On a Scale from Idiot to Complete Jerk

by Alison Hughes

  Some kids get pushed right into the metal shelves, including a little girl who bumps her head and starts to cry. She’s not actually bleeding, but sometimes, at the end of a long day in grade one, a push in the back and a crack on the head can really suck. Joe and I help her find her left shoe and her teacher. The teacher looks angry and also very, very tired when she hears what the little boy (whose name is Ty) did. Ty clearly sucks up a lot of her energy. And maybe he’s not even the only “high-spirited” and “challenging” child in her class of twenty-five kids.

  The teacher tells me, “Ty knows better than to push his way through the mudroom. His parents and I have been working on that. And many, many other things.”

  I ask my research assistant what he thought of it all as we walk home.

  “Kid’s a jerk.” Joe shrugs.

  My brother may not be a scientist, and he may be only eight years old, but he knows a jerk when he sees one. We all do.

  Conclusions: Six-year-olds can definitely be idiots and possibly even jerks. I mean, face it—when you read this case study, you immediately thought, “Little jerk!” didn’t you? Okay, so maybe Ty has some hyperactivity issues or something that might explain why he acts like he does. I don’t know. But he may also just be a little jerk (maybe an 8-9 on the scale).

  When can a kid be scientifically classed as a jerk? I’m going to sound about ninety-five years old here, but the answer is when they’re old enough to know better. Little Ty knew better than to shove other kids’ heads into mudroom shelves. Jerk.

  Even if they exhibit early jerkish behavior, young jerks may downgrade to occasional idiot behavior and then level off and become normal people. In this case study, if we followed up on young Ty (which isn’t going to happen, because this report is due Thursday), we might find that his parents’ and teachers’ efforts to make him less jerkish have paid off. He may have become a regular, nice, normal kid. Yeah, I doubt it too.

  So we’re up and running. Anyone over six can be a jerk.

  Scientific Illustration #3:

  The Path to Complete Jerkdom

  We’ve seen that jerks start young. But what happens when the

  jerkish behavior of young children is not corrected by parents,

  teachers, counselors or the fury of other children? Check out the

  following series of graphs, which show, scientifically,

  just how serious things can get.

  When unchecked, jerkish behavior becomes more frequent. It becomes the jerk’s new normal. It can also intensify in annoyance as well as frequency. So, that kid in the seat behind you on the bus who keeps randomly kicking your seat? If nobody stops him, he might get bored with idle kicking and start in with full, rhythmic, two-feet thumping. When that becomes boring and normal, he’s going to go looking for something else. And before you know it, he’s launched on the path to full-time, complete jerkdom.

  CHAPTER 5

  Can Really, Really Old People Be Jerks?

  Scientifically proving that people can be jerks as young as maybe age six got me thinking. We all know that older kids, teenagers and adults can be idiots and jerks. Nobody disputes that. But what about old people? I’m talking really, really old people. Is there an age at which jerkitude generally declines? Does extreme age affect a jerk’s ability, energy and ingenuity? Where do really, really old people sit on the scale from idiot to complete jerk?

  It seems kind of awful to research whether a great-grandmother pushing a walker is a jerk. But can she be one? How about that ancient toothless guy in a wheelchair? Can he be a jerk? In the interests of science, I took my research to another level for this groundbreaking study.

  CASE STUDY #3

  The Nursing Home Manly Man

  Subjects: Really, really old people

  Laboratory: St. Hilda’s Health and Home Care Facility

  Experiment: My great-grandmother lives in this very nice nursing home. All the people there have their own rooms, but there’s a main dining room where they go for meals and a “social room” where they have bingo, sing-alongs, yoga, you name it. Great-Gran is eighty-nine, and she’s got a busier social life than I do.

  My family visits her every Sunday for about twenty hours. Once we’ve talked with her a bit and told her what we’re doing in school, there’s not a lot to do. But on this particular Sunday I had a plan. My scientific mission was to observe the behavior of all these seemingly innocent, sweet old folks. Were there jerks among them?

