Mind Your Own God Damn Business

-CBF-

My little sister was in town last weekend.

While she was here, we spent some time looking through old family photo albums from the early 90′s.

At the time, my little sister was about two years old. As a teenager and young adult, my little sister has been a delight – funny, clever, interesting and an all-around great person. As a toddler, my little sister was basically a hairless feral dog. She was always screaming and biting. She didn’t really trust anyone in the family but my Mom. Any attempt to talk to her was met with a suspicious glare.

Equally entertaining, but in different ways was my little brother. My parents, bless their hearts, made sure that none of my baby pictures were revealing. I was naked is some of them, most of them, even (some things never change), but there was always something covering up my unmentionables.

Not my little brother. He was naked almost as much as me as a child, but my parents were too tired to worry about covering up his goods, apparently, and it’s hard to find a picture of him without cock’n'balls flying everywhere.

Here’s a little sidenote: My little brother and I have picked up a new hobby.

First, watch this video.



Ever since we saw that, whenever we’re around each other, one of us spontaneously starts screaming what we’re doing, and then the other one yells “LIKE A BOSS!” in between. It sounds stupid, right? It is. It’s a lot more fun than you might think. Try it with someone sometime.

Best of all in those albums, though, were the pictures of middle school me. I obviously can’t put any of them in here, because I’m trying to keep the personal information to a minimum on here, so photographs would be a bad call.Trust me, though. I looked like an idiot. It’s always funny for me to look back at those pictures now and think about how this was the point in my life where I was, by far, the most concerned with how I looked, and this is what I managed to come up with. Tight rolled jeans or really short Umbros, large, round glasses, gigantic neon T-shirts, a thick fog of self-loathing, and that stupid chin-length, split down the middle hair cut that only 12 year old boys and soccer moms have.

Which brings me to the subject of this post.

Currently, almost all middle school boys have their hair cut in a bob. For those of you that don’t know, it’s this kind of long, shaggy, androgynous haircut. Shouldn’t bother me, right? Wrong. It creates all kinds of problems for me.

First of all, I feel like they’re trying to bait me into making fun of them.

Middle school kids are incredibly judgmental. They spend 80% to 90% of their day badmouthing their classmates for any perceived imperfections. The last ten to twenty percent of their time is spent badmouthing any adults in the vicinity. Sometimes, that adult is me.

Does this offend me? Not really. When I first started subbing, I was really afraid to set foot in a middle school, because I remembered how hard it had been for me when I was a student in one. It turns out, though, that being insulted by a 12 year old isn’t nearly as hard to deal with when you’re over twice their age.

First of all, their insults almost always miss the mark. I wear running shoes instead of dress shoes most of the time, because I’m on my feet in seven hour chunks. It’s more comfortable, and it’s not as though it’s my wedding day or I’m making a state of the union address; I’m a fucking substitute teacher. I also have really hairy arms, and I tend to wear a lot of blue.

Those are the three things that I get made fun of for the most, probably in that order.

Can you see why I don’t give a shit? I might get a little upset if they were to take some potshots at my lack of a career, or my receding hairline, or my inability to reliably maintain an erection during the first month or so that I’m sexually active with a girl because of nerves (I swear, that’s not true. Why did I say it, then? Because fuck you), but when the best that they can do is make fun of me for my shirts being blue too often, it’s hard to take them seriously.

Here’s the problem, though: I can’t really say anything back. Well, I guess that’s not really the problem, because I suppose that I technically could – I don’t think that I would be breaking any laws – but it would be pretty unprofessional and create a pretty shitty environment for the students. The real problem is that they say and do so many ridiculous things that are begging to be made fun of, and I have to show restraint and bite my tongue.

I hate showing restraint.

Let’s go back to the haircuts. To help emphasize my point, I’ve created a little game. It’s called “Middle School Boy or Adult Woman?” The object is simple. You look at a picture and try to figure out if you’re looking at a 12 year old boy or a grown woman.

Ready? Here we go!

Can you determine the gender of the people above?

Neither can I!

Is Person A Tommy Spencer, 12 year old soccer enthusiast and proud owner of a hairless set of balls, or is it Samantha Dawkins, high-powered executive and proud mother of two? Is Person B smoldering hot 20-something actress Keira Knightley, or awkward, prepubescent chess club president Bobby Jenkins, 13 year old boy? Is person C Katie Holmes, former Dawson’s Creek star and current wife of Tom Cruise, or Castle Greyskull inhabitant and certified bachelor Skeletor?

Who the fuck knows!? It’s like I’m looking at four photos of the exact same person!

You see what I mean? Every time I set foot in a middle school, I’ve got half a classroom of four foot tall kids with high, shrill voices and women’s haircuts. They’re ripe for mockery anyway, AND they’re making fun of me because I’m wearing running shoes with slacks.  but instead of calling them on it, I have to say something like “You know what will help distract you from my shoes? Factoring the odd-numbered equations on page 216 in your book. Remember to put your name at the top, because it’s due at the end of the block. Bitches.”

"A man with hairy arms? That's the most ridiculous thing that I've ever seen!"

Haircuts aren’t the only problem. One day I was in an 8th grade classroom with a girl sporting a noticeable mustache. She was pretty snotty, and during some free time, she was, believe it or not, making fun of how hairy my arms were. I wanted to call her Magnum P.I., or tell her how impressed I was, because I couldn’t grow a mustache like that until I was in my early 20′s, but could I? NO! Instead, I was forced to giggle to myself at the thought of doing those things, which in turn resulted in more sass.

The other, more important problem with the haircuts is that it makes it hard for me to determine anyone’s gender in a classroom. The boys still haven’t hit puberty yet, so their voices are still high and their faces are still androgynous. A lot of the boys have girl’s haircuts, and pretty much all of the girls do. Take a look at D in the quiz above again. Suppose that he was wearing a t-shirt and jeans instead of a tie. Probably a boy, right? But how sure are you? Now, suppose that subject D’s name is “Madison”.

You’re fucked.

Is this one of those things where I’m just going to complain without proposing a viable solution to the problem?

Please. Of course not.

Here’s the plan: From here on out, boys will have two haircuts that they can choose from:

1. MOHAWKS "I pity the fool that can't determine my gender based on my haircut!"

2. FLATTOPS "I also pity the fool, because the author of this has never seen any of my movies or listened to my music, so he doesn't know any of my catch phrases."

Looking good, boys! That’s not all, though. You’re not just sporting a sharp haircut, I am incredibly unlikely to mistake you for a woman!

That settles that. I know what you’re thinking, though: What if a GIRL shows up to school with a mohawk or a flattop?

Simple.

She will receive an absolutely savage beating, because there will only one style of haircut that women will be allowed to wear to school:

THE RHINO

Fucking Awesome.

There you go.

I can already hear all of you complaining: “Is the above image a photoshop job? Assuming that it’s even real, this would take hours to do!”

Look, I don’t have the time to argue semantics with you. How long would it take to style your hair like that? I don’t know. Is it even possible? I have no idea.

Here’s what I do know, though: The person in the picture above is unmistakably a woman. So if you’re a girl, you had better show up with a fucking rhino on your head so you don’t have to deal with the indignity of a substitute teacher calling you “Sir”.

Otherwise you get caned. It’s simple.

Thank you.