Saturday, March 1, 2008

Freaks

Is every creative writing class full of Freaks?

Oh, come on, Julie. You're being judgmental, one of those girls who presumes to assume she is NOT one of the freaks, and sits, flattened against one wall of the classroom, heatedly scribbling down all kinds of wretched, unflattering descriptions of the Affected sitting around her.

-First, the pink-shirted, wire-rimmed glasses-sporting econ major, who is burning with so much passionate political activism that he is two seconds from wearing a sandwich board around campus over his LandsEnd backpack, and who couldn't write anything remotely entertaining if he tried till his eyes popped out, who critiques my hometown essay like it's the dejointed rough draft of a fourth-grade ESL student. And like he's God's Holy Gift to editing. Hey, he has tiny teeth and one or two commas TOTAL per five-page paper, but it's not like I'm judging HIM for those personality flaws.

-Then, there is an assortment of engaged people, two girls, one boy, and also three married girls. The engaged guy, always in slick, slightly-too-small navy blue button-downs, used our sonnet assignment to propose to his future wife. He took her to a rustic bridge in Provo Canyon (so many of those around there), recited the poem, and then she cried and fell into his waiting arms. At least that's how he told it. This is the slightly doughy guy, always wide-eyed, who spends the entire class period typing really really really loudly on his laptop, and who lets out a soft cry of amazement at his own brilliance every seven minutes or so when he has written something obviously and predominantly life-changing.

-Of course, there's the standard Creative Writing Class Girl, two of them, the ones with long, tangly, mousy tresses that reach at LEAST to their bum and that perpetually cover at least one half of their faces. They saunter heavily into class, in their scary, wide, black construction-like pants and black t-shirts. They've got the silver chains from belt-loop to belt-loop, millions of them, different sizes, chains I could never figure out the purpose of. These are the girls that are constantly sketching those anime women with huge boobs and huge eyes all over their assignments and swirling their pungent hair all over the place. All of their writing, whether poetry, essay, fiction, or other, is chock full of phrases like "shining dagger", "sparkling water", "wisps of raven-black hair", "withered, bleeding hearts", and other jewels of the English language.

-There's the boring but occasionally entertaining assortment of people who are Biology or Chemical Engineering majors taking the class for a GE and who sit completely terrified through each class period, silent, sweating it out that they may, at one time, be asked to give a comprehensive thought on something involving the wide world of creative literature. These are the people who write essays with titles like "My First Bicycle" and love poems with titles like "Love Poem". If and when one of these people is called on, he or she gives an ugly, high, nervous laugh, reiterates for about the seventeenth time that they're "just a _____ major," and then his or her head explodes, to the delight of the rest of us.

-Finally, there is the guy everyone knows is probably the unibomber. This is:
1. The only person in the class who can actually write.
2. One of the most intimidating human beings in the world, probably preordinated to be the next dictator of a small country in South America, although he is not from South America or of any South American type of descent.
He's in a button up shirt and dirty blazer, and thinly-worn jeans, his prematurely graying, three-inches-too-long hair and four-day stubble obviously not square with the honor code, but everyone is too pee-their-pants frightened of him to say anything. No one really knows why he's so terrifying, but he emits this stank, stank intellectual and political odor of knowing way more about absolutely everything than everyone else in the classroom combined. He's not often in class, and when he is, he's usually muttering to himself and jiggling one of his legs impatiently, even when he's half asleep. A smell-wave of unwashed sock falls gently over a six-foot radius around the jiggling leg, and after experiencing it once or twice, each individual in the class, besides the other smelly ones, have learned to sit on the other side of the room, else they be torpedoed with the sock-waves, as well as the "you're way stupider than me" ones.

Geez.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

#1- you are an excellent writter little miss julie!
#2- this was very very true- i quite enjoyed it!

Lanée Jensen said...

laughed out loud.

@emllewellyn said...

Sometimes I wish I could be as good a writer as you. Cue sighing.

Interestingly.... I wrote something for my class (who hates my writing, it turns out) and your thoughts (read: unadulterated praise) would be appreciated:

http://metaphorik.blogspot.com/2008/01/psychobilly-freakout.html

Anonymous said...

Yeah, I had a creative writing class at the beginning of first semester and I dropped it. You should have told me you were taking one. I would have taken it with you.
I forgot about the "wisps of raven black hair" thing. Although you forgot the heavy use of pop culture. I HATE THAT!

Heidi said...

I have really long hair and I wear wide-leg pants lately (because I want to dress like Greta Garbo for some reason) and I write cliches sometimes...I'm one of THEM! ACK!

*reaches for razor*

Casey T. said...

brilliant