The Great Escape

“My life is your vacation?” Ha. Fuck off.
Team Work is for the birds, you hear me? THE FUCKING BIRDS.

Growing up on the Jersey Shore is a mistake your parent’s made in your honor and you’ll spend the rest of your life trying to forget about it.

Yeah, I said it.
Sure did.

As I continue on this journey of life I have realized how much I really don’t dig teamwork. In fact, I think teamwork is very, very wrong. Every man for himself. Eventually there will come a time in an individual’s life where there is no teamwork option. So saddle up, because you can’t enter into the “Life” race with an entourage.

Who cares right?

Well I do, I have always cared. I never wanted to be apart of a group, I never wanted to be grouped in general and I sure as fuck didn’t want to spend the rest of my life defending all the negative stigma associated with my hometown. Like I had a choice in the matter, it’s not like I am embracing it, I don’t have a stupid “Jersey Strong” bumper sticker on the bumper of my car do I? So then why is the judgment equally as hard on me as it is on someone who for instance has a dumb banner flying on their flag pole that says, “The Jersey Shore is Open” or “Restore the Shore” please, “Continue to bore”, “Jersey Shore wish I could close the door”.

Sorry, I think.

There is nothing I hate more than being stereotyped except maybe forced group participation. I do not like feeling like:
1: I have no choices.
2: No way out. (Exit’s must be made visible)

There is no coping, or “dealing” for me. When I start to feel uncomfortable I have no other choice but to escape.
People will be disappointed, People will question my sanity and I will get yelled at.

In seventh grade my parent’s, like they had with most things in my life starting at a very early age. My parent’s allowed me to make very mature decisions on my own. I went to Catholic school in middle school and the time had come to make the big “communion”. I could not handle this; in my mind I wasn’t sure that I was ready to confirm anything. I thought this was a lot to take on. Sure, I weighed my options. A lot of kids in my over privileged obnoxious school received a lot of lavish gifts, money and sometimes even a car. Which is also real dumb for obvious reasons, which I’m not going to lay out for my readers because I would have hoped that you would know better already.

I decided I wasn’t doing this whole “confirmation” ordeal. I was the only one who opted out of the experience. Everyone else only cared about money or just fitting in, I on the other hand internalized this descion and let it eat away at my prepubescent soul for months before I finally gave it the veto.

Fuck it I said, I’m not confirming shit. What? Because, I completed a few religious studies workbooks and served a few funerals. No way, confirmation denied.
I needed more proof, no go.

So whenever there was a class trip pertaining to the whole confirmation process, I had to sit in the office. It was really boring. For the first half of the day I had to sit in a chair writing in what my school referred to as a “theme book” which was just a regular notebook that was smaller in size and contained less pages and wider spacing. I think the school just required these books because they sold them at the school book store and you could only purchase them there and they were like five dollars a piece for like 40 pages. Kids were going through these things like hot cakes.

Anyways, I sat in this chair and I had to write everyday a couple sentences about my “holy intentions”, I just didn’t want to get into it. I would write things like, “take the bus home, watch some TV, go meet up with Nina and Big Bob down the street (the public school kids).
The principle would adjust his tie knot (which wasn’t a Windsor, he wasn’t that kind of man) and he would ask me how these intentions were holy & I would then have to tell him like I had told him several times before, I didn’t know what made an intention holy so all I could do was write about regular intentions. He would put a big red check next to it and then hand me a watering can that had rosary beads draped around it and he would point to the office flowers and semi “shush” we away as if I were a servant on a southern plantation.

Then more sitting, then we would do our prayers, morning, lunch, after lunch and before we left school.

I think he thought I was mad evil, because years later I talked to several other kids I graduated with and they told me that they never had to keep a holy intention book or water the plants.

“Fucked up”

So anyways, I thought since I already uninvolved myself religiously from a group and multiple class trips and cash money. Fuck it, this mine as well be my new thing. Unintentional or Intentional I didn’t care, I was above the influence, regardless.

School pictures? Nope.
Yearbook club? Nope.
Any other school club that I had no idea even existed at all while I was attending school. Nope.

Not making my confirmation also meant that I didn’t have to serve any masses anymore; I didn’t have to go up and take the holy Eucharist, which made me gag. I actually just pretended to take it and I would then put it in the small pocket of my skirt go in the bathroom once we got back to class, hock a loogy on it and stick it under my desktop.
That eventually blew up in my face that was the same day the principle stopped asking me to log my holy intentions.

