Fan Friday Submission #1

Another Morning

By Josh

Another morning, another day at school. So here I was, waiting at the bus stop. 20 minutes early for God knows why. Being the first and only person at the stop, I had a lot of time to muse to myself. “Gee, it’d be sweet if I climbed that tree right now. I could totally ninja attack Anthony from there.” Of course, before I could, I saw my friend Anthony coming towards me from across the little park where he lived. “Eh, maybe tomorrow...”

                Anthony walked over, in his casual, but confident walk. As he walked through the small park he stopped briefly and exaggeratedly admired the cool spring scenery. As he approached me, he stopped, and glared at me briefly, and then he stared with a freakish predatory gaze at my heart. “Uh oh,” I thought. “I know where this is going...”

“Eagle Claw!” he exclaimed as he shot a hand towards my heart. Reacting the same as usual, I slapped his hand away to deflect the lethal attack. After I had succeeded in doing so, he glared at me again, and said through gritted teeth, “I’ll get you next time.”

“Uh huh,” I said, my usual response. Both our stances relaxed. “So...” I continued. “Did that cylinder player come in the mail yet?”

“No,” Anthony said with a slightly disappointed tone. “If it doesn’t come today, I will have to destroy the UPS man...”

I laughed. “Well, I’m sure it’ll come soon. It’s three days late. If it doesn’t, come, we can teach them all a lesson with our wiffle bats.”

“How would you kill someone with a wiffle bat?” Anthony wondered aloud.

“Maybe you could break it and stab people with the sharp edges?” I suggested.

“Maybe they would just die from internal bleeding if you kept beating them enough with it...” he continued.

“Hm... not bad, I like it.” Our conversation continued like this until the bus came. At the next stop, we looked for our friend Christopher.

“Is he there?” Anthony asked.

“Nah.” I responded. “Looks like he’s being a weasel today.”

“That dirty weasel turd...” Anthony muttered as he shook his fist with the mock rage that burned against Christopher for going to school chamber choir that morning. After a 15 minute bus ride, and an enthralling conversation on the topics of zombies, guns, World War II battle tactics, and how ethical assisted suicide is, we arrived at school. Walking into the school, I asked Anthony the age old question, “What’s first period?” He gave his usual shrug of indifference and ignorance, and we continued to our usual meeting spot at the top of the northeast flight of stairs. The entire gang was there, including Christopher who had just gotten out of choir practice. We exchanged “heys” and “hellos” with everyone there as Anthony snuck up on the individual known to us known as Adman, and violently assassinated him. Adman recovered shortly and brushed the dirt off his shirt as he got up, and greeted us with open arms. We stood beside Christopher chatted with him and made sure to call him “weasel” for his missing riding on the bus today. Life continued on as normal, with everyone making jokes about video games, work, dead babies, and the like. Our friend Brown was making fun of his own massive head again, claiming we’re all orbiting around him due to it generating a massive gravitational field. As we were all jesting with each other, I took a quick break from the little circle of wit and humour and looked outside the large glass window behind me. For some reason there was some Asian guy walking around with a rainbow coloured sombrero on his head carrying a long board, which was kind of weird. Not long afterwards some drama students walked past us with large cardboard cupcake props. It was kinda surreal. I returned my attention to my friends, and wound up getting mock disemboweled for making a lame pun. Keeling over dead on the floor in front of Terrance’s girlfriend, she stared at me with eyes only slightly widened, she quickly said, “Wow, that was violent.”

The bell rang, and lucky me, it was History with Anthony, and several other friends first block. History was a joke as it always was. Most of us in our little circle of friends were breezing though it with A’s no problem. So we spent the majority of our time being wise guys and cracking jokes and goofing off all class. As I arrived there, the door was locked. Apparently our teacher hadn’t come yet. So I initiated my usual ritual. I put my hand on the door handle, and began to rattle it. I kept at it for a few minutes, waiting for the teacher to arrive. Sure enough, she rounds the corner, and sees me doing what I’m doing. The change of expression on her face was a strange one, as if she was expressing, “I can’t believe I have to put up with this crap.” I step aside to let her unlock the door, and as she does, she looks at me and asks, “There Josh, are you happy? The door’s open.”

