School Days

I take a class on Friday mornings now beginning at 8:30 am. It's a little exhausting because I have a class on Thursday evenings until 10:30 pm. But I like the class on Friday mornings. There aren't many people around and the atmosphere is much more laid back.

However, there is a guy in the class who I kind of want to destroy. He is really irritating. I'll call him Fess.

Fess started school the same term I did, and annoyed me the first minute of the first class I ever had with him by asking to partner up with two of the smart guys for one of the group projects, leaving me stuck with an ignoramus and a pothead. The only good thing about it is that I wasn't stuck with him.

He's a goofy looking white guy who wears a baseball hat constantly, has bad teeth and something like 13 dogs. He's married to a woman who was kicked in the head, and fancies himself a photographer. He is always interrupting class to talk about his photography, which isn't good. I want to brain him.

Once he had a hacky sack thrown playfully at him by a kid in the class just because he was talking so incessantly. The instructor was not pleased by the incident and severely reprimanded the kid who threw it. Instead of being a dude and telling her it was no big deal, Fess started making pouty faces and rubbing his head, trying to elicit more sympathy.

Another time, I was having trouble with the computer I was on, and he, unasked, came up and tried to give me advice, even going so far as to TOUCH MY MOUSE!!!!! I realize I am not a fast user of Photoshop yet, but I still manage to do better stuff than he does. He has no artistic talent at all, not even as a hack, and he's really the last person I want advice from.

Unfortunately, he is in my Friday class and bothers me constantly because I'm the only girl.

Slight digression: What is it with guys compulsively trying to impress women? None of the guys in that class ask what any of the other guys think of their work. They ask me. Or rather, they demand that I come look at their stuff and praise it. I wish I could say they were barking up the wrong tree and that I'm honest, but I can't. I usually just say 'very cool' and walk away, even when I hate it. Boys are weird.

Anyway, the project for this class is a package design. We start out with a template for a box, and then design the logo and label for the product package. I haven't decided what I'm going to do, but I made a great template for the type of box I want - an elongated trapezoid. I had just finished, when Fess wandered over after talking at great length about doing box for birdseed in the shape of a birdhouse. "Oh! Cool box! Would you email me that template? I have an idea for it."

"I hope it's for another class," I said apprehensively.

He grinned sheepishly. "Well, I can't find a template for a birdhouse."

"Have you googled 'birdhouse template?'"

"No....."

"Well might I suggest you try? I don't want you doing the same one I'm doing. At least not for this project."

"Okay."

He shuffled off.

But of all the nerve!

On break, he went to go find me to tell me how tired he was, and when I asked him why out of pure etiquette, he told me that he and his wife had engaged in extra-marital activities until midnight the previous evening.

I was pretty sure he was trying to mimic my unusual turn-of-phrase, which sometimes leads to uneducated people saying things like 'extra-marital activities' when they just mean regular old sex with their spouse.

"Midnight, huh?"

"Yeah," he said, chuckling foolishly.

"You better take it easy there, cowboy. You need your beauty sleep. Badly."

He then proceeded to tell me about how most men's sex drives wither after they turn 23 (23?), but how he's goin' strong.

Now I'm not squeamish about sex, but thinking of him in his goofy hat, making love to a woman who was kicked in the head gave me funny feelings that might, in weaker people, lead to a desire for humiliating and deviant acts of sexual congress and cravings for canned meat. Or something equivalently uncomfortable.

Anyway, he is a weirdo, and a hack, and a total annoyance, but as I've just discovered, kind of fun to blog about.