God and the Devil

As a teenager, my mother asked that I work during summer breaks to earn what my grandfather used to call "pocket money". To my surprise, I had little trouble getting a job at the newly opened Loco's Pub, albeit as a dishwasher. That first summer, we got absolutely slammed on a daily basis. Besides getting pelted in the eyes and mouth with black bean remnants and other nasty bits from the ridiculously overly-powerful "hose" I used to clean awkwardly-shaped dishes, it was a pretty boring job. Very hot, and very soapy.

One day, I made a mistake. On a particularly busy Saturday afternoon, in an act of sophomoric lunacy, I decided it was time to try some magical mushrooms from an older co-coworker to make the afternoon a little more interesting. I got my wish. He told me, laughing apathetically, as we stood in the men's room, that it probably would be best to wait until I got home to take them, but with great gusto, I downed them right there to his guffaws, gagging severely. We walked back into the kitchen and back to work.

About 30 minutes or so later, I realized something was slightly off. The sink-water had become a particularly dazzling color of bluish-green, and I remember staring at it in awe for a few minutes until a co-worker came by and gave me a shake and said something I missed entirely. I nodded and mumbled incoherently, my glasses almost entirely opaque from steam, as my mind began to wander again..."What the Hell am I doing here?...It's really hot and hard to breathe...I think I'll go to my car and listen to some music." That last thought turned out to be not such a great idea.

I stumbled past my boss's office, catching his confused glance as I passed by, opened the back door, letting it slam behind me, and walked across the parking lot to my car. I got inside, turned on the radio, and leaned back, satisfied. I honestly can't say how long I sat there, but at some point several minutes later, an alarming thought came to mind like a lightning bolt: "Wait...I'm sitting in my car listening to music when I'm supposed to be in there, at work, for money." Leaving the car running, I opened the door, stood up and - in habit - locked it, and took a few steps before leaping into the air in horror. I had locked myself out of my running car, and was, literally, hallucinating in the hot, hot Macon summer sun - at work -during a particularly bad rush.

I stumbled back inside, half-crazed. As I passed the guy who had sold me the stuff, I spun him around, and with a manic passion, told him that he was, I suddenly realized, literally, the Devil, and that the guy on the line next to him was, in fact, God, himself. They burst into laughter. Pleased with my reasoning, I approached the row of surly line cooks, and pleaded my case. In the end, a seasoned veteran came out and was able to effortlessly break into my car using a crudely-fashioned pickle-bucket handle, relieving me of my intense anxiety, albeit temporarily. I wobbled back inside, and was instantly confronted with a decidedly more pressing conflict: I had a Jinga-esque pile of filthy dishes to deal with and was quite bewildered and sweaty.

Somehow I made it through the day, but the ride home presented entirely new challenges, as I was faced with a one-in-a-million scenario in that the local police had set up a roadblock on my street during that particular afternoon. Trembling, I pulled up to the road block, and fumbled through my wallet for my license, but to my unbelievable disdain, could not produce it: I had accidentally left it on the dresser that morning and for the second time that day was forced with the awkward task of relating a critical fail and asking for help, although this time to someone in a decidedly more authoritarian role. My mom rolled through the same stop a few hours later to find me sitting on the curb, peacefully, in outer space.

/whoops

Avalanche, or The Red-Faced Planet

In elementary school, I developed an appreciation for the skillful art of procrastination. Waiting until a calculated moment to begin a school assignment, I would normally spend long present moments in the rapture of impetuous youth (say, playing video games and reading comic books) while willingly conceding that short expanses of space and time in the future would be anxiously and feverishly consumed completing an impending assignment. I began this habit initially because of complacency towards my assignments but continued it indefinitely because I always excelled using the described method. In the third grade, the woman I called a teacher also happened to be called a mother by another student in my same grade but of a different class. He was regarded by his teacher as an intelligent creature, much as I was also considered myself at the time, and students sometimes talked between classes about which of us was more intelligent. Near the end of the year, after I had "gone steady" and "broken up" with a girl from my third grade class, my teacher assigned each individual student an aspect of the solar system from which each student was to present to the class an oral presentation. To me she assigned the planet Mars. As normal, I burned the last hours of the night before the assignment due date engaging in Mortal Kombat and relishing in the illustrated tales of Mutants who were hated and feared. I set my alarm that night with the intention of waking up at 3 AM and completing the Mars assignment before my class began at 8:30 AM, a feat which would have easily accomplished had I not unintentionally set my alarm for 3 PM the next day. I awoke the next morning to the sound of my parents preparing for work at 6 AM, which at once registered to me that I had failed to rise at the intended time and that I had an extremely limited amount of time from which to prepare the presentation. Jetting around the house as stealthily as possible to avoid alarming my parents, I managed to secure an empty shoe box which I imagined could suspend in its vacuous interior an orange I had taken from the fridge by a piece of yarn I took from the sewing materials of my mother. Having been unable to construct the model before I caught the bus to school, I attempted frantically to piece it together through the rhythmic shaking motion of the Big Cheese but realized in consternation that I had not obtained the means to secure the yarn to one inner side of the box nor the means to secure the yarn to the orange. When I arrived at school, the elaborate model and presentational designs of other students struck me repeatedly like a boxer who had quickly gained the advantage and, like one who sadistically continued pummeling an opponent even after the declared KO, I was unable to construct any model more impressive for the assignment before I heard my teacher call my name to begin my presentation. I stood up in the front of the class, the girl whom I had broken up with facing me in anticipation that I would confirm why she ever liked me, and held up the box I had brought with me. Inside the box, the orange rolled around lazily in response to the gravity of Earth, impotent as a symbol to convey relevant information about the planet Mars; information like how Mars was suspended in space around the Sun, how its size and relational distance to the Sun compared to other planets, or even simply (as the fruit reflected orange light instead of red light) the color many people would cite as a common titular reference to Mars as the "Red Planet". I stammered through the few uncertain facts I had attempted to memorize about Mars, the while trying at once to display and obscure the destructively insufficient model I had created. This markedly unprepared presentation having been completed, I shrank back into my desk. Increasingly millisecond by millisecond I felt an awkward silence condensing in the room around me, as if the room were a bowl containing a liquid gelatin mixture which was congealing in the cold response to my presentation. The girl I had broken up with was flushed in the face and avoided revealing her embarrassment for me by similarly avoiding eye contact with me. Nervous giggles bounced around the room like 25 cent rubber balls with impossible momentum. The teacher looked sternly at me, as if to confirm that every one of those ballistic giggles should strike my face as red as that of the girl avoiding my gaze and the surface of the fourth planet from the Sun. She then pronounced in earshot of every tympanic membrane of the local universe, "Phillip, I am disappointed in you."