I look at her with a face beaming with excitement and relief. “Oh yes! I was afraid that the doorknob gods had abandoned us, and weren’t going to let us in! But we prayed and prayed to them, then you came!”

“Great...” she muttered.

We all filed into the class, and I continued exclaiming, “Behold! I have seen the light! I have seen what few men have dared to dream!” As we settled down, our little group settled down in our usual spot, we made our usual pre-lesson shenanigans. I looked at the bottom of my poor desk, and saw the usual rainbow colour of gum brighten up the dingy desk. “Dear goodness,” I said aloud. “This is disgusting, isn’t it?” I turned to my kleptomaniac neighbour to my right, Flint, just as he had his hand sticking out to steal my binder sitting on the floor.

“Hi Josh,” he smiled and waved at me with his other hand. Even after a few good slaps to the wrist, and one stab with my pencil, he still got away with my binder. Oh well. He gave it back like, two seconds later. After what seemed like too short of a time joking around, class actually started, and the teacher began her lesson.

“Today, we’ll be talking about the Allied invasion of Normandy. It began on a day known as D-day, and-”

Anthony, sitting in front of me interrupted her with a kernel of brilliance. “Boy, that is D-lightful.” The entire class laughed, and the teacher only rolled her eyes and sighed. But Anthony wasn’t done yet. He turned to me and said, “Hey Josh, I hate to ask, but did Juno that? I bet you did Nazi that coming.” It was a long class for the teacher to say the least.

Second Period, second class, time for Chemistry. I raced a classmate, henceforth known as The Browski to Chem class. Whoever won typically varied from day to day, but today I was fortunate enough to win. I let showers of praise rain down upon me in my head, reveling in my triumph. We sat down beside our usual deskmate Paris, and chatted with him for a bit.

“Did you guys finish that worksheet on thermodynamics?” Paris asked.

“Yeppers,” The Browski said with his trademark campiness.

“What about you Josh?” Paris looked at me.

“Uh, nope,” I said with my usual admission of laziness.

“Josh,” he said with a sarcastic scolding, “You’re not gonna make it through this class. You’re gonna be like those slacker guys who poured cereal into the sink in the washrooms this morning.”

“What? Somebody actually did that?” The Browski asked.

“Oh yeah, I heard about it this morning. I even saw a picture of it on Adman’s phone.” Adman turned around from his seat 2 rows in front of us.

“What? Oh the cereal thing, oh yeah.” Adman walks over to us, and shows the picture of a sink in one of the boy’s bathroom filled with an entire box of Fruit Loops.

“Huh, that’s pretty weird,” The Browski said. “I guess that would explain why I heard a vacuum running in the bathrooms this morning.”

                “What a waste of perfectly good Fruit Loops,” I bemoaned. All present solemnly agreed. “You know, this kinda reminds me of that time last year when all those plastic forks and knives were found stuck into the school field.”

                “Oh yeah!” Adman said. “Who did that anyways? Who has the time to come here and stick hundreds of pairs of forks and knives into the ground?”

                “I thought it was some douches from the school we beat during the big football game sometime around then,” Paris stated.

“Maybe,” I said. “But-” I was interrupted as our Chem teacher started class.

One uneventful note taking class later, we were let loose to wreak havoc during our lunch break. I stopped by the computer lab, affectionately known as the “nerd cave” to catch up with some friends there. I stopped by to chat with James, a guy who has the strange distinction of looking Mexican despite not even being remotely related to anyone Mexican.  As soon as Anthony showed up, I knew we would improvise some sort of tag team on our unwitting friend.

“Hey James, where’s your girlfriend?” Anthony asked.

“She’s at a doctor’s appointment.” he stated.

“Is she pregnant?” Anthony asked

                “What? No!” James sputtered out in confusion.

                “Are you positive?” Anthony continued.

                “Yes, I’m positive!” James exclaimed.

“Maybe when she’s there she’ll find out she’s actually positive too,” I added.

James kinda sorta lost it at that point. “Twelve! Twelve, you guys are twelve!”

