A Dash of Confidence

During the twilight of my tenure at New Braunfels Middle School, I was able to have two electives, one of which wasn’t forcibly a physical educational requirement. For my last semester of public school, I chose Journalism, and Theater as my personal two. The journalism class is a story for another day, but for now I will spin you the tale of my small piece of glory. Most of the actual class is a blur, to which the gooey secrets may later be remembered by me, but I will start my theater stories, with my last one.

The final assignment of the class was to put on a production, which the instructor would choose. Our teacher chose this rather namby-pamby fairytale court, which seemed to be written by a flounder with a case of severe brain trauma. The characters were all pretty cut and dry, the judge, the lawyer, the three little pigs, and the rather non-beefy bailiff. After reading the play, I daintily threw my hands up in the air, and bellowed “you call this art?!” then ran out of the room throwing a drama queen’s fit. So, instead of doing the rather unfunny court proceedings, I elected to do another sketch, something to perhaps warm the crowd, for the main show. As it required it’s audience to be at a proper temperature for baking.

As I had become a fan of Monty Python’s Flying Circus in the years beforehand, I was well acquainted with the different sketches, and running gags of the comedy troupe. My parents even when so far as to buy me the script books for the television show, so I would enjoy the sketches without seeing them. So, I chose the parrot sketch, as it was widely considered to be one of the best of the show’s run, and the fact that I only needed three actors, and no outlandish costumes consisting of Viking helmets, or pepper pot wigs. My friends Sam, and Danny joined in the sketch, Sam playing the storekeeper, Danny the train agent, and myself as Mr. Praline.

The big day came, and several classes were jammed into the theater room, violating many a fire code, just so instructors didn’t have to teach, and so my class can show their diminutive acting skills. As Sam’s, Danny’s, and I’s sketch was much shorter than the brain hemorrhage that was Fairy-Tale court, we were allowed to go first. Despite my fading English accent, and occasional missing lines, we were a hit, the audience laughed, and seemed to be enjoying the production. The laughter flowed over me, and I felt for the first time in my life, that I was funny, and that people could see me as something other than that smell kid who wore Hawaiian shirts everyday.

Though this was my final memory of attending the public school system of New Braunfels, it was a fairly positive one. Instead of having the jock patrol making fun of me, or having a rather unsuccessful attempt of trying to get a girl to like me, I increased in some self-confidence, if only by a smidge. I don’t think I will soon forget the barrage of laughter than resonated in that dull gray room on the third floor, though then again it may have just been the voices in my head. Those guys do tend to be a set of gigglepusses.

A Virgin Sacrifice

During the my career as a schoolchild, I was for reasons unknown, selected to be a “leader,” in both the New Braunfels School District, and the family of Holy Cross schools. I’m not sure why I was labeled with this mantel, I wasn’t particularly sociable, nor did I work outstandingly well with others. I suppose it may have been because I’m passably intelligent, but my grades in public school were far from superb, but I was usually picked out. Also, I was likely the most emotionally stable of my friends, and that’s a stretch, as I had many an outburst, though I was never expelled. Perhaps NBISD chose a child per each generation to pick on, as the district as a whole got bored, and felt the need to take it out on others.

Anyways, during the summer of 2006, I for some reason wanted to join the A.C.T.S. program, and I was signed up to go on a retreat during the latter half of that summer. I can’t remember why I joined, maybe it was so I could meet some girls who wouldn’t talk to me. So, I spent three long days at a retreat, immediately regretting it as soon as I stepped onto the bus at St. Peter’s and Paul. The bus left the church, and proceeded to drive out somewhere in the country, to their compound, where we were forced to make counterfeit Swatches. In reality, it was a church, with a community center close to it, but that was just the waypoint, after collecting more of the “chosen,” we were herded to Saint Anthony’s high school in San Antonio.



We were stored inside a retreat house which was within a weak man’s stone throw of the school itself. When we arrived at the institute, we were given a shirt marking the occasion, it held a scripture passage on the back, which was misspelled. During my time inside, we were forced into groups, and assigned different retreat leaders and were meant to suffer their peppiness. The name of our group leader escapes me, so I will dub them “Skippy,” it seems like a appropriate name. So, we would waste the day away by talking about God, making trinkets for export, and eating powdered eggs.

