The English Major

It's another month, dear reader, and one of my favorite: May. April showers will now start paying off and bringing May flowers, inspiring all of those hippy pussies and various forms of sexually repressed young men and women to try their hand at poetry. Community colleges and local bookstores will then collect these mediocre attempts at rhyming and publish them in their annual poetry and creative writing collections, wastes of paper that will go unread except by those who knew the right person to get something in and get their nut by seeing their name in print (ever notice that guy breathing really hard at the library printer? He's not masturbating, he's a published author!). All of this springtime creativity brings me to one of my favorite topics in all of academia, the English major. Why do I feel entitled spend an entire blog post ranting and raving about them? Because, sadly, I am one.

Coming up in school, several things became apparent. 1.) I had no aptitude whatsoever for math and science. When you're still using your fingers for simple subtraction problems in a high school algebra class, you have to accept the fact that you will not be going to space with NASA in this life. 2.) I was not good at sports. Besides denying you a career as a professional athlete, this is typically an indicator that you will not become skilled in hand to hand combat, which is the real reason for having sports, and therefore will not be of much use in the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Secret Service, CIA, FBI, NSA, NASA (aliens), police, or any of the inherently violent professions that are really cool. 3.) I could read. 4.) I was "sensitive". This category is typically judged by the number of times you cry silently into your pillow a week after school/masturbating, and the number of female "friends" you have that have not and never will touch your genitals, but have figured out that you will give them attention in a laughably non-threatening way. Put all of this together, and what do you get? A liberal arts college English major!

Now I could go into a great number of instances where I proved my weak constitution with flying colors (the rednecks at the truck stop referring to me lovingly as a "story faggot"), but instead I believe the best way to demonstrate just how true all of the stereotypes are, I will tell you about a classmate of mine. As in most college level English classes, the ratio of girls to guys is about 20: 3, two of which will inevitably be homosexuals and best friends with all of the girls as well as the professor. In one particular class I happened to have a young fellow who fit the following description: curly, black unkempt hair; heavy, heavy amounts of chest, arm, and facial hair which typically reflected his mood; a morbidly pale complexion, except for his cheeks which were perpetually flushed; black, thick framed glasses; typically wearing the same exact clothes every time you saw him, either an incredibly tight graphic t-shirt or a paper thin button down shirt that looked like someone had died in it before he wore it, cargo shorts or dirty jeans, and Birkenstock sandals. His voice was an unpleasant mumble with the vaguest hint of a recently conquered speech impediment and a demeanor that told of missed sexual opportunities. Now I say all of this not out of meanness, he's a comrade in literature; but I only give you all of this detail because it helps to illuminate two memorable incidents from this semester.

Story number one: There's really not much to this one, basically he came to class one day and smelled bad. I was sitting in the back of an American literature class when he rushed into the room exactly fourteen seconds late to class. No big deal, but it had obviously pushed him close to the brink. He sat down in front of me and furiously tried to copy down syllable that came from the professor's mouth. I continued drawing my mechanized dragon that I had been working on all week and didn't think anything else about it. All of a sudden, my nostrils were assaulted by what can only be described as sour trash rubbed in wet yak pussy. I made a gagging noise that interrupted the class and had to do the classic shirt over the mouth and nose trick. Within a few seconds the horror passes, luckily, and I was able to resume breathing. But after a few more minutes, the putrid stink of a deceased hobo came wafting back my way. Looking around for the cause of the evil, I quickly discovered that the smell came when a gentle spring breeze came in through the open window, swept across this unwashed nerd, and then came plowing into my face. I also noticed about that time that he was sweating profusely, the back hair sticking up from his shirt was thoroughly matted. My guess was that he had stayed up the majority of the night working on the latest installment in his ongoing fantasy novel, and had woken up too late to shower before class, thus excreting all of the Mountain Dew and beef jerky from the night before through his pores. There was a point during the next hour of torture that I honestly contemplated killing myself, between his stink and listening to another slob ramble about how "postmodern" she thought the story was.

Story number two: for our last class of the semester our professor invited us to his house for refreshments while we watched the last few people give their final presentations. I showed up first to my surprise, and had to make small talk with my professor about the weather while hoping he wouldn't notice that I was high and praying that more people would show up soon. Finally enough of our class arrived that we could take our seats in his living room and begin the presentations. But right before we were to begin, in bursts smelly kid. I'd seen that he had chosen the paper thin button down and shorts for this fancy occasion. But I also noticed that he was absolutely soaked through, the shirt now more like a suggestively see through stripper's garment, revealing his once again matted chest hair. It had been raining most of the day so no one though much of it at first until the professor asked, "Oh, is it raining still?" To which the boy responded, through heavy breaths, "No." Apparently, possessing a GPS device, but no form of modern transportation and not enough social skills to ask for a ride, he had decided upon the most obvious course: running the 4 and 1/2 miles from campus to the professor's house while holding the GPS for directions, which, because of the near 90% humidity caused him to become nauseatingly soaked with sweat before arriving at the home. I shuddered a little. But, thankfully, he was the first one to present! And I have honestly never seen anything like it. What started off as a vague examination of commercialism in a short story that he muttered off unintelligibly while staring intently down at a crumpled piece of notebook paper turned slowly into one of the greatest tirades against capitalism that I have ever witnessed. Well, at least one of the funniest. As he spoke, he managed to catch his breath, he grew more impassioned, he grew more bold, he spoke more forcefully, he gestured wildly with his hands about the room. He went on for a good ten minutes, ranting and raving against the evils of a capitalist society, all the while still sweating profusely and not noticing that his nipples were clearly visible through his now invisibly wet shirt. He finally drew to an incoherent close, coming down off of his high, and whimpered something about the need for all of us to see the truth all around us. The room sat in complete silence, stunned by what we had just witnessed, not sure how to react. A slow clap was established and as he took his seat I definitely saw his lip quiver just ever so slightly. The class continued, and we all moved on (aka stared at the monumental set of boobs on the girl with the lisp) and most people forgot about what we had just witnessed. But not I. For me, the whole incident was a much needed reminder of the incredible service the English major serves in our institutions of learning. It provides an outlet for the energies and attentions of the most deranged, maladjusted, self-aggrandizing weaklings of our society; people who would otherwise be carving dolls of their mother out of bars of soap or shooting John Lennon. So next time you're in an English classroom, just take a look around and realize that all of those unstable people, back in colonial times, would be living out in the woods hoping for you to get lost and ask for directions so they could show you their manifesto and undergarment collection... and would probably then rape you. Just be glad we give them something to do now.