It's kind of amazing how some people at school just don't care if they're poking you, stealing your hat, or putting sticky pieces of paper on your chair right before you sit down, and YOU DON'T WANT THEM TO.
Having been at my school for 3 years, I've acquired some knowledge. 1, people usually have 1 of 3 reasons to annoy you and none of them are justifiable. Either they like you, they enjoy bugging you, or they're exacting their revenge upon you for something you did to them. If they like you, (and trust me, I know this from experience) they will stalk and/or follow you for recesses at a time and could do this every recess for over a year(unless you actully do something about it). If bugging you somehow gives them pleasure, well, who knows, this rarely happens. If they're trying to get revenge on you, they'll probably just chase you with an angry look on their face. This will last 5 minutes.
2, people usually don't care that what they're doing annoys you because, well, that's kind of the point. I have some methods for getting them to stop.
a.steal something of theirs. They will usually agree to stop if you give them back whatever you took.
b.ignore them. Hard, but they'll get sick of it eventually.
c.act like you enjoy it. Opposite effect will ruin the point and they will leave you alone.
d.hide. If they cant find you, they can't annoy you.
So there you go.
If someone REALLY gets on your nerves you can try telling a teacher but, like i said in one of my earlier rants, that doesn't always work.
Sadly, this problem will never end.
*sigh*
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Phil,
ReplyDeleteThe Mariner is excited about this rant.
It's deep, baby. True. Provocative of endless
comment from all of us here on the islet.
Even Piquant and Yambo want to weigh in.
We'll all masticate on it and get back to you
soon-like.
Dig you later,
AM
Phil,
ReplyDeleteSorry I haven't forwarded my encomium on your
most recent rant sooner. Yambo and Piquant
are frantic with excitement because of that new Discovery Channel show about idiots who keep baby monkeys as pets, and so
the two peabrained creatures have been--well, completely unfit to live with, to say
the absolute very least. And then you throw in the fact that now, as a direct result of
Y&P's obsession, the general store here is completely out of diapers, and I think you get a sense of what I am currently up against. Or, buried under.
Especially since the two simians only eat durian.
And yes, I've tried steam cleaning and
repainting the whole house. It's not an answer. After we burn everything, we're going
to have to move.
As I mentioned last time, the two wretched
subhumans have also been cheetering on day and night about your rant. Somehow, it spoke to them--perhaps because they are not too dissimilar in chromasomic makeup from your
(presumably)hopelessly inbred tormenters.
But, despite my global reputation as a expert
prober of primate ululation (see my 1999 book YES I UNDERSTAND WHAT MONKEYS ARE SAYING SO WHAT'S IT TO YOU JACKASS, currently completely out of print and unavailable everywhere)I shall not endeavor to try to translate for you what the dual dingbats have been "saying." It's enough that I rely on them to do my taxes. Whatever advice they have to give you, especially given their recent tumultuous antics, can't be worth tuppence. (I mean, I heard one of them--Piquant, I think--opine that, as soon as possible, you should bring a chainsaw to school. Dr. Phil he ain't!)
By the way, isn't that Discovery Channel show
just frightening? What kind of lamebrains would keep monkeys around the house? What is wrong with people these days?
Anyway: I now call, to the front and center,
your rant.
I first note that, within it, you seem a bit
unhinged, even for you. Statements like, "If bugging you somehow gives them pleasure, well, who knows, this rarely happens," while possessed of a certain coy charm, still seem rather veiled as to their intended syntax and
ultimate meaning--almost as if, to express your total frustration, you hit on the idea of just typing random words out of the phone book, and then triumphantly calling them "sentences," or "complete thoughts."
Question, too: were you perhaps all hopped up on Lucky Charms while writing your rant?
(If so, please don't be mortified--it can
happen to the best of us!)
Confusing, as well, is the relentless motif of confliction in your mini-essay--you know,
your many assertions that your underage adversaries are actually annoying you because they "like" you.
As old Granny Flujub, the wizened crone who
lives around the bend, observed to me when
I presented her with this disconnect, "Let's
hope they don't 'like' him enough to pool their milk money and buy an AK-47! Haw, haw
haw!"
In sum, I feel as though I must spend a lot
more time reading and re-reading your rant--
akin to a Biblical scholar when first confronted with a portion of the Dead Sea
Scrolls. For, in trying to grasp the net
metaphysics of your rhetoric, I am, as the kids used to say, "thrown for a loop."