Though occasionally (5 times a day), we would all gather around for a “personal narrative” by one of the retreat leaders. These stories would quickly turn from nice little soliloquies to sob fests by everyone in the room. While reading their story, the retreat leader would immediately burst into tears while relaying some horrifying life experience, then everyone else would join in, it was worse than when I saw My Dog Skip in the theater. Of course, I was the only one not crying in the entire room, so I would have to find something to put my attention to, seeing as I didn’t want to make eye contact with someone, and have them find I wasn’t emotionally gut wrenched by the tale of woes.

Nearer the end of the retreat, we were all told to line up and go to the school’s auditorium, probably for some play about moral hygiene. As we were put in front of the door, they placed me in the front of the line, I guess so I could absorb the first wave of bullets that rained down upon us. Then as I was ushered (pushed) into the main auditorium, I found that it was dark, with only the lights on the stage laminating the large hall. Then, I noticed the shadows that lay in the chairs of the space, and they turned around and revealed themselves to be people. Each of them was chanting the same hymn, but it appeared rather demonic, as their faces were lit by the candle the cradled in their hands. Apparently I was about to be a virgin sacrifice to the unholy cult of the “Kingdon” of heaven.

They looked upon me while their mouths moved in synchronized movements, I panicked and acted as though I also knew the words of the hymn, though in actuality I was just sing the parts of Night Fever that I could remember. The last memory I have is that I was standing onstage next to the other retreaters (who seemed to be enjoying it) awaiting for the end to come, as it surely looked as though my time was up.

Alejandro's Anti-Amazing Atheltic Adventures No. 1

During my time spent in the New Braunfels Independent School District, I was usually given a yellow sheet of paper at the end of a school year, so I could decide what classes to take the following semester. The golden rod paper would usually list the classes you were required to take, i.e. English, Science, Math, and so on. But starting at the end of fifth grade, the paper had included a new item: electives. So, when the end of sixth grade came along, and we were to decide what two electives we would take in seventh grade. NBISD requires you to take at least one class that requires some sort of physical activity, there are three choices: Gym, Marching Band, and Athletics.
Unfortunately for me the legendary Basket Weaving class that all teachers threaten you with did not exist. So for some reason I chose Athletics.
Athletics was different than gym in that, if you wanted to even attempt to join one of the school’s sports team, you had to be in this specific class of sweat mongers and jock-brocks. For some reason I felt that I was going to be able to make it onto the basketball team, despite my inability to play, or even know what a point guard was. So, there I was, a very unfit, and slightly overweight early teen stuck in a room of jocks and preps, who were already much more desirable to girls than I ever was, or likely will be, except maybe in Canada.

As we were forced to work out fairly rigorously every day, we had to have our own set of workout clothes. I had a shirt, and a pair of basketball shorts, but apparently this wasn’t enough for the coaches who felt the need to assign each of a set of school issued workout clothes. They had us line up, and they would look at us and guess what size we wore, and even if they were horribly off, they wouldn’t give us a correct size. Rather like the portal of uniform assignment at concentration camps in World War II movies. When my turn came, and Jones; the grossly obese football defense coordinator looked at me and assigned me an extra large. Now, I wasn’t the skinniest kid around, but I was far and away not going to fit into a pair of extra large pair of gray shorts, and a half shirt. So, as time rolled on, I found a way of getting rid of jumbo clown short pants, and quash my homoerotic half shirt that revealed my chunky mid-drift.

Sometime during the middle of the semester, we were taken out of the mat room, and forced to run around for a few miles. As the actual running track consisted of mud, and was normally used by the girl’s athletics class, we were forced to run the streets around the school, while the coaches piled into a pickup truck and drove around like hillbillies on a gay-witch hunt. I was one of the most unfit in the class, so I was always trailing behind with the other fatties who signed up for the class by mistake.

The coaches usually paid more attention to the real athletes to make sure they were always running, so they were off far ahead and us in the back could slack off by walking, or collapsing from heat exhaustion. Yet, every so often that truck would drive down around the corner, and we would have to start running again, just in case they decided to hunt us down in a manner described by Richard Connell.