"Christie"

When I was about nine years old, I was handed a note from a female classmate while walking back from lunch. As I looked down and saw it was, indeed addressed to myself, and more importantly, from "Christie," I immediately felt flushed, as Christie was one of the most attractive and popular girls in the class and would have never been someone I imagined "going with." As soon as I could reasonably justify a bathroom break, I fired my hand up and was mercifully excused. I hurried out the door, down the catwalk, into the boy's bathroom, bolted into the nearest stall, slamming and locking the door behind me. As I looked down, my hands shaking in still-confused excitement and anticipation, I tore the note open, and read the following, from "Christie": "I drawed this pictur cuz I love you," written in jarringly terrible handwriting. Instantly deflated, I tumbled back to Earth.

The attached illustration of what I could only imagine was meant to be a representation of myself - essentially the classic stick figure with exaggerated facial features and elongated digits, more typical of drawings of four or five-year olds, helped me connect the dots. The note was indeed from "Christie," but unfortunately not the cute, popular one. My "Christie" was an obese girl with severe learning disabilities and a ponderously strong Southern accent. I tried as hard as I possibly could to avoid her gaze when I returned to class, in shame for my hubris and true commiseration with the poor girl, though I occasionally looked up, masochistically I suppose, to catch her discomforting stare. 

Shadow Day

As a sixth grader, my class took a trip to the un-air-conditioned, broken-windowed middle school in downtown Macon that we would all soon feed into. Those of us who were in gifted classes were separated and taken to observe an advanced humanities class after lunch. My "shadow day" experience had been mostly positively up until this point, but as I stood in line to enter the classroom, I was jerked out of line by a large, unfamiliar woman who, in an angry tone, asked me if I had "a problem." As an eleven-year old who was already beginning to experience symptoms of generalized anxiety, I was understandably horrified. I stammered: "Nn...nnn...nooo. I'm sorry, I don't have a problem," pleading in terror and confusion. In response, she leaned in, and said, "Well, you're going to have one!" I was absolutely petrified - I shook my head, hurried into the classroom and sat down without saying another word. "Anxious" cannot begin to describe the way I felt, and although I ended up having this teacher the next year, I never learned what had inspired that terrifying encounter, other than some cruel joke or bizarre intimidation technique. 

(Wo)Men

One day in the 7th grade, I was struggling through a class day with a particularly pernicious bout of diarrhea. I had an exam after lunch and was confident that by this time, I had the diarrhea under control. However, shortly into taking the test the need to evacuate my bowels of some ineffable nastiness became increasingly potent. I was nervous about asking to adjourn from the classroom during the exam both because my teacher might think I was trying to escape her attention in order to cheat on the exam and because the act of leaving during the exam would draw the attention of other students to just how badly I needed to relieve myself. Additionally, a girl named "Stacey" with whom I had long been childhood friends and on whom I had recently developed a childhood crush sat directly in front of me. These anxieties about having to pass the noxious intestinal equivalent of a thin french onion soup only served to increase the evacuative urge. As a result, I began passing aurally muted and nasally repulsive bursts of gas from my posterior. As little as anyone else, I did not want "Stacey" smelling these bursts and by now the evacuative urge had become undeniable. I awkwardly shifted around "Stacey" to clear the desk aisle, the gas inflated posterior of my jeans moving directly past her face and nose, and walked as inconspicuously (as my swelling embarrassment would allow) to the desk of the teacher. I made my request to use the bathroom to her. She fumbled thunderingly through her hollow metal desk drawer for the hall pass before locating it. After she handed it to me I exited the classroom in the same manner through which I had approached the teacher's desk. The click of the classroom doorknob that indicated the door had fully closed also functioned as the tensely anticipated pistol shot of a competitive sprint. As if the evacuative urge was another racer against whom I was competing to first cross the finish line, I sprinted down the hallway and ducked into the first bathroom I found. I was relieved to find the bathroom vacant and I entered the second stall. The explosive and sonorous contents of my bowels having been expelled, my short term memory suddenly reminded me that the bathroom I had entered did not have urinals on the walls. As I quickly assessed the relevance of that detail, I heard the giggling voices of pubescent girls entering the same bathroom that I had...

