Friday, May 9, 2014

Community College

In my late teens/early twenties I experimented a lot. With colleges. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. So I hopped around from college to college with a stint at my local community college. This is a period of time in my education that I was serious about everything except education.

SNL skit. Community College Bowl.

My cousin Larry and I were in the same situation. Living at home, working part-time jobs, no real goal or ambition in life. So naturally we took some classes together. Really more so to get our parents off our backs. We didn't really go to most of the classes. It turns out pretending to go to school is a lot harder than actually going to school. I like to think of it as a time where we were just making memories together. Lots of them.

One of my all time fave memories is of Larry almost getting us killed. We were in this one class together and all I really remember is the teacher wore so much lipstick that her water bottle was covered in it and it really grossed me out. That and this other thing that happened one day. We were sitting in class next to each other. I was half listening and apparently Larry was not listening at all. We liked to write notes to each other and smear Cheetos all over each other's books. Because we were really mature. Anyway, the teacher is all fired up and calls on Larry. She says, what would you do Larry? Larry has not a clue what this woman is talking about. He looks at me and I just smiled. This was going to be good. The teacher says, come on Larry, what if this was one of your sisters? How would that make you feel? Larry was so nervous, he developed a stutter. Umm, umm, umm, well I don't know, I guess I'd be all for it. Yeah I think it's great. OMG. He did not. Yes he did. The entire class was up for grabs. Yelling at poor Larry. What do you mean you're all for it? This one girl was relentless. How would you like it if someone put your balls in a vice and squeezed it as hard as they could, huh, how would you feel about that, Larry? Larry was mortified and I couldn't catch my breath from laughing so hard. Larry was not happy. He said what the hell are they talking about, under his breath. It took me a minute to gather enough self-composer to tell him the topic was Female Genital Mutilation. The teacher asked you how you felt about young girls having their genitals cut so that they could never experience pleasure from sex and you said you're all for it! Especially if it was your own sisters! Pretty sure Larry was still confused with all the big words, but he knew enough to know he stepped in it big time. You would think we would have never gone back to that class after that day. But nope, it was one of the few classes we actually got credit for that semester.

When you are a broke college student who is trying to avoid going to actual classes, the number of places you have to go are limited. So we spent a lot of time at our grandma's house. We would eat all of her food and watch TV. She knew what we were up to, but loved us and our secret was safe with her. Until one day she started asking some questions. What are we going to do with our lives? When are we going to get our acts together? That sort of thing. So I start by saying I have no clue and I just don't know what the heck I'm going to do. The disappointment was evident. Larry's turn. He takes the bold-faced lie route. He tells dear old grandma that he's actually going to graduate from community college after the next semester. My jaw hit the floor. Grandma turns to me and says, now see why can't you be more like Larry? And if that wasn't bad enough we overheard her later that day telling her friend on the phone how Larry has his act together, but that other one, I don't know what the hell she's going to do. If this was my E! true Hollywood story, I believe this would be what's referred to as rock bottom. Or the time I applied to a bagel shop and didn't get the job.

Later on, I asked Larry what he was going to do when "graduation day" came and he didn't really graduate? How are you going to explain that to Grandma? He didn't know. But as luck would have it, our grandma died a few months later. Died thinking Larry was a soon to be community college grad and I was a loser. Thanks Lar-bear.


*Some names have been changed so the people I'm talking about don't know I'm talking about them.








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