This one's a USC story. Not South Carolina, I'm talking about what "clever" people call the University of Spoiled Children, and still cleverer people call the University of South Central.
To put this in a time-frame, this was back in the days before almighty Trojan football. Back then, USC's strategy was to lose every stinkin' game. And those players were really good at losing. All except Keyshawn Johnson.
I mention Keyshawn, because it represents the sum total of my football knowledge. That's right, I don't know shit about football. To USC alumni, this is far more difficult to come to terms with than, for example, the fact that I can't taste or smell. It's much more disturbing. Heck, I was even in a fraternity. It just doesn't make sense. And I figure, it's not worth ruining their universe, so I just pretend to like football, and I can do that, thanks to Keyshawn. Here's how it works:
On learning that I went to USC, a stranger will say something really specific about some recent game that I know nothing about. (Are we in football season now? Fuck if I know.) I'll agree, but soon it will be expected for me to say something about football. At that point, I'll make a joke about how bad SC was back when I was there, and then I'll say, "except for Keyshawn." Then I'll make a face like I'm remembering how great it was to watch Keyshawn, maybe I'll whistle or something, and suddenly I'm friends with the stranger, and not expected to discuss football anymore, having passed the football test. So thank you Keyshawn for your help fitting in to society.
Anyway, that's all just background. What I really wanted to talk about was the parking situation at USC and an incident that involved my car. Here goes.
Back then, even though it was a different millennium, USC was very progressive with the price of parking passes, charging 21st century rates. I don't remember the specifics, but I think it was something like fifty bucks a month (yikes!). I conducted a study (not an intentional one) on how frequently the on-campus parking enforcement people actually ticketed cars, and discovered that paying in advance for parking was almost (though not quite) more expensive than paying after-the-fact.
So what I needed was a place I could park legally when I wasn't in a hurry, to offset the frequent illegal parking. Enter my "Super Secret Amazingly Close To Campus and Yet Still Nobody Knows About It" parking spot. That's a long name though, so for reasons we'll get to, let's call it Die Hard.
Die Hard had several advantages and disadvantages, some of which I've hinted at already. Here are the pros and cons of the parking spot:
Advantages:
No tickets
Close to campus
Always a parking spot available
Disadvantages
Car gets broken into, without fail, every single time you park there
The disadvantage was admittedly annoying. Each time I'd park there, someone would come and smash the passenger side window. Then the thief would open the glove compartment, looking for a gun or drugs, but finding only the owner's manual to a '93 Honda, various maps of California, and a few four-colored pens. These items the thief would leave scattered on the floor, atop the glass, presumably disheartened by the experience.
When I would return to the car, I too would be disappointed. And when I'd bring it to my window-replacement guy, he would roll his eyes and ask why I keep breaking my window.
This is all entirely true. And I know you might think me an idiot to keep returning to this parking spot where the same thing kept happening. President Bush once said, "fool me once, shame on -- shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again."
No but seriously, it was hard to believe that this would keep happening! I assumed the thief would learn I have nothing of interest in the glove compartment. And if there were more than one of them, hanging around the same spot (the Die Hard), they'd communicate. Apparently, it never hurts to smash a window and check, just to be sure, so they kept doing it.
This brings us to why I'm calling it the Die Hard. This isn't the kind of street that street cleaners clean. If you dropped trash there, it would stay exactly where you left it until it appreciated in value to the point that someone would pick it up and ebay it. If you left, say, shattered glass, it would simply become part of the landscape, so the ground was pretty much covered in it. (Remember, that scene in the first Die Hard where Karl shoots all the windows out and John McClane has to run around barefoot in the shattered glass, but he still kills all the terrorists, cause he's such a badass?)
In time, I learned that I was being silly to keep the window closed, so when I parked there, I would roll the window all the way down, open the glove compartment, and empty the contents onto the seat. With all the shattered glass on the street, it would look as if someone else had already taken the gun and/or drugs.
For a time, it worked brilliantly. Then one day I returned to the Die Hard, only to find the car nowhere to be found. If you've ever had your car stolen, you know how weird it is. Initially you think, "Wait, did I really park here?" Then you walk around to all the other places you might've parked instead. Then you come back to where your car should be and wonder again, "did I really park here?" Then you check the parking signs to see if it could have been towed, and decide it couldn't have been. Then you decide that indeed, you really parked here and this sucks.
