I Ruined Someone's Life Once

When it comes down to it, we humans are all pretty much sheep, generally speaking. We all share the same basic needs, and as such, we all live a routine that sees to it that we meet these requirements, or we perish. Sure, we try to distinguish ourselves from the herd with our clothing, hair, and the rest of that which composes our facade, but in the end we are all endlessly grazing sheep, really. Despite our best efforts at individuality, most people still fall into very uniform social groups, and the best that the worst of us can garner (or is it the worst that the best of us can garner?) is little more than fellow sheep glancing at their finely groomed wool.

There are some, though, that have denied conformity's crook and elevated themselves amongst the herd. Whether intentionally, such as braving the edge of the world in sailing unknown seas, or unintentionally, like the discovery of penicillin; great efforts, discoveries, and remarkable accomplishments define those who are a sheering above, or below, the rest of us.

So it was that I achieved something that not many can claim and became: "The Great Ruiner."

Greetings.

I was in ninth grade junior high, trying to sleep through another day of classes, when cosmic forces conspired to wreak havoc on an otherwise peaceful slumber. This was a pivotal time in my life, where I began that journey that would make me who I am today, and this moment is one of many pieces that construct the whole of my array.

You see, one of my least favorite periods of the day was drama class. The teacher was a wretched, crooked, old crone, that we will call Ms. Gnarl, and she liked nothing better than tormenting me with work, assignments, and interrupted sleep. Not only did she carry with her always a cloud of bile stench, she spat venom when she spoke, and sharpened her talons on the fat kids who couldn't act very well. The chubby ones probably sated her voracious appetite better than the puny ones, like me, but she tried to make room for me on plenty of occasions. She also carried with her a gullet full of spite, probably because there were no knights in the kingdom bold enough to tame that wild beast, and showered her pupils with misdirected frustration.

Since Ms. Gnarl was keeping me awake, to critique various acting performances with the rest of the class, I chose to turn my A.D.D. onto something else and doodled away on a sheet of paper. The lighting was low, illumination came only from stage, reflecting off the oily faces of the acne-ridden youths, so my usually shoddy art was even worse than usual. On stage, the lone female thespian wailed over some tragic tale and flopped about like a fish that was both demonically possessed and suffocating on air. Low lights + distracting bad acting = awful drawings. In disgust I decided to abandon my failure of art and throw away my sheet of paper.

In our drama class we had a rule about staying seated during a show. I couldn't get up and toss away my balled up piece of paper. Figuring myself a genius, I decided to take a shot at the trash can from about five desks away, thus adhering to the "stay seated" rule and disposing of my trash at the same time. Brilliant! I wasn't even ten feet from the garbage bin, how could I miss, right? If I did, so what, the balled up paper would be there waiting for me when I was allowed to stand up. Harmless...

With a cock of the wrist, a furrow of the brow, and a quick mental calculation I let fly my ball of paper in a shot that would have made Jordan proud. The trajectory was flawless and I was already smiling to myself. Job well done, chap, you just scored at the buzzer securing the championship. The crowd goes wild! Only, it didn't go quite like that.

I somehow failed to notice a water plug jutting from the ceiling, you know, those water spraying angels that loom overhead in case of a fire; it had another idea in mind. My ball of paper banked off the plug and now committed toward the stage. The girl onstage was standing tall, delivering the performance of the millennium, I'm sure, when a wad of paper struck her atop the cranium, not once, but twice bouncing straight up and down before falling aside like her dreams and aspirations. There the ball of paper lay, at the feet of the thespian, a monument of my doom.

Needless to say, this brought the house down.

The girl ran from the room, crying, and flailed upon the lockers in the school hallway. The lights came on and fingers were pointing here and there, but no one yet knew it was me that launched the paper projectile. No one, save for one person.

"Dude, did you mean to throw that at her?" asked a sympathetic voice from the jock in the adjacent desk.

"No, I was aiming for the trash. It hit the water plug in the ceiling!" I whispered.

The jock rose and pointed at me exclaiming, "It was Smiley, and he meant to do it!"

I was dragged by the scruff of my neck by Ms. Gnarl, probably not dissimilar to the way she ensnares a possible mate, and thrown into the hallway where the thespian still bemoaned her tragic existence.

The thespian cried to Ms. Gnarl about how her life was ruined and she would never be the same ever again. To which I responded with sarcasm and apathy like gasoline to a fire. I never knew my hands were so powerful, and that with the flick of the wrist I could destroy someone's life, forever! Apparently so.

I was called all manner of foulness, written up, sent to the office, and ultimately banned from drama class. I was cast away like Satan, and also like Satan, I would personally see to the corruption of the sheep.

This little incident followed me home, where I was beaten by my loving father, mostly because Ms. Gnarl called me "white trash," and was exiled to endless amounts of after-school detention and punishments. Through all the fallout that ensued, I stood strong and reveled in the fact that I had broken the crook around my neck, or at least came closer to doing so. The world around me was unraveling, a life was ruined, and it all stemmed from a quirk of geometry and a ball of paper. Did they not realize this too? Somehow they made a ball of paper into an atom bomb. Despite the abuse and retaliations, I laughed at the sheep. So much chaos, so much fun!

There is a person walking the earth these days whose life I ruined. No one else can ruin that life, I did it. I distinguished myself against the herd and they were sent reeling. Or did I?

Perhaps it wasn't me, but rather, the snowball effect of witch hunts and prejudice? It wasn't really my fault that the thespian got hit with a ball of paper, but no one believed me or would even consider the possibility of accident, I just had to be made example of.

“A ball of paper you say!? By God, man, that is evil incarnate!”

My attitude towards those who already had it out for me didn't help any, I had one foot in the grave to begin with, but it was amusing how everyone let so small a thing blow up and send the herd scattering.

Maybe the herd just needed an excuse to run around and act all panicky? In which case, I am happy to have helped. We all need exercise and release. How is the wool these days?

Love,

Smiley Grimm