On a Scale from Idiot to Complete Jerk

by Alison Hughes

  MRS. DRISCOLL (irritably, shouting above the alarm). A LINE! FORM A LINE!

  (She swings her arms back and forth like an air-traffic controller. The Spin-cam scans the lineup and stops at the end, where two girls are huddled together, looking nervous and covering their ears. Shay, a legendary jerk, slips into line behind them. He looks like he’s enjoying himself. Spin zooms in.)

  SHAY (loudly, tapping on Maddie’s shoulder). Are we sure this is just a drill and not a real fire??

  MADDIE (nervously). Of course it’s just a drill. It’s always a drill.

  SHAY. I heard it was a real fire…WAIT. (He stops and sniffs.) Do you smell that? (His eyes widen fake fearfully.) I smell smoke!

  MADDIE (panicking). What?? Smoke?? (She grabs Kaylie’s arm.) Do you smell smoke? Is there smoke? I think I smell smoke!

  (Shay grins.)

  KAYLIE. Smoke! Omigod, I smell it too!! We gotta get out of here.

  (They start pushing the kids who are already lined up. Those kids shove back. As Mrs. Driscoll opens the door, some of the kids stumble and fall, and some bolt into the hall. Spin catches one last glimpse of Shay, yelling into Maddie’s ear.)

  SHAY. Hurry, HURRY! I just saw flames outside the classroom window!!

  MADDIE AND KAYLIE. Aaaaaaaaahh!

  (Shay turns, notices Spin filming and knocks the phone out of Spin’s hands. The aptly named Spin-cam gets a whirling shot of desks and floor. The video ends abruptly.)

  (The video starts again later in the locker room, showing a gross overflowing garbage can.)

  SPIN. Oh, good, Spin-cam still works. Skidded right across the room there. (Spin’s face appears.) Well, that was more interesting than I thought it would be. Pretty impressive that I caught that jerk Sha—I mean, I hope this case study gave you enough, um (looks down at the writing on his hand), raw data to draw numerous important and highly scientific conclusions, J.J. (Grins.) Research Assistant Spin and the Spin-cam, signing off.

  Conclusions: Shay is a skillful jerk. During a fire drill, what kid hasn’t wondered uneasily if it’s a real fire? Notice how Shay used this niggling fear, fuelled it and let it spread like, well, like wildfire? He also managed to avoid any blame for the panic, while Maddie and Kaylie got detention for pushing the other kids. Completely diabolical. Shay’s a complete jerk most of the time, so I might even go so far as to make a scientific finding that crisis situations intensify a jerk’s natural jerkishness.

  Maddie and Kaylie weren’t jerks, even though they were technically the ones to push the other kids. While pushing is obviously not optimal fire-drill etiquette, they were acting out of fear rather than jerkishness. They were just nervous about the situation, rattled by that crazy-loud siren and freaked out by Shay’s jerkish little mind games. At most, they were idiots to listen to Shay at all, let alone believe him.

  CASE STUDY #7

  Sanjiv’s Hideous Injury

  This case study was a last-minute addition to this science project, but it’s just too good to leave out. I mean, there aren’t so many genuine crises that you can afford to let one go to waste. And good old Spin managed to capture most of it on the Spin-cam.

  Subjects: Grade-eight students

  Laboratory: The field, lunchtime

  Experiment: Here’s the setup. It was finally warm enough to go outside, so we were all out in the field. We were laughing and talking and goofing around when disaster struck. Alex, the biggest guy in grade eight, jumped to catch a football thrown by Spence (second-biggest guy in grade eight), landed in a sprawl and cannoned into my friend Sanjiv (who’s probably the smallest guy in grade eight). Sanjiv went flying. It happened in a split second. One minute Sanjiv was up, the next he was down. And man, was he ever down. He couldn’t stand up, he was grimacing in pain, and he was clutching his leg, which was bent in a spot where a normal leg doesn’t bend. It was as if there was a whole new joint between Sanjiv’s knee and his ankle. Nowhere to hide that injury in skinny jeans, let me tell you. Spin, who was in another group a little way off, heard gasps of panic, sensed something going on, flicked on the Spin-cam and ran over.