Yadda, yadda, yadda…
I went onto high school, public school.

Creepy little place, ill touch upon later.

I really kind of just never wanted to do anything except talk to people and make loud noises in the hall way, I wasn’t trying to learn anything, I didn’t really care at all whatsoever. I knew basic math, I could read, and not that well but I read. I knew a lot about history and in seventh grade I learned all about what the clap was, so I didn’t see any reason why I needed to pay attention, I felt as though I had already learned the essentials.

Most teachers knew I didn’t care and they didn’t care about their job either so we just had one of those silent agreements. I purposely lost all my textbooks and workbooks every day daily until there were no more spare books to be given out. I never had a pen, I wrote on my hand or someone else’s book sock, if I felt like something needed to be taken note of. But this happened rarely, normally I was just chewing on the eraser head of the pencil until it got down to the sharp part and I used that sharp part to carve creepy words into the desks. My favorite was, “Slam pig”,“Slime bucket” or I’d do that weird S thing where you connect the lines and I would then make it saw “swine”.

I mean eventually after three years teachers finally caught onto the fact that only the desks that I sat in had these words written on them. Super proactive educational team at my high school, they arrived late to the conclusion more times then they actually turned in a real lesson plan.

Anyways once and a while I got one of those teachers who tried to look like they cared but in reality they were just looking to take their marital problems and lifetime regrets out on a young person. I was usually that young person, I reminded them of everything they weren’t “free” and “carelessly reckless”. I knew things without doing readings, I had quick-witted comebacks and I had zero respect for their time or my time for that matter.

After having to take earth science three times over because of my poor attendance, I finally slid by and they allowed me to move up to a yearlong science course, which consisted of oceanography one half of the semester and meteorology the second half of the semester. All of this made me nauseated. I couldn’t have cared less about anything more than I cared less about the dumb weather or reading a barometer. I didn’t care about whale sperm or where Staten Island was dumping their 6 packs of soda plastic thingies… like I just tried and tried to care the slightest bit and I couldn’t.
The man who taught the class was of course a ridiculous little man, he was a hot head with a terrible Neapolitan complex and we hated each other from day one. I hated him for dressing like a goddamn sports authority Coleman family tent advertisement. All of his clothes were waterproof, he wore Merrill hiking boots and he had not one but two lance Armstrong live strong bracelets. I mean the man made me sick. He wore wool socks in July. He was just ass backwards, unnecessary and not worth my time.
I couldn’t make it to his class on time because I had to loop around the perimeter about three times before the vomit that began to rise to my throat at just the thought of having to listen to him speak for an hour, settled to about mid throat.
He spent the first ten minutes of class calling all over looking for me when he knew damn well what I was doing, I needed to ease into class. I wasn’t some caged rat I wasn’t going to stress myself out to make it to class before the second bell rang, life was stressful enough as it was. Not only did I have this shit ass class, my guidance counselor placed me in two basket-weaving classes and 3 gym classes. Which, I started a new basket everyday because I would have my good friend that had the basket weaving class last period toss my basket before he left.
Because the teacher would waste the first twenty minutes of class trying to find my dumb basket and it would buy me some much needed fucking silence.

Anyways back to this weird little man and his dumb barometers and his stupid laminated free Willy posters. From day one he made me sit up front, which was not fair because everyone else had a choice, I did not. He had no reason behind making me sit front row, he just had it out for me. Having to sit front row in his class was similar to being forced to stay on the subway cart with the bum who shit himself and not having a way to switch carts. That man had straight bum ass breath, he knew it too.

He was all about group work, everyone had to have a fucking mini army in order to go outside and check the dumb barometer. He never let anyone get his or her jackets and even though it would have made more sense for everyone to rotate the obligation of having to write down the stupid temperature, he had to make it difficult.
One day I finally said, I don’t understand what you get out of this or what we are suppose to get out of this, we do the same thing everyday, “WE GET IT, WE CAN READ A BAROMETER NOW, it’s WINTER… “IT’S COLD” . He told me I could use some consistency in my life, I told him I did have consistency I consistently hated everything we did in class.

