22:02 - May 23, 2002
outlawing mario
My ______ Day, by Hannah E. (fill in the blanks, kiddies! profanity allowed!)

I haven't truly been at school for the past week or so; when you're a senior it's esy to orchestrate this. Sign up for the field trips. Find scholastic reasons to visit your grandmother at twelve. Volunteer for silly things like speaking at middle schools, but in this case Be Sure To Get All The Information Correct Even If Your Teachers Are Complete Idiots And You Have To Ask Them Eighty Million Times, because get this: Fodor says to meet at the P.E. Office, one p.m. No problem. I'm early. There at 12:45 because I'm not about to go to band for eight minutes. Nobody is there. Hallway deserted. 'Out to Lunch' sign on the door, literally. I think: maybe they meant the Athletic Office, so I find the Athletic Office (incidentally, the two are nowhere near each other) and sure enough, there's a big group of kids slouching around on the floor and in some chairs. 'Where are you guys headed?' I ask them.

'Timber Ridge,' one of them says after a few seconds.

'Do you know where the Haven group is?'

'Oh, they pushed it back an hour. Come back here at two..' the kids says.

Okay. I go out to my car to get a book to read until then, running into an issue with Big John The Security Guard on the way. ('You can't go outside.' 'I have to get my backpack.' 'You have a class.' 'I'm excused.' 'How do I know that?' 'Ok. That's nice. See ya in five.' Stomp. Slam.)

Anyway, I get back to the Athletic Office around 1:15, and sit around reading Trainspotting for 45 minutes. 5 past two, I get worried. 'Should they be here?' I ask the secretary. She tells me to go out in front of the gyms to see if the van's there. Incidentally yet again, the gyms are nowhere near the Athletic Office either, so I tramp across the school out past the gyms, getting into issues with Barbara Johnson The Senile Substitute Gym Teacher on the way. ('Where are you going?' 'Out.' 'Mr. Richardson's class is in the Field House.' 'I'm not in Richardson's class.' 'Yes, you are.' 'No, I'm not. I don't have gym this period.' 'Then why are you here?' 'I have to find a bus.' 'But Mr. Richardson's class isn't finding any buses....' 'Ok. That's nice. Bye.') There are no vans outside. There is only Mr. Romaine The Associate Principal, so I ask him if he knows anything about a field trip. 'Duhhhhh,' says his face. Okay then. I head back to the Athletic Office. Again.

'They left without you. Take your own car,' says the office secretary when I walk in.

'Fine and dandy, except when I tell the security guards that I'm leaving in the middle of my scheduled Spanish class without any sponsoring teacher to take my own car to my own middle school to talk about I don't even know what, they're going to LAUGH IN MY FACE. Any other ideas?' I say, in one breath.

'A pass,' she says, blinking. 'I'll write you a pass. I'll call the Safety Office and write you a pass.'

She calls the Safety Office. The Safety Office tells her it's against the school rules to let me leave. She calls my dean. My dean says he doesn't care one whit and to write me the pass and if security has a problem, they can just blow it out. Nate's at the door when I show him my pass, and Nate couldn't care less either, so I am on my way to Haven, finally, and I pull up and park (illegally) in the circle driveway.

The assembly is in full swing when I burst in at the front doors (babbling over the intercom to the main office that I don't have TIME for a visitors pass, I'm alumni, '98, so take that....) and into the auditorium doors, and down the auditorium aisles and damn this place is tiny, look at this tiny auditorium, and Mr. Futransky (who? they said Brinkworth!) is saying something about there having supposed to have been a girl here talking to them about marching band, but she didn't show, and I am down the aisle in a flash taking his microphone, to the laughter and applause of 300 8th graders.

At which point I realize I don't know what I'm supposed to be talking to them about.

Mr. F whispers in my ear, 'band, Hannah! band!' and I blather endlessly for about ten minutes about the transition and the color guard and the football team and the formations and I forget to be nervous again. At the end I take a sweeping bow. Some kids there remember me from elementary school; they yell 'Hannah the pianoman!' and whistle. Sweat drips from my hair. I am not taking the van back as Mr. F insists. 'School rules, eh?'.... well, I am not taking any school van back to school in order to call my dad downtown and have him take the train back from work in order to get his car and pick me up from school and drive me to Haven so I can get my car and drive it eight blocks away to work. No. I am eighteen years old and I can get behind the wheel of my own vehicle if I fucking well please.

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My take on Nintendo, swiped from my recent conversation with Mike: DanceWiThePanda [10:07 PM]: you pull up weeds to get extra lives! you eat magic mushrooms!
DanceWiThePanda [10:07 PM]: i mean, forget the fucking purple teletubby. this is way more suggestive.
DanceWiThePanda [10:10 PM]: and if you stomp on a turtle, their guts fly out of their shell and start walking around?
DanceWiThePanda [10:10 PM]: hit your head on a brick to earn money?
DanceWiThePanda [10:10 PM]: ride on a big green dinosaur?
DanceWiThePanda [10:10 PM]: i mean, completely.
DanceWiThePanda [10:11 PM]: catch a fly and steal its cape, become magical Flying Mario.
DanceWiThePanda [10:11 PM]: walking on the clouds, etc. (Hey! You! Get offa my cloud! don't hang around 'cause two's a crowd... get off my cloud.)
DanceWiThePanda [10:13 PM]: walk in the door... turtle is big. big evil mushroom goomba! walk back out.. everything is small. don't get eaten by the giant piranhas in pipes, kiddies!
DanceWiThePanda [10:20 PM]: outlawing drugs aint the way to fix things. if they had any sense, they'd outlaw mario.

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