An Unparalleled Countenance of He

"Commander Data! Find me a massive, unencounterable Romulan cargo ship so that I may (shaddup!) wreak havoc upon them and appease the little green man who so maniacally (shaddup!) runs about in my imperceptive and puny brain!"

"Wait! Hold up there for just a cotton-pickin' moment, Mr. Simon. How. .uh, how. . ? Why are you laughing?!?!?" The sudden realization of why they were laughing hit me like a fly on. . .uh, well, you know. If I hadn't yet fathomed my incredible intelligence quotient, I could have sworn they were laughing at my cotton-picking phrase! With the unpredictability of a flying monkey, an intense eruption of buried anger escaped and insult-laden phrases populated the serene Tunisian air. (Not really, but it sounds pretty cool). "Shut up! Cotton picking is cool!" was the only comeback (albeit a lame one) I could think of, but I had them where I wanted them and if not for the thought of a 6" X 6" rubber band ricocheting off my forehead not being a pleasant one, I would have advanced in my believed-to-be-cool orientation.

"May I go on now?" Simon seemed to ask with his upraised eyebrows and his flick of a rubber band in my direction. Ignoring my screams of OW! and the teachers putrid lecture on "how the class would be more interesting and fun if only we could be a little angel like Simon," Simon began to indulge us more with his thought provoking story about Picard until I interrupted him by wondering aloud, "Isn't it illegal for a teacher to have a crush on a student?" which brought Simon into crazed conniptions and everybody else (who actually cared) into obnoxiously thunderous laughter.

Of course, anything less than a full-blown eraser war would be a disappointment and I would not be disappointed, not today! Too many times I had experienced the never-ending lull of my American Civilization class! Had it been only three months ago that I had actually envied people who were watching old reruns of Welcome Back, Kotter and the always very special episodes of Blossom at the very time that I was planning my world domination? I do not like to think that I was ever that desperate. I need no pity. The experience, while horrific, made me the man that I am today. Shut up!

While pondering the ultimate effect that my ragged eraser would have on Simon, I began to feel something (which I though was a direct result of the fine young thing sitting in front of me [that sounds bad, doesn't it?], but later, would learn, was gratitude). I began to hold several truths to be self-evident: 1) Simon could not stand to be bored and 2) he was fun to be around.

Is it really possible not to laugh and generally have a good time when you see somebody else having fun and cracking up all the time when he talks to his calculator, actually believing he is the Captain James T. Kirk or Spock? I also found it hard not to laugh when in imagined playing a guitar on a tennis racket to impress the girls (why was I playing basketball?) or just using his goofy guffaw to display his amusement? It isn't.

As is the generally understood rule that all good things must come to an end, so did this refulgent circumstance. As the exasperating bell rang for the entire ninth grade class of seven to move on to our next destination, I did so in a quiet manner, occasionally dodging the consistent flow of flying erasers, looking forwards to the very thing that fueled my school existence: lunch.

Joining my best friend Yotcha for a friendly chat of, well, let's just say, slightly slick analogies, I began to mentally prepare myself for the devestating punishment that I would soon inflict upon Simon and his piteous band of teammates.

As I stepped onto the court in my customary trash-talking fashion, I began to notice that Simon was doing a pretty good job of throttling his best friend, Will (the Pill as my studious friend Don liked to call him). Impressive, I thought, but how might he stand up against the likes of me? (If I sound cocky, it's probably because I am).

Waiting patiently for Simon to finish his game, I studied his moves and noted the improvements he had made to his once stagnant game. Was the person before me, the one hitting jumper after jumper and displaying an intangible knack to display beautiful fluid moves (a la Michael Jordan) to the hoop the same person who only a year before had bricked every shot and was known, behind his back, as Simon "The Bricklayer" Griffee? While the improvement had been a gradual one, I had never really stopped to think about the work and energy he had put into his game. Just how much work he had put in was about to be decided.

"Are you ready for me to give you a thrashing you'll never forget?" I asked him very nonchalantly in a pompous sort of way.

"Whatever," he remarked in only the way he could remark.

Grabbing the ball, I took it out to the top of the key and checked it, but making sure to remind him of his inferior skills while doing so.

