I don't think I could even play one on TV

Ma Gleemonex, bless her heart, maintains to this day that I could have been a doctor if I'd wanted to. Now, as I've said before, there are many reasons this is not the case, but -- well, I guess if I wanted to live my life in dread of the daytime, and never have a moment's peace (see preceding re: dread), technically she could be right -- I'm not a Science Person (hoooo boy, am I not), nor a Mechanical Person (I had to call Mr. Gleemonex today to tell me how to get the Prius out of Park, SHUT UP it's a NEW CAR OK?), nor a Math Person (I got a whole other post brewing on that one), but I did always get top grades in classes of those subjects. It cost me dearly, and I lived in dread of them, mostly, but I pulled the fucking grades.

As a matter of fact, in my single hardest and most dreaded class of high school -- Honors Chemistry -- I not only ended up with something ridiculous like a 96 for the year, but also I won the gold medal in this fuckin competition our nutjob chem teacher made the whole class participate in. Yeah, I beat Y'all-Know-Who (our eventual valedictorian), who was considered a shoo-in to win.

But the thing is, I was TERRIFIED of chem class. I distrusted the chemicals, I HATED all the complicated fuckin math we had to do, I never for a moment believed I was in the right on any task I was made to perform. In English, in History, in Government, even occasionally in goddamned TRIG for chrissake (which I hated with the fire of a thousand suns), I knew what I was doing, but never, ever did I feel that way in H.Chem.

And people, you shoulda seen me and my lab partner -- my good friend, eventual bridesmaid, and boon fuckin companion, AF -- in action. We -- we were no help to each other, she and I. Among the major Chem Sins we committed (the minor being too numerous to list):

1) Shrieking Bunsen burner pyromania. Neither of us wanted to light the fucker, so it'd sit there, gas flowing, for an eternity before we got it lit -- at which point it'd shoot flames toward the ceiling and we'd sort of dance and shriek around it like only teenage girls can, and then see what we could light on fire without getting caught (e.g. a single hair, a gum wrapper, etc.). We were a danger to ourselves and to others, some days.

2) We were supposed to be making soap, via a very fucking complicated series of equations and whatnot. Ours didn't jell, despite the fact that we were sure we had the math right. So we STOLE SOME from Y'all-Know-Who, and also a little from Mister Smartypants (whose girlfriend, a year younger than us, hated our whole entire class of girls cause she thought our lives consisted of trying to steal him from her). Ta-da! Soap, bitches.

3) We broke a beakerfull of ... something or other, something kind of toxic, right on our lab table. Teech was busy on the other side of the room, and didn't hear the glass breaking. Thinking fast, before we became the subject of a big hullaballoo and dash to the chem shower and that big range hood air-sucking thing and also a lecture on lab safety and an automatic letter downgrade for the experiment, AF and I casually swept up the breakage and the goo inside it with paper towels, tossed them in the garbage (well, in Mister Smartypants' garbage, heh), and started over.

AF, if you're reading this, all I can say is -- I hope you didn't dread that class as much as I did, and hey -- thanks for not, like, burning me or ratting me out to the Teech. Heh.