Crazies in Elementary School

There was this kid who had a painfully average name, so let's just call him Andrew. Andrew was fucking nuts, but he was my friend in some ways. Even in preschool he was the kid that caused the teachers to have that sad, tired look in their eyes.

He liked recess in preschool. He liked it so much so, he would just leave the classroom and would leave the teachers screaming "ANDREW!!! THIS IS NOT PLAY TIME!" He would escape outside and hide from the teachers, during class. He would hide in the smallest, strangest places that it would take upwards of 40 minutes for the teachers to locate him and get him back inside the classroom.

During recess Andrew would like to play house. He would be the husband, I would be the baby, and this really nerdy boy was always told to be the mom. "GO GET THE LAUNDRY" Andrew would shout, then push the nerdier child down out of the top of the fort/slide/monkeybar thing we had on our playground.

When Andrew would run, he would stick his hands in his pockets while going full speed. He never ran in a "normal fashion", but this kid was faster than hell.

By 2nd and 3rd grade he would always tell stories about how he would tease his younger brother and sister by calling them gay all the time- so much so that by the time his little brother was in 8th grade he seriously believed he was gay. His little sister was as dumb as a brick... the type of kid to run into walls.

Andrew would always talk about gasoline and time travel. He brought his lunch to school in old army surplus containers. He lived by a chemical plant, and would talk about how he would look at the chemical plant from his yard.

His parents were divorced and he lived with his mom. His mom was never home. He liked to take advantage of this by making things with chemicals while his mom wasn't home. He took videos of games of fire tennis- the ball they were hitting back and forth was on fire. He was quite obsessed with fire. One time he was mixing chemicals home alone: bleach, shower cleaners, and stuff like that. His mom came home early and asked what he was doing. He just said "Cleaning". He could also make pipe bombs, and would melt coins together with a blow torch for fun. Something like that. His mom believed him. He had a few crushes on girls, but would become a complete freak whenever he tried to approach the girls he liked- for example he would scream jokes at them.

At school he had a friend or two, but he was strange. He would look up the sky and talk about fire. He always drew a tear on his face when he was trying to show sadness. If he found a word had a funny pronunciation, he would repeat it like 100 times in a spanish accent.

He wasn't too smart either. However, he would write the most abstract and strange things for topics like "My first pet" or "Mexican Holidays". I don't remember why either... it wasn't what he wrote, but more of his word choice. The teachers were impressed with his imagination, but showed concern about his tendency for violent themes.

I haven't seen or heard from him in a few years- he transfered from my highschool, so I don't know if he is alive or whatever.

As many of you have already admitted, I WAS the crazy kid. I apparently had some incredible anger management issues, which--put on top of my social anxieties and need for constant creativity--awesomely exploded various times. I was well-known as a violent kid; one day I was sent to the office for hitting Lindsay, and when I came back, I hit her again. Upon returning from THAT trip to the office, I sat down, turned to her, and hit her again. I was sent home.

Now, my memory is a shady one, so my incidents are sort of low in detail and high in speculation and feeling. During my elementary school years, my friend Geoff and I were popular for making comics and designing games, and passing them around the room. Apparently, despite the crappiness of the drawings, they were looked at in reverence and awe. One time, in a class in third grade, I was working furiously at one of these comics. My teacher, a woman I hated incredibly because anyone in our class was smarter than her, told me to stop. Repeatedly.

I got upset when she took my paper, told me I could get it back AT THE END OF THE WEEK, then--this was the final straw--FOLDED the paper. She folded my artwork, upon which I had laboured with pen and ink for a whole two days. So, I loudly protested. She told me to sit quietly. At this point, hot tears stung my eyes because I was crazy emotional. I could feel the pit of my stomach knot up, then punch my brain a few times, until I thought it would make sense to screech loudly and push the desk over.

When she threatened me with sending me to the office, I came out with one of the oddest things I've ever done or said, in my opinion: In a high falsetto, I said "Well then," choking back tears, "why don't I act like a little angel and fly all around?" And I crossed my arms, and flapped my hands, and pranced in little circles like a diminutive cherub.

She dropped the hammer with one of the oddest punishments to which I have ever been subjected. She handed me a half a set of junior encyclopædiæ, and made me stand in the coat closet, holding them, until the day was over. Two hours of standing there with heavy books in my arms.

