I'll Call When I've Got...No Class

I spent the last 3 days in a continuing-ed class for my job. No matter how many of these things I take as an adult, I always revert back to being in school as a kid: sit down, shut up, and don’t mess around with crap. But everyone else just strolls around, brings in chips, yammers away etc. Me, I’m in the corner assuming that someone’s about to start screaming at me any second. I have begun to notice throughout the years however that in every class, there are some of the same fucking characters that keep popping up. Such as:

1) THE GUY THAT ASKS A THOUSAND QUESTIONS. We all know how these classes work – you gotta do them for your profession, to cross them off on your to-do list to keep whatever license current. So you show up, sign the attendance sheet and get the hell on with your life. Even the instructors are like “I will try to get you out of here early if we can cover the material.” Which means “I’ll stand here and talk for a few hours, and if you let me run through this garbage as quickly as possible without fucking bothering me we can leave in time for you to get home and rub one out to the Tyra Banks Show.” We all know this and respect it. But there’s always ONE jackass who wants to fucking ask question after question and so then we don’t get out early. The class is fuming at him, the instructor is staring at him and trying to shut him up using a jedi mind-trick, but the dude won’t stop asking questions. But the best part is, they're not even good questions, it’s not about concepts – it’s always him latching onto one question and then WANTING TO PAINT EVERY POSSIBLE SCENARIO!!!!!!! If you’re a pet groomer, for example, it would go like this

Instructor “…as so, when washing animals use soap and water…”
Guy: “what about horses? Should we use soap and water for horses?”
Instructor: “Yes, of course, soap and water for horses. So, as we-“
Guy: “I’ve got 2 dogs, what about them? Soap and water for them?”
Instructor: “Yes. Dogs too. Now, if w-“
Guy: “What about hamsters?”
Instructors: “Yes. (icy ‘please shut up stare’ now settling in). Now, -“
Guy: “What if I wanna wash dogs AND hamsters, should I use soap and water?”

You get the picture. Meanwhile every fucking inane question he asks adds onto the class time, driving you insane with rage. Your only hope here is that someone confronts him in the bathroom during a break and tosses him out the fucking window. Otherwise, a 4:45pm stop time means 4:45pm. Unreal.

A close cousin to this jackass is the middle-aged woman who wants to regale the class with anecdote after anecdote of every fucking thing her company has even done, every case that has ever come up. SHUT UP YOU OLD BAG!!!!! This person also needs to be “dealt with” during a break.

2) THE LEADER. There’s always some dude who, within the first hour of the class, steps in and says something almost intelligent. Everyone quickly assumes this guy is some sort of expert in the field, and as the day goes on they defer to him and ask him questions etc. You can see this guy come to life all of a sudden – one morning he wakes up desperate to hang himself in his room (i.e. his parents’ basement) cause he’s 42 and the last date he went on was prom with his Aunt Gussie, and now here he is in a room of people looking at him as if he’s Ron Jeremy at a dick convention. New life!! The best thing to look for here is the next day, when he shows up in some new “trendy” clothes, maybe some sunglasses et al and really tries to milk this moment for all it’s worth. Good for him, cause in a matter of hours it’s back to Bay Ridge to scrape mama’s feet. But what a run!!!

3) LATE METRO GUY. This is the douchebag that strolls in an hour late – the class is settled in, it’s quiet etc. Now this guy comes in, finds a chair and then spends half an hour unwrapping himself. First while standing in the middle of the room he’s gotta carefully take off his $800 leather jacket and fold it like he’s in the fucking color guard at Arlington so he can lay it on the next desk. Then he sits down and starts ripping through his paper bag (all, mind you, while the instructor is talking) and now we gotta watch him lay out his latte, his mango-pineapple juice, and his fucking egg-white & cream cheese bagel while he text-messages everyone he’s ever known on earth. He doesn’t think for a second “maybe I should try to be as quiet and inconspicuous as possible, since, after all, I did insult these people by wandering in an hour late like a fucking asshole” like a normal person might, he just snorts and huffs his way through everything, oblivious to the 100 eyes staring at him. He’s probably glad he’s getting to showcase his newest button-down shirt with a VERY high collar and unbuttoned cuffs that dangle at the end of his arms. Fuck you.

