Ah, one more thing:
Uncategorized
-
By now I've probably lost all my readers, but I'll talk anyway. I'm mailing my college applications next week, and I wrote two essays, so here they are, in order of clarity.
1. (beware, this is one sentence prose poem)
Time Flies
I don’t know which door, and I don’t know why all the other girls haul flat fussy totes instead of backpacks to their classes and when I dive for some seat stranded in the bell’s wake even the whiteboard watches me stutter that I am Daryl ******** a freshman without a pass, and the guy in front of me has mossy armpits and loathsome legs as my lips trip over my braces and my backpack’s zipper interrupts the teacher and for some reason, this place calls the bathroom the lavatory, like laboratory, as if latex gloves and goggles are requisites to piss, and I scrawl poetry on the stall door among crossed-out curses (erasing it after superior pens mark the grammatical flaws) and at the mirror by the sink I meet the eyes of some senior’s reflection, her lashes like spiders stuck in tar and I say sorry for looking, and sophomore year I marshal beauty in the margins of my math notes, find Y equals time wasted, why equals space and life waits art waits and I hate this place, those orange lockers, how they blaze after five failed tests and never punch back, never write back to my fractured, caps-lock poems about them, and I stumble into biology in the high heels I wear for every inch I should have grown, if only I ate things other than cheez-its, and whenever this kid taps his feet, I smack his desk, my alarm on dusky mornings, while I fill bubbles on tests in colored pencil and personify plutonium and read On the Road in drivers' ed, a wayward atlas in my hands as the blackboard maps car crashes and back home I burn cheap incense and savor its persistent smell, but mom just throws it out because the meatloaf tastes like chamomile and I tremble at the threshold of eleventh grade, watching ancient juniors squint in daylight, bleed Starbucks, wrestle stunted scores and now it is my turn, autumn, and I walk home past my licensed speeding peers, I favor slow scenery, I like my shoes muddy when they march up the stairs to my room where loose-leaf and paint-sets are strewn about the floor, and I'm the Thinker in a swivel chair bathed in laptop blue, musing by a tenement of pixel windows where the residents watch the watchers, writing for a teacher who puts my papers in piles by themselves, copied for the class and how satisfying silence can be after years of stormy thoughts, rows of heads bent over my words, necks craned toward my art on gallery walls and I search out beauty in renewed library books, in the rippled shine of a rushing train, as I linger on museum floors, span the painted battlefields of Jackson Pollack and come home, a senior, to hear mother turn the knob of the right door and whoa, wait, today is the deadline to order my cap and gown?
2.
A Breakthrough
A deer ran through a school window, according to The New York Times: it reminded me of being an artist. The bewildered deer, explains a wildlife professor, mistook its reflection for the enemy and charged through, only to find beyond the shower of bloodied shards a vacant hallway. Like a misunderstood teenager, the hormonal Bambi tried to find himself as he aimlessly hobbled past classrooms, teachers, janitors, children, all panicked by the sight of the desultory, yet determined, intruder. After about half an hour, a few brave adults cornered the by then hysterical buck, and amid a clamor of relieved cheers, led it out the back door.
I don’t have this problem in school. This is because I use the front door and I am not a deer. Still, there are many windows to break. Mine are blank pages, white canvases, and smashing them, whether with pencil or paint, is a silent, accepted process. Standing before this emptiness, I face an imagination paralyzed at the sight of its infinite likeness, and only after I charge at the looming white can I continue my search. So what am I searching for? That question is the white paper; its answer is vague. I search for searches. I read the Times not just for the news, but for kindling, and after many fires I have found that the local stories are the dynamic ones. The words “Troops Surge into Iraq” lose their vitality in the race to inform; but “A Normal Lesson in Vocabulary, Until a Deer Bursts through a School Window” is motion arrested. Call me a pyromaniac of metaphor.
