On a Scale from Idiot to Complete Jerk
Page 6
This last jerkish event might also be depicted by a cool diagram (a diagram within the explanation of a graph! Does this guy ever stop?). Ever hear of Venn diagrams? They’re circles, mostly, developed by somebody named Venn, I guess. Anyway, all the circles sort of overlap in one shaded, overlapping part. It looks like the kind of doodling kids do on their binders in a boring class, but I’m told it’s more significant.
Scientific Illustration #7:
Quadrants of Jerkish Behavior
In this illustration, all the circles represent the jerkish
behavior of the popular crowd. The overlap area shows
a highly concentrated and coordinated area of jerkish activity
(like when the group all dissed the formerly popular girl).
We will label that area Complete Jerk Quadrant because
quadrant is such a cool science word.
Conclusions: A highly detailed, multi-lined graph, a diagram and four lunch periods of research: I’ve spent way too much time on this case study already. And what did it prove? Interestingly, it didn’t only show what everyone already knows—that these four jerks are indeed jerks (although it’s always nice to have that documented officially). It also demonstrated two very important general conclusions about jerks:
1) Leaving aside the really hard cases for the counselors and psychologists, jerks rarely demonstrate their jerkitude all the time. Much of the time, jerks pretend to be normal people. Like that fools anybody. But at key times—during jerkish events, episodes or opportunities—their true natures are revealed and the jerkitude spikes.
2) When we think of jerks, we often think of individual jerks acting annoying all on their own. But the really groundbreaking part of this case study shows several jerks working together in a group to create a massive jerkish event. Sort of like animals that hunt in a pack, only jerkier.
B) Teachers and Principals
1) Teachers
We come to the tricky part of the project. You might think that talking about whether teachers can be jerks in a project that will be graded by a teacher might result in some kind of a conflict. You know, be a little awkward. Absolutely not. We’re all objective professionals here. No names will be used. All scenarios described will remain anonymous and highly scientific.
Anyway, much like coaches, many, many teachers are wonderful people. They inspire kids to learn and devote themselves to education. Especially my favorite teacher, who is kind and caring and really appreciates a good science project when she reads one.
But let’s face it. Regular people can be idiots and jerks, so teachers are likely no exception.
For this chapter, I:
(a) held a scientific focus group (my friends) to
(i) develop a list of the kinds of jerkish behavior they had personally witnessed among their teachers (this list has been edited—heavily edited) and
ii) rate the behaviors on the Jerk-O-Meter from 1 to 10 (1 being normal, 10 being complete jerk);
(b) paid the focus group in fruit gummies and assorted snacks; and
(c) came up with the project’s first scientific table to display the results.
Scientific Illustration #8:
Rating Annoying Teacher Behavior
Teachers have, in the last fifty or so years, been prevented by
various laws from being the kind of jerks your parents’ teachers
might have been. Most of them don’t scream a lot anymore or try
to deliberately humiliate kids. Even so, there still seems to be a lot
of room for idiocy and jerkishness in the classroom.
TEACHER BEHAVIOR RATING REASON
Deliberately calling on a kid
who’s staring down at his
desk and not making eye
contact at all.
Staring down at your desk,
the universal kid symbol
for “please leave me alone/I
don’t know/I don’t want to
answer” should be respected.
Making the “last one in” do
ten push-ups in gym class.
Teachers never factor in
distance here. It’s always
assumed that you’re just slacking,
rather than, say, playing
goal at the far end of the field
like I was last gym class.
Making everyone do laps
even if only one person
misbehaves. Running senseless laps is
even more stupid than pushups.
This punishment is
unfair and tends to lead to a
lot of group anger against
the misbehaver. Which,
come to think of it, might
be the point.
Thinking that running laps
around the school is an appropriate,
character-building
punishment. Laps have nothing to do with
character. This is entering
total idiot territory.
Forcing us to do an entire
“dance” unit and getting mad
when junior high boys (and
most of the girls) both dread
it and suck at it. You tell me when we’ll ever
really need to “Bollywood
dance” and I’ll smile through
it.
Bragging about the awards
or championships they won
when they were our age
(twenty or thirty years ago). Bragging on its own is just
idiotic. If accompanied by
pelting volleyball spike-serves
at us, it moves into jerkdom.
There is no place on the
scale to show that this is
also pathetic.
Making the entire class stay
after school because one kid
threw a snowball. One kid. One snowball.
Do the math.
Assigning extra homework in
a snitty voice because of the
snowball incident.
Bonus move up the scale
for taking the whole incident
up a notch. What does
homework have to do with
snowballs, anyway?
Using student slang (e.g.,
Teacher: “That is so fresh!
