I'm expressing with my full capabilities
And now I'm living in correctional facilities
Express Yourself ~ N.W.A.
💀💀💀
After drifting away from May, I spend the next hour zoning through numbers with Singh-a-long. Then off to hate the English with Or'sir. Even before my ass hits the seat Butcher is already asking if I saw him bash the shit out of the Fallon quarterback and sent him off the field on a Gatorade cart. I can tell that Butch is super psyched that he broke that "passing flocker's face" in several places on the way to another bloody victory over those "Fags from Fallon".
Unfortunately, I have to lie and tell him I couldn't make it to the game. Because I got stuck at work with a couple of old raisins, Walter and Mary Margret Corn. Oddly Butch seems very disappointed with this, but tries to shrug it off as:"No big, it was just a flocking preseason game anyways". I do stoke his ego a bit when I tell him that my grandfather guy was super thrilled about the victory over Fallon when he read about it in the paper on Saturday morning. That Aces was even more impressed, when I told him that I knew someone as awesomely heterosexual as Butcher Barnes.
This seems to make the monster feel much better about himself, and at me for missing out on seeing him "slaying the shit out of Fallon Fag QB1 and beating his dick into the dirt". So he proceeds to tell me all about the glorious fall of the flocking Fallon to Butcher and the boys in bruise blue. Sometimes I really have to wonder if Butchy actually hears some of the things he thinks? Or if he just waits for his translator to let him know what he said that once time?
After I escape the old English, I spend the obligatory hour of power with Chad thinking of new ways to test our manly fitness. Today Captain Midnight decides that we should all hit the weight room for a little thing he likes to call, "pushing it until it gets hard". The upside of this is that all the freshmeat can manage to do is hurt themselves hard on all the weight benches. I see no less than two of the meatheads drop twenty-five-pound plates on their feet.
Not to be outdone, Sporka hits a new all-time personal low for malingering, when he fakes pulling a groin muscle. Then asks Chad if he can go to the nurse's office and have her check his groin out. Chad of course completely misses the fat bastards grinning face as he fake limps his way to get his groin "totally checked out" by the nurse.
So after another shower of power, scarring the freshmeat with my ink, I am done with Capt Midnight. So I hit the lunch shelter and for a nice lunch with May and surprise leftover pizza. Which thrills her to no end, cause clearly this feisty little girl is seriously into her pizza. We mostly spend leftover pizza lunch discussing how awesome dummy Math was for May. As Coach Subsistute O'Something went over the Friday's game statistics with everyone in her dummy math class. So after a pretty damn decent lunch, I zone thru Drone Strike, Art Art, Senorita Loca Gato and Dr. Doom. After which I head towards my final destination of the day ...Detention.
Earlier in English, I asked Butchy about detention, who I correctly presumed has seen the inside of the punitive side of this institution more than once. So thanks to Butchy, I learned that detention is held in the 'Other' Library. According to Butchy directions, "You just go to the not the 'Library Library', with all the computers and desks and shit in it? But the Other one next to the Library-Library ...with all the big books and tables and shit in it." Apparently, this school library has an 'Other' friend, and oddly enough the Other Library is almost attached to the Library Library, so go figure.
So thanks to Butchy's startlingly accurate directions, I find the Other Library with relative ease, and with plenty of time to spare to hit the head. I always try to make a point to use the facilities before detention, so as not to suffer the water torture of an ever-increasing need to urinate after the first five minutes. Looking around the 'Other Library', I realize that Butchy was right about one thing, this place certainly has a lot of big books. So knowing Butchy as I do now, this place must scare the crap out of him, with its millions of words watching him and whispering thinking things behind his back.
But when I walk into the Other Library I am in for a surprise, because all the usual suspects who normally haunt detention are not to be had. There are no hardened hards, no shaved head puff-puff tough guys with numeric neck tattoos, no Mal Flores switchblade sisters looking to scissor kick the crap out of anyone "for looking at them wrong". Not even that one hazed out dude, who might have nodded off in the last class before detention and is just sleeping one off. Nada.
In fact, all the normal detention denizens are painfully absent from this place. The few kids that are doing time in here are smiling and talking? Which I find is highly disconcerting for detention, and to be honest somewhat offensive.
"Name? And subject?" The stereotypical skinny geeky kid with a name tag "Clifford" with a clipboard inquires hopefully. Clifford with the clipboard, which I mentally readjust that to "Cliff'board" is just standing there looking at me all kinds of wrong, like we are comrades or something?
"Dean. Detention." I drone.
"So Math, Science, English? What are you good at, or what do you need help in?" This guy is so irritatingly super upbeat, he is like the living embodiment of nails on a chalkboard.
"Detention?" Yeah, I need that, not whatever crazy Koolaide this after-school special Cliffboard kid is selling.
"Oh..." Cliffboard eyes me suspiciously. "...are you a first-time freshman by any chance?"