In the past I have been labeled with other neuroses, namely attention deficit disorder and cynicism. My penchant for surreal news supports these, as does not having a driver’s license or an “acceptable” math percentile. But how does one measure attention? Does it appear flawed when it darts from object to object as my peers, set in alphabetical rows, solve problem after problem in mind-numbing sequential order? Yes, in a classroom where everything is right, wrong, or undeclared. To the searching deer, this is a petty concern.
Every morning in pre-calculus, I remind myself that there are no geometrical lines in the natural world; things are what they are, and any explanation, any outline, is a futile cry for order. If I daydream, if I search, it is because I have unlucky genes and a scant sense for relative values, and I am glad of this. The great poet Richard Hugo once said that the “imagination is a cynic.” It assumes all things have equal value, which is the same as saying nothing has value, which is cynicism. Without this, I would read that article on Iraq, because it is more important. I would forget to celebrate the deer. Without this cynicism, I would be a great math student, a driver undaunted by the straight highway, and a terrible painter.
A friend once asked me which I could live without, writing or art. Neither. They depend on each other. Painting supplies my mind with images, while writing cleans my room, packing everything into quasi neat new carrying cases so more thoughts can filter through. Weaving through limitless color and music, I defy the straight line, that highway, that deathbed for so many deer. I have colors and words to translate my thoughts to others and myself, to show why I’ll never wait behind a pane of glass, my life on the other side.
Both these essays are amalgams of almost every xanga entry I've ever written. There is no point in asking which is better, because each belongs to a separate genre. I want to know which one you think will get me into college.
-
I just wrote this for my language class, but I felt the need to post something. Also, I turn seventeen tomorrow. Buy me things.
Hands off
Last spring my art teacher asked me for a favor. He worked for an art gallery in New York City and needed an intern to guard an exhibit. I don’t know why he asked me; he taught many kids, and even some of his seventh graders were better equipped for the job. Still, he insisted, and three days later I stepped from a cab and onto the gallery’s echoing floor. Swaying with boredom, I stood for eight hours shielding art, struggling to restrain people from touching the pieces. Guards should be intimidating, but I, with my quivering voice and abs of jell-o, was not qualified. Nonetheless, after a month on the job, I have pocketed tips and pointers to help protect art, and none require lethal weapons or steroid injections.
The Attire.
Despite what kindergarten teachers believe, the outside counts, especially when working in a gallery. When people eye you, they only notice your clothes. So, don’t wear pink. Don’t wear yellow, purple, or magenta. Ditch the whole rainbow. Colors suggest personality, emotions, and thoughts – all human attributes. Those may be essential in real life, but in an art gallery you won’t be taken seriously donning a periwinkle parka.
You will be taken seriously wearing patterns, especially if you’re guarding installation art. Installation art uses sculptural materials and other media to alter how you experience a certain space. Walk into a room, and everything is suspect. “Is that art?” one may ask, gesturing to the white, souless floor. “What about that?” asks another, gazing at a cold, rigid chair. Imagine what they’ll think when they see you, stiff in a corner, frowning, decked in patterns. God forbid you match the art - these people will beleaguer you like a flock of starving geese. “I’m not really here, I’m invisible” you’ll repeat. They won’t believe you. Your words may even inspire them, and they’ll study you, stroking their chins for hours. Don’t feel flattered. If you continue distracting, you’ll be fired.
To keep your job, wear black. Black attire is severe, and even if you’re a chuckling midget, people will less likely antagonize you. You’ll blend with the gallery’s staff of starving artists, who have been wearing black since high school. You’ll also appear at least five years older and therefore more experienced. Besides, it’s slimming.
The People.
Imagine you’re in a video game and you must terminate a shape-shifting enemy. Its name is Compulsive-Art-Toucher and it attacks in four forms:
The Hipster. Some hipsters visit galleries because they love art, others pretend to love art to enhance their hipster persona. Either way, their presence is inevitable. Every gallery-going hoard carries nail-biting hipsters, and soon those nails will scratch art until it bleeds black polish.
