On a Scale from Idiot to Complete Jerk (10 page)

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 got 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.

This last jerkish event might also be depicted by a cool diagram (a diagram within the explanation of a graph! Does this guy ever stop?). Ever hear of Venn diagrams? They're circles, mostly, developed by somebody named Venn, I guess. Anyway, all the circles sort of overlap in one shaded, overlapping part. It looks like the kind of doodling kids do on their binders in a boring class, but I'm told it's more significant.

Scientific Illustration #7:
Quadrants of Jerkish Behavior

In this illustration, all the circles represent the jerkish
behavior of the popular crowd. The overlap area shows
a highly concentrated and coordinated area of jerkish activity
(like when the group all dissed the formerly popular girl).
We will label that area Complete Jerk Quadrant because
quadrant is such a cool science word.

Conclusions:
A highly detailed, multi-lined graph, a diagram and four lunch periods of research: I've spent way too much time on this case study already. And what did it prove? Interestingly, it didn't only show what everyone already knows—that these four jerks are indeed jerks (although it's always nice to have that documented officially). It also demonstrated two very important general conclusions about jerks:

1) Leaving aside the really hard cases for the counselors and psychologists, jerks rarely demonstrate their jerkitude all the time. Much of the time, jerks pretend to be normal people. Like that fools anybody. But at key times—during jerkish events, episodes or opportunities—their true natures are revealed and the jerkitude spikes.

2) When we think of jerks, we often think of individual jerks acting annoying all on their own. But the really groundbreaking part of this case study shows several jerks working together in a group to create a massive jerkish event. Sort of like animals that hunt in a pack, only jerkier.

B) Teachers and Principals

  1) Teachers

We come to the tricky part of the project. You might think that talking about whether teachers can be jerks in a project that will be graded by a
teacher
might result in some kind of a conflict. You know, be a little awkward. Absolutely not. We're all objective professionals here. No names will be used. All scenarios described will remain anonymous and highly scientific.

Anyway, much like coaches, many, many teachers are wonderful people. They inspire kids to learn and devote themselves to education. Especially my favorite teacher, who is kind and caring and really appreciates a good science project when she reads one.

But let's face it. Regular people can be idiots and jerks, so teachers are likely no exception.

For this chapter, I:

(a) held a scientific focus group (my friends) to

(i) develop a list of the kinds of jerkish behavior they had personally witnessed among their teachers (this list has been edited—heavily edited) and

ii) rate the behaviors on the Jerk-O-Meter from 1 to 10 (1 being normal, 10 being complete jerk);

(b) paid the focus group in fruit gummies and assorted snacks; and

(c) came up with the project's first scientific table to display the results.

Scientific Illustration #8:
Rating Annoying Teacher Behavior

Teachers have, in the last fifty or so years, been prevented by
various laws from being the kind of jerks your parents' teachers
might have been. Most of them don't scream a lot anymore or try
to deliberately humiliate kids. Even so, there still seems to be a lot
of room for idiocy and jerkishness in the classroom.

TEACHER BEHAVIOR	RATING	REASON
Deliberately calling on a kid who's staring down at his desk and not making eye contact at all.		Staring down at your desk, the universal kid symbol for “please leave me alone/I don't know/I don't want to answer” should be respected.
Making the “last one in” do ten push-ups in gym class.		Teachers never factor in distance here. It's always assumed that you're just slacking, rather than, say, playing goal at the far end of the field like I was last gym class.
Making everyone do laps even if only one person misbehaves.		Running senseless laps is even more stupid than pushups. This punishment is unfair and tends to lead to a lot of group anger against the misbehaver. Which, come to think of it, might be the point.
Thinking that running laps around the school is an appropriate, character-building punishment.		Laps have nothing to do with character. This is entering total idiot territory.
Forcing us to do an entire “dance” unit and getting mad when junior high boys (and most of the girls) both dread it and suck at it.		You tell me when we'll ever really need to “Bollywood dance” and I'll smile through it.
Bragging about the awards or championships they won when they were our age (twenty or thirty years ago).		Bragging on its own is just idiotic. If accompanied by pelting volleyball spike-serves at us, it moves into jerkdom. There is no place on the scale to show that this is also pathetic.
Making the entire class stay after school because one kid threw a snowball.		One kid. One snowball. Do the math.
Assigning extra homework in a snitty voice because of the snowball incident.		Bonus move up the scale for taking the whole incident up a notch. What does homework have to do with snowballs, anyway?
Using student slang (e.g., Teacher: “That is so fresh! YOLO!”)		Believe me, this does not help kids relate to the teacher at all. It just gives them material for LOL-ing at them behind their backs.
Using heavy sarcasm (e.g., Teacher: “Yeah, you guys are really going to be ready for high school.”)		We understand, so you don't have to be mean about it. And the sarcasm isn't preparing us for anything either.
Playing their lame music in class and getting mad when kids complain about its lameness.		This is low-grade idiot behavior, but we're a captive audience, and that makes us angry.
Using obvious bluffs (e.g., Teacher: “If this class doesn't settle down, you will all fail health class!”)		Nobody fails Health.