The Bus

One of my first weeks as a Freshman at UGA, I found myself chasing down a university bus in a frenzied attempt to make it to my astronomy class on time. It was a giant lecture-format class with several hundred students - attendance taken every day - and anyone arriving late had to enter through an extremely loud and disruptive door at the front of the lecture hall. Suffice to say, as a freshman barely a week into my college experience, the thought of that was insufferable. So there I was, backpack filled with way more books than I realistically needed to bring to class, sprinting towards the UGA bus as it began to take off. Waiting at the stop, presumably for a bus to take them to the sorority house, were a bevy of beautiful coeds. As I glanced at them for a moment, I lost my footing, and tumbled forward, doing at least one awkward somersault as a result of my over-weighted backpack. Looking up, I first saw my bloody knees and palms, then the bus slowly taking off, and finally, as I turned to my right, the half-concerned, half-amused faces of the sorority girls. All I could think of to say was, "Damn, that hurt." A few girls laughed. Most were confused. I made it to my class about 20 minutes later, to the quips of my astronomy professor and laughter from the audience.

A few years later, one of my closest friends had a much more harrowing experience with a UGA bus: he was given a ticket for jaywalking as a result of being struck and jettisoned several feet after failing a test and distractedly walking in front of the behemoth's warpath. The same guy who had earlier broken his arm while ringing the Chapel Bell and later by punching a mutual friend in the face, walked away from this particular incident completely unscathed. Very odd, I remember thinking.

"Laytonya"

Many of my friends and even family members have called me "Lay-tonya" or "La-tonya" over the years as a nickname, without knowing or remembering the origin of that particular moniker. On the first day of tenth grade, I came into my new homeroom to find that we had all been assigned seats; however, I could not find mine. I looked around for a couple of minutes before coming across a desk with an envelope addressed to "Laytonya Smith." After verifying with the teacher that, yes, my name had been incorrectly recorded as Laytonya (apparently someone in the front office thought my name was a typo), I proceeded to open the envelope to find an invitation to participate in the Miss Teen Georgia pageant, along with all the other girls in the class.

The Tornado Drill

At the beginning of seventh grade, I was lucky enough to date one of the pretty, popular girls for...like 3 days. Between awkwardly talking over the phone for a few minutes a couple of times and being too nervous to sit with her and the other cool kids at lunch, it was certainly a magical few days. Then, one day during a tornado drill, while hunkered down along the wall with everyone else, covering my head, I heard the whispers and giggles as a note made its way in my direction. Knowing she was not far down the line, I shot my glance down and prayed it wasn't what I knew it probably was - a breakup note - sure enough, my friend elbowed me: "Hey dude, I think this is for you."

/awkward

The Constitution

In elementary school, one particularly cruel teacher had a favorite punishment that she loved laying on us at every opportunity: handwriting the U.S. Constitution in its entirety, including a few pages from our textbook with background information. Altogether, it was usually 15-20 pages handwritten, and took a few hours. Of the various reasons I received this punishment over the course of the year, a few come to mind: going to the water fountain when two people were there already (it was the first day of school and I didn't realize this was a rule so I was made an example of), flipping through the dictionary pages "too loudly," and getting up to get a pencil from my book bag.

Allergies

I hate allergies. A few mornings ago, I sneezed so hard in the shower I rocketed myself through the curtain, colliding with the toilet, breaking its seat and lid off. I have a massive bruise on my side and now I have to spend ten dollars at Walmart on a new toilet seat.

In high school, my allergies were so bad one Spring that I had to carry a sock in a Tupperware container to blow my nose in, because I had to do so more frequently than I could realistically get up during class to get a tissue.

Go Dawggs......oh God, my wrist!

The scene: particularly rowdy UGA football game, student section. The good: UGA won big time. The bad: at a moment of particular exhilaration, a fan threw a FULL 32 ounce stadium cup from the upper deck, which struck my wrist like a missile as I celebrated the play that inspired the cup's flight. The visual contrast between me hunched over in intense pain and, literally, every single other person around me jumping up and down celebrating was humorous to say the least.

/ouch

Picture Day

On the morning of picture day in fourth grade, my cat jumped on my face while i was sleeping, causing her claws to slash all the way across my face...definitely had to actually be turned sideways for my yearbook picture (my mother was understandably horrified).