Spotting hipsters is easy; just note their appearance. Most sport skintight pants, screen-printed T-shirts, studded belts, and tattered Converse sneakers. Hair is black to vomit-green, and often resembles tangled, grime-crusted seaweed. Don’t be afraid; these people aren’t as unique as they strive to be. You’ll notice, after awhile, they all look alike.
You’ll also realize they’re easy to handle. Select a suspicious hipster, one who has been circling the same piece for fifteen minutes, and stare. Don’t smile, don’t mope, just fasten your gaze. He may hide it, but he’ll be nervous. You’ll be sure he’s uneasy if he worms his hands into his pockets. As long as they’re there, he may live.
Others won’t be as lucky. These are the pseudo-intellectual hipsters, and their fingers poke art as if it were in a coma. You can scold, but your words will wane on pierced, deaf ears. When the hipsters do acknowledge you, they’ll argue. “Art is an experience,” they’ll say, “Sometimes, a hands-on experience.” This may possess a grain of truth, but if all visitors wiped pieces with their greasy palms, art would resemble a Happy Meal. Explain this, and if he still refuses to abide, whine to the lady at the front desk. She wears even more black than you.
The Tour. Here, the Compulsive-Art-Toucher splinters into about fifty people. They are adults, and they press “HELLO MY NAME IS…” stickers to their shirts. Their young guide talks with her hands and smiles until her gums bleed. As the people pour into the exhibit, warn her touching art is prohibited. She will either reiterate this to her tour or, more likely, blink and continue gesticulating in art history babble.
Now you are burdened with fifty curious forty year olds, their thumbs twiddling behind their backs. The guide has summoned them into a quiet mass, and she prattles on. You’ll have to wait. Any moment, a finger will linger, and when one does, be quick. Shuffle to the culprit and tap his shoulder. When he turns, whisper “Please don’t touch the art,” loud enough for others to hear. Don’t shout, because the tour guide will stop lecturing, and everyone will glare at you. If the touching persists, then you can shout, but only after the guide pauses, which won’t happen for another fifteen minutes.
The Art Collector. You will recognize the art collector because the lady at the front desk warned you about him. He will be tall, frowning, and in his mid-sixties. His attractive wife, clinging to his arm, might be your age, but don’t ask. The two will stride throughout the exhibit, furrowing their brows and muttering. The gallery owner will walk with them, explaining each piece. She wants their money, and she won’t acknowledge you because she doesn’t know who you are. Keep it that way. In the gallery world, the more power you have, the less soul.
Let the collector and his wife touch the art. Soon, it may decorate their dining room. If average people arrive, they will want to touch, and you can’t stop them - they’ll ask why they're forbidden. Answer with “Well, you’re not important” and they’ll curse you to oblivion. Still, if you're silent, your boss will notice, and she’ll fire you. My suggestion? Run to the bathroom. If someone asks where you’re going, gesture to the restroom and say it’s an emergency. You won't be lying.
The Family. If you’re lucky, the family will only have three members: the mom, the dad, and the baby sleeping in its stroller. This never happens. Parents visit exhibits to press culture on their kids, and infants can’t even hold drool in their mouths. Parents prefer bringing your worst nightmare: six year olds. If these children were only curious, there would be nothing to fret about. It’s inevitable that their stubby fingers graze the art. What you don’t know is, seconds before, those fingers were scooping snot from sliming nostrils. Warn the parents to watch their kid, and even advise the child not to touch. If it happens anyway, the parents will scold, and the kid will throw a violent tantrum, punching and spewing booger-lumped tears on the clean floor. Run for a soapy towel. The dad will haul the kid over his shoulder and the family will exit, mortified, mumbling “Maybe next year.”
Basic Survival.