"Naw not, Junior." I shake him off stupid. "So can you just point me in the direction of detention or not? Cause I don't need another tardy detention, for detention. I already know that trick."
"Um...this is detention, and you're here on time. Or you will be, just as soon as we get you stamped in and signed up?" He smiles shyly awkward and taps the clipboard sign-in sheet. "So Math, English, Science or History?"
"Oh okay, bro ...whatever." I shrug him off, because there is no way I am falling for that roof pool new guy bullshit. "So if this is detention, where's the teacher that runs this sideshow or whatever the flock this is?"
"Um, the teachers don't run detention? The student counsel runs detention and handles all honor code violations?" He is looking at me all puzzled like. "I'm Clifford Sinclair, the Senior class vice president of the AV club, and this is my thing for the year. So yay me!" He cheers softly to himself, and I swear to the sea this cat smiles embarrassingly like he blazing means it! Yay him!
"Say what's what now?" I shift out of the drift and eye bone him hard, because now Cliffboard has my full and undivided attention. I know there is no way in hell any institution worth a whit is going to let students police themselves. That's just like inviting anarchy and mob rule, and no tearchering type is ever gonna let that happen on their watch.
"Ah, so you've never been to detention before then?" He smiles shyly like this is our a first date of many. And now all the dark voices in my head really want me to smack the crap Cliffboard with his own clipboard, then run around screaming "Attica!" after I set this book place on fire.
"Yeah, I've been to plenty of detention before, bro. Not whatever the hell this is, casue this whit definitely ain't it?" I glare out at the smiling faces of the detention detainee's.
Because everyone knows that detention is always run by the most sadistic asshole in administration. Who hates you for sucking air hard enough to keep on living, and takes schadenfreudian glee in watching you suffer for an hour after school trying to hold your piss in. While he lords over the little people, doing some mindless ass bullshit, like copy a couple pages out of the rule book by hand. Detention is most definitely not run by the inmates. Like some sort of sick reverse Stanford Experiment paradigm, in order to help students do better at school? That's just crazy, and I am half Insanistani on my mother side, so I know what insanity looks like when I smell it.
"Okay, so here's how this works. We have two detention sign-up sheets. One for the subject you're the most successful in, and one for the subject that you're struggling in, if any?" Please note Cliffboard does not say fail or failing, nor weak, or weakest. Cause cats like Cliffboard only think in terms of struggling towards success or achieving success.
"So the pool on the roof is where now?" I eye this clown down hard now, cause I know damn well that this is one of those pool on the roof moments. The one where some smartass is trying to get the new kid to see the pool on the roof. But there is no pool on the roof, just a stairway up to a door that locks right behind you. So you have to wait up on the roof for the janitor to hopefully check for your dumbass or scream for help. It's a character test to see if you're a stand up there guy, or are you a "please help me down" little snitch.
"You did bring your detention slip with you, right?" He nods hopefully so. "Because you gonna need to get that time-stamped to show your time in and time out. But please try to remember not to stamp out and back in, if you take a bathroom break or you need a snack or anything else."
"So let's just go ahead and stamp you in." He takes the slip out of my hand and Cha-chunk goes the library time stamp machine on the counter.
"Now then, let's get you matched up with a 'Study Buddy' from the list." And yes, Cliffboard actually air quotes "Study Buddy" at me. "So you can take a table anywhere in the middle sections or the corners. But not the front, as that is reserved for research projects only. Oh, and if your study detention section goes over time? Just let me know and I will give you credit towards your next detention or extra class credit. Depending on the teacher, of course."
"You have a question, yes?" Cliffboard asks unhelpfully. "Because you seem to keep blinking a lot and looking a little unhappy..."
Yeah, I got some blazing questions! Because my head is about to explode with the Insanistani shitstorms, the like that San Fall has never seen. WTF kind of institution are you mind raping bastards running on the mothership! A student run detention for whatever the hell "honor code" violations are? With flocking timeouts for snacks and bathroom breaks, to get better at learning stuff?
At my old institution, you sat in silence suffering with your piss paunch water torture punches until your eyes turned jaundice. Cause that reinforced the lesson being taught...OBEY! And obviously, anyone with half a brain would have gone to the bathroom first, before coming here on time to SUFFER! You ever hear a teacher say "anyone with half a brain" they're talking about that one "success story kid" not the "animals" they have to deal with every day. Zookeepers and prison guards use the same terminology, cause they use the same cages. Cause chain fences make chain mentalities.
But just when I am about to rip Cliffboard's clipboard out of his hands and beat the Vice Presidential AV Club crap out of him and his big brain control paradigm. An all to eerily familiar lilting voice from behind me starts soothing the dark voices in my head.
"Hey Pod Person guy. If it's all the same to you, I think I'll take this new one out for a test drive today." My dark mistress snickers from the shadows. "Cause I'm like here for my English extra credit or whatever?"
