Suburgatory (20 page)

Child Precocious in Sarcasm

Suburgatory, USA—A local child has both impressed and alarmed his teachers with his precocious fluency in sarcasm.

Tex Holter attends the Mason Elementary School. His teacher, Jared Bauer, is bowled over by his abilities and describes the first time he became aware of Tex's sarcastic talents.

“He's
six years old.
And yet he overheard me saying Principal Massey accidentally sent out an embarrassing personal e-mail to the whole staff and, without missing a beat, said—I shit you not—‘Awkward!' and walked away.”

At first, Bauer and others thought it was a fluke, but it was not.

“One day a specialist came in to help one of the disabled kids in the class. This specialist is just a bumbling idiot. Of course, what do the kids know? Well, one of them knows; Tex Holter knows. He sees her and says, ‘Oh great,
that
one.'”

But Holter's strange fluency in sarcasm has a serious downside. It sets him well apart from his classmates, according to Bauer. “These are six-year-olds. Their idea of a joke is to put the word ‘poop' at the end of every sentence and then say, ‘Get it? Poop. Get it? Poop. Get it? Poop.' Again and again. That's normal—and annoying after a few minutes, by the way—but the kids love it and laugh and laugh. So what does a kid like Tex do with that? They keep yelling ‘poop!' in his face waiting for him to laugh and he just says, ‘Talk to the hand.' So yeah, he's become a total outsider and we're worried about him. And I shouldn't have said ‘a kid like Tex.' I've never met another one like him. I've seen more albinos than I've seen this.”

The school took action to help protect Tex, allowing him to join the teacher's lunchroom. Now he has become fully conversant in school gossip and has become such a welcome source of humor among the teachers that they would be sad to see him go. “We know, we know, he needs to negotiate how to get along with his peers, but when I told him once that he was my own personal Jay Leno, he just gave me this stare and said, ‘I'm with Coco,' meaning I had insulted him by choosing Leno instead of Conan, who I guess he thinks is far superior. Oh God, I laughed so hard.”

The school felt it was crucial to pull Holter's parents into the mix to try to understand what's going on with their son. So Ben and Teresa Holter came in for a talk with teacher Jared Bauer.

Jared:
So I just want to say that I love having Tex in my class and he's a great kid, but he seems to have this unusually, um, developed way with humor, a kind of sarcasm that is very atypical for his age.

Teresa [rolling her eyes]:
Right, we wouldn't want him to excel in anything, just try to make him mediocre like the rest of them.

Ben:
Zing!

Jared:
Ummmm, OK . . . it's just that his strange, I mean, extraordinary ability is causing him social problems.

Ben:
Oh, like Bill Gates had problems? Yeah, he turned out just
awful.

Jared:
Sorry? Not quite understanding either of you.

Ben:
Are you new here?

Jared:
Huh?

Ben:
Great, you're going to force me to speak in your language with all its ugly directness. We as a family are fluent in sarcasm, it's our primary language, our culture, our mother tongue. Tex is just doing what he was born to do. So what do you suggest be done?

Jared:
Wow. Weird, never heard of this one. Well, I think we need to stop accommodating for Tex's “different ability” and force him back with his peers, or he'll never learn to speak and interact well with kids his age.

Teresa:
Yeah, it's always been my dream that Tex think up the wittiest poop joke; yours too, Ben?

Ben:
Harvard weights quality of poop jokes right alongside SAT scores.

Jared:
Listen you two, Harvard's a long long way off. Right now I just want to make sure Tex makes some friends and finds a supportive group to thrive in.

And with that, Teresa began a “slow clap.”

As the meeting ended, Jared Bauer said, “Wow, that was brutal. What's cute and funny on a six-year-old is pure D-Bag on a forty-year-old. I'm going to help Tex with every fiber of my being to knock some of that smarm out of his system. ‘Culture,' my ass. Poor kid!”

Bauer has his work cut out for him. When he told Tex that he could no longer have lunch with the teachers in the faculty lounge, he added, “Tex, we just think it's best for you to be with kids your age, to try to fit in and be with the regular boys.” Tex stood there, in his ironic
Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner
T-shirt, and said, “Epic FAIL.”

Mom “Never Yells” at Kids,
Uses Scorn Instead

Suburgatory, USA—A local mom prides herself on never yelling, preferring to use pointed scorn instead.

“Those people who yell, they should be hauled off to protective services. Don't they know what they're doing to their kids? I never even raise my voice when my—” Gina Burke's four-year-old daughter interrupted. “Mama, can I have a cup of water? I'm, I'm thwirsty now.”

Gina took a very big breath, as if winding up, clenched her jaw and slowly articulated each word. “Right, Anna. I would just
love.
To get up. And get you something. Right after I sat down. Right after I
asked
you. If you needed something. It would be
so so
much fun for me. To get up. Again.”

She got up in a huff and continued speaking about the lasting legacy yelling can have on children. “I grew up in a yelling household and I flinch every time I hear a raised voice. I simply never do it, in any context, no matter my frustration level. In fact, I won't let my kids even go to a house where I know the parent yells. My kids would just shut down, crumble.”