  Observations: After we’ve talked a little with my great-grandmother, my dad, my brother and I go to play shuffleboard in the social room, like we always do when Mom, Grandma and Great-Gran get talking. As we played, I looked around. People playing cards. People watching TV. No cheating or gossiping or bad behavior at all. No jerks in sight. Nothing happening. I sigh and put my notepad away in my pocket.

  Now, I understand that you have to be patient in scientific observation, like those people who squat in African rain forests for thirty years, interacting with the gorillas. I get that. But I’m feeling like it would take a lot longer than that to get some research done in this place. I begin to think that jerkish behavior might take a lot of energy, and that very old people might be too tired and worn out to be jerks.

  Then a very old guy with a cane stumps into the room and stops. He stares at us. One of those long, unblinking stares that makes people uncomfortable. It doesn’t help that he has watery, reddish eyes and a peeling, spotty head. It is an ancient, tortoise-like stare.

  “THOSE CHILDREN THERE,” he calls loudly to my dad, gesturing at us with his cane, “ARE THEY BOYS OR ARE THEY GIRLS?”

  We all freeze.

  “BOYS,” my dad says cheerfully. “THEY’RE BOYS.” I can tell he thinks the old guy must not be able to see very well.

  The old man kind of snorts and limps in to get a closer look at us. I feel like a zoo animal. He studies us with his old, bleary eyes. He leans in so close I can smell his oldness.

  “BOYS, EH? YOU’D NEVER KNOW IT!” he bellows in disgust. “LA-DI-DAH LONG HAIR… LOOK LIKE WIMMIN, THE BOTH OF THEM.”

  Joe and I look at each other, startled. Our hair is cool.

  “WELL, YEAH, THEY MIGHT BE DUE FOR HAIRCUTS,” shouts my dad, looking down and trying not to laugh. We will never hear the end of this one.

  “HOW OLD ARE THEY?” The old guy cuts him off belligerently. Hey, pal, we’re right here. I hate it when adults talk about you like you’re not there when you’re right there.

  There is a long, loud and very tedious conversation between Dad and the old guy about our ages. And about how the old guy wasn’t skipping around with girly hair playing sissy games when he was eight or thirteen. He was threshing wheat and building barns and plowing fields and fighting in wars and being a decent, short-haired, manly man.

  We manage to escape from the old guy (who, incidentally, shouts after us, “IS THAT HOW YOUNG MEN RUN THESE DAYS??”) and get around the corner before Dad bursts out laughing. It is very unprofessional. Dad is still wiping his eyes when we get back to Great-Gran, and I ask her about the old guy.

  “Oh, you mean Angus,” she says knowingly, nodding her head. “Cane, scabby head, SHOUTS?” Apparently, she’s known him for about eighty years. She laughs when I tell her about our meeting with him.

  “Well, what do you expect? Everyone knows he’s a cranky old jerk. Always was.”

  Conclusions: The old guy was a complete jerk. Therefore, very, very old people can be jerks.

  It is not mean to think of old people being jerks. We sometimes assume that all old people are nice and kind. But think about it. Old people are just us, only way, way older. The mean kid from school who steals gum from the nice people that own the corner store? He’s going to be really, really old someday. A really, really old jerk.

  Four generations of Murphys agreed that the old guy was a jerk. And apparently his sister, who lives there as well and who I didn’t have the pleasure of meeting, is a real jerk as well. It got me thinking abou
t how some families tend to breed jerks. It gave me the idea for my next chapter. Read on.

  CHAPTER 6

  Jerks in the Family

  Normal families are all alike, but every jerkish family is jerkish in its own way. In this chapter, we look at whether people can be born with jerkish tendencies and then pass those on to their children and grandchildren, who in turn become jerks. It would be interesting to know if last chapter’s nursing-home jerk has any children, and if so, how they turned out. Short-haired jerks, I’m guessing.

  It seems pretty clear that children observing the way their jerk parents act will learn those kinds of behaviors. Normal kids learn normal things from their parents, like sharing, waiting their turn in line or chewing with their mouths shut. In a similar way, jerkish kids learn jerkish things from their jerkish parents, like cheap-shotting in hockey, bragging openly or banging on aquarium glass even though there are signs saying it hurts the fish.