That was the ODDEST of my anger management issues. I have a history, though. I chipped a kid's tooth in preschool with a giant block. I tied a girl to a tree in second grade. I planned and carried out a full-scale military campaign over several years on the playground. And my crowning achievement, kicking a senior in the nuts when I was a sixth grader, warranting a severe choking. In response to the choking, I hocked a loogie into his face, and ran away.

Ahhh, school.

I think I had some serious unchecked issues or something as a kid. I'm really not a violent person, but the only two "fights" I've ever been in in my life happened the same year in elementary school.

There was this girl in my grade 5 class - one of those stereotypical bratty kids you knew was going to be a vapid valley girl - permed blonde hair, blue eyes, twig skinny, always had bows or ribbons on, and had the most horrible cliquish bitchy personality in the universe. Half the teachers saw through her "innocent flower" act and hated her, the other half bought it hook, line and sinker, and she used that to get away with some things that would get a lot of other kids suspended.

Anyways, during recesses, our school had these alcove dealies built into the walls of the building where you could sit down and relax instead of running around the field. Me, being an arsty nerd type, would often go there and spend all recess doodling on papers.

She'd come by, grab my papers, tear them up in front of me laughing, then when I'd (naturally) get upset, would kick me in the shins and laugh more, or tell me "there's nothing you can do about it because I'm a girl and you can't hit girls!!", laugh while sprinking the shredded papers around me. I'd like to think I was raised to respect women, but bitches who hide behind the "I can do whatever I like without any retribution because I'm a girl" infuriate me to this day.

So, one day I decided I'd had enough, and when she reached to grab all my papers again I stabbed her in the hand with my pencil. It bled like a motherfucker but the wound wasn't that bad, and I didn't get in trouble for it. She didn't pull that crap with me after that. I felt guilty for a long time about it later on in my life, but at that moment it was like pure righteous justice to my kid mind. In hindsight I probably should have just told the principal or something. (The teachers and recess ladies wouldn't do anything.)

Then, there was another kid who one day decided he didn't like me because I'd apparently said something about a friend of his, and he was gonna "kill me" because "he was a black belt". Unfortunately, due to a gross miscalculation on his part, I was about a foot taller and probably 40 pounds heavier than him.

After spending 10 minutes trying to talk him out of it, the recess bell rang, and he figured it would be his last chance so he charged me. Not knowing my own strength, (again from never having been in a fight,) I kicked him squarely in the chest as he charged, and then once more in the chest when he hit the ground.

I got ready for him to get back up, but noticed he was just lying on the ground vomiting and crying his ass off. (I was freaked out at first because I thought he was coughing up blood, but turns out he'd had some spaghetti for lunch and it was sauce.) Nobody ever tried to pick on me much after that as I had destroyed the super-scary black belt guy in two hits. Oddly enough, we became pretty good friends after that.

I just wanted to be left alone to doodle.

Last I heard both of them were druggies. Ah well.

There was this slightly retarded fellow, Scott, in my second grade class. We would all write weekly submissions to the local newspaper for a section called "Happy Time", which would give you a set theme and publish the best entries weekly. It was coming up on father's day, as we had previously made some Father's Day presents in class, so we all realized what to do when the Happy Time theme was "Talk about a man you really admire." We all wrote about how great our dads were. Except Scott. He wrote about Jake the Snake.

Later on in life, Scott would go to join the junior high band. My friends and I would crash the daily summer band camp on occasion, to steal the pizza that they get for lunch. We would run into Scott and talk to him. Most of the time he would just say some cool things like "MAN I'M A BEAST" and "YOU'RE THE BEAST", that type of thing. Sometimes he'd say something else like "MY PARENTS, THEY HAVE THE SAME PARENTS." And, on one fateful day, he was saying something about ice cream. Only before finishing what he said, he threw up all over his shirt. Then, without batting an eye, he continued to talk about ice cream. With puke all over himself.

Previously, on a band trip to some competition, people on the bus were playing a game where everyone sits in a circle and you have to say something funny to the person on your left. If you laugh, you're out of the game. Things were going well until it was Scott's turn. He pivoted to face the girl he was sitting next to and declares, "WILL YOU MASTURBATE ME?"

The bus went silent. The game ended, and everyone went back to sitting in their seats.