Today has been another long day with many surprises. First, I need to apologize to Michele. I really did think cats always landed on their feet no matter how hard you threw them on the ground.

Her cat must have some kind of "issues."

But anyways, after what really happened today, we started wondering about school. What we liked and disliked about school.

More importantly, what class in school did you hate the most?

Classes that you dreaded going to and hated the teacher and the other students and the smell of the class and everything about it.

These are ours.

turtle speaks up first.

We limited ourselves to High School, but I guess you can go on from there if you want. I mean the fucking stupidest(?) classes I ever had take were COBOL 1, 2 and 3. Fucking COBOL. Welcome to 1978. What's funny is they just changed those classes about three years ago to JAVA 1, 2, and 3. Welcome to 1999. But, as you can already tell, those stories, if there were any, would probably suck and be totally boring, so I'll keep it on something everyone can relate to. And that actually might have a small chance of being funny.

This was the situation. In our school, everyone had to do a few semesters of social work. Don't ask me why. You would skip lunch and then spend the hour lunch plus the next period doing your social work class. I have no idea what the name of the class was called, but the gig was that we had to pick something from a list, form a group of us and do it during this two hour period and then go back to the last period of the day at school.

All well and good right? Well, me being who I am, tried to do something cool that would give me the opportunity to get nicotine or THC in my lungs and maybe some free food in me at the same time.

I'll volunteer for the Soup Kitchen! Whoever's idea it was to put this together must have been stoned off of his ass when he wrote this schedule of causes down for the students to pick from. Really. Send a bunch of kids down to skid row to get stoned and then feed hungry people. I mean there is a little bit of logic that seems to be lost there, but meh, who cares. I thought it was cool. I would get high as fuck and then help out the poor and get a free lunch out of it.

So this is not the class I am complaining about.

It actually let me in on a little secret that I had to relearn many times over later in my life. No matter how bad you think it could be, it could always get worse. And sometimes it does get worse. But not right now. Not for me at least.

Good life lesson to learn as a kid, so maybe the administration did think this out pretty well. They just forgot about the part of us getting stoned everyday then having to come back for that last class. This was the class I hated. No matter what frame of mind you are in, foreign language is hard, but stoned, tired, sweaty and stuffed with free food made this class almost unbearable. See, I went to one of those system schools that the trouble makers from other districts and all the rich kids from around the schools vicinity went to.

Interesting mix of kids.

So anyways, I picked Spanish. Fuck, I grew up listening to that shit my whole life so this would be a breeze. I could speak more Spanish then the fucking teacher, so this would be easy, right?

First day I got into class, I was stoned, stuffed belly, sweaty......and I took my seat. People sat around me cause I could speak Spanish. Or so they thought. Fuck. Or, so I thought, too. The teacher spoke. In Spanish. But not the spanish I was used too.

"Hey...what did she say?"

"Something about the class being all in Spanish....or something about her dog."

"What? Now what did she say?"

"I think she just called us all a bunch of tampons...I think."

Que lastima.

This was going to be a long semester.

Turns out I only knew Spanglish and it seems that Spanglish fuses words from Spanish and English and makes up a brand new word that is almost slang but kind of not slang cause you all have heard it before. Well, fine. I can retrain my mind. Some of the students told the teacher I spoke Spanish and the whole semester I was fucked with by her. Her Spanish was so good, half the time I wanted to call her a "fucking bitch" just to see if she understood English.*

Well, it came down to a choice for me. Get stoned and feed the poor while failing Spanish or get stoned and feed the poor and drop to the dummy English class. Well, I stayed in the Spanish class. After all. I spoke Spanish right? I wasn't going to let her beat me and I sure as shit wasn't going to stop getting stoned at lunch. Had to help feed society's left behinds, ya know. In fact, I'm still pretty sure the reason Jimmy Carter gave away the Panama Canal was cause he wanted to get stoned one day instead of go to another meeting. So he headed down to Panama for an important trade negotiation and next thing you know we lost control over the Canal.

This will all be covered in another LNT titled "The Panama Canal; or Why Jimmy Carter is Going To Hell." We will probably be doing it sometime next week.

Anyways, I failed the class. My friends failed the class. They all blamed me. We all put on a few pounds. I was mocked by the teacher the entire semester and ended up having to take it with another teacher cause she couldn't stand me anymore.

But, on the bright side, I saved a shitload of money on food, was stoned a lot and learned a better perspective on life.

So fuck that puto bitch.

I won in the end.

I think.

*Turtle travel trip. While traveling in foreign countries, always assume bartenders know every single insult you say to them in English.

michele does carrie:

My most hated class in high school? When Turtle asked me about this I rapid-fire answered: mathsciencereligionsocialstudies.

Let's face it. I didn't like school all that much. This disappointed my parents to no end because I was always the "smart one" with "potential" who brought home better grades than both my sisters combined. I was going places. Too bad all those places were down. By the time the end of 8th grade rolled around, I was incredibly bored with school (ed note: I write this after receiving my 8th grade son's report card and being flabbergasted at how bad it was and this sudden light bulb is going off over my head...my god. He's ME. I need to put a stop to that pretty quick. I will not have any of my children being ME).