                “Your face is twelve,” I sophisticatedly rebutted.

                Suddenly Christopher jumped in out of nowhere and shouted, “Your mom’s twelve!”

                Being the cool guy I am, I rolled with it. “Your mom’s face is twelve. In bed. If you know what I mean.”

                Anthony mused for a second. “What does that mean?”

                James just pointed and the door and while laughing said, “Get out.”

Figuring that I should go meet up with some other friends, I did start to leave. But not before I walked up to Adman sitting beside Terrance and said, “Women with lots of chest hair, think about it.” Adman clutched his head and laid his head on the desk in front of him, laughing or crying, or something, moaning almost as if he was in pain. Terrance just looked at me with eyes wide open and a face of horror. Brown who was nearby simply just put his hand on his chin, and looked contemplative wondering what that actually would be like, and if it would be so bad. I didn’t stick around to hear his answer.

                I made my way down the hall to the bright yellow metal bench where I eat my lunch. There I saw most of the so called “We-eat –lunch-together,” club. I said my greetings to everyone there and sat down in my usual place beside Melissa. Apparently I had arrived in the middle of a conversation that as usual, was incredibly weird.

                “I like this one: ‘Do you have any French in you? Do you want some?’” Melissa said as she laughed.

                “I like your grandma’s Shige. ‘Hey, wanna go smoke some weed?’” Lynn said.

                Shige laughed, and then she spoke. “Oh yeah... That’s a really funny one.”

                “How is that a pick up line?” I asked, whilst grabbing my sandwich from my lunch kit.

                “Who knows,” Shige replied.

                We all continued to sit there for some time eating our lunches and talking about various mundane things, such as school, books, movies, trannies, and how crazy insane some dude got when he huffed some Lysol. You know, normal stuff. Eventually though, the bell rang. Shige, Melissa and I all had French class coming up next, so we bid goodbye to our lunch companions and departed, though as it turns out, Shige didn’t wind up going to class because of some reason or another.

               

Well, another French class. Another worksheet. Which was fill-in-the-blanks using a word bank of all things. I looked at the first question on the sheet.

_____ Un moyen abordable de se déplacer plus facilement, et se moquer de la vie.

Which kinda trasnlates to :

_____ An affordable way to get around, and have some fun in life.

Scanning the word bank, I see “voiture” or car. Somehow though, I get in in my head that “Hookers,” would be a lot funnier to stick in the blank. I show Melissa, and another person, Tanner, what I did. We all burst out laughing, and continued to do that with every single blank, only because it worked so well.

_____ Something that kids play with.

Hookers.

_____ Someone you can go see to help you deal with problems in your life

Hookers.

Everyone must’ve thought we were completely mad giggling like that all through class. Good thing we didn’t have to hand those sheets in... Afterwards, there was a discussion about feminine and masculine pronouns, and the French teacher drew those funny looking male and female signs up on the black board as part of her lesson. While we were working on yet another worksheet, a girl who sat near me, asked why the male sign was the male sign, and the female was the female one.

 “Well, I dunno for sure, but you know how the male sign has that thing sticking up? Maybe that’s why?” I answered.

Another girl, Sarah, who sat beside this girl looked at me and said, “Hey, yeah, that’s what I was thinking!”

The girl who asked the question however, did not get it. “What? I don’t understand...”

Everyone in the general vicinity who heard this just looked at her with a look of just, “What?” on their faces.

“How could you not get it?” I asked. “That thing on the male sign sticks up, just like...”

“Don’t tell her Josh! She’s too innocent.” Sarah jokingly interrupted me.

I laughed. “Alright, I won’t.”

“No, wait! Tell me, I still don’t get it!” the clueless girl pleaded.

We never told her.

                Last block of the day, physics. I mostly kept to myself in this here, since I didn’t know many people in this class. As I walked in I said “Hi” to the two guys I actually did know, Nicholas and Nathan. Of course, by virtue of being accepted late in that class, I got a spot nowhere near either of the two. I was way near the front next to a girl I didn’t know. Basically, all I knew was that her friend Kevin who sat behind her, had a bit of a crush on her. He made it too obvious in the way he talked to her, though lately he hadn’t been terribly happy around her. After working dully a bit, finishing all the work I had been given for the class in 15 minutes, Ashley, the girl I barely knew, said my name.