"Well alrighty then Miss Grimm, he's all yours." Cliffboard beams and walks away to his spot at the reference desk. "So I'll go ahead and sign you both in on the sheet so that you get the right class credit."
I slowly turn towards the vaguely recognizable voice standing behind me in the shadows. And there she stands, in all her dark glory with a quirky smirk on her pale visage, her shark stick and bowling bag in hand. In her shady shadow is her evilly smiling sinister sister, who looks like she is having all kinds of a good time at my expense.
"So it occurred to me, that I probably shouldn't let you ride out your first detention all alone ...now could I? I thought maybe you'd need someone to introduce you around the zoo to the other animals. Make sure you play nice with the other kids." May offers me her bowling ball bag to take.
"Maaaaay...Beeeee?" The thinking machine in my head rumbles low and steady as I obediently take her bowling ball bag.
"And on that sad note, I will leave you two losers to your fun time." April's Fool smirks. "I'll be back in two hours after practice to swoop you up, May. So don't wander off anywhere with the dummy."
"Okay sweety, and try to remember to have fun at Triangle Troops." May trills back dulcet. "And don't forget thinking to many thoughts makes you feel fat? That all that spare air is super good for your head."
"As if." So with a whip crack of her perfect ponytail, Someone's Sinister Sister turns on heel and slinks back to the hunt. Ready to claw out the hearts of those who would dare oppose her rise to the top of the triangle. Where she will someday rule over the fear with a fake blonde iron fist.
"So how do you feel about reading Ozymandias to me for an hour or so?" May smirks.
"I ...don't ...really ...feel ...things ...anymore?" I string together some words that I can only hope make sense during this trying time.
"Oh man, do you have a lot to learn about assimilation, Lifeguard Darren." May laughs melodically. "But it's all gonna be okay Mr. Devil. Just keep smiling, or the Pod People will notice you're not one with us yet."
So I let the blind lead the dumb through his first detention of many, and a harsh introduction to Study Buddies. To say that my first real introduction indoctrination to an educational learning moment, versus the standard institutionalization orientation "get with the program asshat", I was accustomed to, was an understatement of Epic Flocking proportions. Detention credits for tutoring other kids in subjects you're good in or getting help in subjects you're weak in is just ...insanity?
As I was indeed struggling with trying to understand the striving to succeed mentality of the Pod People of San Fall. So let me put it to you in terms you might understand "bester". You know those "really good" schools you sometimes hear about? The ones that have high test scores and everyone smiles and goes to a "real" college? The kind of school that has zero drug problems and no one from around the way ever died in a parking lot shanking, over losing an eye boning "Maddog" contest to a dude with a numeric neck tattoo?
Yeah, well that "one real good school" you only ever heard about in urban legends, probably has a Senior AV VP chess club kid who runs detention name Cliffboard? And this Cliffboard cat, he's flocking going places. He's gonna live in the big house, drive the big Benzo, with his nice puffy wife and the 2.5 puffy kids. Clifford is never gonna be just Cliff, he is always gonna be Clifford. And if you don't know what that really means in the grand scheme? Yeah Brah, chances are you got's a chain-link fence around your institutional educational facility too...huh?
Because in my limited experience, chain link schools are little more than gateways to Kiddie Pimp Foster Care, Juvenile Hall and/or prison. They even have a fancy academic term for the phenomenon: School to Prison Institutionalization. To wit, chain link fences making chain link mentalities.
Take my old institution, Sea Side High. If your school is anything like my old one, in a lot of ways it resembles a prison. We call the quad, "The Yards", and the cafeteria, "La Cantina". We had plenty of armed security guards "on-site" to run the metal detectors? Yeah, hate to break it to ya brah, but you're not in that "good school"...you in an institutional learning facility.
And your institution is only teaching you environmental behaviors that will come in handy for where they fully suspect you are headed next ...Prison. Because they are preparing you to be a correctional inmate, a "real" prisoner, with a real Yard, and real Correctional Guards. Chain fences make chains mentalities, because soon enough you're gonna have some chains on your legs, shuffling off to be "corrected". Which is why the success story kids are referred to as "the best thing to ever come out of this place". And why are they a success story? Because the rest of the inmates are the same old story ...unsuccessful.
But let's say for argument's sake, you're not totally sure what kind of place you're getting educated in? Ask yourself this simple hypothetical: If one day, you woke up in your school blindfolded? And you only had your hearing to rely on ...what kind of place would you be afraid you just woke up in?
A prison?
A mental asylum?
A zoo?
A Special School?
Or a very special episode of Saved by the Degrassi, where everyone is super worried about Blossoms missing her first period?
Yeah, I hate to break it to ya ...but the fact that you had to think about that at all? Says everything you need to know about the "real education" you are receiving. So like the Buddhist say ...better luck next time bro!