Almost four years ago, I graduated from a Catholic high school. Looking through Facebook today, I realized that out of the 38 kids in my graduating class (thirty-fuckin-eight!), I'm one of the only stragglers left finishing up college. I can't say why that is… other than for me… because I was smart and switched from the ball-busting electrical engineering major to the piece-of-pussy-pie English and set myself back a year… but the main reason I don't know what's going on with my former classmates is because I haven't talked to any of them in at about three years (excluding my first girlfriend, Jenn, who is still a sweetheart). But I'm going to go out on a limb and say that most of the people from my graduating class didn't go out and get drunk every night for four years (relatively… I mean I didn't get trashed on Christmas… though that gives me an idea for the family dinner's fruit punch this Advent season).
But then it got me thinking that my fifth year high school reunion is right around the corner. Then I thought: Will I go?
Then I thought: Probably not.
The strange thing about that is, well, back in high school I was pretty fucking weird. Now, I think I'm pretty well-adjusted.
In fact, I think that if any of the people from my class stumbled upon this blog or my articles, they'd probably be really surprised. Why?
Well… something haunted me for my entire high school experience and I don't really talk about it much (my parents hate thinking about it… heh).
You see, as the title says, I was expelled. It was my freshman year…. for “threatening the lifes of the staff and student body.”
Yep. My freshman year of high school I went to a public high school in Ridgeley, West Virginia. It was a school of morons and I was pretty much ostracized on a daily basis. Yet, isn't everybody in high school?
To be fair, I had a pretty sizable group of friends and wasn't too terribly fucked up.
That said, I did have a blog then too (back when blogs were cool!). I wrote on things that happened at the school and essentially made fun of everything. By the end of the year, I had a decent little readership and got a big head (me? yeah! I was cocky back then too).
Well, we had this teacher, who I'll call Mrs. Smith. Well Mrs. Smith was a bitch. I know I shouldn't be saying this now, because the day I was kicked out, she was in the office bawling to the principal and I felt shitty. Yet, I was incensed. See, in my blog, I wrote a post with a pretty detailed process of how to kill and dismember Mrs. Smith. Now, I'm laughing, thinking about it; but it was pretty fucking graphic. See, the day that the school principal found it (about a month after I had written it) just so happened to be the anniversary of Columbine. So, this douche made all these fucking weird associations and tried to get my ass kicked out. The kids at the high school made up a ton of rumors: NG Hatfield was part of the Trenchcoat Mafia; NG Hatfield had a bomb; NG Hatfield had planned on burning down the school. Etc. etc. Basically, by the time I was put in front of a tribunal of super intendent and principal and random psychologists that day, the hype so high, I was already fucked.
I remember sitting there with my parents (who were called in, no less). They shamefully covered their faces (my dad, not so much though, I still remember his fucking scowl and thought: I'm truly and utterly fucked), while I tried like hell to explain to a group of rednecks what “satire” is.
Even better, the fat ass principal already had it out for me when I embarrassed him at a prep rally a few months earlier…
He said something like, “Now we're going to run out there and take out Keyser.”
And I yelled, “I don't think you're going to be running anywhere!”
(Which got me three days of in-school suspension. Heh.)
So this fat fuck tried everything to demonize me…
“Pimp goes the weasel is your email address?” he asked and my dad's scowl took a new angle in arc. (By the way, I haven't been on that email in six years, heh.)
“Yep.” I replied.
“Do you think that's funny?”
“Well…yeah?”
“I don't find it funny at all,” he said, circling it on a piece of paper and passing it to the psychologists.
“Well you don't have a very good sense of humor, then” I said.
This wasn't very helpful. My mom began to apologize for my behavior and I asked her and my father to leave the room. They didn't, and after a few more questions about the way I see the world and a lot of statements about how my sense of humor is fucked up, I was sent home to wait for the schoolboard's decision.
Now, please allow me to give you a little insight about my father.
My father, though I do love him, is a fucking hardass. He's not a huge guy, but at the time he was big enough to whoop my ass. This, for some reason, he decided against.
Instead, it was psychological warfare he waged.
We had just built a garage the summer before and a very large pile of dirt was behind it from digging the foundation.
He woke me up at 5AM the next day with a whistle.
“Here, start digging” he said, and handed me a very little garden shovel. So, I went outside in the cold dew and started digging with this little plastic bitch. After a few days, I had it all done (because when he went off to work I used an actual shovel and a wheelbarrow). He caught on to this and locked them in the shed, then had me continue digging down. He said it was a “metaphor” for the way I was slowly digging myself into a hole for the rest of my life. A pretty simple metaphor if you ask me, but fucking EFFECTIVE, nonetheless.
After I dug about four feet deep (which isn't hard to do if you dig for ten hours a day), he had me fill it back up. When I was done with that, he gave me a toothbrush and told me to start scrubbing the new garage.
When all was said and done, and I found out that I was going to be expelled (though luckily we managed to let them just give me the credits from my classes), I had cleaned, dug, and kissed my parents' asses for two weeks. My sister, who was a grade below me didn't forgive me for the public embarrassment for a few years thereafter; but now, she's cumbersome to my popularity so fuck her… haha (love you, Ashie).
Not so luckily for me, when I moved to the new school, one kid from the public school had moved to the private school too…some fat bastard named Danny. He told the entire student body that I was expelled for killing a man. This helped me out a little; nobody really fucked with me and I (relatively) stayed out of trouble until my senior year when this rich-kid threw a piece of clay at me in art class and I went over, kicked the stool out from under him, grabbed his neck (the teacher said I choked this fuck but I don't remember that) and said, “You do that again, I'll fucking kill you.”
I was sent to the principal's office. Then I was sent to anger management. Which is laughable to my friends now. I mean, the Agent Orange acts up every now and then, but I'm generally shootin' the breeze with my friend Mary Jane… as I'm sure isn't a huge surprise or anything… heh. As for how I deal with anger now… I write. But, as RHCP says, “I'm a low-brow but I rock a little know-how.”
I guess one of the best things about the whole thing was that the school implemented a code system that's still in effect (so I've heard) because of me. For instance, Code Red is a fire. Code Blue means that there was a person on school premises hurting people. Hence my old email of “NG_Code_Blue.” Which, I'm sure that fat ass principal wouldn't find funny; but alas, I'm not Carlos Mencia.
I don't know how seriously people took all of it back then. I was on the football team, I talked and made friends, I tried to get over it… but alas, it always felt like I had a little demon on my shoulder telling me, “TO BURN IS TO CLEANSE!”
Heh. Just kidding.
Then, to close this all up:
Somebody once told me that there is nothing worse for some one than popularity in high school. Luckily for me, I was a fucking weirdo.
Also, I'd like, if you'd like, for you to give me a little feedback here… I don't usually freely tell this story and I don't want to just be left hangin'.
(And if you don't, I'll fuckin' KILL YOU.)
=D