Courting Disaster

A Midwinter's tale

By James Norton

Looking nostalgically backwards, I've found that most of my high school experience thus far has consisted of trying to keep my actual number of minutes spent within school walls to a bare minimum. Study hall? Skip it. Aud? It's Taco Bell time! School Dance? Dash for a cafe. Even as a lowly and miserable frosh, I'd figured out that the best place to be when any sort of school function is taking place is anywhere but school.

At my rate, this survival strategy had been working just fine, for a good seven semesters, when an ominous rumbling shook my cynical little world. During my second hour English class, lots of people started boasting loudly of writing me down as a nominee for Midwinter Court. Cute! Cute. Very cute. I blew the incident off at a case of an isolated group of people acting under temporary insanity, but my subsequent appearance on Court ballots nudged me closer to a little nightmarish vision I'd had, months ago. My vision was very cinematic and terrifying; it consisted of me, onstage kissing a cheerleader, while a phat funky fresh mix of "Woomp! There It is!" pumped and throbbed in the background.

Later voting results led me yet another gigantic step closer to living my dark dream; I was, as they say in Gibraltar, "elected to Midwinter Court."

Pretty obviously, I was in deep trouble, and my options were limited. Being the daring man of action I am, I sized up my choices.

1) Decline effective immediately, for strong political reasons, and call all the Madison papers, or

2) Pretend to go along with Court, get onstage for the skit, and then moon Libby, or

3) Cleverly transfer to another school, or

4) Play along like a cowardly little Swiss milkmaid.

Time for a values check. What would private detective John Shaft do in a case like this? How about MacGyver? Unfortunately, their choices had little bearing on mine; I am no superhero, I am merely a wussy high school student. Play along it was, to the point of clearing up a couple of skips on my record for the previous week, to ensure that I could be humiliated for my classmates' pleasure and photographed to near-catatonia. People don't need photos of me. I'm just damned goofy looking. People should just carry around photos of Sean Connery or Timothy Dalton, or Stefan, and think of me. Anyway.

Things happened quickly after that. The Student Social Committee hounded me for a script and questionaire answers much like the KGB used to hound Soviet dissidents. I had to memorize lines so I could lip synch like a pro. I spent quality time with Libby. Things all paid off, however, when I stepped in front of 1/3rd of the school and made an absolute and complete idiot out of myself.

Spectator 1: I had no idea that Jim could act like such a complete idiot.

Spectator 2: You must not know him very well, then.

Spectator 3: He's doing a really thorough job, isn't he?

I enjoyed the rest of the skits, but I have to admit I found watching Floyd the Janitor sweep up marshmallows a lot more entertaining than seeing Reggie the Regent jump up and down in place like a big retarded bear doped up on amphetamines. Anyway, Hell on Earth in a Gym ended after an indeterminate number of minutes, and I went home and napped, my debt to society paid.