June 15, 2008

• I'm illiterate!

  I admit it. The rumors are all true. I can't read.

  It all started when I was very, very young. My mom held up flashcards with letters on them. In my foolish infant mind, those flashcards looks delicious. I sank my teeth into them, much to my mother's dismay. She gave up on tutoring me. Later, I was able to bluff my way through 1st Grade. It was amazing. Through a combination of cheating, being prompted, lucky guesses and inconveniently-timed bathroom breaks, I prevailed over the education system's attempts to pound "knowledge" into my head.

  2nd Grade wasn't as kind. For some reason, everything changed. "The Cat In The Hat" was no longer the accepted standard for reading. They expected me to read and write unreasonably long words, such as "Everything", and "Sandwiches". Sweet Darwin in Hell... that was a lot of pressure to put on me... a cute, sweet, innocent little child with gigantic Bambi-eyes. I couldn't take it. I tried to imagine I was somewhere else, like inside of a Hawaiian volcano. Then the teacher called me. "Nori." he said, gesturing to me with his bony fingers.

  "I have explosive diarrhea!" I immediately replied, desperately wanting to actually have real explosive diarrhea.

  "No, you don't. Come on up and take some chalk."

  I walked up to the chalkboard in terror. "Please spell 'Chocolate'." he said menacingly.

  I stood there for a minute, frozen. It was like that scene in 8-Mile where B-Rabbit is just standing there and can't think of any dope rhymes to bust a dope freestyle. I just drew a random scribble on the chalkboard, hoping to explain it as "bad handwriting", and praying that it would be close enough to "chocolate" to get me out of this jam.

  The teacher, Mr. Salmon (What the hell, his last name was a fish!?) stood up. His face was beet-red from anger. There was a vein bulging on his forehead. He snatched the chalk and snapped it in half. Meanwhile, I was peeing like crazy this whole time. "I must commend the banality of your composition," he began, "HOWEVER, your pervasive ineptitude is astoundingly inexcusable. Attempting to inject the most minuscule iota of academic cultivation into your so-called brain is a nauseating quagmire of utter futility!"

  "Whatever." I mumbled.

  After that, I vowed to never learn to read or write. Instead, I committed a majority of my time to laughing at homeless people. Those were odd times for me. I had to do a lot of running in order to avoid getting hit with their empty beer bottles. It got me into peak physical shape, to the point where I was able to win several National Table Tennis Championships, and because I was able to play incredibly well, I was basically able to coast through much of school.

  The Harry Potter books came out. This changed my life. I was really, really excited about reading one. I ran to the store, purchased a Harry Potter book and ran home with it. I opened it, and it had that new-book smell. Then, I began to attempt to interpret the alien symbols that littered the pages. I looked up and yelled "I'M ILLITERATE! NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!" Then I burned that book.

  So, still, to this day, I haven't learned to read, and haven't read any books. I'm sorry. All my posts are written by my secretary, Samantha. She's a wonderful lady, but a bit on the pudgy side. Haha, I just made you write that, Samantha! Well, I hope that's what you wrote. I hope you didn't write "Nori is a gigantic bitch" instead.

  The end.

  • 5:43 pm
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