Cinema Customer Scoop #1: Card-Swiping Lunacy

In my four and a half years of working at movie theaters it is inevitable that I will have my fair share of stupid customers and the inane gibberish that spouts from their noise holes. Each of them has their own personal stories, each with it’s own aggravating idiom. Now, you will be able to enjoy those wonderful stories of ignorance and all around nearly unbelievable acts of ineptitude.

This story comes from the month of June, in the year of two-thousand and ten. Obama was president, and the world was not yet overrun by pink zebras with deplorable table manners. I was working on concessions all day, the sun had gone down, so the glare from the cars in the parking lot was no longer frying my retinas. The box office worker had needed a break, and I being the only other person qualified to work it, left concessions and sauntered over to box.

I gave a rappa-tap on the door, and found it opened by Thomas, who was working within. He left and I sat down to a half hour of taking green paper, and exchanging it for glossy red papers. The first twenty-eight minuets went on without a hitch, few customers came, as I was assume everyone was out hog-calling, and hadn’t the thought to go and see a movie. I was almost done covering for Thomas, and a squat-bent up little man with a wife in a purple blouse came up to the window.

He ordered two tickets for Grown Ups, as if that wasn’t a big enough mistake, he proceeded to hand me his credit card, which became an extreme source of anger for me. I swiped the card through the machine, and the message popped up on my screen reading “This is not a Credit Card,” despite the fact that I looked very much like one, and it even said the words on it’s colorful surface. I shook off this first attempt at preventing the card from working, and went about swiping it again, as sometimes the register sometimes will refuse to scan on the first swipe. The message appeared several more times, so I shouted “Vile machine! Thou shoust not make me a fool!” and began entering the card’s information manually.

After entering the card number and expiration date, then asking the customer for his billing zip code, I turned the card around to find it’s three digit security code. What’s this!? The code was absent from its spot, not only had the ink from the letters disappeared, but the entire of the backside of the card had been sanded smooth. Unable to read the back of the card, I asked the squat man if he knew the code, quite obviously he didn’t. But, he did go on to tell me to keep trying and swipe the card fruitlessly. After five minutes of “this is not a credit card” I told him it did not work. He then produced a second card, which worked instantly.

Why hadn’t he given me the working card from the get go? Instead he let me go about frivolously trying to make the shell-shocked card work, despite it obviously being long dead. After leaving box, I saw him talking to Sean my manager about something. I scurried away into the hallway so that he wouldn’t see me, and attack me with his defunct card. Sean later told me that the small man said I had abused the card and given him a dirty look when I threw his tickets at him. Despite the fact that I give a neutral reaction to his card not working, he made me out to be a rather angry-elf who stabbed his card in the heart with a letter opener.

Sour Cream, Lettuce, and False Termination

A little over a year ago I achieved employment in Denton after spending the past two years almost completely without a job. The month and a half I spent puttering around Best Buy, messing up sales with secret sellers doesn’t really count. Upon my arrival of Cinemark 14 in Denton, I was fairly well received by others, and tepidly impressive as I knew a lot of the goings on behind the scenes at a movie theater. Also I wasn’t some whiney school kid, so that’s always a plus. I remember the first two people I met while working in my first few days, Mr. San Antonio, my constantly galled manager, and Laura; a clever young lass who drives a beige colored car.

With the exception of Mr. Cole who hired me, San Antonio was the first manager I worked under. I gingerly walked into the scullery on my first day to see that he was already barking at the other two new hires, Mark and Gracie. Despite his sometimes cross outward appearance, San Antonio is actually quite the cool dude, understanding my references to Dragonball Z, Rimmer salute, and an occasional hardy “Rowsdower!”
San Antonio’s catch phrase is something that he has apparently wanted to say truthfully since he became a manager, those two words of termination: “You’re Fired.” Perhaps following in Donald Trump’s footsteps, but not his hairstyle Jacob struts about pulling people aside to break the false news to them, then giving them a stern nod and walking away. Once performing this action, the victim is usually set into a vegetative trance to which they lay for a few moments, during which the spider is able to encase them in a cocoon for ingestion later. And it is likely that he will comment this phrase once reading this particular entry.