I managed to pass my classes, but my report card was always filled with comments like the dreaded "is not living up to potential." I passed math and science and religion and social studies not because I liked those classes or even cared about them, but because I was blessed with the ability to bullshit my way through anything.

Except gym.

My god how I hated phys ed. And my teacher - who followed me from my public school junior high to the Catholic high school I attended - was the only adult I had met up until that point that did not fall under the spell of my hypnotic bullshit machine. All the excuses in the world were not going to buy me back those points I missed for ditching class.

I didn't ditch gym because I was lazy. I just hated it. Hated it, dreaded it, feared it. The lockers. The changing of the clothes. The showers. The uniforms. The cheerleaders. The whole image of that scene in Carrie that played through my mind each time I entered the locker room.

Ok. I was a scrawny kid. Short, skinny and kinda flat chested (I didn't grow these bodacious tatas until after I had kids). I was also painfully shy. And, well.....I was spastic. Hell, I still am spastic. Totally uncoordinated. So now can you see why gym was torturous for me? I had to go into this locker room and get changed in front of all these girls who already had tits filling out their fancy Sears bras. They had long legs and perfect hips and....tits. It killed me. I'd try to undress so no one could see me. But girls are nosy. And not shy about it either. All the girls would blatantly stare at each other and even remark on each other's bodies. "Oh geez your boobs are getting big, Kelly!" or "Your ass is really firming up, Gina." Sometimes they would even feel each other's boobs. "OMG that's real! Steven Bell swears you have been stuffing your bra with socks. Wait til I tell him those are REAL!" And they'd all squeal and laugh and do some secret cheerleader code that I'm pretty sure meant "Hey, look at the short, skinny kid over there. She's got no tits! She's got no ass! She looks like she's 12!"

I can't imagine this shit going on in the boy's locker room. "Hey, Jeff, your pecker sure has grown. Everyone, come feel Jeff's dick!" or "Hey Mike, those biceps are sure looking good these days. Can I squeeze them?" "OMG is that penis real? That's not a strap on or something? Everyone look at Big Boy over here!"

No, I don't think it happens that way. Girls are weird like that. They have no problem pointing out the developmental milestones of their friends. Or the shortcomings of the scrawny kid. There were some times I just wished they would go all Carrie on me and get it overwith. I kept waiting to be barraged with tampons. It never happened.

That's not to say something worse didn't happen.

Enter the uniform.

We didn't wear shorts and tshirts to gym like most normal people. Or like the guys. We had to wear this jumper. Shorts and a shirt all in one. Snapped right down the front. Freshmen wore this ugly green color. And it had all these pockets. That was kinda cool. Until I was told that no, the pockets were not meant for cigarettes. Or to stash my nickel bag. The uniform was so hideous I can't even find a picture of it, so I drew one for you.

This might not look so horrifying to you, but picture it on someone who was about 80 lbs and less than 5 feet tall.

The other girls filled theirs out. Their long, slender legs looked fine coming out of those shorts, where my legs looked like two sapling sticks. The other girls undid a few snaps and sexed the uniforms up a bit. If I undid any snaps, it would just sort of fall off of me.

So there we were, out on the football field, being forced to play field hockey or some other game I was physically unqualified to take part in. I tried explaining this to Ms. Bullhorn. But she would have none of it. I gave her my best bullshit stories. None of them worked. I was forced every other day to take part in this ridiculous school sanctioned 40 minutes of mayhem. Most of the field hockey time was spent with Captain Kelly - she of the every growing tits - yelling at me for being a spaz. Some of the time was spent with Kelly's best friend Gina - she of the firm ass - poking me in the back with her hockey stick.

No matter what we played, it was the same. Me trying to do the least harm to my team's chance of winning while also trying to avoid the Wonder Duo of Tits and Ass while also trying to not look like a complete fucking dork while also trying to get through the class without finally exploding and bashing Kelly's face in with the butt of my stick.

I hated gym.

Eventually I stopped going. I discovered a world of other spastic, scrawny, phsyical activity loathing kids in the pizza place at the village green. Pinball and pot were a much mightier draw than Kelly and field hockey.

Yes, I failed gym. Making up the classes wasn't so bad though. An hour or so running laps by yourself or cleaning out the sports supply room had nothing on swinging a bat at a softball lobbed by someone who was aiming for your head. Plus, the after school makeup time was not moderated by my teacher, but by the male teacher, who was too busy watching cheerleader practice to notice if I was really making the full laps. 1/4 mile down the track, hard left under the bleachers, hang out there with the rest of my spaz friends until the cheerleaders stopped bouncing around, then back to Mr. Bullhorn, pretending to be out of breath.

I did this for four years. Either not show up for gym or show up not wearing my uniform, which meant I had to sit out (awww, damn!) and make up the class some other time. The time I spent after school -and the time I spent playing stoned pinball - was worth the time NOT spent feeling like Carrie White.

I did happen to run into Kelly just last year at Wendy's.

She was working there.

She's about the size of a small third world country.

Yes, that made me happy. I'm shallow and vain like that.

Oh, like you're not. -M

So those are our most hated classes. The ones we dreaded going to. Sure, there might have been classes we got worse grades in, but these are the ones we had nightmares about.

Your turn. What was your most hated class in high school?

Michele and Turtle still have weird dreams about being naked in school. Only one of them thinks these dreams are fun.

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