When guarding art, your number one goal is to survive. A healthy human needs food, water, a bathroom, and entertainment. You won’t find these in an art gallery. Food is scarce, and if you steal a sandwich from the office fridge, its owner will hunt you. Starve or ask where the closest deli is, and when you eat your meal, eat alone. Your colleagues will be discussing existentialism in another room, and if you join the conversation, you’ll sound like a moron.
There may be a bathroom, but it will be under construction. Proceed if you dare, but don’t switch on the light – the socket has exposed wires and you’ll be electrocuted. Digest in the dark and press the lockless door closed with your foot. If the door is too far, pray no one opens it. Also, bring Purrell - the sink water isn’t water.
For entertainment, brainstorm stories about the people touring through the exhibit. Narrate what they’re thinking based on their facial expressions. Eventually, you’ll develop schizophrenia, but when you start shouting obscenities to your imaginary friends, open your cell phone so it appears you’re conversing with real humans. Don’t read books, and don’t jam to your iPod – those things will distract you. Stay as focused as you can. You may go insane, but at least the art will be safe. Who knows? Maybe, when it’s all over, you’ll even get paid.
-
A Postcard from Europe
When I was in Paris I visited the Pompidou, a modern art museum. To travel to each exhibit I waited on tubular escalators remniscent of a robot's bloodless intestines. Each room was either too bright or too dim, and I affected fascination with each piece, my feet echoing on the glassy floor. I once asked my art teacher if she knew the secret behind contemporary art, and her answer was that it created a 'mood.' Vainly, I tried to look at the art for what it was. I stood with the pixie haircuts and designer jeans, the black nail polish and skinny cigarettes. I stood with these hipster art freaks and tried to understand what I was seeing, let it enlighten me. I walked forward, backward, and squinted my eyes until everything blurred.
The next room was for films. It had mostly short films of neon people screwing in painful positions; but one intrigued me. It projected a man writing outdoors. As he wrote on the paper, the sky downpoured. Soaked, he continued. And every time he wrote, the rain freed his ink from structured letters, swirling them into limpid images. During my third viewing of this film, all feeling clogged my throat, and if I tried to laugh I would cry. I stood and floated to the next room.
That’s how I ended my trip to Europe, anyway. The first week was spent in Athens, the second in Rome, third in Florence, and the last was in Paris. Athens, Rome, and Florence all contributed to my new view of the world. By Paris, by the time I reached the Pompidou, even the cleanest, most robotic, machine-like piece of ‘art’ couldn’t have laid a metal claw on my newfound inspiration. Things had already begun to look different to me by then. There were colors I never saw before, or just never noticed before. Everything I came in contact with had a life of its own. Everything greeted my eyes as a beautiful experience and nothing more than that.
When there's a stain in life it can be magnified times a million of its actual depth. Sophomore year sucked, but in petty ways. Mom grounded me for two whoollleee weeeekendzz. My art teacher didn’t like me. I had ‘problems at home’. Everything multiplied into clusters, clogging my senses and my outlets. That’s what problems do, they stuff your ears so you can only hear your own cynical thoughts, they drape a gray veil over your eyes so all you can see is the repetitiveness of your stupid life. It’s solitary confinement. You're deaf, blind, and beauty is alien. You listen to depressing music, sense the emptiness in your writing, in your art, until they're no longer outlets. And then? Then you seek professional help.
I’m talking about the day you implode, and how afterwards you are ashes.
I arrived in Athens thinking I would spend my adulthood behind a greasy Burger King cash register. Music was empty, and I listened to songs only to analyze their sound, to control my moods. Songs were prescription drugs. Sad? Belle and Sebastian. Pissed off? Pixies. The world was a jigsaw puzzle that only made sense when I was a little kid. But now I felt obliged to deconstruct the puzzle and scrutinize each piece to find its deeper meaning. No piece made sense alone.
Athens was a dirty city, but we explored other regions in Greece. The first was Delphi, where the oracle once prophesized. During the three hour ride there, an instructor told us to write a question for the oracle. I took this assignment so seriously that I wrote nothing.