During my second shift I was placed under the watchful eye of Laura, who from what I can remember wasn’t very impressed with me at first (who would be?). She took my past experience in movie theaters to be unsound, and passed me off as some stupid kid, but I proved her! Despite her indifference to me, I did find some common ground when I suddenly panicked and shouted out the words “Doctor Who!” With this vocal spasm I learned she also liked the show, and we developed an instant rapport. Then I lost it after going overboard with my nerdiness of both the classic and modern series, as opposed to just the new series with the Ninth Doctor forwards.
Yet, after time she allowed me to talk to her again, but only with a permission slip signed by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau’s chief executive. Thankfully Mr. Martin Dolan is an old friend of mine, and got it out of the way for me. Seeing as she was out and about upstairs starting movies, while I was downstairs wanting customers to go away and stop giving me brain trauma. And now I can safely say that I have moved to no. 97 on her list favorite people, right next to Mickey Rooney, and the guy from the Zararain’s commercials, which isn’t a bad spot if I do say so myself.
Well there is some year old nostalgia from me. Perhaps you can write something more interesting, or whittle some dancing clogs.

A Poor Man's Dungeons & Dragons

During the Cold War, children were taught to fear the Red Menace, not knowing when the time would come that the Russians would hit an over-sized red button and launch their nukes at us. Yet, kids back in the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s didn’t let the fear of atomization stop them from enjoying Mr. Sun’s rays while playing on lead jungle gyms. Yet, during the early 2000’s this enjoyment of the outdoors was not as widespread as it had been in decades past. The vast majority of my afternoons during seventh grade were spent on the computer, more specifically on AOL Instant Messenger. Many an adventure were created between myself, and my then pals whom I shall refer to as Berry and Shake.

Each of us had our main character, mine was a young fellow by the name of Alx Topi (who apparently either Albanian, or an antelope) with spiky black hair, and a green kung-fu outfit. Shake’s character was an android named Zerbo who I like to picture wearing kaki slacks, and had a white helmet with a black visor covering his face. Berry’s character was the least describable, I don’t think he had any fantastical powers, or even a garish costume, but his name was Hank T.C. which was simply stolen from the anagram for the Hank the Cow-Dog books. So, there we were; a generic Anime character, a moldy robot, and a dog traveling from dimension to dimension, much like the show Sliders, only it didn’t feature John Rhys-Davies.

I don’t remember many of the adventures we suffered through, but I do recall the basics of it all. A lot of the stories Shake, Berry, and myself came up with were simply ripped off from TV shows, and Video games we enjoyed, so not much creativity was shared between us. The times that Berry and I would steal copyrighted characters and locations, we would change it up a bit, or make a new story which featured both our characters and those from the original show. I also thought that Shake was doing this from the get go, but for some reason he rebuffed any of Berry’s or I’s attempts of taking the story in a different direction. I later learned that Shake was merely reciting to us the opening movie of a game he played at some point in time, and as exciting as that may be, it was about as creative as Meet The Spartans.

Though we did it every day, there were times when we would have to remind one of the others that it was our daily ritual. So, we would go about gabbing on the phone like cartoon chickens, telling the other to go online so they could talk. A bit silly really (rhyme), but what can you expect from three socially awkward boys who didn’t go outside? The few times we would play with only two participants, and the fun would run away like a squirrel into heavy traffic. Our adventures would consist of characters sharing conversations consisting of one or two word answers and very little action (much like my modern phone calls.)

So, it’s fairly obvious why the television version of our exploits wasn’t picked up for a premiere season. The logistics in securing the rights to copyrighted characters alone would cost the yearly gross revenue of both Belgium and Luxembourg.

