Vanity: Too Much and Not Enough

Don’t worry: not all my entries will be like that last one. To balance it out, I’ll write a different type of entry.

So I have this really annoying classmate. Okay, actually I have many, but there are a few who are really annoying that I have to listen to a lot and that have been extra annoying this week.

There’s this one classmate of mine who looks like he lives on the streets. Actually, I’ve seen people on the streets who are better groomed and dressed than he. I’m sure he was a dog in a past life. I believe a comb has never touched his long jungle of hair, nor shampoo. His beard resembles a bird’s nest. He dresses in a stained trench coat that looks like the carpet of a cheap bus station. A small radius around him is needed as a buffer because those who sit too close to him may suffocate.

The first time he lurked up to me was after an exam. Students left one by one, whenever they finished. I was out early, but as it turned out, not early enough. I stepped into the empty hallway outside of the quiet room and this scarecrow walked up to me. Before I could get my coat on and escape, he said something to me. His demon eyes were focused upon me, and I understood what a prey must feel like just before pounced upon. When he spoke, it didn’t sound like words of any language I knew. It sounded more like a snorting horse, about to gallop.

“Sorry, what?” I asked.

“[Grumble, snort]” he said.

“I’m sorry, I can’t understand you.”

The hairy scarecrow stepped closer to me. “[Snort, grumble]” he said. His breath was like an old basement that hasn’t been cleaned in decades, and was hot and thick like a sweaty dog. I shut my eyelids tightly and lowered my ear. He leaned ever closer. I could hear the maggots in his teeth squeaking. He whispered his dog breath into my ear. “Do you know where a bathroom is?” I tried to be helpful. I gave him some suggestions, but I think he grunted that he had already looked in those places. I apologized quickly, and escaped.

However, he again found me in the next class. He sat down right behind me so that his breath could create a greenhouse effect around me. I shuddered, and I think he thought I was cold. I was surprised he recognized me and felt we had enough of a relationship that he should make such a comment. He mentioned the freezing weather, and I mentioned Groundhog Day and how it would tell us what to expect. My neck never turned, though. I concentrated on writing notes I really didn’t need to write.

After class started, he would continue to whisper horrors in my ear. The professor was lecturing on some boring subject that everybody in class already knew. He mentioned how in a certain process electrons diffuse. He said that it was a kind of force. Then, from behind me, I heard the words, “Luke, use the force!” I would have laughed if I wasn’t frightened for my life, and suffocating.

Later in the lecture, from behind me I felt a tapping on my shoulder. The taps were much like the kind you would expect a ghost would haunt you with. I ignored them at first, guessing they were unintentional. It was hard to tell because I was dizzy from the classmate’s fumes. As the taps continued, I had to respond. I turned my head ever so slightly so as not to peer into those horrible eyes or to breathe in the exact direction of the beast. He spoke, “Do you have a quarter?” Now I don’t know what he needed a quarter for in the middle of class, and I didn’t ask. I just got out my change, fished around for a quarter, pinched it between my thumb and finger, and raised my hand over my shoulder. The quarter was pulled from my fingers, and his dirty claws briefly pushed against my nails. “Thanks,” he snorted. I didn’t turn around again; I didn’t pay attention at all.

This is not my classmate, but you get the idea.


At the end of class, when I finally turned around to leave, he was gone, although the stench was not. I like to think that there is some machine that will give a person a shower for a quarter, and that he was going to this machine. Most people do not benefit from any added self-importance. Though his self esteem may not be low, he could certainly use some more vanity.

This brings me to another annoying classmate. I call him the Hollow Boy.

Definition of Hollow Boy: The Hollow Boy is a student who imagines his gray matter is somewhat of a delicacy among intellectuals, including professors. Due to the surplus of authentic morons my cornfield university has, Hollow Boy is able to succeed in his vision of grandeur. Hollow Boy likes to use elegant words, which might make his mouth beautiful except for the crap in his teeth that he has from kissing the professor’s ass. The professor may even find it attractive to humor this student and call on his ever raised hand when the rest of his mob of students can only utter words of academic vomit. However, in any other class where the majority of students have more than the orange flavor of the Jello brand between their ears, he would be nothing more than the vain piece of chewed meat that he is.

Hollow Boy was a mosquito buzzing around my ears from the first day. The situation began to suffer when his sophomoric vanity was elevated by the ramblings of students who hunger for their own voices to quickly decay their own chances for sounding at all sharp. They should have stapled their lips because at least before the class began, nobody knew the extent of their dumbassity. “It is better to keep your mouth shut and let everybody think you are an idiot than to open it and prove them right.”

The only reason I am stranded in the room of cosmetic wearing monkeys is because the university’s requirements for credentials of a minimum intelligence dictate that I must. Having already finished the more difficult ones, I elected to not make an already exhausting course load heavier. Therefore, I have sunk to classes with heads that are cranially challenged in thickness. As probably is the case with Hollow Boy, I have already suffered through more advanced classes which have taken me beyond the simple analysis needed for this easier one. I have to admit that he must know something about something, if only that. Unlike Hollow Boy, however, I have spent enough hours in the more advanced classes to know that his seemingly clever insights are actually nothing more than urine in a cocktail glass with one of those little umbrellas.

If it is not bad enough that he sprinkles words of glitter over himself all class, at the end, I found him engaging in further kissassery. He went privately to the professor in the front of the room and was asking questions that only 100% pure beef suck up would ask. Not even an interested fool would inquire over such insignificancies. “Oh, today’s subject matter was so interesting. Do tell me more, My Dear Professor. The class’s discussion was simply orgasmic!” Class is not such a delight for me. It’s more like going with my parents to decide what color carpet they should buy for the livingroom. I simply show up, say what I have to, leave, and do what assignments I must. Anybody who finds the class that interesting goes on my list of people who need a swift kick to the arse.

His vicarious perfection is limited, though. He was a quarter hour late to class on the day our first assignment was due. His excuse was that there was a long line for printing off the computers. I well know the horrors of the busy computer labs, but if Hollow Boy were all he says he’s cracked up to be, then he would have done his assignment and printed it off on time, which he obviously didn’t. He couldn’t even turn in the very easy assignment. He said that even though he waited, he still couldn’t print it off and that he would hand it in later. His dear professor went along with it, though. Hollow Boy all but fell on his knees and worshipped the professor as if thanking him over and over would take away his fear of not getting his assignment in on time. Fear and pride can bring out good in people. Hollow Boy shows us the alternative.