Sleepytime Regrets Chapter 3: Back to the Few Chairs
When I was younger, and still to a lesser degree today I
suppose, I demanded to be the center of attention. When someone did something that was met with
high praise, I had to try to do it too.
I thought that perhaps if I did the same thing, then I could piggyback
on the adoration of the original. This
usually ended poorly. Basically I was
the Monkees spin-off to the smarter, cleverer, and funnier Beatles main act
that preceded me. The mere fact that
Microsoft Word recognizes the word “Beatles” but puts a red squiggly underneath
of the word “Monkees,” something I have literally just uncovered, is testament to
the relationship between the two.
One of the most notable of these desperate attention seeking
occasions occurred when I was in 2nd grade.
There was a boy, Chad, who I was friends with in elementary
school who was better than me. It wasn’t
just the normal “This guy is better than me at football but I’m better than him
at Candyland,” where people stack up as better or worse than others across many
categories. He was better than me in literally all
regards. He could do math homework two
grades above us; he would get better report cards; girls liked him more; guys
liked him more; he was faster; he was better at sports; he could read aloud
without stumbling over himself; and he was taller. And yet, despite all of this, he lowered
himself to be my friend. This was the
ultimate example of why he was better.
He would sometimes invite me over to his house. I used these opportunities to ransack his
bathroom, hoping to find some medication or voodoo doll to somehow explain his
superiority.
One fateful day, our teacher assigned us an arts and crafts
assignment. All of the supplies were on
a desk across the room, so everyone was frequently out of their seat to get
whatever they needed.
I don’t remember the particulars of the project, but knowing
me I probably wasn’t following the teacher’s instructions. I always found some way to bend any school
activity into something pretty close to what the teacher wanted us to do, but
not quite. For instance, if we were
supposed to be making macaroni paintings, then I would make a 3-D macaroni
volcano sculpture that was belching glitter lava down one side. I hoped I would be received as a savant, but usually
the best I got was sideways glances and prescriptions for ADHD medication that,
perhaps unfortunately, went unfilled.
I was working diligently at my desk when I heard a loud
thump from behind me that shook our classroom/trailer. I turned to see one of my classmates,
Jennifer, on the ground laughing. Chad
stood behind her with her chair in his hands.
I spun back around and asked someone if they had seen what had
happened. Apparently Chad had pulled the
chair out from underneath Jennifer as she was about to sit down. I watched as Chad and Jennifer and everyone
at her table laughed heartily. As
Jennifer got up, she smiled at Chad and he helped her back into her chair.
Interesting. I wanted
that. I wanted the laughter and the
smiles and the attention. I turned to
look at my project which was probably a sticky mass of construction paper and
rubber cement. I’m not sure if it was
some deep-rooted personality disorder or just the glue fumes, but suddenly I
had an overwhelming desire to yank someone’s chair out from under them.
I stood up and scanned the room, looking for a victim. I decided that I wanted to follow Chad’s blueprint
as closely as I could and do my chair pulling to a girl. I ruled out Jennifer, however, because I
figured it would be weird if I de-chaired her right after Chad did.
I walked over and stood at the craft table, absently shuffling the supplies while scanning the room for movement like a predatory
bird. No one got up from their seat for
quite some time. I was left standing in
front of the table for several minutes like a victim of Prepubescent Alzheimer’s.
Too much time was passing.
The buzz from Chad’s prank was dying and people were going back to working
silently. I had to do this soon, but no
one was getting up! I started to
panic. I was no longer pretending to
look for supplies but rather was watching the class like a vulture up on his
perch trying to identify the weakest member of the herd.
I was losing hope when suddenly Rachel, a quiet girl, stood
up to reach across her table for a particular color of marker. Rachel wouldn’t have been my first pick
because she was a little reserved, but I thought that this might be my one and
only chance.
She was starting to sit back down when I sprinted noisily
across the room and grabbed her chair. I
had it pulled about half way as far as I needed to when she committed fully to
sitting. Her butt missed the chair and
she hit the hard metal seat with her back.
Her vertebrae sliding against the metal lip of the chair sounded like a
woodblock soloist on meth. She bounced
off of the chair with a yelp and flopped onto the floor, creating a loud thump
and shaking the classroom/trailer like before.
However, this time there was no laughter.
She clutched her back and started to cry. I stood over her, holding her chair. I looked up to see the entire class staring
at me. Chad shook his head in
disapproval. I felt absolutely
terrible. That’s when the teacher
started yelling.
30 minutes later I was in the principal’s office and Rachel’s
father was on his way to pick her up from school. Sometimes I lay awake at night thinking about
how I am probably the only person in the world to physically give someone scoliosis.
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