Something that always interested me when I was in school was how at the end of the year, a lot of people relaxed their personae. Like a guy who might have been a complete douche all year long suddenly start being nice to you for the last few weeks of school.
I could never figure out exactly why, whether it was because school was almost over, or so you didn't plot revenge on them all summer long, or in the case of grades after which you may never see the person again, it was so you didn't plot revenge on them for the rest of existence.
At any rate, I did find this fascinating. At the end of seventh grade, I noticed that a classmate of mine (the guy who, um, disposed of the periodical during the infamous San Francisco trip) was teaching one of the girls how to play chess. This was notable for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that he didn't know how to play.
Even in high school, every time the end of May/beginning of June rolled around, people were a little friendlier. Case in point:
During the Grad Night trip to Disneyland, what started as a giant group eventually broke up into smaller and smaller groups. While we were still at least a dozen or so strong, we decided to hit Splash Mountain. Keep in mind that as per the rules, we were all wearing semiformal wear.
I was decked out in my mad-pimp/Bob Barker black pinstripe suit I got for five bucks at Salvation Army, so I wasn't worried about the possibility of getting wet.
We were in line, chatting with our friends, when one friend of ours--let's call him Jeremy, since that was his name--started schmoozing with a few female classmates. Talking to the ladies was one thing, but he was laying it on awful thick--at least, that's how it seemed to my friend Jeff and I.
We both looked at Jeremy, and then looked at each other. Wordlessly, we agreed that letting this behavior go unchecked would just be detrimental to our friend in the long run, so we had to do something about it.
"Yeah," Jeremy said, "I draw a little bit. In fact, I was--"
He stopped in mid-sentence, because Jeff had stepped forward and held up Jeremy's hand as if it were a trophy. The girls waited for an explanation with a puzzled look on their faces.
"This," Jeff said in the most serious voice he could muster, "is the hand of a man who masturbates."
And then as if nothing had happened, he got back in line with me. The girls laughed while Jeremy sputtered, trying to think of something to say after that.
I admired Jeff for his ability to cut through the crap like that.
Unless he did it to me. That was a sock in the arm.
