do you see what i had to put up with on a daily basis?

Four years ago, not long before I decided to give up high school, I started my sophomore year in good spirits. I had mostly honors classes, except for math and whatever they didn't actually give honors courses for, which (I assumed, anyway) that I'd be learning with generally smart people. I might've gone for AP classes, and probably gotten into them, but that much work seemed like a huge waste of time. Anyway, I was now a sophomore with freshly dyed blonde hair (complete with scabby burns from the bleach that was left on for too long, thanks Mom!) and lots of cute new clothes.

My favorite class would, of course, be English. Even if my teacher sucked, I knew it would be enjoyable because it's English and I rule at it. On the first day of school, I discovered that my teacher did not suck and was, in fact, a delightfully dry-humored man who collected canned meat because of the odd ingredients, like plastic or something. A few weeks into the semester, the whole class got into a debate about whether hunting for sport was okay. Predictably, just about everyone in the class agreed that hunting just so they could put a moose's head on a wall was perfectly fine. I should've known, what with all the hunting camouflage that was worn in the classroom.

Interestingly, once the debate got slightly heated, I noticed that I was seated smack dab in the middle of every idiot that could weasel their way into an Honors class. This did not make me happy at all. And then a girl a few seats away from me spoke up and said that she didn't like animals and they're just for food, and that one time she killed a mole with a broomstick. When I snorted derisively and asked this bitch why she'd do that, she said it was because it scared her. OH GOD THE HORROR. WHEN MOLES ATTACK! So, she did what she had to do to defend herself, and that was to attack a mole that was probably all lost and shit with a broomstick. Mr. P looked at her and says, "Um, you know moles are blind, right?"

Apparently this affected the young lady because suddenly she felt all bad, as if killing a rodent that can see for no reason is any better than killing a blind one. And how the fuck do you not know that, anyway? So she says, "OMG BUT HOW DO THEY KNOW WHERE THEY'RE GOING!!!!" Look, I'm pretty sure that after millions of years of evolution the moles have adapted a system of finding their way around. This chick was what I would call a dingbat. As in, she was constantly saying stupid shit. After that incident, I picked up my books and moved to the corner of the classroom that held smarter people (read: the ones that had this look on their face while she talked about the mole incident: O_O). Mr. P didn't challenge this at all. In fact, he didn't even say anything, he just gave me this look like, "Well thank God, there's another one who's not an idiot."

Mr. P was pretty damn cool. He had a sense of humor that isn't appealing to most high school kids ('cause, you know, you had to actually think to get it), and even had a way of mocking the, uh, slower kids while making them think he was laughing with them instead of at them. You know, sophomore year probably would've been cool if I hadn't gone all bipolar on everyone. No, seriously, I got the correct diagnosis in September of that year. I was actually extremely social. After I got out of the hospital, my friend Gene (who ended up being my boyfriend like 3 times after that, but he's kinda dumb so that didn't work, obviously) called me up like five hours after I got home and was all, "You wanna go to a football game?"

Pfft, you know it. This was before I was openly smoking in front of my parents, so I took every chance to get out of the house and sneak a cigarette or twenty. Good times, man. That's when I was all into the baggy pants and clothes from PacSun and Gadzooks before they both got shitty and the colorful bangle bracelets and Chuck Taylors. Except my Chucks were the fake kind from Wal-Mart because fuck paying $40 for a pair of old-school sneakers. I'm actually wearing my Hurley shirt that I got for that school year. Good memories are pretty awesome.