Staring out the bus window, I listened to a song called “Bird Dream of the Olympus Mons” by Pixies, and suddenly mountains engulfed us. My hands migrated over to my camera. I checked to see how the picture turned out, and it resembled any two dimensional glossy postcard ever to grace the shelves of souvenir shops. Once again I gazed out the window gaped at the mountains; I smiled at the city of Delphi.
Every ruin for Apollo was enormous, standing wizend under a halo of clouds. Overall, the tour focused on the accomplishments of the Greeks. Every ruin was oozing with “See how smart they were?”s,, and “Damn, I can’t believe they could do this three thousand years ago”s. To be honest, though, I wasn’t paying much attention to the tour or even to the ruins themselves. The only time I listened was when the oracle was mentioned. Apparently the oracle was an illiterate woman who made her predictions by inhaling some type of hallucinogen and then squabbling in gibberish to a translator. Other than that, the only thing that truly caught my interest was that rare but familiar sensation of feeling completely insignificant. I couldn’t focus on those tiny crumbling ruins when there were miles and miles of mountains all around me, making me feel free but comfortably snug at the same time. It was the first time in over a year that I felt like a human being. I was standing on top of the world, but I was so, so small that it didn’t even matter.
Because along with my petty problems last year, I was also developing this boiling hatred. At first it wasn’t for anything or anyone in particular. It was just anger. Then I started hating myself for being angry all of the time. And then, by the middle of the school year, my hatred was not only directed at myself, but broadcasted out toward all of humanity. I hated people. I hated people and I hated the way people lived their lives and I hated what people created. I hated that my entire social life seemed to revolve around whose parents weren’t home that weekend. I hated how so many of my relationships were typed out and saved on a hard drive. It killed me to see everyone live such routine lives, do the exact same things every day until each day was the same day and they only lived to pay the bills, buy the groceries, succeed. And all the people I met were polite because their parents taught them to be polite and told them what to say to strangers. And all the people I knew did what they did every day because they had goals they wanted to accomplish, set goals written in stone, written in resumes, written in college applications, tests, quizzes, myspace profiles. As far as I could tell, the world was flat and the people were made of machinery.
But there I was, high in those gigantic mountains, feeling such a rush that I could hardly contain myself. I still hated humanity then. I still hated people. And seeing these beautiful mountains made me feel vengeful and relieved at the same time. This, I thought as I smiled to myself, is what humanity wants to create. They want to create mountains. Cleaner, taller, laser-powered mountains with glossy windows and room for escalators and elevators and spotless restrooms. They’ll call them sky scrapers, too, and they’ll stand tall and proud in the center of cities, reaching toward our infinite sky like untainted syringes filled with radioactive pollution and a dash of conceitedness. And when their artificial mountains don’t leave a mark, they’ll create artificial birds. Cleaner, larger, engine-powered birds that slice through the clouds and serve cute little pretzels in cute little airtight packages. They’ll do all that because humans want to succeed. They are driven to succeed even when there’s nothing left to accomplish. They are so driven that they dare to replicate the forces that created them in the first place. I hated how people seemed to think they could play god, and I hated how all they were really doing in the midst of creating was destroying.
I still believe we’re killing nature. However, the difference between now and then is that at that time I was nearly convinced there was nothing more powerful than what people created. I chose to forget about the hurricane and the tsunami and the mountains. Mentally and sometimes physically, I lived in a city. I was surrounded by people and their creations all the time. I was suffocated by my own miniscule problems. Only on the rare, celebrated occasion might I have seen a single star in the sky.
I brought my camera with me for the tour, mostly taking candid pictures of people on my trip and odd stones with ancient etchings on them. At some point, I got up on a ledge and once again aimed my camera at the view. Once again the picture was just another postcard to send to my relatives. “Delphi, Greece” would be the yellow-lettered, italicized caption beneath the picture, and I’d mail it my grandparents who might hang it on their refrigerator. But this time I looked at the picture and something in me settled. No longer was I too low or too high. My mind settled into this serene state, this rare, undisturbed placidness. I breathed in the cool air, I smiled, I turned my camera off.