  Observations: (Everyone has their lips sucked into their teeth or their hands over their mouths. I’m not sure why people do that when they see an injury, but they do. Sanjiv’s leg really is a gruesome sight. We’re all pretty much used to legs bending in the usual places.)

  ALEX (glancing over his shoulder). What? I hardly touched him! Just get up, Sanjiv.

  SPENCE (walking over). Yeah, man up, Sanjiv. Whoa! (He sees Sanjiv’s leg and gets Alex’s attention by smacking him on the shoulder and pointing. They stare.)

  ALEX (looking very pale and queasy). It’s not my fault. I was just catching the ball! It was Sanjiv! He was in my way. If he hadn’t gotten in my way…

  SPIN (running over). I’m videoing here, so this better be goo—oh, jeez! Sanjiv, you okay? (The camera rolls up to Sanjiv’s face, then down to his weirdly, scarily bent leg and stays there, jittering.)

  WESTON (shrilly). Of course he’s not okay! Look at him! Look at his leg!

  ALEX. He was the one who—

  SANJIV (wincing in pain, eyes tightly closed). I think…it might be…broken…

  ME. I’m no doctor, Sanjiv, but that sucker’s broken for sure, so—

  ALEX. It’s not my fault, okay? It’s not my—

  ANGELA. I’ll go tell a teacher! (Runs off.)

  (Just when we don’t need it, rain starts to pelt down.)

  WESTON (shrilly). What should we do? We gotta do something! We can’t just leave him lying here in the rain! (There is silence as the group stares uneasily at The Leg.)

  ME (fighting to stay calm). Okay, okay. Let’s think. Who’s big? Who can carry him? Alex? Spence? C’mon, guys!

  (The two bodybuilders of the class, who are always flexing their pecs and chugging protein shakes, stagger backward, holding their hands palm out as if warding off a vampire.)

  ALEX. No way, man! You seen that leg? (Sprints off, followed by Spence.)

  EDIE (calmly). You guys are idiots. We can’t move him. I’ll call nine-one-one while we wait for a teacher.

  ME (visibly relieved and shaking). Yeah, yeah, that’s right! We can’t move him! We shouldn’t! Nine-one-one…

  (The camera is still on, but Spin isn’t aiming it at Sanjiv anymore. All it’s recording is grass and shoes. Fortunately, the audio picks up everything.)

  SPIN. Yeah, we just gotta wait for an ambulance, make him comfortable. (Shouts down at Sanjiv, lying on the rocky ground in the driving rain.) You comfortable, Sanjiv? You okay?

  CHAN. Does he look comfortable, Spin? Turn that thing off. Look, everybody give me your hoodies. (The camera clicks off. Everyone peels off their coats, and Chan stuffs one under Sanjiv’s head and spreads the rest on top of him. We wait, shivering, for people who really know what the heck to do in a crisis.)

  Conclusions: So, obviously, not everyone acts perfectly in a crisis. Not muscle guys, not even scientists. There are some interesting conclusions to be drawn from this case study.

  1) To be a jerk, you usually have to do something deliberately jerkish. But sometimes, not doing anything makes you a jerk as well. While Alex didn’t deliberately cause Sanjiv to go flying (it was clearly an accident), he still acted like a jerk because:

  (a) he was more concerned with telling everyone it wasn’t his fault than apologizing or helping Sanjiv;

  (b) he actually blamed Sanjiv for causing the accident in the first place (which was a total lie); and

  (c) given the chance to help Sanjiv (okay, I admit that carrying him into the school was a stupid idea, but that’s beside the point), he didn’t.

  I would appreciate it if this scientific conclusion remained confidential. Both Alex and Spence, huge and surly at the best of times, are more belligerent than ever since the whole school saw them run away during this case study. We are all quietly enjoying their predicament, but the situation remains delicate.

  2) Sometimes, being in a crowd makes you
act more stupid (though not necessarily more jerkish) than you would normally act. For example, we’ve all seen the shows, we all know you don’t move people who are hideously injured. But it’s completely different when it’s real, when it’s your friend lying there.

  We all stood there, kind of numb and paralyzed, waiting for somebody else to do something. Angela finally started the rescue ball rolling when she ran for help. While only Alex was really a jerk in this situation, lots of people didn’t act perfectly. I myself regret my lack of scientific objectivity. But maybe that’s the conclusion—in a crisis, whether there are jerks around or not, leave the crisis management to the professionals.