Only I soon learned that it doesn't suck as much as I first thought. It took a police report and a discussion with my insurance company to discover that it didn't suck. What sucked was my beat-up 1993 tan-colored Honda. It being stolen meant the insurance would write me a check and it was time to go buy a new car. That was exciting news, and I started to fantasize about shopping. Could it come with unbreakable plexi-glass? (Or would that just anger them?) I was excited, and I only had to wait a few days for the insurance money to arrive.
Then I got the call. The police. They found my car. It was in Rancho Cucamonga. They wanted me to come pick it up. This would mean there would be no insurance money.
I said earlier that my not being into football can be totally unimaginable to USC alumni, and I know that to people not from Southern California's Inland Empire, the notion that a place named "Rancho Cucamonga" exists (and that it's not, like, a play-area at Knotts Berry Farm or something) must seem pretty unimaginable. But yes, Rancho Cucamonga is all too real, and it's the place the thieves abandoned my shitty '93 Honda, the place where my dream of replacing said Honda died.
When I got to the car, I inspected it for clues. The thieves had taken a crowbar and attempted to pry open the front hood. This produced the opposite of the intended effect, wedging the front hood permanently shut. A better strategy for getting at the engine would have been to enter the car (unlocking the door from the open window) and pop the hood using the lever. What could it mean?
Inside the car, there were Taco Bell wrappers, not just in the front seat, but in the back too. It had been several thieves. There was evidence of a failed attempt at removing the radio: someone had made some screwdriver punctures above it and pried off a piece of the non-removable faceplate.
I was seeing a pattern that could only mean one thing. These guys were idiots. Idiots from Rancho Cucamonga. The cops called them joyriders, not car thieves, and refused to investigate a clearly visible thumb-print on the rear-view mirror, since I had already recovered the car.
On the way home, I pulled into a mechanic to investigate why the temperature gauge was running so high and why the car was making such strange noises. Turns out, it had something to do with a blown head gasket. So maybe these guys weren't joyriders from Rancho Cucamonga after all, maybe the car had overheated and had the last laugh. Read more...
[DISCLAIMER: I've gotten some traffic to this story from searches like, "What should I do if I drink pine-sol?" If you just drank Pine-sol, please call 911 immediately. Consuming pine oil can cause injury and death. If you're Googling that because you're considering drinking Pine-sol for fun, you're an idiot.]
This is a story from the summer of 2002. It's not for the faint of heart (or faint of stomach). I was living in Venice Beach at the time, still dating Erin, and what I remember most about the setup here is that it was a hot night, really hot. The Venice apartment didn't have air-conditioning, and generally, you didn't notice, because the beach winds usually kept things cool enough, but not that night. That night was sweaty hot, enough so that I was on top of the blankets, wide awake.
Looking back, it's possible the incident I'm about to describe took place after sex (Erin was over, after all), but I don't particularly remember sex that night, just the heat. I was very dehydrated, so I asked her where her water bottle was. With Erin, you didn't have to ask if she had a water bottle, just where it was. She was a water-bottle girl, always had one nearby. She told me it was on the table.
Actually there were a few tables, a bedside table, a computer desk, and a coffee table by a couch. As far as I can recall, I didn't ask which table she meant, and as you'll see, maybe I should have. I assumed she meant the coffee table. That's where I found it, anyway. A single bottle, the only item on the coffee table. And I began to drink.
This is the point in the story I remember most vividly. Drinking from that water bottle. I was a little dizzy, maybe the result of standing up too quickly from bed. But soon, I realized it was a serious kind of dizzy. I figured drinking water would help, so I kept drinking, but a wave of nausea came over me fast. My body was reacting, convulsing almost. I was choking on the water.
Erin heard my freaky noises and asked what was wrong, but I couldn't answer. I didn't know what was happening and I couldn't speak. She turned on the light and looked at me stunned. It took me a moment to realize what she was seeing, I was drinking Pine-sol.
Before I go on, you may need some background. I have a condition known as Ageusia. It means I have no sense of taste. I didn't lose it, I just never had it. And if you're wondering about smell, the answer is no, I can't smell either. That's called Anosmia. I'll write more about this at a later time, as people usually have a good deal of questions, but it takes us out of the story. For now, suffice it to say, I couldn't smell the pine-sol, and I couldn't taste it. The experience I was having--my body wretching as the liquid passed through--that was probably the closest I've ever come to tasting.
I run to the toilet and throw up. In a few minutes, I throw up again. And again. Erin calls the poison-control hotline, and I take the phone to talk to them in my now raspy voice.
