Hating the Past: Foreign Language

If you are apart of the we are in America, speak English crowd like me, you probably loathed forced language classes in middle school and high school.  It's always more challenging to learn things you have no interest in, but foreign languages are nearly impossible to learn when you not only don't care but are fundamentally against the course itself.

In middle school I took two years of Spanish for the first time and hated it.  Year one was rather basic and my teacher was moderately attractive so blow ups were few and far between.  Year two Spanish was rather annoying because my Spanish teacher doubled as my homeroom teacher.  You can imagine how annoying this might be.  I didn't really care for her and I put up with alot less shit then.  It was obviously bad seeing her twice a day especially when Spanish class seemed to overlap into homeroom. We had it out a few times.

On the first day of class we were told that we would be picking Spanish names to replace our real names for class.  The teacher would call us our Spanish names and it would be fun!  At least that's what I now suppose the idea was.  This did not go over well with me.  My name is Kevin.  Not Carlos. I'm American and not Spanish.  I'm also not Chinese and named John that would be weird.  So the teacher hands out a list of names and tells me to pick one off the list.  Per usual I suggest something off the list.  "Can I be Magglio?"  "No please pick a name off the list."  It would have been cool to be Magglio Ordonez, but I'll settle for Carlos Lee I thought.  This was well and good for a couple weeks until we had to start writing our Spanish names on our tests.  So after the first test didn't go so well, I didn't want to play her games anymore. 
"Carlos, can you write this sentence on the board?  Carlos doesn't answer.  Carlos, can you write this on the board?
"My name is Kevin.  I don't want to be called Carlos anymore." 
"Everyone in my class goes but a Spanish name."
"Why?  This isn't Spain, this is America and I'm an American and I want to be called by my real name" 
"These are the rules of my classroom, and everyone seems to follow them but you.  Now please write this sentence on the board."

This is paraphrased because my memory isn't quite that sharp but stay tuned for Part 2 of the story know as the Pete Rose incident.

Hating the Past: Adolescence

It was 6th grade in Mr.Houdart's class (he's an ass or maybe was) when I first realized I was losing my grip on some of my friends. Some kids were so afraid to tell each other who they liked. Everyone said Aimee Stahl as far as I can remember. Some kids started dressing differently while I still rocked sweat pants because I was more concerned about recess than anything else.
Needless to say middle school hit me like a ton of bricks. Despite awkward warnings issue by my dad when he had me isolated "you know boys and girls are going to start kissing," or this gem "girls are going to start to grow boobs". It was as hilarious then as it is now. I'm sure it was difficult for him to bring it up.

I entered middle school to find hundreds of new students and a ton of girls I couldn't talk to. Some girls that knew me before asked why I was so quiet all the sudden. IT WAS AWKWARD. I didn't know how to handle things. I didn't watch MTV, live on AIM, or shop at Aeropastle. As far as I was concerned wrestling was still cool and ESPN was the only channel that mattered. Shopping for clothes didn't sound like much fun. I was hesitant to change and didn't know what to do about the pimples on my face and back. A landmark victory in middle school was working up the courage to speak to Alyssa H*rn or sneaking a peak at Christina T*rtu's panties (locker next to me). I was always trying to find my traction in middle school but it came and went in two years and I had to start all over. It wasn't until my junior year in high school that I started to look normal and assemble any kind of idea of what was going on.