Beauty can’t be captured, and people can't create the earth. Buildings, airplanes, cameras – I wanted moutains, birds, and presense. What we’ve invented, they were only machines, and no one could give them the beauty of living.
Humans were robots. Their creations were as dead as their routine lives, and my camera proved it.
But in Paris the first art museum I visited was the Orsay. Every room contained living pictures. Their colors summoned me, making me wonder about the stories they were trying to tell. Each painting was a window into another world, a lingering glance at beauty viewed through other eyes. Sunsets ranged from smooth strokes of reds and yellows to orange and purple splatters. Self-portraits were as realistic as photographs, as distorted as one’s reflection in a rippling puddle of water.
That was the day I abandoned my anger, and the world was no longer a puzzle. I saw it as an infinite canvas, painted with every color, every texture, every stroke. And although it made little sense up close, I only had to step back and feel small, not insignificant, but small. Then we were beautiful, the buildings were beautiful, and I thought nothing of our dying batteries.
-
Well, sorry about those ten days of nothing. No one's really home to read this anyway. In fact, I'm leaving in two hours myself. Where to? Europe, basically. For a month. A different city every week. I think the order is Athens, Rome, Florence, and Paris. So, I'm excited. I'll probably come back a lot cooler than I am now. Or I may not come back at all and just hang out with my foreign boyfriend and camp out at the Louvre for the rest of my life. Also, I'm going with my friends Hilary, Zoe, and Ari. Although I consider these three people to be my best friends of all time, they refer to me as 'the dog'. In their free time they enjoy pinning me down to the floor and stuffing Little Debbies into my mouth. The only thing I really regret about this trip so far is the fact that I read the Da Vinci Code. Now I'm going to instinctly prance around Europe in search of The Holy Grail and slick my hair into that horrific Tom Hanks number. If the albino doesn't kill me, one of my roommates will.
Anyway, I have to finish packing. I tend to procrastinate. Hopefully this summer will do what last summer did for me. And hopefully I'll come back from this place with the mojo I initially lost at Camp Fernwood.
Enjoy this month,
Daryl.
-
Finals
Well, so ends the last Tuesday of my sophomore year in high school. I’ve always hated Tuesdays. Mondays were obvious downers, but Tuesdays were a little more inconspicuous about it. Tuesdays just never really mattered. Like the middle child. Monday is the annoying immature younger sibling, cranky from not getting enough sleep the night before. Friday is the fabulous older sibling that does everything right, because older siblings are better than you and mommy loves us more. Wednesday and Thursday get rounded up –they’re second best, but at least they aren’t kid sister Tuesday, middle-child Tuesday, the forgotten sibling we obliviously left at the mall yet again. Tuesdays are just lame. Even if we all went on a family vacation and left Tuesday at home, it probably wouldn’t even be creative enough to pull a Home Alone 4 and find clever ways of ruining the lives of escaped convicts while learning valuable life lessons at the same time. It would probably just spend the whole week biting its toenails and preserving the clippings it didn’t swallow in some air-tight jar it stores in the back of its closet. You know, on the shelf behind the row of moldy, malignant, bloodthirsty sweater vests.
The last week of school is always the hardest. Oh- wait, sorry. My bad. The last week of school is always the hardest in
At least I know that after Friday, school is history for two wonderful months. Sure, we have summer reading, but I like reading. I’ve always liked reading. I like analyzing what I read and writing about what I read. Want to know what I don’t like? Numbers. But it’s summertime, it’s almost summertime, it’s practically summertime, and summertime, unlike any other time, won’t get counted into my grade point average.