Something Less Intresting

After eating a hearty meal of while rice and ranch style beans, I sat down to watch a two hour disc of Dragon Ball Z season three. I made it though three whole heart-pounding episodes before hearing my phone ring. I answered it with utmost composure and gave a deep-felt “hello” to the person who lay on the other side of the conversation. It was Miss Stout from work, apparently the redneck girl who likes to smoke and being annoying all round wasn’t able to work her three to close box office shift. Being the friendless dud I was, I accepted to go into work for the next nine hours, and sprang into action. And by sprang I meant that I sat around and watched another episode, as my work clothes were in the dryer and not fit for wearing. After finishing the episode I ran down to the laundry room and said “to hell with it!” and grabbed my semi-moist clothes, and went to work.
Not many battles occurred during the first hour of work, stupid people came and went, without bothering me for more than a few moments. Alas, it was not meant to last. Around four o’clock a rather flamboyant young man with a cigarette sauntered up to my kiosk and ordered two tickets too see Inception. I took his money and provided him with his tickets and went about my business. Then the human male in his company came and had this conversation with me:
Him: “We’re together.”
Me: “Yes, I gave you two tickets.”
Him: “Like, he is my boyfriend.”
Me: “Alright, I figured”
Then him and his confidant went away, leaving me and Miss Bow more puzzled than anything else. Why did he feel the need to divulge this information to me? Did he believe that it would offer him a discount? Or perhaps I gave a look that made him think he was watching a movie with his brother? Either way it didn’t explain why he told me, or why he felt the need to wear the same grey plaid shirt that I own, only three sizes to small.
About half an hour after the Gay-boy brigade went away, the window outside my box was devoid of any customers, providing my favorite working conditions. With Miss Bow to talk to, I was able to enjoy working inside of my red colored cage. Then a little surprise came trotting across the bottom of my eye-line, a rather beige avian was walking about on the sidewalk. I turned to Bow and told her there was a Roadrunner outside. I believe I’ve ever seen her jump up and move around faster, or will since. The bird had skittered out of sight, but then made a 180 and scurried back across our box office, then few away. As she saw it Bow shrieked with joy, and flailed her arms about like a child who just opened their first Christmas present that wasn’t a pack of tube socks.

A Breif History of Time and Space, and Poke-e-Mans.

Back when I was a wee lad, I was one of the millions of American children to fall prey to the Japanese phenomena known as Pokémon. From television, to video games, to cards, you were never far from an image of one of these “pocket monsters.” I was in the fifth grade when I started my fascination with those one hundred and fifty one battling creatures. As my parents never bought me a Gameboy for any occasion, I had to settle for the card game, which thankfully my compatriots also partook in. The simple joy that came when opening a booster pack of those vibrantly colored pieces of paper, it was like Christmas, only more disappointing. Though the thrill that came when I opened that cellophane package and saw that glittered sparkling of a holographic shinning light up at me, was far above any experience.

In fifth grade, my entire class was hit by the brutal force of Pokémon hit my classmates and myself in full. Within the halls, and cafeteria the adventures of one Mr. Ash Ketchum and his comrades; Brock a man who apparently stared into the sun until his eyelids welded shut, and his red-haired friend Misty were widely discussed. I remember one occasion when I brought my card collection to school to show my friends once recess time came around. Well around the time recess normally came, it did. As we all got up to go and play on the neon colored slides and, play kickball on heavily uneven teams, I grabbed my green photo album which I kept my cards in. “Why are you taking your binder to recess?” asked Mrs. Ansorge as I stopped to answer the question. I explained to her that I was going to show my collection of Pokémon to my chums in the school yard. She looked at me as though she just found me sitting on top of a pile of narcotics, with illegal fireworks in one hand, and pornography in the other. The punishment for the pseudo-offence was light admonishment, which left me feeling more confused than punished.

A year or so after the incident at school, a small shop had opened up downtown which contained exclusively Pokémon products. The store was run by a small Japanese woman, who from what I could tell was a frequent customer of the tobacco shop located next door, as she was never without a cigarette. In the front window was a sign telling anyone who cared to look that they could sell their memorabilia there for cash. So, with this news I gathered my cards and had my father drive myself and my brother to that particular mustard-yellow colored store.

Once inside my father and brother busied themselves by staring at different sizes of that particular electrified yellow rat, as I took my cards to Tokyo Rose for what I assumed was going to be a mountain of cash. While she flipped my card-binder with near apathy I twiddled my thumbs expecting to gain a large sum of dollars to which to by more useless crap with. After a few moments she closed my collection and looked at me though her tear-drop glasses, scheming of a way to crush my short-lived dreams of economic stability. She went on to explain that I did not have desirable cards, saying that what holographic cards I did have, she would put on display for a few dollars, and would not have any buyers. My heart sank, and as a topper after I took my cards back she decided to exhale her smoke into my face, as if to say “it’s a Squirtle eat Squirtle world kid.” A month or so later the store closed, I suppose kids aren’t willing to buy toys from some crotchety old woman who will give you second-hand smoke for free, and refuse to buy your pieces of paper with fire-breathing salamanders on them.