4) THE FRIEND OF THE INSTRUCTOR. As you go around the room in the beginning, you say “Hi, I’m Kieran, I work for blahblahblah” and there’s always one guy that actually works on the outside with the instructor, which he happily points out. Number one, this guy is almost always gay. I don’t know why, it just always works out that way. “Hi, I’m Tommy, and I actually WORK with Paul, hi Paul! (big wave).” Now this jackass feels special, and throughout the day he’ll jump up to assist, and make inside jokes and make knowing “oh, we know this, don’t we buddy” looks to the instructor throughout the day. Not that you really care, but it’s one more thing to aggravate you as you sit there all day locked up in class while your friends are at Happy Wong’s Ass Club getting happy endings in the back while eating themselves out of a mountain of pork fried rice. Do you need this? No. The only redemption is the next day when it’s a different instructor and the dude looks crushed a he becomes just another shithead with a desk.

5) THE OLD-TIMER. This is a guy that was in the business 100 years ago, and has decided for whatever reason to “get back in the game.” His main look is utter confusion and he doesn’t believe a fucking word anybody says. “What? You think you can sell widgets for $100? No way, no way young man. When I was at the top, you were the king if they sold for $25!!!” Meanwhile of course things have happened in that interim – the Cold War, the European Economic Community, Pluto has become a planet etc. He’s incredulous and leaves every class shaking his head knowing we’re all crazy. Luckily he’s been up since 5am so by 3 o’ clock he’s totally bushed and can barely keep his eyes open, so he eventually shuts up.

6) THE HI-LITER. This is always a young girl who, upon being given a textbook or any printed pages of info immediately begins highlighting everything on the page. “oooh, yes (hi-lite)…ooooh, yes (hi-light)..” til before you know it 95% of the page is in neon yellow. I’m like hey dumbass, the purpose of a hi-liter is to make certain sentences STAND OUT; now when you look at a page it’s the un-hi-lited stuff that jumps out. Idiot. And yes, I have no idea if it’s “hi-lite” or “highlight” or “high-light” or “kiss my ass”, but there ya go.

7) THE ONE HOT GIRL. There’s always one, and only one, smoking Hot Girl in class. She sits at her desk, oblivious to all the dudes trying to catch her eye. It starts with you trying to catch her eye, stealing glances at her while the instructor blathers. Pretty soon you realize all the other dudes are trying to do the same thing, so you find yourself darting eyes at THEM to let them know “hey…dibs.” So now we got about 80 eyes spinning around in everybody’s heads. To the instructor we must look like lunatics, or like Japanese anime – I’m waiting for an instructor to all of a sudden drop to the floor with a massive seizure, like those kids in Japan. So it goes you try to eyeball hot girl/every other dude does too/dudes eyeball each other/BAM!!!! Hot chick leaves with Late Metro Dude. FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This reminds me of a story, actually. My buddy Ryan and I went down for my little sister’s college graduation a few years back, and of course everybody got wasted/had a great time etc. At the end of the night Ryan and I were gonna share a bed in my sister’s room when in came this WASTED smoking-hot chick, whom we shall call, let’s say, Doris. She comes in all happy-drunk and immediately deposits herself in bed between Ryan and I and falls asleep. Now, me being a guy, I of course thing “hot girl in bed…well, I better stay awake in case she wants to, you know, do it.” Cause you know, if a girl wakes up in the middle of the night with a coupla strange dudes in bed with her, she’s prolly gonna want to have sex, and I don’t wanna miss out cause I’m sleeping. I figure a night of missed sleep is better than her saying the next morning “Gee, I woke up and wanted to have sex, but you were asleep so me & Ryan did it for 3 hours. Boy, you can sleep through ANYthing!” So I laid there all night, eyes wide open and every move/breath she took “ooooh yeah…here comes the fucking!!!” What an idiot. Of course, the next morning I find out that the whole night Ryan was on the other side of her, eyes wide open, doing the exact same thing. Hot chick sound asleep in the middle with two jackasses staring at the ceiling with hard ons. Typical.