“Hey Josh, could you come help me with question seven?”

“Oh, sure, no problem,” I said.

After helping her with the question, I asked whether she needed anymore help. She looked briefly at the questions left in the workbook. She laughed a bit and said, “Probably all the rest of them.”

I laughed too. “Well, I’ll just move my desk over here then.”

So we worked on the problems and got them all finished with time to spare. So we sat, and talked and laughed a bit. We were getting along pretty good actually. After a while, of this, the teacher handed us back some partner projects we had done, though with me being the black sheep in the class, I had struck it out alone. When Ashley got her partner project back, she looked... not terribly thrilled about the mark. She handed it to her partner on it, Kevin, who sat behind her. He looked at it briefly and said, “Hey, I think we did alright on this.”

Ashley looked frustrated. “But we could’ve done so much better...” She turned to me. “What did you get Josh?”

“Uh... I kinda aced it.” I said, not quite succeeding in masking my pleasure.

“Haha, wow, really?” Ashley laughed as she asked. She was silent for a second. “You know, how would you like to be lab partners for the rest of the year?”

“Oh, sure, I’d love to.” I said as I laughed and smiled a little.

Later after class had ended, I was walking out of the room with Nicholas and Nathan.

“Wow, Josh, that was pretty sweet what you pulled back there,” Nathan said in amazement.

“What was?” I asked.

“You know, that thing you pulled with Ashley. You totally shut Kevin down.”

“Oh, that?”  I laughed. “I don’t think she likes me like that if that’s what you mean. Whatever’s happening to Kevin isn’t my fault.”

“What do you mean?” Nathan asked.

“Kevin’s hasn’t been putting moves on her for a bit now, haven’t you noticed?” Nicholas pointed out.

“Ashley just got a boyfriend recently.” I continued Nicholas’ point.

“How do you two know that?”

                “We saw her kissing him outside the room when she came in for class, before you got here,” I replied, smiling, and mildly amused.

The bus ride home was the same as the bus ride back, only with Christopher joining Anthony and I this time. While on the bus, Christopher poked that back of his sister, Lorraine’s, head.

                “Christopher!” Anthony exclaimed in false shock, “You perforated the back of her head!”

“What?” I asked. “That wasn’t a perforation! There’s no hole in the back of her head!”

Anthony reasoned, “But he tried to perforate it! Even though he may not have made it all the way through, he might’ve made a small divot or something. That counts as perforating her head!”

“Attempting to perforate is different than actually perforating! There’s no complete hole through her skull!” I defended.

Anthony shot back. “So what, you dig a hole in the ground, you can’t actually call it a hole since it doesn’t go all the way through the Earth’s crust?”

“Perforation is a complete hole all the way through something!”

Anthony sighed and looked sad. “Ugh, poor stupid Josh. Too stupid to realize the truth.”

I looked at Christopher. “I need a dictionary.”

“Why?” He asked.

“To prove to Anthony that the definition of perforate is to make a complete hole in something, and then so I can beat him to death with a large blunt object after.”

Christopher laughed and laughed listening to us bicker and threaten each other the rest of the ride home. Lorraine, listening to all of this, only sighed and probably wondered why she put up with all our antics.

We had just gotten off the bus, and Anthony and I were still arguing about it.

“Josh, you’re dumb, you smell like ham... And you’re dumb.”

“You’re just mad ‘cause I’m right.”

“How? You can’t prove it.”

“I’ll look it up tonight, and you’ll see.”

We just reached the point on our walk home where we parted ways. I looked at him and said, “Well, alright, I’ll see you tomorrow I guess.”

“Alright, see you tomorrow. Don’t get killed.”

I laughed. “Like that UPS  delivery guy whenever he shows up?”

Anthony laughed too. “Yeah, like that guy. I’ll get him whenever he shows up... with... sharp, pointy sticks.”

“Hahaha, alright, well see you!”

“See you.”

               

And we walked our separate ways, looking forward to tomorrow.