Spirit Weak

Welp, Spirit Week just ended at my school. About time. You see, the whole thing was pretty much an exercise in pointlessness. What is this? You get a bunch of teenagers, tell them to wear the most ridiculous outfits imaginable, and tell them that it “builds pride in your class”. Well, I don’t know about you, but I would have a lot more pride in a school whose students didn’t dress like morons.

Monday: Western day

Ugh. Monday’s bad enough without being surrounded by people shouting, “Howdy!” and wearing hats clearly created a a joke. Most people wore jeans and flannel, the itchiest material known to man (besides burlap), as well as a cowboy hat they got when they were four. Be aware that, under New York State laws, about half of these people can legally drive.

Tuesday: Twin day

Today, the object was to dress exactly the same as somebody else. Granted, we do this every day, but today we made a big thing about it. Now, not to be sexist, but the males and females all wore things along the same lines: The guys all wore either jeans and a nondescript shirt, whereas girls wore entire outfits designed for the specific purpose of being worn on this day (for example, I saw two sets of Doublemint Twins). Notice the alliteration. (Tuesday-Twin) I used this in my argument for Miniskirt Monday, but this particular request was turned down.

Wednesday: Class day

Today, each class had to wear a different thing. Unfortunately, most of the cagegories were really, really generic, which meant that everyone in a particular class wore variations of the exact same thing. For example, the freshmen had to dress as nerds. They all -every last one- wore a plaid shirt tucked into jeans, and accented with large glasses. The sophomores had to dress as superheroes, and so all wore a cape. The juniors had to dress up “in a futuristic manner”, and all wore tin foil. The seniors had the theme “party animals” and all wore either a single party hat, or an extensive, expensive, full-body animal suit… with a single party hat.

Thursday: Dress to impress.

We had to dress to impress. This meant either black, white, or beige, and included pants, a jacket, and a dress shirt. This is logical. I wanted to do this one, if only because we actually looked respectable. But I couldn’t. See, the last time I had to “dress to impress” was at my friend’s Bar Mitzvah. in 2006. The only thing that fit me was a black shirt I vaugly remembered buying, and I just wore the darkest jeans I owned on the basis that they looked like dress pants to anyone who had been blind since birth. As someone remarked, I was “dressed to depress.” Ha. Puns are funny.

Thursday, part deux: Boneheaded American almost fractures wrist.

During a commercial break during the Colbert Report, I decided, out of nowhere, to try and balence myself on a basketball. This struck me as perfectly normal at the time. Don’t even ask. I almost got it, but then the basketball, totally ignoring my instructions, flew off to the side. I fell squarely on my left hand, which didn’t hurt so badly except for the fact that my wrist still hurts, three days later, and that all the blood and air rushed out of my chest, so I almost fainted, and that I ended up missing the rest of the show. Damn.

Friday: White and Maroon Day

Our school colors are white and maroon. Now, these are actually pretty badass colors, but after careful comparison I feel that black and maroon is just so much more so. Ah, well. Today sucked. For one thing, everyone was chanting either two- or four-syllable chants that convenitently required little brain activity to come up with or remember. They were all making a really big deal out of the Homecoming game, which was apparently between my school and this huge rival. Or something. I don’t really care about football teams; to me, I only watch football to watch football. The actual winner or losing of the game is irrelevant. This, presumably, is not the approach taken by most people. So, here I am, with my wrist pulsating, enveloped in a sea of maroon and white, with people shouting and high-fiving (ow) all around me. This, or course, culminated in a pep rally.

Now, pep rallies were events designed in 1939 by Nazi scientists who wished to weaken American culture to the point where it could be easily beaten by a stick. Unfortunately for them, we had control of various forests that produced synthetic rubber.  But we still were unable to defeat them quickly enough to stop the pep rally from permeating our country.

You see, as far as I can tell, the object of pep rallies is to see which school has the loudest, most obnoxious dicks. There were people running around, screaming and hitting things. People jumped up and down on bleachers. Air horns, and whistles, were blown. People disrobed and painted letters on themselves (however, pep rallies also lower IQs to the point where people cannot remember which letter is supposed to stand where, so you would end up with, say, NISERSO where SENIORS should have been)

Even worse, this pep rally was a semi-mandatory event. I was almost going to be among the lucky ones who managed to nonchalantly sneak out of the school, until a screaming, shirtless dick grabbed me and – this is true- shoved me into the gym.

In case you were wondering, my school won both the football game and the loudest, most obnoxious dick contest.