Mar 28 2008
A High School Story
My plan is to Internet less this weekend, because I actually have a couple of deadlines. We’ll see how that turns out. As I learned back in Catholic school: the mind might be willing, but the flesh is weak.
Speaking of Catholic school, I figured I’d leave you all with this little story. It’s about the first story I ever sold. I made a hundred bucks on it - and in this day and age with semi-pro rates and all, that’s nothing to sneeze at. It’d cover my phone bill for a month.
Anyways, I went to two different high schools. The first was an all Boys’ Catholic School outside of Boston. The second was a coed boarding school in Connecticut. While I hated leaving the first, I thank God -- er, I mean the Formless Void at the Center of Existence -- that I did. If you’ve ever read Lord of the Flies you have a clear idea of what an all Boys’ Catholic School looks like on a day to day basis.
Boarding school was little better, but it certainly put a love of books into me. Of course when I first got there I hated it and spent much of my time in my room reading (Catch 22, Cannery Row, Iain Banks, or Kurt Vonnegut). I also built endless houses out of playing cards. I think this last thing terrified the other guys on my floor more than anything else.
With time my floor mates noticed my penchant for reading. In fact I’d see what their English classes assigned them and read those books, without even being in the class. To them, reading books meant I must be SMART, and since I was also terribly lonesome and wanted to fit in I wound up helping them with their English homework. And while I once took an issue of Penthouse, some ramen noodles, and a box of oatmeal cookies in payment, I mostly charged cold hard cash for my services.
I had a sliding scale for grades - twenty dollars for a passing C, thirty for a B, forty for a B+, and fifty bucks for an A.
Now there was this one guy on the floor who was doing absolutely abysmally in English class, and when the teacher assigned them all with writing an original short story, this guy knew he was in deep shit being the semi-literate that he was. So he came to me- the Book Guy. The story needed to be handed in on Monday, and it needed to be better than good. It needed to be great.
I doubled my rates.
I knew sooner or later my time as the “Book Guy” was going to come to an end. Either I’d get caught and suffer some punishment, or my own lousy grammar would catch up with me and business would dry up. I was determined to leave the cheating game at the top and put my heart and soul into this story. I wanted it to be OVER THE TOP.
Of course this guy, I’ll call him Jack, spent the weekend drinking beer, roaming about campus, and boasting about how he had the story assignment under control. It was no secret among the students that I was doing half the floors’ English homework, and Jack was a real twit in that jutting chin private school kind of way. Still, I didn’t care.
That weekend I scribbled and scribbled and scribbled again because my handwriting was lousy and I wanted to make sure Jack could copy it. The story was called “Emily’s Last Laugh”, and it was about an elderly woman in a senior citizen’s home. She convinces her nephew to smuggle in some automatic weapons and gives them out to the other senior citizens, and they stage a coup, and Emily breaks out and begins a career as a bank robber. At the end there was a big shoot-out in the parking lot of a 7-11, and Emily winds up dying in a flaming car wreck.
I suspect that if a high school student wrote such a thing now they’d be suspended and put under psychiatric evaluation.
But these were different times. Sunday night rolled around and Jack copied the story out and passed it in on Monday. Wednesday came and the teacher returned with the graded compositions. He stood before the class and said he had been impressed with most of the stories. However, one above all the others really shined. This turned out to be “Emily’s Last Stand” which he then read aloud in its entirety to the whole class.
God, Jack and I were hated. The other students knew full well who wrote that story and listened in sullen silence as my tale of mayhem and carnage got read to them. Jack beamed. He had got an A, while I got a hundred bucks and yelled at by a girl I had a crush on named Lisa who called me slime and an immoral snake.
Soon after that I retired and took up other criminal activities. Later when I had the same English teacher he made sure I worked my ass off. I suspect by then he had learned the truth, and he didn’t want me to think he’d be a push over when it came to passing grades.
See you all on Sunday.
Speaking of Catholic school, I figured I’d leave you all with this little story. It’s about the first story I ever sold. I made a hundred bucks on it - and in this day and age with semi-pro rates and all, that’s nothing to sneeze at. It’d cover my phone bill for a month.
Anyways, I went to two different high schools. The first was an all Boys’ Catholic School outside of Boston. The second was a coed boarding school in Connecticut. While I hated leaving the first, I thank God -- er, I mean the Formless Void at the Center of Existence -- that I did. If you’ve ever read Lord of the Flies you have a clear idea of what an all Boys’ Catholic School looks like on a day to day basis.
Boarding school was little better, but it certainly put a love of books into me. Of course when I first got there I hated it and spent much of my time in my room reading (Catch 22, Cannery Row, Iain Banks, or Kurt Vonnegut). I also built endless houses out of playing cards. I think this last thing terrified the other guys on my floor more than anything else.
With time my floor mates noticed my penchant for reading. In fact I’d see what their English classes assigned them and read those books, without even being in the class. To them, reading books meant I must be SMART, and since I was also terribly lonesome and wanted to fit in I wound up helping them with their English homework. And while I once took an issue of Penthouse, some ramen noodles, and a box of oatmeal cookies in payment, I mostly charged cold hard cash for my services.
I had a sliding scale for grades - twenty dollars for a passing C, thirty for a B, forty for a B+, and fifty bucks for an A.
Now there was this one guy on the floor who was doing absolutely abysmally in English class, and when the teacher assigned them all with writing an original short story, this guy knew he was in deep shit being the semi-literate that he was. So he came to me- the Book Guy. The story needed to be handed in on Monday, and it needed to be better than good. It needed to be great.
I doubled my rates.
I knew sooner or later my time as the “Book Guy” was going to come to an end. Either I’d get caught and suffer some punishment, or my own lousy grammar would catch up with me and business would dry up. I was determined to leave the cheating game at the top and put my heart and soul into this story. I wanted it to be OVER THE TOP.
Of course this guy, I’ll call him Jack, spent the weekend drinking beer, roaming about campus, and boasting about how he had the story assignment under control. It was no secret among the students that I was doing half the floors’ English homework, and Jack was a real twit in that jutting chin private school kind of way. Still, I didn’t care.
That weekend I scribbled and scribbled and scribbled again because my handwriting was lousy and I wanted to make sure Jack could copy it. The story was called “Emily’s Last Laugh”, and it was about an elderly woman in a senior citizen’s home. She convinces her nephew to smuggle in some automatic weapons and gives them out to the other senior citizens, and they stage a coup, and Emily breaks out and begins a career as a bank robber. At the end there was a big shoot-out in the parking lot of a 7-11, and Emily winds up dying in a flaming car wreck.
I suspect that if a high school student wrote such a thing now they’d be suspended and put under psychiatric evaluation.
But these were different times. Sunday night rolled around and Jack copied the story out and passed it in on Monday. Wednesday came and the teacher returned with the graded compositions. He stood before the class and said he had been impressed with most of the stories. However, one above all the others really shined. This turned out to be “Emily’s Last Stand” which he then read aloud in its entirety to the whole class.
God, Jack and I were hated. The other students knew full well who wrote that story and listened in sullen silence as my tale of mayhem and carnage got read to them. Jack beamed. He had got an A, while I got a hundred bucks and yelled at by a girl I had a crush on named Lisa who called me slime and an immoral snake.
Soon after that I retired and took up other criminal activities. Later when I had the same English teacher he made sure I worked my ass off. I suspect by then he had learned the truth, and he didn’t want me to think he’d be a push over when it came to passing grades.
See you all on Sunday.
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