I say, "I've just dranken pine-sol. Can I die from this?"
"How old is the child?"
"I'm talking about me. I drank the pine-sol. I'm twenty four."
There was a long pause, before the poison-control lady said, "Why would you drink pine-sol?"
Usually I'm happy to discuss and explain Ageusia, but this was different. "Can you just answer my 'am I going to die' question first?"
"You really shouldn't drink Pine-sol."
Thank god for experts. By the end of the conversation, I learned that I would be throwing up for a long time, which I sensed already. As long I was throwing up though, things were pretty much okay. Apparently also, this Pine-sol would have really messed with my sense of taste for the next few weeks if I'd had a sense of taste to mess with.
I spent the night hovering over the toilet bowl, with Erin making regular deliveries of water, fuel to my vomit. Once she knew I was going to live, the whole thing became pretty amusing for her. She pointed out that my vomit didn't look like vomit. It was sudsy, bubbly, and clean. "You should vomit on the bathroom floor," she suggested, "and wipe it up between bursts." I was a human cleaning product.
Ever since, and I swear this is true, I have a genuine fear of Pine-sol. I shudder when I pass it in the market. I never buy the stuff. I had a cleaning lady who purchased it once and left a bottle under the sink. I had to throw out a nearly full bottle. And of course, I've learned to put-away cleaning products when not in use. I have to child-proof my place, even though I live alone. How old is the child, indeed. Read more...
This is a story about an event that took place my first year in law school. But first, some background on law school.
Unlike other degrees, law degrees come front-loaded. The first year is when students are the most obsessed, when grades matter the most, when competition is at its highest, and when the world outside law school seems the most distant. First year law students are bona fide crazies. They spend so much time thinking about law that it's tough to remember how to engage in a "normal" conversation with friends and family.
Some of you with other degrees may think you went through the same thing, and maybe that's true, but I doubt it. While you were shooting paintball guns--law students were at war. Was your class rank a specific number, rather than a percentage? Did everyone know your number? Paintball, my friends. Paintball. (Incidentally, this isn't true for every law school. Top-tier schools are generally a little friendlier, "everyone's a winner.")
Here's a video that conveys the idea nicely:
At my particular school, all of the first-year courses fell into this special kind of competitive we've discussed, with one exception: legal research. Legal research wasn't even a full class, it was a portion of the "Legal Research and Writing," class. Whereas the writing portion was graded on a curve, the research portion was pass-fail, so it was cake. And whereas the writing portion was taught by a full-blown professor, the research portion was taught by a librarian, a guy named "Dwayne." (Not actually his name, but I'm not out to embarrass anybody.)
The whole thing was like a "welcome to the library" class, like something you'd take in elementary school, an island in an otherwise big-fish-eat-little-fish class schedule. It was a place where you could turn in an assignment scribbled on the back of a napkin, instead of stressing about whether the watermarked high-quality bond paper was sufficiently acid-free. (Don't even get me started on the proper way to staple. I could write a treatise on the subject, a treatise large enough that it'd have to be held together by a dovetail saddle-stitch staple.)
Each week, Dwayne would give us a little research assignment. We'd have to locate some documents in the library and write the citations down. Most people handwrote their assignments, and most people plagiarized off others in the class. Not me though. I'm a nerd who was going through an Adobe Garamond phase at the time. (These days I lean toward Sylfaen.)
So that's our setting--me arriving at class early, about to turn in a polished research assignment to Dwayne, the librarian. And right before I turned it in, I realized I made a small error. I had typed the year for a citation as "2000," that should have read, "1998." I don't remember exactly how I realized this or what had caused my error. I believe it had something to do with confusing the year of enactment of a statute with the year of the supplement in which the statute could be found. So, I took out my trusty bic four-colored pen, crossed out the year 2000, and wrote in the year 1998, directly above it.
Lets pause for a moment to reflect on four-colored pens.
I love these pens. For a lot of people, they bring back memories of elementary school, but I only discovered them after college. At the click of a color-coded button, the pen offers a choice of black (for general use), blue (signatures), green (comments), and red (revisions). They're refillable and available in both a medium and fine brass point with a tungsten carbide ball. Personally, I prefer the medium point (which comes in the blue barrel), but I like to keep a few orange-barreled fine-points for some diversity.