  ***A note on informed consent of participants to these scientific studies: Sanjiv agreed to let me use this video clip in my project—I mean, after his operation, when his leg was fixed with hardware-store-sounding stuff like “screws and plates.” It was only right to get his permission and possibly only legal. He actually seemed quite proud of his leg being involved in a groundbreaking scientific study.

  I also got Maddie’s and Kaylie’s consent for the previous case study. (In fact, they’re still so mad at Shay that they want me to turn Spin’s video over to the teacher as evidence that it was all Shay’s fault.) And as for Shay, I’m taking “get lost, freak” as acknowledgment, which is sort of like consent.

  CHAPTER 9

  Jerks at School

  Although the events in the last chapter technically happened at school, they were unusual, dramatic events. Most of the time, school is way less exciting, following a predictable, often grinding routine of same old, same old, day after day. The focus of this chapter is on the more day-to-day, routine opportunities for jerks to be jerks.

  A) Students

  It might appear that this topic isn’t even very challenging, because everyone knows that kids at school can be idiots and jerks. It’s totally obvious, even to non-sciencey types. So in this section I decided to do something different. I looked at patterns of jerkish behavior. Does jerkish behavior even follow a pattern? Does it peak at certain times of the day? Can one jerk acting jerkish cause other people to act like jerks? Prepare yourself for some amazingly impressive graphs.

  CASE STUDY #8

  The Arc of Jerkish Behavior

  Subjects: No real names will be used in this example, to prevent my having unpleasant experiences if this report ever gets seen by somebody other than my teacher. So, say there’s this known jerk at school who has blond, not black, hair. He’s also got green, not brown, eyes. This known jerk is really, really good at math and is not on any sports teams. We’ll call him Kevin. Any resemblance to any real person or persons in this case study is purely accidental.

  Laboratory: Math class

  Experiment: Kevin is a guy who goes looking for ways to be a jerk. There is no doubt that he is a jerk (ask absolutely anyone at my school). So in this experiment, I decided to observe not whether Kevin is a jerk, but how he is a jerk.

  Observations: Kevin hates math class because…because he’s so good at it. Yeah, because he’s so good at math. He’s bored. He looks around. He crumples paper and fires it at a nearby girl’s head. She ignores him, so he looks around some more. The student in front of him is working. Kevin grabs his ruler and pushes the other kid’s arm so that his pencil goes skidding across the page. Again and again Kevin does this, despite the kid becoming more and more upset. The substitute teacher looks up from whatever she’s doing (reading a novel? texting?) and tells him to “stop it, mister.”

  Kevin then waits until the substitute teacher figures she should probably at least pretend to teach something, just in case another teacher walks by. When the kid next to him is trying to answer a question, Kevin whispers random numbers, just to confuse him. “Four, nineteen, seventy…[giggle, giggle]…six.” The guy’s a total idiot as well as a complete jerk. Anyway, when the teacher’s back is turned to the class, Kevin quietly rushes to the window. He slips out and slides down a nearby tree to the ground floor.

  When we all look out, Kevin is across the field at the elementary-school playground, flinging the swings so hard that they go around and around the bar until they’re too short for the little kids who are looking forward to using them when recess rolls around. When he’s finished wrecking the swings, he wanders around the field aimlessly. Later that afternoon, the school custodian has to bring a ladder out to fix the swings.

  I could go on. Kevin could probably fill up this project. But I won’t, because it’s illustration time.

  Scientific Illustration #5: Bell Graph of a Jerk

  This bell graph, which is a kind of graph often used for

  illustrating important scientific things (and not only bells),

  shows how a school jerk’s jerkitude builds steadily, then peaks.

  Apparently, jerks have to wake up fully to really embrace

  their inner jerk and sustain a period of busy jerkishness.

  Then boredom or exhaustion sets in, and jerkitude diminishes.

  Jerkish behavior clearly takes a lot of energy.

  Conclusions: Kevin became a jerk gradually during this math class. He sort of slid up the scale from idiot to jerk, peaked at complete jerk, then slid down as he got more tired or bored.

  Jerkosity seems almost impossible to sustain over a long period of time (such as, for example, a whole school day), though some very special jerks (such as some celebrities) appear to have set records in this area.