8) THE SLEEPER. By mid-day there’s always one guy, whom you’ve seen struggling the whole time, finally hit the desk with his head and fall asleep. He will start snoring softly. We all crack up, even the instructor gets in on the act and cracks a few jokes, it’s all funny. After a few hours, the guy wakes up startled, we all have a laugh and the instructor says something “funny” like “Welcome back!” or a self-depricating remark about how boring his lecture must be. This, so far, is okay. If you’re the sleeper guy you get a pass – but if you’re the SECOND guy to fall asleep, you are not cute, you’re not funny, you’re just an asshole irritating everybody. Finally the instructor will snap at someone “hey – wake him up!” Not so cute this time around, little man.

There are, though a few people I would like to see in a classroom next time:

- The hot chick that wears a tank top/no bra and always has a nipple peeping out. That’d be cool.
- A dude that just can’t stop farting. How amazing would it be to have a dude cut one every 15 minutes. “sorry.” “sorry.” “whoops, that’s me, sorry.” I could die happily after that.
- Wheelchair guy. Dude in a wheelchair comes rolling in, knocks over desks trying to parallel park in a row, and refuses help of any kind. We’d all have to sit there and pretend we’re not staring as he knocks over everyone’s coffee and extends our day by an 2 hours. Super-bonus if he and the fart guy are the same person.
- Woman who insists on bringing in sweets for everyone every day. “I baked some cupcakes last night…” whatever happened to these women?

A final note on these classes: Breaks. These are for the people that literally have no fucking life to go home to. The instructor will always say “Ahhhmm, do you wanna take a break, or should we go straight through?” meaning “we can be out by 2:00 if you stay put.” But no, the class ALWAYS chooses for fucking breaks (AND an hour lunch!!!!). So the guy will reluctantly say “…okay. Let’s be back in 10 minutes.” Me, I don’t leave, I sit in my chair and try esp to force my will on people “sit down!! Let’s finish!!” Plus, I’m always terrified that if I get up and leave, go get some water from the water fountain, when I come back I will be greeted by a locked door with my stuff thrown in the hallway outside “you’re late, fuckface – blackballed!!!!” and I’ll hafta spend the rest of my life cleaning up 3-grade puke on school buses. BUT, OF COURSE, every fucking break is extended cause people without fail stroooooolllllll back into class a few minutes late, knuckles deep in another bag of Doritos without a care in the world. These people complain about being there, but then use every opportunity at their disposal to drag it out. Unbelievable. It’s the same thing if you go Greyhound – whenever I ride from NYC to DC, as we get near the Baltimore Travel Plaza the driver will ask if we wanna push through, or take a break. You can guess what the vote is. So he’ll say “okay, be back on the bus in 30 minutes.” I’m fuming cause we’re only an hour away, but these jackasses wanna stop for half a fucking hour. And then you know me – I think I have to be an Olympic sprinter, or I’ll be watching the bus pulling away. But I’m maybe starving, so I get off the bus, and it goes like this: SPRINT to Sbarro oh god, 3 people in line will take forever no time SPRINT to KFC fucking hell no time no time SPRINT to the vending machine and in a total panic buy purchase some Combos, of which I’m better off chewing on the back of the bus seat in front of me, SPRINT back to the bus and quickly find my seat, throw myself down in drenched in sweat and check the time and we only have…28 minutes left. Jesus Christ. But of course 30 minutes isn’t enough for these people, and it’s apparently against the laws of mechanical engineering for this bus to start moving again unless we’ve spent an extra 15 minutes waiting for people to wander back onto the bus, in absolutely no hurry at all. I’m clutching my fucking bag of Combos, keeping them in my jacket pocket so it doesn’t take up any space on the bus, and these people come back on the bus with three course meals fucking spread out. Buckets of greasy chicken, baked ziti in tin pans, unbelievable. NO hurry to get where we’re going. Same thing with class, these people are in NO hurry to get the fuck home.

So that was my weekend, people. Be glad it wasn’t this coming weekend, where I’d miss the first round of the tournament. Then I might have gotten a little pissed.