Anyone who has or had the experience of high school has heard of them. Not even; maybe someone who attended an AP-less high school somewhere someplace stumbled across a Barron’s AP review book on psychology or computer science in a leisurely stroll at their local book store. The point is, everyone knows about AP courses. The only people who don’t know are children attending elementary or junior high school and have no older siblings to be scared by their stories (which was a very nice time - I would like to live that again).

        The the very first thing that happens to everyone upon laying eyes on “AP” is the firing of a trillion neurons in their brains, fired to grab the most degrading, negative terms in their well-established lexicons like “scary shit”, “badass”, “death”, and put them in the single-circle Venn Diagram labelled “AP”. To hell with whatever AP stands for, it has to be one of Satan’s many tests like the SAT or MCAT or PCAT or SHSAT or PSAT or ACT or DAT or MAT or VCAT or TOEFL or ASDFGHJKL. Students enter high school with the impression that AP courses are for the smart and studious, the brave, and the crazy; and if they themselves are already in one as freshmen, they were BAMFs. Although, it was cool that a high school student could start acquiring college credit already. Such were my thoughts as I became accustomed to high school life.

        Fast forward four years into senior year, and I can say that the elevated view of APs the me of four years ago held was silly. Not because my grades weren’t good enough to get into AP classes, nor because of my inherent human quality of laziness, but because of the practice itself. The only AP courses I have taken were AP Java and AP Comparative Government and Politics. AP Java was an enjoyable course. So was AP Comparative Government. I don’t doubt that the material taught in any course designated with “AP” is not on par with actual college courses.

        However, there lies an inherent flaw in the notorious exam at the end of the year used to determine whether a student will be accredited for college credit. Basing accreditation on a sole exam isn’t the best way to determine whether a student has a solid understanding of the material taught, even if the exam is relatively comprehensive. And in my experience, some AP tests are more comprehensive than others. The AP Java test was quite comprehensive. The AP Comp. Gov. test was not.

        While practicing for the comparative government test, I had come across the question, “What are two sources of legitimacy in Iran?” Anyone who takes government knows what legitimacy in this context means - the acceptance of the governing institution by the people. In checking the answers for this question, an answer was, “Supreme Leader”. Iran’s Supreme Leader is like a president, except with more power. This is almost saying the government is legitimate because of the government. I don’t get it.

        In theory, AP courses and college accreditation is great. In practice, there are a few problems that I can see. However, that’s not to say AP Physics students are taking AP physics for nothing; they deserve respect of the highest order and a shower of adulation for stepping into hell willingly… and hopefully coming back out in one piece. Maybe it’s because I only took two courses that my respect for the AP system in general is low. But even if I did take, say five or six, I doubt my college tuition costs would be any noticeably lower.

        So I was innocently working (or rather, surfing the web and whatnot) at my computer desk in my white-walled room, and I happened to take a look around, and saw a bold thing crawling on the wall to my left. It appeared to be an itsy-bitsy spider, nothing two tissues and a pinch of the index and thumb fingers couldn’t handle. I got up from my chair, apprehended the intruder, and performed the time-tested procedure; a drape of the tissues over the annoyance, and a pinch, and voila! Wrap the tissue, throw it into the trash receptacle, be done, be happy.

        However, today would prove to be the day that the time-tested procedure failed me. Expecting to promptly return to whatever I was doing on my computer, I started walking back to my chair. It was not more than three quarters of a step after I had performed the pinch that I have executed on a multitude of occasions, that to my shock the itsy-bitsy spider was still alive in the folds of the tissue, in my hand.

        Ok. Try number two! Squeeze the intruder with as much pressure as can be exerted with the right hand. It didn’t work. Try number three. Use both hands. It didn’t work. Upon closer examination, it started not to look like a spider, but rather a baby beetle! Still, why should a baby beetle be able to withstand the Herculean pressure exerted by two hands whereas a spider the same size doesn’t stand a chance with the pressure from one hand? Ok. I got this. Drastic times call for drastic measures. I folded the tissue in half to encase the beetle, lay the tissue flat on the floor, and stepped on it. IT DIDN’T WORK. After the unfolded the tissue, I found it crawling as if nothing had happened to it, as if I wasn’t killing it, as if life were normal. This was a great insult to me. My body weight cannot crush something the size of the “OZ” that follows after the “16.9 FL” on your Poland Spring water bottle. Try number 4. JUMP on the bastard in the tissue. No sir, try again.