YOLO!”) Believe me, this does not
help kids relate to the teacher
at all. It just gives them
material for LOL-ing at them
behind their backs.
Using heavy sarcasm (e.g.,
Teacher: “Yeah, you guys are
really going to be ready for
high school.”) We understand, so you don’t
have to be mean about it. And
the sarcasm isn’t preparing us
for anything either.
Playing their lame music in
class and getting mad when
kids complain about its
lameness. This is low-grade idiot
behavior, but we’re a captive
audience, and that makes us
angry.
Using obvious bluffs (e.g.,
Teacher: “If this class doesn’t
settle down, you will all fail
health class!”) Nobody fails Health.
Being either way too
uncomfortable or way too
comfortable with the body
stuff in Health. The rating will depend on
our degree of comfort or
discomfort. It’s a fine line,
that’s for sure.
Dancing at school dances
(or dancing at school ever). Not really on the scale, but
the focus group agreed that
nobody wants to see this.
2) Principals
Our principal has often mentioned how the word principal includes the word pal. Yep, just think of him or her as a good buddy who knows all your marks, talks wit
h your teachers and parents and could expel you.
I found our principal to be an elusive and difficult subject for research. He tended to be:
(a) in very boring meetings;
(b) in his office on the phone, behind that scary secretary;
(c) dealing with more important things than my science project (like finding the jerk who swung the elementary swings around and around); and
(d) unwilling to answer questions about why principals might be jerks or idiots.
Teachers are no help here. Teachers tend to:
(a) be teaching, and get annoyed when you raise your hand to ask whether the principal can be a jerk;
(b) escape to and hide in dark staff rooms when they aren’t teaching;
(c) say shifty, vague things like “Well, everyone has bad days…” but never get into details; and
(d) be very aware of the fact that principals can fire them.
So I have very little data on principals. My brother told me that his principal plays soccer with them but sometimes makes them sing too much. It is unclear whether encouraging children to sing qualifies as jerkish behavior.
At my friend’s old school, kids got sent down to the office, where they had to sit on THE BENCH. THE BENCH was an uncomfortable stone bench where you sat, got a numb behind and worried about seeing the principal. But a bench isn’t a jerkish thing. A bench is just a bench. Unless the principal left kids to sweat for a really long time on THE BENCH, I can’t see how that made her a jerk.
I have to rely on scientific deduction for this one. Principals are generally human. They are not babies or toddlers. I have scientifically established that adult humans can be jerks and idiots. Therefore, principals can be jerks and idiots. I think a guy named Aristotle was the first one to come up with this kind of reasoning. But I believe I am the first scientist to apply it to the study of jerkology.
CHAPTER 10
Miscellaneous Jerks
The previous chapters have covered (in thorough scientific studies) most of the areas of life where jerks can be found. But there are still a few miscellaneous jerks left over who don’t fit into the usual categories. Now, you might only run into these jerks once in a while, but in the interests of completeness, I thought they should be included and rated on the scale.
A) Nurses
Now, most of the nurses I’ve known have been fine (do I have to keep saying that?). The nurse I had when I had my tonsils out got me some after-hours ice cream and told me jokes. Like, what goes ha-ha-ha-PLOP? Somebody laughing their head off. Okay, kind of lame, but when you’re green from anesthetic and your throat feels like it’s on fire, it’s good for a dry chuckle.
For every, say, few thousand nice, cheerful nurses, there will be a jerk nurse. Take our family doctor’s office. I’m there with my mom, in the crowded waiting room, leafing through a ten-year-old Sports Illustrated. The nurse calls my name. While my mom and I are putting down our magazines and getting up (literally taking two seconds), she calls my name again, sharply, like “this is the last time I will call this name!” Whoa, whoa, whoa…we’ve been waiting patiently, not snapping at anybody, for an appointment that was supposed to happen half an hour ago, and all of a sudden, because we’re not sprinting to the desk, we get some attitude? Anyway, as she sees us, but we’re still in the crowded waiting room, she rustles her papers and booms, “HE’S IN FOR WARTS? AGAIN??” First, I’m right here. Second, lower your voice. Third, I’m not trying to sprout these things, you know.
Rating: 7-8 (highly jerkish behavior)
B) Doctors and Dentists
My brother can’t help having lousy teeth. I think it’s something to do with his saliva, which is gross, but still, he can’t help it. Anyway, he even had to have an operation on his jaw when he was only five years old. Sucks.
So he’s lying there after the surgery with his face all pale and swollen like a chipmunk’s. I thought we had the wrong kid at first, because he looked nothing like my brother Joe. I checked his hospital bracelet, even though my parents seemed pretty sure it was him. Anyway, we were visiting early, before school and work. Not technically visiting hours, but the nurses made an exception.