I chose the color red for crossing out "2000" and writing in "1998." Red denotes error. If you were in that situation, even if you didn't have a deeply ingrained, near-pathological obsession with proper use of four-color bics, you might have chosen the color red, right? As it turned out, however, that decision (red) would lead to a great deal of confusion, soul-searching, and perhaps even the departure of Dwayne from the law school.
Here's how it went down.
Next week, I arrive early for class, and Dwayne hands me the assignment back. I scored a 48 out of 50. Yes, I understood these scores were meaningless--It was all pass / fail. But still, I wanted to know what my mistake had been. The only marks on the page, other than the 48 score at the top, was a "-2" written beside my hand-written 2000-to-1998 edit.
There were two possibilities. Either I had been wrong to doubt myself, and the correct answer was 2000, in which case I could learn a valuable lesson in trusting my instincts. Alternatively, it might be that 1998 was the correct answer, but by manually correcting it, I had made a sloppy presentation, in which case, I could learn a valuable lesson about the importance of style and form. Which was it?
I asked Dwayne, "What was the correct year for question three?"
"1998."
"I see."
So it was the sloppiness. True, I had written "1998," but I had only hand-written it. It was messy. I sympathized with the grading. I didn't like turning in mixed media, handwriting and typed in the first place. But still, you had to wonder if it was fair to lose points for handwriting, when most people in the class handwrote their assignments. So I pushed it a little further.
"I lost two points because I handwrote the 1998 here? Instead of typing it in the original document?"
His answer surprised me: "No Cameron. I wrote that."
That was confusing. I said, "well, no. You wrote the minus two. But I wrote the 1998 and crossed out the 2000."
"No Cameron. I wrote 1998. You had 2000 on there."
Now it made sense. He had made a simple mistake about who had made the edit. In fact, I deserved a perfect score. Things were right in the universe. I just had to show him.
"Listen," I said. "I know you probably graded a bunch of these, and so when you were doing this one, you probably got there and didn't notice--just assumed that you had crossed out the wrong answer and written in the right one. But really, that was me. I wrote that, right before I turned it in."
That's when I learned Dwayne was nuts. Apparently other people knew this about him already, but I didn't. Dwayne's flavor of crazy I would learn had something to do with hostility toward obsessive students. Or maybe just grading. Or maybe handwriting on typed pages. Who knows. Anyway, it was the first time I witnessed (triggered?) a nervous breakdown.
Here are the highlights. I was no longer "Cameron." I was part of "you people." Us people were liars. Us people had no souls. Us people were prepared to do or say anything for a measly two points. Why would us people insult his intelligence over a mere two points in a pass-fail class? Did us people really believe we could talk him into not remembering his own actions? Us people sickened him. By his tone, I sensed that us people couldn't hear very well unless shouted at.
People were starting to arrive, a little frightened by the scene, and that shook him out of it. Dwayne handed me the paper back, and I took my seat without saying a word. He was back to his dull self, ready to engage in a lecture about the importance of italicizing the period in "id." or some other fascinating aspect of legal research and citation, a lullaby for most of the class.
As he lectured, I wondered if there was something I could say to him at the end of class. I thought about trying to make peace. But, then I noticed something important.
In the course of his lecture, he had written 8 on the board three times. Each time, he wrote it in the same way, one stroke, like an infinity symbol, starting at the top, ending at the top, never completely closed. That's basically the same way I draw mine, except my eights are open at the bottom. And there it was on the page in front of me, "1998," with my style of eight. After class, I planned to point this out. I did, in fact, have an immortal soul, and my immortal soul was owed two points.
But that would have to wait until the end of class.
In the meantime, I just admired my 8. Sitting there, I noticed something else about them--maybe something even better than the handwriting. If you looked carefully, the "1998" that I had written was not the same shade of red as the "-2" he had written beside it. I didn't think his "-2" was from a four-color bic. It was more saturated, a little brighter, and a little thicker. Hell, it didn't even look like a ballpoint, more like a roller grip, or maybe even a gel pen.
When class ended, I approached and said, "There's something I want to show you. I'm not interested in points, but I would like to show you that I wasn't lying about--"
"You are unbelievable!" That was how the speech began. I had misjudged, thinking I could sneak in my evidence before this would happen.
This breakdown speech was soon louder than the first. Were were standing just outside the classroom, which happens to be a computer lab in the library. People were watching. And I couldn't get a word in. The speech covered many bases, it wasn't just about the paper. He was unhappy teaching. He was unhappy with his life. And it was the fault of us people. Us people, who bring him every stupid argument in the world for scraps of points and don't care about others. Us people who are prepared to argue that we have exactly the same handwriting--
"It's not the same handwriting."