The stupid labs were endless, “put this dry ice on this plate”; make sure you put the dumb goggles back into the dumb sanitation fridge thing. Pull your hair back, don’t light yourself on fire, tie your lab coat so no one falls”.
I didn’t know why we needed teams to perform everyday human tasks, no one zipped my fucking jeans for me in the morning and tied my shoelaces and I made it to that hellhole daily just fine.
It didn’t matter if it was 34 degrees or 38 degrees, it was fucking winter in New Jersey and it was just fucking cold, that’s it “cold” its either “Hot”, “Awesome hoody weather” or “Hot”. No one cares other wise, unless it snows or rains but because we aren’t autistic we already knew that those things looked like, without a barometer.

One day I asked him why he needed to wear water proof clothes all the time and I asked him if he was hiding some top secret tsunami information from us, because in that case I wanted to make sure if I was going to die I wanted to make sure I was not anywhere near his classroom.

That was a two-day suspension well spent. Don’t dress like a fucking dick and not expect someone to call you out on it.

Finally, what I was not looking forward to at all one bit was edging closer and closer. The Oceanography Sophomore class trip to Sandy Hook. So dumb, like we all never went to the beach before, for Christ sake our school was named “Shore Regional”. He had talked and talked about this stupid sand castle contest of a class trip since the first day of class. It was in HUGE letters on his dumb syllabus, which also had large orca wale clip art on it as well. I clearly tossed that syllabus the moment I left class that first day, but regardless the date crept up on me.

I was so mad, if I had known I would have been absent, because not only did we have to take a twenty minutes bus ride with this deuce, we also had to have lunch with him afterwards at burger king which was not only going to bleed into my second basket weaving class of the day, but it meant twice the amount of time I normally had to spend with this corn ball.

I walked into class that day 15 minutes late hoping I had missed my chance to embark on that awful trip, but nope.
I had been fooled, I thought the coast was clear because he had turned off the lights in the classroom so I continued to slide by the classroom door when I heard, “Not so fast Missy”, I could have projectile vomited into the hallway.
I said, “ughh what?” he’s like, “we tricked you!” I don’t think I ever hated someone more in my whole entire life as I hated that man at that very moment.

He was all dressed up in his most ridiculous sports recreational outfit ever, he even had a canteen, and it was so fucking gross. He even had on a fanny pack, “Jump rope for heart disease”. He was clearly an unstable lunatic and we were about to get on a bus with him and leave school property.

He made us line up as he handed out more of his useless, handouts. I noticed my hand out had a gold star on it; I quickly looked around to see if the other kid’s had the same star and they didn’t. He then cleared his gross throat and made an announcement that anyone who had a gold star was the team leader, he said there were to be two team leaders and then he asked the people who received the star to raise their hand. I was too busy to hear that because I was trying to talk the foreign kid into switching papers with me, when that creep grabbed my arm and said, “look who landed themselves team captain!” I gave him my death look, my heart began to throb and I could feel a warm itchy feeling forming on the surface of my chest.

I pushed him aside and told him I absolutely could not do this, not only did I not care but I was going to be a real Debbie downer and act real miserable and ruin everyone’s experience and everyone deserved better. He told me I had better get my act together and that him and I were going to be sharing a seat together on the bus.

I could not believe what I had walked into. What I had allowed to happen to me. This rock climbing, tent pitching, whale loving fucktard had me backed into a corner. That sick fuck, I felt dizzy, I felt a cold sweat coming over my whole body, and my knees became weaker and weaker as we walked to the bus.

The bus ride was long, longer than any bus ride I had ever taken in my life. He smelled like mothballs and riccola cough drops, the kind that tasted like shit.

We got to the dumb beach and he handed both team captains (ugh me) a packet of stupid experiments. One included a plastic sand sifter and a plastic solo cup to catch sand crabs in, I thought to myself that this was the biggest waste of my time ever. I looked out at the NYC skyline in the distance and thought about how people my age in New York City were probably actually doing real things not building sandcastles and fucking with gold stars. When that jerk directed everyone’s attention to the lifeguard stand, I dipped.

I dipped faster than I ever dipped before.
I dove behind the dunes and made my way up the jetties and I ran and ran until I got over the bridge into the next town where I then called a cab from a hostess stand at bahrs restaurant.
Cab came; I got in the cab put my headphones on and went home.

I walked into my house and I saw my dad and he asked me what I was doing home so early and I told him I had a dumb class trip that made me feel a certain way so I just ran away and deserted everyone. He asked me if I had asked permission first.

I was like, um no. If I had asked permission I probably wouldn’t have had to run and you wouldn’t have just been in the right place at the right time to pay the cab driver waiting in the driveway.

This place is hit, I’m out.

Fuck the whales.