In comes a group of doctors. They always seem to travel in herds. Herd is probably not right—what do you call a group of doctors? A pride? A clot? Anyway, all of these doctors swarm into the room. The main doctor, the guy that did the surgery, barks at the nurse, “Why are there all these people here?” like we’re these random people who just wander from room to room staring at sick kids. Um, because we love this odd-looking chipmunk-child, you jerk.
He waves us aside, then starts his lecture to the group of student doctors. He asks them questions and then dumps all over the answers they give, because apparently he’s way smarter than all of them. He leans over my brother, says “open up” and shines a light in his swollen mouth, and then he and the rest of them swarm off to annoy other sick children.
Now, I know the surgeon is busy, and I’m not expecting him to pull up a chair and say, “Hey, bud, how’s the mouth? Let’s talk.” My brother wasn’t in any shape for that. But how about using his name? Saying hello? Making me and my mom and dad feel like something other than furniture? Nope. That guy’s probably got a very large brain, but he’s not only an idiot; he’s also a jerk.
Rating: 7-8 (total idiot tending to jerk)
C) Bus Drivers
I have often observed, in a casual, unscientific way, that some bus drivers, including school bus drivers, seem to hate kids. This observation is, admittedly, just based on some negative school field-trip experiences and one city bus ride. Hey, I’m the first one to admit that some kids can be annoying on the bus, but even if you’re not bouncing on the seats, running in the aisles or sticking wads of gum under the seats, you sometimes look up to see the driver glaring at you in that big rearview mirror.
I walk to school, but I had my friend and research assistant Marcus observe his bus driver for a week. She sounds like a real jerk (again, many bus drivers aren’t. Do I have to keep saying this?). I have to admit, when I handed Marcus a notepad with the words Jerkish Behavior: Bus Drivers written on it, I didn’t expect much. Marcus isn’t the most reliable guy in the world. I guess I expected that if he didn’t forget about doing it, he would just lose the notepad. Was I ever wrong. He really threw himself into this project. Check out his list.
Jerkish Behavior: Bus Drivers
Elementary/Junior High Route 3C,
Monday to Friday
• pulling away from the curb and flooring it when J.M. was sprinting for the bus and all the kids on the bus were yelling, “Kid running! Kid running for the bus!”
• plowing through a red light, causing many other drivers to lay on their horns
• pulling the bus over and sitting there glaring at us and not starting up until we were completely silent (except for the girl in grade one who was crying and saying we’d be late for school)
• tossing an empty water bottle out the window!
• grabbing my shoulder because my music was too loud
• leaving us on the bus while she ran in to a convenience store to “get a coffee” (it was a pack of cigarettes—I saw it)
• forbidding two grade twos to sit together because they were laughing too much
• taking away S.V.’s cell phone because the ringtone was apparently “really annoying” (which it is, but so are the driver’s sunglasses, but we can’t just grab those)
This bus driver really seems to embrace the jerk lifestyle.
Rating: 9 (almost a complete jerk)
***Update: This driver has actually been fired! Not for all the jerkish things she did, but for not checking the bus and forgetting a grade-three kid, who was asleep. He had a great morning at the bus depot, eating his lunch and playing games on his iPod, but his parents were very angry about the whole thing. The new driver is much friendlier, but still wears those freaky, wraparound, bus-driver sunglasses.
D) Store Clerks
>
There’s a convenience store near our junior high school, and we sometimes wander over at lunchtime to buy candy. Some kids, the complete jerks in the school, don’t actually buy it—they steal it occasionally, or so I’m told. At least, that’s why the store has implemented a new policy: only five junior high kids allowed in at one time, and you have to leave your backpacks, coats and boots at the door. Is that legal, I wonder? Anyway, it means we have to wait in line, freezing, until another kid leaves the store. Then we have to strip down and get wet socks, all for the privilege of giving them money for sour gummies.
The clerk, a guy who’s been there for years, looks at you angrily as you go to pay.
“Is that it?” he asks suspiciously as you put down the gummies.
I’m in the middle of saying “looks like it” when he yells at another kid, “HEY! No going near the backpacks until AFTER you pay!”
Just another charming shopping experience. Some kids keep coming back to the store for the candy. Me? It’s the service.
Rating: Junior high jerks who stole candy: 10 (complete jerks)
Rating: Rude store clerk: 4 (textbook idiot, but come to think of it, he’s trying to make a living, and it must be stressful having to suspect every single kid, so maybe this can be downgraded to a 3)
E) Neighbors
Our neighbors on one side are really nice. We have keys to each other’s houses, we look after each other’s pets whenever anyone goes on vacation, we borrow ladders and sugar. It’s a good arrangement.