        I started to panic. What am I gonna do with this S.O.B. if I can’t kill it? Will it live forever and haunt me? Should I keep it trapped in my contacts case until it dies? Just then, I had a moment of clarity, as if a higher being sympathized with my unfortunate discovery. FLUSH THE BASTARD DOWN THE TOILET. Yes, this is something that I had not thought of, primarily because I had not encountered an annoyance that couldn’t be dealt with using the aforementioned time-tested technique.

        I ran to the bathroom with the tissue in hand, and immediately shook the beetle into the toilet bowl. This is where my panic and limited sight of the future turned into fun and sight of ten million different paths I could take into the future, all concerned with how to punish the intruder. Needless to say, I let the beetle have a fair share of the panic as it swam fruitlessly in the ocean of toilet water. I was tempted to shout, “DROWN MOTHERFUCKER DROWN,” however, I let the better of me stop such an urge because it would have incited some uncomfortable questioning from my parents and maybe even would have marred my harmless, innocent image permanently. Eventually, it drowned and that was when I knew it was time to return to normal life, to reality. I depressed the switch to flush my toilet, and watched and listened as the black dot in the toilet swirled and swirled out of sight.

        I must say, this was a pleasantly evil experience. I now know the proper procedure for disposing of beetle-like intruders. I however, remain puzzled at the durability of these things; a Google search yielded no helpful results to me whatsoever.

        I swear, bus drivers who operate the buses in the mid of day are, without doubt and even half a thought, retarded. Quite literally. My experience allows me to generalize the bunch as a group of old people who ride the buses in the middle of the day for nothing but scenic routes and the salary.

        These people have nothing better to do than to pick up losers in a rush willing to blow money on the MTA’s glorified public transportation service and to screw them over by speeding at 10mph along the expressway. Goddamn, it must be called an expressway for a reason, or English is just fueling my rage by providing me with no-sense compound words, like how one drives on a parkway and parks on a driveway. If that is the case with expressways, I have been living a lie.

        It’s like these people in the front seat enjoy inciting the angry stares of commuters; angry after witnessing before their very own eyes pedestrians on foot arriving at their destination before bus-riders themselves reach their destination. It’s like these old people see a speed bump waiting for them every other meter of the road. Not everyone can afford the same leisure as them. They should be enjoying their leisurely scenic route in their BMW or Mercedes Benz, not in the city’s buses. 

        My very own perspective on the existence of clothing is that clothing simply wasn’t meant to be. Yes, that’s coming from Mr. I-like-to-dress-up-a-lot, and as contradictory as that may sound, I believe I arrived at my clothing-wasn’t-meant-to-be-ism due to my frequent dressing up.

        Anyone who cares about the fit of clothes; like caring about how much to pull the strap on the back of that vest to achieve that perfect conformation before it’s too much and turns your look to that of a fag (it pisses me off when people do that), or how well this pair of black jeans slims and streamlines your contour; and dresses formally regularly or even occasionally will know what I mean when I say that dressing up formally is a pain in the ass.

        Formal clothes, when worn with that modern fit, restrict movement beyond comfort. True, you can move in any range of motion - it will just destroy your neat fit you’ve spent 10 minutes in front of the mirror perfecting. Moving in motions that clothing wasn’t meant for will ultimately destroy the clothing and your clean look, which just plain sucks. Your shirt becomes partially untucked, creating a flared-out look at the waist which, on almost anyone, creates the most unsightly image a human eye can take in.

        Even if you don’t wear dressy clothes most of the time, you still experience how some articles of clothing are more restricting than others. And just like weight lifting, taking off clothing you’ve put on often involves unnatural motions. Sometimes you might even be struggling to take off a shirt.

        I feel clothes are unnatural and at times too annoying in many aspects for its existence to have been intended. True, clothes definitely have the potential to create a handsome man and an alluring woman. Quoting Mark Twain, “Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.” Of course, a naked man in our clothed society wouldn’t hold power, even if he had hulking muscles more visibly ripped than that crotch rip on your jeans. But in a society where humans are naked, he would be the better man, he would hold massive power; truly a function of nature.

        My English teacher isn’t exactly a person that you’d say is nice, or forgiving, or an agreeable guy, or even possibly straight. Rather, he is an outright asshole, who might be clean for those rare periods of time. Whenever that happens it’s just the happiest days ever; there’s enough happiness to power the world for a millennia, make Earth shine brighter than any quasar and then some. Angels fall from the heavens, the sun shines like you’d never believe, 9/11 never happened, and everyone’s hugging each other as if hugging could grant oneself eternal life and perform photosynthesis to mass reduce carbon dioxide pollution of the atmosphere. The other times, well, make you wonder if he’s an alien spy who’s getting fed up with staying on earth so goddamned long and will finally press the create black hole button, or just how fucking long his periods last.

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