Folly Gorge

Every child of the American public school system come to a point in their educational career when they are selected wither or not they are considered "gifted." For me, it apparently happened sometime during first grade, though nothing would really come of it for three years when I reached the fourth grade. From that point on, I was looked upon as slightly more clever than the majority of the children New Braunfels had to offer. The majority of the time, I was still in the regular classes and did not special treatment because of my "condition" as it was.

But by the time I was in eighth grade, it was ousted as being somewhat exceptional, though frankly I still have a bit of a hard time believing that I was smarter than most of the kids. Then again, looking back most of the students didn't even know where Argentina was on a map of South America, so it wasn't much competition wise. I was still in classes with the regular herd, but in some classes me, and the smarter kids were given different assignments from the lesser humans. This primarily happened in history, and science courses.

Anyhow, the assignments were usually just a variation of what the rest of the class did, only with a few more questions than normal. So, being smarter wasn't providing a much greater amount of work for the most part, but it did lead to some bullying, and being picked on. Emotional trauma aside, it wasn't particularly hard. Though on some occasions, we were given a completely different assignment from the rest of the class, making us feel even more separated than we already were.

The most notable occurrence of this was during in my United States history class, where those of us who were set aside were given a completely different assignment than the rest of the class. At that point in the school year we were studying the American Revolution (Brittan's whoopsy) and it's battles. The handful of us who were stupidly challenged, were assigned to write four pages on the events of Valley Forge.

For those who are uninformed, Valley Forge was a military encampment in Pennsylvania where the Colonial forces resided during the winter of 1777, during the war. Before this point in time, the public educational system did not let me know that his happened during the war. In my then eight years of education mainly told me that the events of the war was that we wrote the Decoration of Independence, then some years passed, then we won. They failed to let us know that thousands of soldiers froze to death, or severely suffered frostbite while waiting for the weather to lighten up.

After a month or so, the paper as due. I somehow filled out four or so pages, and turned it in, happy to have that thing over and done with. But, it was not two weeks later that we got the assignments back. I was given a fifty. Why you ask? Apparently it was meant to be a letter written from the point of view of a soldier with a solid black foot during the winter. The teacher never made this explicitly clear, but did not feel any sympathy for me, and did not give me a chance to fix the grade, what a rabble-rouser. Though after recieveing that grade, I would have likely given him something like this:



While not entirely educational, it was in letter form, so by his rules, I would have gotten a better grade.

As if this wasn't enough of an insult enough, I was enraged when I learned of what the other half of class did instead of a multipage research paper. Instead of taking weeks to write a paper, those muttonheads simply got to draw a picture depicting a battle between the colonials and the British. And despite how grossly inaccurate the picture may have been, they still received a 100, what a scandal. So, not only did I receive a bad grade, but kids who don't even understand how to use perspective in art received perfect scores for being able to scribble on a piece of printer paper.

The Audacity of the Masses

Throughout my career of working in movie theaters, I have accumulated a treasury of titillating tales showing the dark side of the creature known as Man. Now, when I say dark side, I don't simply mean a basic idea of evil, but rather an hash of the smaller things that compose the lives of us all. Over my years I have seen examples of hubris, malice, self-infatuation, slobbery, sloth, stupidity, another thing starting with an "S," arrogance, and above all ignorance. Perhaps I will eventually sit down and write a seven volume epic about my journeys throughout the life of a cinema worker, but not now. As of this entry I will regale you with three short anecdotes which occurred within the last month.

Usually people complain when we as employees do something less than productive, or for some ridiculous reason they do not get their way. But in some strange and rare occurrences they complain because we were simply doing our jobs. On Sunday the 16th of January 2011, a manager of mine; Ware, the magenta-haired Alyssa, and myself received one of this enormously stupid complaints. The three of us were standing at podium enjoying some Earl-Grey and raspberry scones, and Alyssa was notifying us on her theater work in the West End. Wait, no that's not right. Ah, yes. I had just returned from taking out some trash and didn't want to go back into the concession stand yet. The doors leading to the dumpster are right next to theater 11, which was showing Black Swan that week.

A small woman wearing a yellow jacket, and toting a large popcorn walked up to us with a slightly smug look on her face. She complained that she kept hearing the door open and closing during the movie and it was very distracting her from watching "Swan Lake." I followed this stupid remark by telling her, that those doors are used by employees so we were able to leave, or take the trash out. It is not a large grapefruit or bottle of Pine-Sol, I can't stress that enough. She went on to say rather indignantly that perhaps we shouldn't use the door while the movie is playing. Also customers use those doors from time to time, it's clearly labeled as an Exit. Did she expect us to bar anyone from leaving that way? Hopefully she went home, realized she was terribly wrong, and sat in shame.

The other two events happened within hours of each other, so as can be assumed, my limits were being largely prodded. I had made it though several hours of a shift , but fate decided it wasn't meant to last. Within the yellow light of the early afternoon waddled in Ms. Butterslob. She stood slightly taller than Gimli son of Gloin, with some owl-eye inducing glasses, and a grimace that would send wombats whimpering without weather-proof wallets. She looked me in the area of my face where she believed my eyes to be, and ordered a medium drink and small popcorn.

I handed her the drink and popcorn, and she handed over the money, and I gave her the change (if only I knew that she didn't deserve it.) After getting her popcorn she vigorously took the bag and dumped a large portion of the contents onto the Formica infront of me and said "Pick that up." without an ounce of regret or sympathy. If that wasn't enough, she went and complained to my friend Danny who said she complained that:

1. I gave her too much popcorn

2. The popcorn was too expensive

If both of those were the case, why did she chuck out two dollars woth of corn? Perhaps she reached a point in her life where she decided to spite everyone as much as possible without them killing her outright. I think her days are numbered.

The other story from that day concerns someone closer to the womb than the tomb. An hour or so after the Ms. Butterslob incident, a young land around the age of ten wearing a cap in a jaunty way came up to my register. He ordered a cherry Icee, which was fine and not complicated in anyway, so I got it for him. His first strike was the fact that when I turned around to give it to him, he said he wanted a large. So, I had to make another cup for the punk. While I had my back turned he placed his money on the counter, which helps speed up the process of selling. Yet, when I gave him his drink and picked up the bill, there was an odd weight to it. I opened up the folded bill to find that it was wet, seeing my reaction to the damp nature of the money the idiot boy informed me that he dropped in the toilet before coming to the register. My mouth was agape. This child was so blindly stupid to the disgusting state of his currency that he did not realize he was holding something that shared water with human excrement. I was far to blinded with rage to further deal with the child, so I banished him away from my sight. It seems that the majority of generation X's rebellion made them into some rather sub-par parents. Who don't even tell their children not to pay with toilet money.


Now, had it been in a bidet, I might have been more accepting.