"Let's see what you got, punk," I stated matter-of-factly as I began a move reminiscent of Dr. J and expected to drive to the hole and throw in another beautiful lay-up, but somehow I must have "dropped" the ball in the process and Simon ended up with it and threw in a 12-foot jumper with incredible clarification. Another impressive feat by Simon, I cogitated, but I was able to play it off by insinuating that I had my mind on a "loftier" doohickey, like a particular doohickey on the sideline. Tee hee.

Unfortunately for me, Simon wasn't a buffoon and after several usages of that testimony, he failed to contemplate my unparalleled excuse anymore and began to bask in the authentic fact that he was better than me (in basketball only, of course). "This bites" was the only catch-phrase I could think of, and render me speechless was indeed a masterful plight. Although I would never admit it (it would be like admitting Kentucky really does have a basketball team, but they don't), Simon was now one notch above my already gigantic basketball skill level.

Depression hit.

On cue, however, the bell rang and signaled the end of a beautiful, yet tragic, experience and the start of an incredibly moronic alternative: English.

I sauntered over to the curiously small English room and waited for the class to begin so that I might begin to indulge myself in the chimerical odyssey of learning new words.

Announcing my presence in a fairly crude way, I skipped innocently over to my desk and took notice of a six foot six behemoth of a child, Don Hausen, using his trusty dusty thesaurus to tell me how incredibly stupid I was.

Never the one to take anything personally and always able to jump at a chance to impersonate Captain America, I made a mad dash for the next available thesaurus and began to rattle off what I thought of him, all the while protecting the virginal ears of my good friend, Jennifer.

Sadly, teachers have a tendency to put a stop to all things that are fun and Ms. Thornton is no exception. With the use of a few colorful adjectives, she was able to hinder the hilarity Don and I were having and begin class.

The pace moved along slowly as she lectured on the book we were currently reading, Dr. Zhivago (ha! I pulled a quickie [my choice of words sometimes even amazes myself] on the teacher! I never read it!), but it would soon become a more livelier atmosphere as she passed out the tests we had taken the day before. Expecting nothing less than perfection, I stared bewilderingly at my test score. i had only gotten a 94%! "This is anarchy!" I screamed for no particular reason other than the fact that I always wanted to say it. It felt. . . good.

The feeling that Don may have beat me was not good, however. "Don! What did you get? Inquiring minds want to know!" I asked, particularly drooling all over my paper.

"What did you get?" he asked. He always did this to me.

"94! Ha!" I howled fiendishly.

"97! Ha! Ha! Ha! Beatcha!" he laughed as he personally took satisfaction in my personal anguish.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!" I screamed as if someone had just jammed a fork into my delicate retina. "There must be a mistake! I demand a recount!"

While Don and I bickered over our scores, we failed to notice the one person that had scored higher than both of us, Simon. He just sat there, with this goofy grin spread across his entire face. "Shut up, Don!" I said, trying to get his attention. "You weren't the highest one anyways. Look at Simon. look at the grin." Our shouts had been changed to lowly whispers as we conversed about how Simon and done and wondered how a grin could ever be that goofy.

"It's goofy! Almost too goofy!" Don masterfully concluded, and for once, we agreed. We ignored the ultimate bond we had experienced and set to work on finding out how Simon had done. After much debate, we decided on assaulting him and stealing his test, but much to our dismay, Jennifer overheard and demanded that we not do that because that would not be "nice." (I have since learned never to question the authority of a female for fear of being pelted with unidentified flying objects).

Finally, we decided to ask him what he gotten, and to our amazement, he showed us! He had, indeed, scored higher than both of us on the examination. This, I concluded, was worth researching. With the brisk movement of my hand, I grabbed his notebook and stared in awe and wonder at all the 100%'s he had amassed. Simon isn't all that smart, I kept telling myself, he is of normal intelligence (something Don says he cannot even begin to ponder). If he isn't smart, I deliberated, then he must work hard and a feeling of desolation overcame me because I had never done that before and never wanted to do that before.

I was astonished by how I had never even noticed how hard Simon worked. When I began to think about it, it became so painfully clear that he did everything with a passion, whether he liked it or not. It was an admirable quality, I noed, but I decided I wouldn't let it get me down, so I grabbed a thesaurus and began insulting Don again, but with a little less enthusiasm.