My good people.
On Tuesday, I witnessed the smarmiest, most unrepentantly rank speech I have ever seen in my teaching career. It was so irredeemably repugnant, so gallingly putrid, that at times it almost rose to the level of art.
The assignment was the farewell address, which is an opportunity for seniors to reflect on their formative years as they prepare to graduate—in terms of academics, activities, relationships, interests, and the like—and present these well-formed and organized ruminations to the class. Many students use the opportunity to talk about an aptitude or pursuit of which many of their peers may not have been aware. Others talk about drug-addicted parents, profound losses, and even psychological struggles of their own. Still others confine their remarks to lighthearted remembrances of the ordinary vicissitudes and occasional monkeyshines of adolescent life.
And then there are those who are seemingly engaged in some sort of unseen scavenger hunt to cause the most offense, draw the deepest gasps, and elicit the most soul-sick groans from the instructor.
Me.
Allow me to hit the highlights of Tuesday’s final speech in my final senior class of the school year. I have inexplicably changed the names to protect the vile. So let’s call Tuesday’s presenter Ignacio Boondoggle.
The speech, it goes without saying, received a grade of zero. And while there were some innocuous reflections and even some sweet moments, they were drowned out by the relentless flood of foulness recounted below. Some of it is nearly amusing; some of it is vaguely troubling; some of it is downright disturbing. All of it is profane. You have been warned.
- The speech began with Ignacio's exhortation to the class to “settle the fuck down!” And settle the fuck down, they did.
- Ignacio lamented that he didn’t have a lot of pictures of him and his friend Travis Banjo because “we’re not gay.” He later reiterated the statement, lest anyone misperceive their special relationship.
- Ignacio reported that he and Travis would often engage in a “ball-grabbing war” to pass the time, and that often, when one of them was feeling down, they would just “grab each other’s balls” to lift one another’s spirits.
- Ignacio also reported playing “The Penis Showing Game” when bored in class. (Apparently this game originates from the film Waiting.) Bart would show Ignacio the “Bat Wing”; Ignacio would show Bart the “Shy Turtle.” This would be done at the most inappropriate moments possible in order to enhance their enjoyment of this pastime.
- Ignacio likes to get, and be, naked. He met his good friend Bart when he screamed “Group hug!” in the showers one day after gym class. Bart was the first (and only) respondent to Ignacio’s invitation.
- He frequently plays strip rock-paper-scissors and admitted that quite probably—on a subconscious level—he purposely loses these games so he can remove more clothing. Ignacio also reported getting in trouble for a nudity-related stunt in chemistry class last year: he climbed inside a cabinet and pressed his bare buttocks against its glass doors, giving the teacher (and his peers) an unwanted show.
- Once, in accounting class, the teacher was conducting an exercise and needed a fictional name for an imaginary checking account. Ignacio obligingly supplied “Gum Cuzzler,” and the teacher began writing it on the board. Once she realized the suggestive intent of his suggestion, the teacher sent Ignacio from the classroom. “I got in trouble for that one,” he recalled blithely.
- Reported playing “Smear the queer”—in which a target is identified and all others attack him—when he joined the soccer team in high school. He helpfully had this phrase in his PowerPoint presentation so there would be no question as to its proper spelling and usage.
- A portly young man's shirt ripped during gym class and his “boob” came out. Ignacio threatened to “titty-fuck” him. (At this time, I interrupted Ignacio to ask him if he remembered the conversation we had last week, in which I cautioned him against including inappropriate content in his speech and he had promised he would tone it down. He said he did remember, and he would tone it down. But by this point he was like a runaway train of ribaldry. He could not—would not—be stopped).
- In Ocean City, Ignacio, Travis and Bart spent the time “trying to pick up fat chicks.”
- Ignacio made reference to a film called Two Girls One Cup, and the fact that it changed his life. (The film's title also graced a PowerPoint slide.) A cursory Google search indicates that the film is actually the unofficial title of the trailer for a scat-fetish pornographic film called Hungry Bitches. If you don't know what “scat-fetish” is, you are lucky, and you should not find out. The appearance of the title and mention of the film was met with uproarious laughter from many of the boys in attendance. (There is apparently a spate of videos taken of people’s reactions when seeing the video in question for the first time. Search “2 Girls 1 Cup reactions” on YouTube for examples of this fascinating phenomenon. My favorite is also from one of my favorite musical groups of all time, hip hop giants The Roots; be warned, you need to turn down your computer’s volume, because there is lots of horrified screaming. None of these reaction videos shows the actual pornographic clip, rest assured.)
- Ignacio stated, in a matter-of-fact way, that his prom date this year was a “whore.” Just as notably, he seemed untroubled by this young lady’s apparent harlotry.
- Ignacio admitted losing many leg-wrestling matches at family functions because he was competing against “grown-ass men.”
- Ignacio's penultimate slide read as follows: “Your only young once so fuck shit up.” - Albert Einstein. I have several problems with the inclusion of this quotation: first, some in the audience apparently believed it was plausible that Albert Einstein had uttered the phrase attributed to him, which their bewildered questions revealed; second, the use of ‘your’ where ‘you’re’ would have been proper proves that my efforts to teach Ignacio the difference between a possessive and a contraction were an utter failure; third, I quit.
- The slideshow—and his speech—closed with a self-portrait which Ignacio had shot the previous evening. It featured Ignacio recumbent on a bed, completely nude, with a blanket covering his groin. At this, I sprang up from my seat and turned the computer projector off. Though the photograph was not revealing in any specific way, its horrifyingly suggestive tone—and its subject’s unmistakably lascivious gaze—were very much the last straw for me. In so many ways.
- After the rest of the class had left and I was still reeling from what had just happened, Ignacio approached me gingerly, said he was sorry that things got out of hand, thanked me for putting up with him all year, and gave me a tender hug. And with that, he was gone.
Never shall I forget that speech. Not if I live a thousand lifetimes, not if I have ten thousand more students. Notwithstanding any hypnotism, primal scream therapy, traumatic brain injury, or other Eternal Sunshine-esque method of targeted memory erasure I might visit upon myself. Never.
And so I ask those of you who are not in the education field: remember well what I have told you, and consider gently the grim task of the teacher in dealing with these sorts of tom-fools.
Thank you for your time. I am getting an early start to summer vacation.
Monsoon