  But how do you explain those families who have a jerk parent (or parents) and normal, nice-ish kids? Or families where the parents are super nice but one of the kids is a jerk? It must be confusing and alarming when jerks just appear in otherwise normal families—normal parents, normal brother, normal sister, then BOOM! All of a sudden you’ve got a jerk in the family.

  Is jerkishness really just a random occurrence, like tornados or delicious food in the cafeteria? Or could it be a trait passed down from generation to generation, like brown eyes or being left-handed? There’s a scientific word for this: heredity (which is pronounced “her-ED-ity” and not “here ditty,” as I once thought when I was much, much younger).

  Dictionary time. The big, heavy Oxford Dictionary of English says this:

  →heredity noun: the passing on of physical or mental characteristics genetically from one generation to another.

  So basically, what I just said but with the word genetically thrown in there. That means, I believe, something to do with things in your blood. I’ve put the dictionary down, and I’m not opening it again.

  So is jerkishness something that can actually be passed down from old relatives? If you trace a family tree back far enough, will you find ancestor jerks who have secretly passed on their jerk genes to unsuspecting future generations?

  CASE STUDY #4

  Rebecca’s Confusing and Alarming Family

  I was disappointed to discover that, other than my uncle Dave (see Chapter 11), both sides of my family are mostly boringly normal non-jerks. I really needed a more dysfunctional, jerk-ridden family to study, genetics-wise, for this project.

  As if it was meant to be, Rebecca (not her real name), who sits in front of me in Language Arts, came in late for class last week, threw down her backpack and hissed, “My family is such a nightmare!” Nightmare family? This was just what I needed. I described my project to Rebecca, and we struck a bargain. Rebecca agreed to research her family tree with the help of her grandma, who lives with them. She was very clear about the research not going further than this project—in fact, she swore me to secrecy, so of course I agreed, and of course I’m even more interested in this family than I was before.

  I agreed to collect egg cartons and gross compost materials for Rebecca’s science project on seed growth, and to buy her a Slurpee sometime when a group of us go to the convenience store and it doesn’t look like a date.

  Subjects: Rebecca and her nonna (grandma in Italian)

  Laboratory: Rebecca’s house

  Experiment: To save Rebecca from writing it all down, I borrowed Rebecca’s family’s video camera to film the interview Rebecca had with Nonna. So just remember that I had to listen to this twice, once live and once typing it out. All in the interests of science…

  Observations: I had to heavily edit this interview (***indicates where I stopped and started), because, man, Nonna can talk. And it seems like there are about four thousand living members of Rebecca’s family, many of whom Nonna either viciously hates and/or never speaks to. I am unsure about her scientific objectivity.

  REBECCA (nervously, looking at the camera). So, Nonna, thank you for agreeing to be interviewed…

  NONNA (suspiciously). Who’s that? (Points a finger at the camera.)

  REBECCA. I told you, Nonna. J.J. and I are interviewing you for research.

  NONNA (with heavy sarcasm). Oh yeah, right. Research. You think I was born yesterday? Becca, if you think at thirteen you’re going to have a boyfriend, you got another think coming! When I was thirteen…

  (Nonna calms down and breezes through several generations of her family at a confusing rate, jumping from era to era, using lots of hand gestures and flipping her suspiciously black hair. She throws in bits of rumor, gossip and history. I’m not actually sure, but I think she mentions Napoleon.)

  REBECCA (determinedly trying to bring Nonna back to the relevant points). So your mother and father were nice, kind people…

  NONNA. Angels, angels.

  REBECCA. And Nonno (looks at the camera)—my grandpa, who died many years ago—his father…

  NONNA. Was an angel. A wonderful man, Papa Silvio, so kind, so sweet…

  REBECCA. But Nonno’s mother, Rosa, you say was maybe not—

  NONNA. A she-devil! Mama Rosa…well, the rose smells sweet, but it has thorns! You make me speak this woman’s name? I remember the week before our wedding…

  REBECCA. So Nonno’s brother, Sergio, was a jerk, and his two sisters, Marta and Sophia, were jerks. And all of their twelve children are jerks. Is that what you’re telling me? Seriously, Nonna?

