Art Pact 230 - That guy


Oh, that guy. He spends all his time indoors - you know, tied to the computer. Complete sad case, but what are you going to do with those nerdy types anyway? You need someone to make facebook or whatever, right? The art is in keeping them interested without them getting all - you know, stalker-y, right? I mean it's not like he's actually got a chance. No, he's for one of those chunky girls, you know who I mean? Not like, the sassy ones, not the ones who've just put on a few pounds because they've been having bad days recently, but the real full-on... you know, it's depressing just to talk about this. I mean anyway, we're talking about people who somehow manage to live in a different world.

That guy is an embarrassment in class. I mean you'd think he'd be the first to put his hand up, right? To answer all the questions, like nerds do. But he's not like that at all. He keeps his mouth shut, just sits in the middle of the class like some kind of special (you know what I mean) and stares at the teacher or at me or whoever, it's totally disturbing. I can't bear sitting in math class because he's always behind me, it's creepy having nerd eyes on the back of my neck. I keep asking to change seats because it just isn't fair, but that's Ms. Donbretz for you, assigned seating or nothing - I might choose nothing, but I mean why should I stand for the whole class? That's just wrong, and it leads to varicose veins (so Wendy says, and she should know after all), so it seems like I'm sort of stuck with it.

Worse than the staring is the whispering. It's like, how much of a freak can one guy be? I'm sure he's always whispering about nerd things, or some other geek rubbish, or things about the wind - like, he's some sort of weatherology freak or something, and I just can't be hearing about all of that stuff, like the way the storm is going to come down on us all, or how we're going to get carried away by the wind. It's like, newsflash, only sad cloud-watching geeks are ever going to get carried away with that sort of thing, the rest of us have other sources of excitement in our lives? It's just so wrong, I mean I get that people have some different hobbies - Wendy collects beads, for god's sake - but there has to be some kind of limit, I mean when someone is that excited about the weather there must be something mentally wrong with them, like he was dropped on his head as a baby, or he came out with callipers or something, or like Wendy says maybe his mother let him get inoculated by one of those doctors who's just interested in putting a tracking chip in all the newborn kids or something. It's weird, because sometimes Wendy talks a whole load of rubbish, like everything about home and stuff, but she's quite on the ball when it comes to science stuff.

Anyway, that guy, you never see him outdoors except in the most weird places, like (obviously) he seems to love science, because I guess they all do except that he always gets terrible marks on his tests, so  bad that Mr. Carmichael calls him up to the front of the class. You have to laugh, because they look like such a pair of nimrods together, Mr. Carmichael with his comb-over which isn't fooling anybody obviously and then that guy just staring up silently while Carmichael's shouting at him that he would have expecting this from one of the airheads but it's a complete confusion to him why that guy has to be disruptive and write down complete rubbish in all the answers. Then that guy just whispers like he does, that loud whispering they do in the drama club where you're supposed to be able to hear what Romeo or Juliet are saying because for some reason you're supposed to care (like, who would care about Italians or whatever?), and he tells Mr. Carmichael that everything that's in his class is rubbish, that it's all just going to get blown away by the wind and Mr. Carmichael with it, and that's when Carmichael gets crazy like he does, and he shakes his head so that the long flap of hair all falls down over his right ear, and he sends that guy off to the principal's office. It's all so tedious, like why do these people have to fight over trivial stuff like that when they could just be happy if they fell into line with what all the normal people do? Wendy says that they're looking for something in their lives that they can't find, but they're staring past it because it's too close for them to see, which I guess makes sense if you think about all the sleeping around that dad did before he finally got together with her when she was his secretary and left mom.

The weird thing - no, the most weird thing - no, not even that, obviously, but a weird thing - is that that guy loves going on the science field trips. It's like, he's totally a nerd in his normal time, and totally a retard in science classes, but when we go out in the park to the north he's completely ecstatic.

We had a field trip last week - something totally boring, like having to count the number of bugs on a certain tree, totally gross, but I made sure to partner up with one of the other nerds so that he'd do all the work. I saw that guy on his own, standing in the middle of a bunch of old trees and just staring up with a great stupid grin on his face at the leaves up above that were rustling in the wind. He was whispering, like he does, and for a moment it looked a bit like he was actually talking to someone.

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