What's in a name?

Generally speaking, I try not to include real names here, because, well—it’s my goddam blog, and I do as I damn well please. However, for this entry I will have to make an exception and use a real surname. I can only pray that you will forgive me.

High school English was a joke. And not only because of my overweight, aging teacher, who will be called OB. With his extensive knowledge of Dostoevesky, but no sense of how NOT to creep out another human being. This man was extraordinary. His face was always glowing red, with buldging eyes, lightly covered by his bright white eyebrows. His hands circling each other, in a hypnotizing notion, as if he was deep in thought, while he licked his lips. This man’s tongue was constantly roaming around his face, as if looking for hidden treasure, or something. He reminds me of the wolf from little red riding hood, only instead of eating the elderly he taught us how to properly place pronouns. All his eccentricities aside, he had one clear defineable feature. Whenever emotion overwhelmed him, whether it be laughing hysterically, getting furious, or simply thinking too hard, he began to shake. I mean this man went into convulsions. He was like one of those massage chairs lining the hallways of malls, only instead of inserting a quarter to make it shake, a one-liner, or an act of disobedience would do.

The point is, when this man was not shaking or acting like a child molester, breezing around the room looking for his next victim, we had no use for him. If he was not entertaining us, we were not paying attention. Naturally this only led to more hysteria, picture the scene. Children not sitting at their desks, paper airplanes being thrown across the room, endless chatter. And at the front of it all, our failed conductor, was poor Mr. OB, casually shaking, waving his arms at us like Frankenstein, trying in vain to calm us down.

OB: (casually shaking) Guys, guys, come one. Come on, pay attention. Pre-fixes and suffixes serve entirely differen—

A rolled up piece of paper is thrown across the class and hits him square in the head. Chuckles are held back from various points in the room.

OB: (Begins shaking uncontrollably) Face frozen, eyes wide, body vibrating like a mattress at a cheap motel.

The classroom erupts in laughter, children fall off chairs. OB becomes more traumatized, resulting in a continued, more extreme case of vibrosis. The vicious cycle continues.

My favourite OB incident occurred when a student I will refer to as DumbStudent, because, well, he was a dumb student, thought it would be funny to imitate OB. When OB left the classroom, he put his arms outward in the Frankenstein pose, widened his eyes, made a low mumbling sound, “uhhhhhhhhhh” and began shaking uncontrollably. Naturally we found this hilarious. That is until OB re-entered the room. DumbStudent then turns to see what we’re all staring at without ending his Parkinsons fit. Needless to say, the shock of seeing this re-enactment causes OB to go off on his own vibration fit. So there we stood, a group of us in shock staring at these two vibrating disasters. A 17 year old boy facing a 50 something year old man, arms facing each other, wide eyed, vibrating like we were in the middle of an earthquake, both letting out the same familiar buzzing noise. “Uhhhhhhhhhhh”. The awkward silence that followed will haunt my dreams forever.

But I digress, for this story does not come at poor OB’s expense, it comes at mine. It was a typical day in English class, OB distracted with a student, or a bagel, or his medication, I can’t recall. A group of us sat around, trying to burn time by shooting the breeze. I can’t remember how we got on the topic but we were trying to convince a friend of mine, BetSheCanDoThis, to tell us her middle name. For one reason or another she refused. No matter what we did or what we said, we just couldn’t get her to tell us her god forsaken middle name, and this angered me. I was now on a mission, I WOULD find out that middle name, even if it meant pulling out the big guns. Now, you have to realize that I pride myself on loyalty and honesty, and one thing I will never do is betray someones trust, and I try not to lie. But this occasion required some serious action, and I thought it vital to go against something I told my father I would never do, I was going to reveal his middle name. I sat waiting and listening. I waited for that perfect moment when BetSheCanDoThis was being totally hammered, when she was on the edge and just needed that little extra push, I waited until she had convinced herself that she had the most embarrassing middle name in the history of middle names. And when that time finally came, I was ready.

I lean forward to capture the attention of the group, I speak emphatically with my hands, and I’m sure to annunciate…every….word. I say this with a tone of disgust in my voice, that sounded like someone just told me they impregnated their own grandmother with the seed of Satan. And I say it loud.

Ving: You think you’re name is bad? My dad’s middle name is Hymen!!!!

Now, this comment alone is not all that bad…unless you’re my dad, but sitting directly beside BetSheCanDoThis is another classmate, PerfectHiney. Of course PerfectHiney is not her real name, but is a description of her perfect hiney. I don’t think she’ll ever read this blog, so I think it’s safe, but if she ever does, I think she should know. PerfectHiney… you have a PERFECT hiney. I love you. Now back to my story.

The fact that this girl had a perfectly sculpted rear is not her only mentionable characteristic. As I said before, I do not like to reveal real names, but must for the sake of the story. PerfectHiney’s full name was, you guessed it, PerfectHiney Hymen. I can only describe the moment that followed my comment, as some people laughed, some wondered, “what IS a hymen?,” and the others very slowly looked at me, then very slowly turned their head toward PerfectHiney. Needless to say, this alarmed me.

PerfectHiney then stares right at me. She stares into my soul. She sees every wrong I’ve done, every lie I’ve told, and she’s my face begin to turn red as I realize what I’ve done.

PerfectHiney: “MY NAME IS HYMEN!!!!”

Hi, welcome to hell, I’ll be your guide for this evening.

How do you respond to that? I mean, what could you possibly say in this circumstance? Is there anyway to possibly not make things worse? Yes. There was one thing I could do, and dammit, I did that one thing like my life depended on it. I casually stood up, and tucked my chair back in. I silently sulked across the room, careful not to look back. I pulled out a chair on the otherside of the classroom, and sat intently staring at the wall, until I could assume everybody had forgotten the entire incident. If I only had a ‘dunce’ hat.

Welcome to the land of shame and regret. Population: Me.

I can only assume OB was shaking in laughter at the entire incident.