of the society in school. Perhaps you could add more emphisis on what happens to you as a result of loosing your spirit and confirm weather you will get your spirit back. Perhaps you could also emphisize on how you feel about your classmates.
Hi – this is great. I remember all too well the squirming uncomfortableness of being a teenager that didnt quite fit in and this had me reminiscing for a while. I thought it flowed really well and would be interested in reading any more that you have.
I feel the connection of the story was pretty off. It seemed that the story went away to its own accounts sometimes and came back when it felt like it. The story itself was generally good, and I enjoyed the life of such a poor young kid wishing to be a fighter pilot, but its potential is far from being complete.
I don’t know if this might work, considering that the story is more of a Narrative than a Description or Illustration, but you might benefit in adding more imagery. However, I assure you will benefit from adding more metaphors, these kinds of stories feed from metaphors.
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