-
The Trick is to Walk Slow
So, I lost the election. I lost with dignity, though. When they made the announcement on the loudspeaker and my name wasn’t called, I mouthed a quiet “Fuck” and then it was all in the past. Well, it was all in the past in my mind. See, the problem with publicly losing something is that other people don’t forget about it. In that quiet little eighth period Spanish class, I lost the class election for vice president, and that was all. Then, THEN, I walked out of that classroom and into the mainstream hallway of the rest of the student population. I was walking down that hallway, and you could tell the ones that knew who I was were just waiting for me to cry. That bothered me, so I began to walk faster, which directly resulted in more air blowing into my face. I still felt like I was being watched. Feeling gawky and awkward, I walked even faster and gusts of dry hallway air started blowing into my eyes. This was a horrible mistake. I slowed down, but it was too late. I began to blink repeatedly, so fast that you wouldn’t even know my eyes were opening. I tried, really, I tried, but my efforts fell to crap. My goddamned bloodshot eyes began to water. “Are those…tears?” an acquaintance asked, stopping to put a hand on my shoulder, “Are you alright? You’ll be alright. There’s always next year.”
“No, these are not tears,” I replied defensively, “My eyes are just irritated.”
“Daryl, don’t be afraid of your emotions. We all feel for you.”
“No, seriously. I wasn’t crying. There’s just something in my eye.”
“Aww, you’re even using the ‘something in my eye’ line. You don’t have to cover-up, Dar. Would you like a tissue? A visit to the guidance counselor? A hug?”
Upon trying to cuddle with me, I tore away. “Stop touching me, I’m happy.”
“But you’re crying. See guys? Daryl’s crying.”
Then I asked a nearby pothead if I could borrow his Visine and headed off toward my locker.
-
Vote for Me and I’ll Give You My Pet Dog
Tomorrow is class officer elections. Usually, I probably wouldn’t give a flying rat’s ass when the election was or even who was running in it, but this election is special. You can only guess as to why it’s special. I’m just the Vice President type, you know? Class prez gets assassinated, and I gotchyo back. Other than that, the VP doesn’t really do much of anything except help decorate for homecoming and think of creative ways to raise money for prom. I was VP freshman year and all we came up with were Millburn Nalgenes. Buy one bulletproof water bottle to support the freshmen class! Only ten bucks each! Please? Do it? For me?
Maybe freshman year was just a fake. A trainer bra year. Those Limited Too bras the girls used to wear in third grade with the sequined puppy dogs stitched into the parts where the hypothetical boobs were supposed to be. The freshmen are simply the lost age group. Sure, they’ve got their own cute little government hanging up their teeny eensy weensy wittle fliers. But your prom is three years away and basically nobody currently in our school, not anyone except the select dumbasses that won’t graduate and your own class, will be attending it. The only reason they have a freshmen student government is to let everyone know that the freshmen are real live existing people in the school. Because that’s what the freshman government did last year. And that’s all I did last year. Exist. And sell approximately three bullet proof water bottles, two having been purchased by my own mother.
But let’s forget about all that. I’m a sophomore now. I do sophomore things. I used to think it was called softmores, but there ain’t nothing soft about it. I’m PH soph. But even that doesn’t matter anymore. I’m only a sophomore for another eleven days. Then it’s on to the big leagues, three hundred some odd walking dead people, hanging around with AP poles stuck up their scrawny little asses, writing essays, applying for internships, and driving to 711 at the exact same time. I’ll be a junior next year, so I might as well be vice president of the rest of them. Especially if I want to succeed in my plan to achieve universal domination by the time I’m twenty-six and three quarters.
You’d think it would be hard to convince three hundred something people to check off your name on the ballot sheet. I mean, these are sixteen year old kids we’re talking about. They’ve got crazy opinions, those kids. Stubborn as hell. When you push one of their buttons, they ramble on for minutes at a time, telling you what they think, how they feel, even when you repeatedly tell them to shut up because, Jesus, nobody cares. I mean, how could you possibly convince an entire class of intellectual teenaged kids to vote for you? How could you possibly accomplish such a thing without taking military action or promising a giant Starbucks in the middle of the cafeteria and eternal world peace?