In fact, what Gina doesn't know is that she is a mom whispered about by other parents for her “terrifying” discipline style. “I just don't have any reference point for it—I find it astonishing! It's so carefully thought out, and designed for maximum damage, like she's tossing an emotional shit bomb in her kids' faces,” said friend Madeleine Golden.

Said another mom, “In every other way she is Miz Model-Mommy, I mean, she acts like if they were to eat a single non-organic blueberry, they'd keel over and die. But then she talks to them like that? I'd rather send my kid for a playdate with the creepy single guy next door to her who looks like Dog the Bounty Hunter, that's how bad I think she is.”

Back at the Burke's home, Kenneth had just asked his mother if she could buy him a new Lego Star Wars kit.

Gina breathed deep again, and clenched. She picked up Anakin and Obi Wan and quietly but intensely started to playact with them. “‘What do you think, Anakin?' ‘Well, Obi Wan, I think Kenneth is pretty selfish when he knows we don't have the money to buy another Lego set.' ‘Yeah, Anakin, and does Kenneth ever pick up the ones he already has?' ‘No, Obi Wan, he sure is a spoiled rotten Sith Lord.'”

Kenneth just stared at his mother as Gina got up to make lunch. While Anna fussed, Gina said, “This must be why I spent eight years getting a PhD, so that I could cut happy faces out of sandwiches. Dreams do come true!”

At this point, Anna is too young to understand what her mother is getting at, and Kenneth just thinks “Mama is mad.” But Gina's oldest, fourteen-year-old Kendra, fully understands what's behind her mother's “technique.” She stated her take on this: “My mother. Is mad. That we. Ruined. Her professional. Ambitions. We didn't. She did that. Herself. And she. Can bite. My. Ass.”

SHOUT OUT

Join Our Weirdo Junior League!

Jenny Jorgenson is a mom and self-described “freeganista” who lives on Blanco Street.

We, as “freeganistas,” take to the Shout Out today not just to scorn your throw-away culture, with your constant visits to big box stores and relentless focus on regular bathing. We want to win you over, too.

(Just to clarify. We are not “frugalistas,” a term that has been overused to the point of becoming a pathetic Great Recession cliché. Frugalistas, put simply, are pussies. Only when you scavenge for completely free items can you truly disconnect from America's nauseating consumer culture. We are
freeganistas.
Not trite at all, right?)

Though I do enjoy scorning this culture of waste, I wanted to show the human side of dumpster diving and scouring this great town for free items. My freeganista adventures have brought me far more than untold savings and one admittedly nasty case of intestinal worms. Freegan living has brought me firmly into the fold of what I call our town's Weirdo Junior League. Trust me, they're the only people worth knowing within a hundred miles.

The Weirdo Junior League is centered at the town dump, which is in essence a free garage sale. It's stuff that the ­corporate-controlled shopper-slaves drop off—perfectly good items—so they can resume their cycle of shop and dump and shop and dump in hopes of forgetting the futility of their lives and the inevitability of death. Meanwhile, my Weirdo Junior League members are eating their lunch, sometimes literally!

My Disabled Home-Boy

An emotionally disabled man who regularly visits the dump with his aide taught me that the band Journey is a great unifier; I was afraid he was going to wrestle that
Frontiers
cassette out of my hand (being a freeganista means, of course, that your decade-old car still has a cassette player).

The Vagitarian

Her bumper sticker says,
I'm a Vagitarian.
Even better would have been
Pussy. It's What's for Dinner.
I saw her once at Dunkin' Donuts, so she is apparently a Donutarian, too, a proclivity to which I could relate. Did you know that Dunkin' Donuts server Mariela will give you all their leftovers at 6:00 p.m.? And the donuts freeze beautifully!

Now if only we could get the gay guy in town who has the bumper sticker,
Rock Out with Your Cock Out,
and our little Weirdo Junior League would be homosexually complete. I should be honest, I have never had the balls to talk to the Vagitarian, because she looks a little mad all the time. Sometimes I'm a real bottom that way. Maybe she needs more veg. I mean, Vag!

Haunted House Guy

Every town's got at least one, right? This guy's “home” is packed floor to ceiling with, well, what in the Sam Hill is in there? Oh yeah, crap from the dump. All I know is it's busting out the windows, and no wonder both of his neighbors have their houses on the market. He's one of those crazy people who is sweet and exasperating in equal parts—also grimy, which I love, and buoyant. And he has a real touch with kids, finding magic everywhere in the unexpected. If he wasn't so clearly deranged, I'd have him babysit.

Beryl the Yenta

As a daily attendee at the dump, Beryl is like the Elder Stateswoman of town secrets. One man's trash is another man's treasure? Actually one man's trash is another lady's
gossip.
What do you think happens when an old wedding album tragically appears at the dump? Trust me, word spreads fast—like, Twitter-fast—and she doesn't own a single texting device! If you think you're hiding anything when you dump your crap, just ask Beryl. She could give you a profile of your life like what you might see on the show
Criminal Minds.
Seriously, it will make your hair stand on end. Shred before you dump. Beryl's on to you.