But, I will persist--and emerge, one day soon, with just the kind of response to it that you have grown used to from me: one that
is simultaneously refreshingly jovial and infinitely forgettable.
Meantime: ask your parents why Cain slew Abel. The answer they give you might encourage you, because I think it has
much to do with the senselessness you are
so courageously enduring.
Speak to you soon, valiant warrior. You are
their better, and your Lancelot-like gleam
will soon win the day.
Your liege,
The Mariner
Phil,
ReplyDeleteWell, I had quite the successful dinner soiree night before last! I invited twelve of my closest friends, and when all of them failed to show up, I dragged in people off the street. The wine flowed freely, because we didn't have any glasses. And, best of all,
we all had course after course of a pretty
darn versatile meat--a scrumptious one, too, when expertly prepared--monkey!
After the party, I gave over all my mental time to your hazing problem. Some results of that titanic but soul-satisfying effort now follow.
---
I recall the early 80s film SHARKEY'S MACHINE, one scene of which has never left me. Burt Reynolds and Bernie Casey, playing
coppers, are getting shot up in a gunfight
with some perpetrators, and both men are
starting to resemble pieces of swiss cheese
rather than men. Burt says to Bernie something like, "This is really bad." And
Bernie looks at him, pauses, and says, "I
remember this movie I saw. This guy, this
Oriental guy, was in real trouble, just like
us. So, he just let himself disappear."
At this, Burt Reynolds looks at Bernie Casey
like only Burt Reynolds can look at somebody.
It's a look kind of like the one you shoot
people when you find out they're not all
tingly about the POTTER series.
But then, a moment or two later, Reynolds
looks for Casey. And Casey is gone.
Later, it's great when Burt asks Bernie, "How
did you do that?" And Bernie repeats, "I
let go." And Burt just looks at him, with an
even deeper Burt-look.
Anyway, here's what I'm thinkin'. You are such
a live wire--so bright, your personality just
exudes from every pore. (Well, it doesn't
do that literally, thank Goodness,
but you know what I mean.) So when these
mini-morons
at your "school" start throwing you around like you was a beach ball, they likely get a huge rise out of the Philip. You probably look like every one of your tightly integrated circuits is about to explode in a firestorm of no-longer-repressed rage and agony and the utter frustration of knowing you are being manhandled by a bunch of utter yahoos who are not fit to run to the store and buy you shoelaces.
And these jokers see it. And they just love
it. To quote Molly Shannon, "They just love
it, love it, love it!"
But, what if you didn't give them that kind
of exquisite satisfaction? What if the minute
they started toying with you, you just thought
of Bernie Casey in SHARKEY'S MACHINE...and
just, inside yourself...
Disappeared?
Oh, sure, they'd still see you. Your frame
would still be in the picture. But they would
also see that you--the "you" we know and
love--weren't EMOTIONALLY there. You'd be a
limp puppet, expressionless, a dishrag.
And then, for them, beating you to a senseless
pulp just wouldn't be any fun any more. Because they wouldn't see you react. Caterwaul.
I can view them now, as such, walking away from
you, thinking, "He's no fun." And then, never
bothering you again.
To quote the Edwin Hawkins Singers, "Oh, happy
day."
Think about this idea, will you? And, for
further dimensionality, take a look at
Matthew 5: 39-41.
The One speaking there seems to echo what
I am saying, doesn't He?
Of course, I am only echoing him. His Wisdom
always works.
Till next time, and I hope things are improving on the daily battlefront,
TAM
Phil,
ReplyDeleteAnd, let me add:
The strategy I just suggested isn't the same
as "ignoring them," a technique you clearly
state you have already employed. It's meant
to be used after "ignoring them" has not
worked, when "they" are instead doing to you
what the Lilliputians did to Gulliver.
Frankly, too, I submit that "ignoring them"
must not be working all that well, or
you wouldn't have penned your latest rant.
Also, I'm a bit down on the idea of your acting like you enjoy being tormented. It's
hard to pull that off, because you really
don't enjoy being tormented.
Also, when you try the "I love this" ruse, they always smell it out, and then they get
mad at you for trying to fool them, and
then they tease you all the more.
Just speaking from my own youthful experience.
With cretins.
No, I suggest the strategy I've suggested
(which is why I've suggested it). It's not
any of the ones you've listed in your rant, and in that perhaps subtle yet not
insignificant difference, lies its
awe-inspiring greatness.
To quote the classic jazz tune ANGEL EYES,
"Excuse me while I disappear."
Mariner