  NONNA (with the satisfied air of somebody who has finally made her point). Yes, yes. And their children’s children will be too, probably.

  REBECCA (sighing). Okay, let’s move on to you and Nonno. You had three children—Frank, Isabella (my mom) and Tania.

  NONNA. Angels, all of them angels. That thing with the police and Frankie? Garbage! Just garbage. The police made it up. Or they got the wrong guy. He was framed.

  REBECCA (uneasily). Well, he did get convicted…

  NONNA (aggressively). Who you going to believe? Your Nonna or some big-shot stranger sitting behind a desk in a courtroom?

  REBECCA (her head resting on her hand). I know that Frankie’s kids are wild, and that Tania never visits and never calls. But Mom says can you blame her? Anyway, Tania’s kids are okay. Sherrie and Brianne? They’re nice.

  NONNA. What do I know those kids? I never see them. Never…

  REBECCA (quickly heading Nonna off from another rant). But my mom and my dad are good people…

  NONNA. Your mother is an angel. Your dad? (She shrugs.) He’s okay.

  REBECCA. And they had four children. Me, Susannah, Conor and Brayden.

  NONNA. Such a stupid name, Brayden! Like the sound a donkey makes…

  REBECCA. Anyway, it’s not his name that’s the problem.

  NONNA. No, true, that’s the least of that kid’s problems. Trouble with friends, school always calling, the things we find in that backpack of his…

  REBECCA (looking wearily at the camera). Can we stop now, J.J.?

  Conclusions: I got more than I bargained for in this case study. You were right, Rebecca—that is one nightmare family you got there. And Nonna herself could be the star of some weird reality show. My Small, Cranky, Italian Nonna! or something like that. Anyway, in most families, people can barely remember their grandparents’ last names, let alone their great-great-great grandparents’ names, let alone whether or not they were jerks. So often there is a lot of guesswork involved. But Rebecca’s nonna had an encyclopedic knowledge of her entire huge family, and razor-sharp memories, even if they were mostly about old feuds and grudges. So even making allowances for Nonna’s lack of scientific objectivity, there seems to be evidence of a strong genetic line of jerks in Rebecca’s family. Like, four generations of jerks, most of them on the non-Nonna side of the family.

  For every jerk in a family, there’s always a bunch of nice people that somehow have to deal with them.

&n
bsp; Jerks and heredity could probably be a whole science project by itself. And you’d have to live about seven hundred years to really figure it all out. Gene scientists, good luck with all that. I’m fine with accepting that the science is unclear on the subject of jerks and heredity, and that it probably won’t be solved by an eighth grader in one chapter of his science project. (Full marks for effort, though, wouldn’t you say?)

  Scientific Illustration #4:

  Rebecca’s Family Tree

  This is as close as I could get to illustrating (some of) Rebecca’s

  family tree. Now remember, this is a science project, not an art

  project. Therefore, the following stick people should just be

  taken as representing people, not actually looking much like them.

  The known jerks are the stick people with angry eyebrows and

  the fuming marks coming off their heads. The non-jerks are the

  ones smiling or looking uneasily at the jerk beside them.

  CHAPTER 7

  Jerks in Sports

  Like sun, water and soil for plants, sports provide the optimal environment in which jerks thrive. Many elements that contribute to prime jerkish behavior are found in sports—adrenaline, intensity, competition, pressure, physical contact and some spectators your own age. Is it any wonder jerks flourish?

  For example, you’re on an unexpected breakaway, skating faster than you’ve ever skated in your life. The ice is a blur. The crowd is screaming. You can hear your own heart pounding. There’s only the goalie between you and glory. You wind up and…BOOM! Some faster-skating jerk from your own team swoops in, strips the puck off you and scores. This is a very recent example (last night’s game) of jerks in sports, taken from my own hockey team. Faster-skating jerk, you know who you are.