  ***A note on jerks and bullies: Are complete jerks always bullies? How about bullies? Are they always complete jerks? The way I see it, bullies are always complete jerks, but complete jerks are not always bullies. Now that’s getting pretty philosophical, but it’s scientific too. For example, a person can be a complete jerk in one random situation (say, standing up and deliberately rocking a canoe at camp when all the other kids are terrified of falling into the leech-infested water). But unless this kid keeps targeting certain other kids over a longish period of time, he doesn’t quite enter bully territory. Bullies, the super-jerks of the world, are a topic all on their own. But that’s a science project for another day.

  CASE STUDY #9

  Graphing Solo Jerks and Groups of Jerks

  Subjects: The popular kids in grade eight

  Laboratory: The lunchroom

  Experiment: I secretly studied this group over a series of lunchtimes, my notebook hidden under the table. I didn’t actually need to be very secret, because this group never notices me, and they expect people to watch them. What’s the point of being popular if nobody’s looking?

  Observations: Unlike Kevin, the jerk from Case Study #8, the popular kids in grade eight aren’t all obvious jerks. In fact, many of them behave quite normally, if maybe annoyingly. But I sacrifice four lunchtimes to science and observe many jerkish events, best displayed on another amazingly scientific graph, this time one of those very official spiky, heartbeaty-looking graphs.

  Scientific Illustration #6:

  Graphing How Jerks Respond to Jerkish Events

  This graph took a lot of time. While it looks complicated

  and very impressive, it is actually pretty simple. The different lines

  on the graph represent different people. I only picked four,

  but believe me, I could have added more. There’s Miss Dot,

  Miss Dash, Mr. Solid and Mr. Wavy. This may sound like the intro

  to a lame preschool TV show, but trust me, it gets better.

  Note that each line spikes on the jerk scale at certain times, shown by the letters A, B, C and D. These are jerkish events. Here are some examples.

  →Jerkish Event A: A non-popular girl comes into the lunchroom. She has a very unfortunate, drastic new haircut. One side is way shorter than the other (like, scalp-showingly short) and the remaining hair is dyed a purple shade not found in nature. Most people just sort of ignore the bad hair and eat their lunches. We’ve all made some mistakes in the hair department. I won’t get into a brutal bowl cut I once g
ot at a cut-rate “salon” my mom dragged me to. Anyway, non-popular girl’s friends make room for her at their table, being careful not to stare too long at the purple mess. But two girls from the popular group burst out laughing, cover their mouths and whisper loudly, “OMG, bad hair day has a whole new meaning!” Note on the graph that Dot and Dash (both girls with perfect hair) really spike to total jerks at this event.

  →Jerkish Event B: I stumble on a fold in the carpet as I walk past the popular group. “Hey, walk much?” calls Solid (a jerkish guy who I can’t stand), and he sort of mimics my stumble, making it seem way bigger and way more embarrassing than it really was. The whole group laughs. Okay, so maybe this isn’t a hugely jerkish thing, but it was mean, it happened to me, and I happened to be walking near a certain girl who also happened to look up…Anyway, that’s B.

  →Jerkish Event C: So Solid and Wavy think they’re extremely cool because they’re on the senior basketball team. Solid carries around a basketball all the time so nobody forgets that fact. So they start passing it around in the lunchroom, keeping it away from any non-popular kids who try to get in the game, “shooting” over top of people, etc. The ball sails wide and sends another kid’s burger flying into the giant dustballs in the corner, and all they do is yell, “C’mon, BALL! Pass it!” So this kid gets:

  • No lunch

  • No apology

  • Yelled at

  Add it all up, and you get two complete jerks (note how the solid and wavy lines spike on the jerk scale on the graph).

  →Jerkish Event D: A girl approaches the popular group. She used to be in the popular group, but for some mysterious, much-gossiped-over popular-group reason she got kicked out. She says something I can’t hear, but in a friendly way—you know, with a smile. The popular kids look at her unsmilingly, then look away. They totally ignore the girl, who is still standing there. Then one of them clearly suggests leaving, and they get up and leave the other girl standing there. Jerks. This may not sound like very much, but trust me, in junior high, it really is. All the jerks (Dot, Dash, Solid and Wavy) spike to complete jerks during this event.