All you have to do is feed them.
Last year I voted for Eric Rubin, not just because he’s going to be my boss someday, but mainly because he gave me a jelly doughnut minutes before I walked into homeroom to fill out the ballot sheet. I was walking to my homeroom and he just handed it to me. Actually, he said “I’ll give you this doughnut if you can promise me your vote.” So then I said, “Heck yes,” and the doughnut was mine. Minutes later, upon entering my homeroom, I realized that I already told Catherine I’d vote for her in exchange for an airhead, and Will if he gave me one of his fun size snickers. Some creep whose named will be withheld asked for my vote in exchange for his virginity, but I politely told him that I had a small can of tear gas in my binder. In the end, I chose Eric Rubin because I liked that his platform focused on money for internal improvements, a higher tariff, and the abolishment of slavery. Also, his doughnut was pretty damn good.
I’m not here to ridicule sixteen year olds. I am one. I’m just here to tell it like it is. And what it is is bribery. Everyone knows it, everyone, the candidates and the voters. But nobody cares. Last year, when I didn’t run for anything, I woke up twenty minutes too early out of sheer excitement, humming Disney tunes as I opened up my windows and the birds chirped, rushing downstairs to quickly eat my Reeses Puffs like it was Christmas morning. And it practically was Christmas morning, only it was Election Day, and instead of presents I would be receiving mounds and mounds of ‘vote for me’ sugary goodness. In honor of the occasion this year, I went to Costco and purchased 150 miniature packs of gum. I have to hand them out and say “Stick with Seitchik.” Like a stick of gum. Get it? It’s funny. Laugh.
There’s only one other known way to obtain votes from your class. Murder one fourth of the rainforest and turn it into giant posters that would be plastered over every free space of hallway in the school. There are so many posters posted, that poster-posting styles have even been developed. First you’ve got your millions of eight by eleven ‘VOTE FOR SALLY’ numbers. Those posters are usually crappily taped to the wall since there are so many of them. Often times, they get stuck to your feet and easily-amused people may tape them to the back of your shirt. Then there are those eight by eleven posters that have a million words on them, all about the budgets for the prom and the promises the candidate is making. These posters are neatly taped to the wall since there are about three of them and they contain words like ‘transaction’. Needless to say, nobody reads those. Instead they divert their attention to the massive posters right next to them that have incredibly strained rhyming slogans. These are the standard types of posters and then there are my posters. I have about sixteen posters. Twelve of them say ‘Vote Daryl for Vice President Class of ’08. The other four are the result of about an hour of brainstorming. And when I say brainstorming I mean thinking of words that rhyme with my name. Here’s what I came up with:
You should pick
Seitchik.
Upon realizing that my name sucks, I proceeded to do whatever the hell I wanted.
Daryl puts the ice in vice. *insert picture of 50 cent wearing a diamond-studded medallion.*
Daryl doesn’t have lice. Vote her for vice.
Daryl doesn’t do anabolic steroids. Vote for her.
Daryl can’t help you save 15% or more on car insurance, but she’s still pretty cool.
Even my mom thought of one. I thought it was decent until I realized that no one in my generation besides unfortunate people named Daryl know who Daryl Hall and John Oates is. Her slogan was “Daryl’s Hall and John Votes.” But who the hell is John?
There’s not much else to a student council election. The people vote, they announce the winners on Friday, the winner goes home and thinks up fundraiser ideas, and the loser loses all of his friends and gets thrown blindfolded into a slimy ditch off of route 10. Either that or he just shrugs and enjoys his Friday afternoon. And we all know what the fundraiser’s going to turn out to be anyway. A bake sale. Because the thing is, all you really have to do is feed them.
Recent Comments