I sneaked the line in, but he ignored it and went on about the odds that both of us would just "happen" to have the same handwriting and just "happen" to have the same color pen--
"It's not the same color."
That stopped him briefly, and he parroted it back to me, stressing every syllable like a schoolyard bully, "it's not the same co-lor red."
It wasn't a question, but I said, "No actually. It's not the same color. If you'd just look at it..."
He snatched it from my hand, and held it up to the light. I knew it didn't take long to see the difference in the colors. It was obvious. But the moment lasted. He stared at the page, and I stared at him. I remember him breaking first. He eyed the room around him, a computer lab of law students who had stopped to watch him yell. But things weren't going well--he wasn't getting redder, angrier. Or was he tearing up?
He slammed the paper down on a desk and yelled, "That is mostly the same color red!" Then he ran out of the room.
The next day, I ran into him on campus. He was calm. A changed Dwayne. He told me something akin to an apology: He explained that he looked at his books and noticed that other students who got the year wrong were only deducted one point, so he credited back a point. (I considered telling him he had missed the point (sorry), but he was trying, so I just thanked him.)
We talked. He told me he had decided to leave the school. He wasn't happy here. He'd try to find himself a job at another library and had lined up an interview somewhere in San Diego. A new beginning. I wished him luck.
* * *
Mostly is an interesting word. It can be ominous, like when the little girl in Aliens warned that "they mostly come at night... mostly." Or ironic, like the entry for Earth in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, "Mostly harmless." Sometimes, it's a no in yes's clothing. Like when the copilot asks if you remembered to lower the landing gear? "Mostly." Miracle Max put it well, when he said, "there's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive."
For me, mostly is Dwayne's breakdown story. It's about how he was at fault, and I was in the right. How he lost his temper, when I remained calm. How he acted childishly, when I stayed mature. And yes, it's all true. He should have handled himself better. That's the story.
And while I readily admit that things are different now, and those events took place during the emotional intensity of first-year law school, a time when I couldn't be more singularly self-absorbed, it still happens to be true, I was in the right, the one who crossed out 2000 and wrote 1998. At the very least, of that fact, I am sure. Well... mostly. Read more...
Generally speaking, my writing process goes through three stages. First I write. Then I loathe. Then I destroy. It's easy. Write, loathe, destroy. Let me give you an illustration of that, using the short blog entry you're currently reading (which, incidentally, is in the destroy phase). Here's how it originally read:
Short and crappy. Not that I have anything against "short," but it sounds like a commercial, right? Actually, that's not even how it read originally. That was after a makeover in which I attempted to make it useful, since it had failed already to be in any way interesting. Once I had written it, and moved on to the loathing stage, it left me with a real "so what" taste in my mouth. Once that had set in fully, I moved on to the destroy phase. First, by trying to make it useful. Now, by wrapping it in this negative commentary. See how the process works? Write, loathe, destroy.
Now, I will say this. I think this approach to writing has kept me from successfully writing a blog for many years. Don't get me wrong, I've written plenty. But I've done a lot more of phases two and three, the loathing and destroying of blogs. Each time I'd get the itch, I'd start up a blog on another service. Sometimes annonymously, sometimes under my name. After a while, I'd start hating what I wrote. It would all sound like it was written just to be written, not because I particularly had anything to say (phase two), and then I'd get motivated to destroy all evidence of the blog's existence (phase three).
Anyway, here we go again blogging. I'll try to resurrect old posts from the various blogs that seem worth resurrecting and post them with their original dates, but on the whole, it's going to be very difficult to dig up my victims and put them on display.
If all this sounds very self-pittying and depressing, it aint. Really! Frankly, I don't even think it's very unique. My experience with other writers has been that they all have a love-hate relationship to writing (heavy on the hate), so there's nothing new here. In fact, I think on the whole there's something positive that happened here in that I managed to destroy the original post without deleting it. It reminds me of that Justice Breyer quote, "the remedy for speech you don’t like is not less speech, it is more speech."
Now if I can just avoid wrapping this whole entry in a quote and doing it again... Read more...
This one's a USC story. Not South Carolina, I'm talking about what "clever" people call the University of Spoiled Children, and still cleverer people call the University of South Central.
