The Boy With The Underpants, a tale

We've spoken on the topic of my English teacher before now. While somewhere in the depths of middle age, he gives off the air of a crusty old man and is somewhat of a fixture at my school. He is addressed by his first and last initials, which I find endlessly entertaining, and he has a smirk.

Surely you know what I mean by this. When certain humans purposely make scenes for his amusement he smirks, sticks a hand in his pocket and makes some suitable statement that both tells them off and contributes to the general hilarity of the situation. Hawaiian shirts are his stock and trade, despite the fact that he is not really a Hawaii kind of person. Or maybe he is. I am just making grand and beautiful assumptions here.

All of these things manage to contribute to a slightly creepy feeling about him. Last week, for instance, we were taking notes on The Inferno and, as he read aloud, he stopped-- "...they descended upon the Mount of Joy. Doesn't that sound like a great name for a porno, 'The Mount of Joy'?"

He's either really cool or really creepy. I've been a student of his since last year and the only thing I'm pretty sure of is the fact that I (and, indeed, the world) will probably never know.

Last year I took "Team Sports" for a semester. The class fluctuated from three to ten people and, due to size and the beautiful soul of our instructor, our only requirement was to keep moving. I fully admit, with great spasms of pride, that I took this opportunity to navigate laps around the gym while reading a book. The instructor was a burly guy with a partial beard and I liked him because I generally like teachers and also because I was allowed to read books during gym class.

I tell you, I have had best high school gym experience ever. I took my first semester of gym freshmen year (which now feels like a billion years ago), when I briefly lived in the magical land of Florida. Here we had the opposite problem; the space was so crowded with people that they simply did not want to wrangle us all into submission. Instead they gave us the option of shooting hoops or sitting on the floor of the gym and using the period as a study hall. I spent many an hour masterfully dodging basketballs launched at my face. Worth it.

The gods of gym class have smiled upon me.

My burly bearded gym teacher went AWOL around December and we were given Ye Old Initials' son, at that point a long-term substitute, as our replacement. I'm pretty sure people have decided to call him by his initials, too, which I'm sure thrills him to bits. My sources cite him as a colorless, gangly creature who gives the impression that he might be toppled over by the slightest breeze. On the converse, however, I know of at least one girl who daily giggled over his existence ("he's so hot!!!"). In any event, he would ask after my books and I would give vague answers from my spot on the bleachers, hoping against hope that he would not make me perform physical activities.

Remember VoldeTread? I haven't visited with him since I completed the journey that is Supersize Me and fell into a slight state of panic that I might die of deathness. This was about a month ago. School is a valid excuse, OKAY?

I managed to skate by over midterm exams by throwing a frisbee to myself. I haven't really seen him since then.

In my AP English class, turf of Ye Old Initials himself, we have managed to partition ourselves into three groups. The boys find themselves on one side of the class and the girls on the other, with a few girls breaking ranks and scattering out towards the middle. The boys, of which there are approximately five, feel it necessary to pull glorious pranks on Ye Old Initials. Yesterday, for instance, one particular boy left a pair of his boxers in Ye Old Initials' desk chair before class. Ye Old Initials was unfazed upon discovering them. He picked them up and tossed them onto the corner of his desk-- "These belong to anybody?"

The boys cracked up and the owner got up to collect his underpants (sky blue with steam engines, for those wondering).

I could make jokes here, but I definitely may have had a discussion on breast reductions and a Venezuelan woman who chopped her abusive husband's genitalia off with my groupmates a few minutes later. This may have happened.

But I would like to take this opportunity to go further into my long and illustrious relationship with the boy with the underpants.

The Boy With The Underpants is a wide-eyed, excitable human with whom I occasionally exchange words. In addition to making himself present in my English class, he sits next to me in math class.

It occurs to me now, in the frantic editing stage of this post, that this sounds exactly like the beginnings of The Dobbin Situation. Not happening.

In math class, home of catlovingmathteacher, he sits next to me and alternates between words of confusion and the phrase "this is cake" accompanied by a chuffed sigh and rolling of shoulders.

I made the mistake of calling him out on a personal tirade/guilt trip last week by noting that some people (namely me) do not actually have friends. He immediately contradicted his assurances of friendlessness by informing me that I was his friend.

"You're not my friend," I said.

"Come on," he said, "we talked on the first day of school, we're friends."

"I think we have contradicting views of friendship."

He handed me his phone as catlovingmathteacher explained a graphing problem, grinning at his own brilliance. With the skill of an everlasting ninja, I hid the phone behind my binder and noted that he had brought up the dictionary's definition of "friend."

Apparently we're friends now. Like I have any choice in the matter. Now he attempts to get me to shake his hand every time we meet and dramatically shouts "friend!" in my direction at strategic intervals.

I'm going to go with the idea that my denial is a character building activity for his benefit.

The guy has over six hundred friends on Facebook. Yes, I am a stalker.

When he isn't declaring Precalculus to be cake (duh!), The Boy With The Underpants spends his time in math class calling the girl who sits in front of him "baby girl" and trying to braid her hair. I was asked to teach him the great art of hair braiding at one juncture. He's improving, I'll give him that much. His greatest accomplishment in life (or at least the summer) was reenacting a horror film at midnight with his friends for the benefit of a group of girls who, after finishing with their shock, joined forces with them and helped them repeat the ordeal for another batch of humans. Judgment. He appears completely earnest, yet acts in a way that suggests he is a slimeball. Or maybe he's a teenage boy. Who knows?

Last week he and his fellow male humans hijacked tennis shirts from Ye Old Initials' back room and decided to model them. Grand ideas were painted for us--they would join Ye Old Initials' tennis team and take over the world. Ye Old Initials wasn't convinced, noting he had two freshmen who could easily take them on. Soon they were planning a take-down.

"If I win state," said The Boy With The Underpants, miming a tennis racket in his hand and readying for victory, "you have to persuade Sarah Johnson, with your mad serenading skills, to marry me."

"I thought you were going with Brady's sister."

"Her too!" he said, eyes bright and words tripping up on the way. "I'm marrying Sarah and taking Leeann to prom."

This was all fine and well and amusing to me until a few days ago, in math class, when he beckoned to the boy who sits behind me (a slimeball, I feel, but here I am Judging The World). "Oh my God," he said, "Sarah Johnson likes my status! She touched my status. I tell you, we're getting married, dude."

The beginnings of a love story if I ever heard one.

"I feel ready to stay up for, like, two days straight, man," he says, in English class this time, rubbing his face. "Like, Jesus, man."

Now the class is discussing Halloween and attempting to coax one of my groupmates into saying vulgar things in Spanish for them.

Now he says: "Ye Old Initials you should, you know, shave the sides of your head."

"Earl is naturally white, dude, I mean." The boys lift up the sleeve of a Mexican boy's t-shirt to reveal a farmer's tan.

"It'll get better in the winter," he says.

One can only hope.