I said earlier that my not being into football can be totally unimaginable to USC alumni, and I know that to people not from Southern California's Inland Empire, the notion that a place named "Rancho Cucamonga" exists (and that it's not, like, a play-area at Knotts Berry Farm or something) must seem pretty unimaginable. But yes, Rancho Cucamonga is all too real, and it's the place the thieves abandoned my shitty '93 Honda, the place where my dream of replacing said Honda died.
When I got to the car, I inspected it for clues. The thieves had taken a crowbar and attempted to pry open the front hood. This produced the opposite of the intended effect, wedging the front hood permanently shut. A better strategy for getting at the engine would have been to enter the car (unlocking the door from the open window) and pop the hood using the lever. What could it mean?
Inside the car, there were Taco Bell wrappers, not just in the front seat, but in the back too. It had been several thieves. There was evidence of a failed attempt at removing the radio: someone had made some screwdriver punctures above it and pried off a piece of the non-removable faceplate.
I was seeing a pattern that could only mean one thing. These guys were idiots. Idiots from Rancho Cucamonga. The cops called them joyriders, not car thieves, and refused to investigate a clearly visible thumb-print on the rear-view mirror, since I had already recovered the car.
On the way home, I pulled into a mechanic to investigate why the temperature gauge was running so high and why the car was making such strange noises. Turns out, it had something to do with a blown head gasket. So maybe these guys weren't joyriders from Rancho Cucamonga after all, maybe the car had overheated and had the last laugh.
I chose the color red for crossing out "2000" and writing in "1998." Red denotes error. If you were in that situation, even if you didn't have a deeply ingrained, near-pathological obsession with proper use of four-color bics, you might have chosen the color red, right? As it turned out, however, that decision (red) would lead to a great deal of confusion, soul-searching, and perhaps even the departure of Dwayne from the law school.
Here's how it went down.
Next week, I arrive early for class, and Dwayne hands me the assignment back. I scored a 48 out of 50. Yes, I understood these scores were meaningless--It was all pass / fail. But still, I wanted to know what my mistake had been. The only marks on the page, other than the 48 score at the top, was a "-2" written beside my hand-written 2000-to-1998 edit.
There were two possibilities. Either I had been wrong to doubt myself, and the correct answer was 2000, in which case I could learn a valuable lesson in trusting my instincts. Alternatively, it might be that 1998 was the correct answer, but by manually correcting it, I had made a sloppy presentation, in which case, I could learn a valuable lesson about the importance of style and form. Which was it?
I asked Dwayne, "What was the correct year for question three?"
"1998."
"I see."
So it was the sloppiness. True, I had written "1998," but I had only hand-written it. It was messy. I sympathized with the grading. I didn't like turning in mixed media, handwriting and typed in the first place. But still, you had to wonder if it was fair to lose points for handwriting, when most people in the class handwrote their assignments. So I pushed it a little further.
"I lost two points because I handwrote the 1998 here? Instead of typing it in the original document?"
His answer surprised me: "No Cameron. I wrote that."
That was confusing. I said, "well, no. You wrote the minus two. But I wrote the 1998 and crossed out the 2000."
"No Cameron. I wrote 1998. You had 2000 on there."
Now it made sense. He had made a simple mistake about who had made the edit. In fact, I deserved a perfect score. Things were right in the universe. I just had to show him.
"Listen," I said. "I know you probably graded a bunch of these, and so when you were doing this one, you probably got there and didn't notice--just assumed that you had crossed out the wrong answer and written in the right one. But really, that was me. I wrote that, right before I turned it in."
That's when I learned Dwayne was nuts. Apparently other people knew this about him already, but I didn't. Dwayne's flavor of crazy I would learn had something to do with hostility toward obsessive students. Or maybe just grading. Or maybe handwriting on typed pages. Who knows. Anyway, it was the first time I witnessed (triggered?) a nervous breakdown.
Here are the highlights. I was no longer "Cameron." I was part of "you people." Us people were liars. Us people had no souls. Us people were prepared to do or say anything for a measly two points. Why would us people insult his intelligence over a mere two points in a pass-fail class? Did us people really believe we could talk him into not remembering his own actions? Us people sickened him. By his tone, I sensed that us people couldn't hear very well unless shouted at.
People were starting to arrive, a little frightened by the scene, and that shook him out of it. Dwayne handed me the paper back, and I took my seat without saying a word. He was back to his dull self, ready to engage in a lecture about the importance of italicizing the period in "