Random Acts of Nerdness: Zotnummingurtard!

I’m walking down a dark, mostly forgotten corridor made of nothing but cement and old drywall. My footsteps echo down the murky hall as I grasp my backpack tighter to my chest, fearing where my unwilling journey will take me. I glance to my right and see piles of junk stashed in a small room through a window in the door, its purpose and function lost to the ages. I peer to my left and see a massive room with ancient machinery sitting stagnant, but with anticipation of being revived and mutilating and destroying whatever is forced into their waiting gullet.

Near the end of the dim hallway is a soft, cold glow, the light at the end of the tunnel. Yet I know I don’t want anything to do with what’s in that light, but I’m pushed to press on. I step into the glow, and as my eyes adjust, a sterile-looking room with old, white patterned tile, rusted lockers and worn school desks are revealed to me. I carefully survey the room, which appears to be empty. With the fleeting feeling that all is well, I relax my shoulders and loosen my grip on my backpack, but an instant later, a cold chill shoots up my spine.

I begin to spin around out of instinct, but there is nothing I can do anymore. I catch a glimpse of the oily, horrid grinning face which represented God’s abandonment of the planet Earth. Before I can act, I catch a glimpse of the rough black end of the T-square out of the corner of my eye as it buries itself in the back of my neck, sending waves of pain, blood, and regret over my body. All I can think about as my body falls to the ground is how stupid it was to let my guard down.

My head strikes the tile, my eyes jam straight forward to allow me to see the pool of crimson oozing out of my neck, head, and wherever else it felt it wanted to escape. I hear a muffled, low, ignorant chuckle grow ever more distant as my vision dims. Before the blackness swallows the world around me, I hear the creature who had struck me down let out a triumphant, satisfied cry:

ZOTNUMMINGURTARD!!!

If that didn’t cause you to relieve yourself in your office chair, garnering stares of disgust of those around you, you simply aren’t human. For the rest of you, as you’ve come back to your computer after excusing yourself to go to the restroom for a little while and wait until everyone who witnessed your reaction leaves while you come to terms with the image you were just coerced into picturing, you’re probably now taking comfort in the fact that this was simply some sad fiction written by an entertainment website author who has rightfully never been paid a cent for his work. You’re probably smiling nervously as you shakily take a sip of the beverage of your choice.

Well, prepare to do a stereotypical spit-take and order a replacement computer as I tell you this story REALLY HAPPENED!

Okay, not exactly, but the events this opening were based off of pretty much my entire Freshman year in high school. This was the year of new beginnings, the start of my new high school career, with boundless possibilities that could dramatically shape my path in life in countless different ways. It was also my first time experiencing what Hell must be like.

My exploits, as most do, started innocently enough with a presentation. Before my first day of school at Clay High, the school hosted a presentation for a class called Tech Prep. From my understanding, the class was organized from some outside group and was offered to schools to implement so students could learn valuable skills for the future. What these skills are, I have no clue, and I doubt even the heads of the organization knew for certain.

But that didn’t stop the reps from stealing the evenings of a room full of excited parents and less-than-excited students telling us how wonderful Tech Prep was. I remember sitting in the humanities room, with the cushy chairs and fancy tables they used to lure the humanities students into a false sense of comfort before smacking them with a pile of homework (survival of the impact was the first assignment; the rest were far worse), listening the peppy representatives toss their deceptive droppings on the table in front of us, expecting us to chow down.

I raised my hand and asked if the course offered computer programming. At the tender age of fourteen, I still had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. Most of the other kids really didn’t either, but they had Big Dreams for the Future! All I had was the desire to go home and play Super Mario RPG.

Granted, this was basically my attitude until I was twenty-two, and even at that point the change wasn’t my first choice. For years, the question of what I wanted to be when I grew up was constantly being posed to me by teachers and other motivational grown-ups, and for a while, I wanted to be a cartoonist because I drew comics and really enjoyed it. Of course, if you read Bug, you can tell my artistic abilities haven’t advanced all that much, and the writing from the old comics was about what you would expect from an average fourteen-year-old, so this future seemed a little uncertain.

I did, however, enjoy video games with a passion, so I decided I wanted to program them. The problem was, I knew very little about computers. My household was so late for the technology train, we didn’t even know there were technology spaceships by that time, and stood waiting at the station for a train that would never come again. We had a Macintosh Superdrive in 1991 and stuck with that until we got a Packard Bell in 1996, Between and a little beyond that time, I had no idea how to use Windows at all, so I decided computers were evil and would take over the world because I didn’t know how to use them (you think I’m joking). I warmed up to the Packard Bell after a while and figured out some things, but I was nowhere near where I wanted to be to create video games.

So when they said “Oh, of course we teach computer programming!” I became excited that I might finally be able to learn an applicable skill I would enjoy. I signed up and left the presentation feeling pretty good, until I talked to Selmek later, who informed me they told him at a different presentation the class would involve learning to draw on computers. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but history would show the wise would have questioned the situation a little more before jumping in. Instead, Selmek and I went to class.

It turns out had I asked the representatives if the class involved interactive sex education with the varsity cheerleaders, they probably would have said “Oh, absolutely! Remember to bring condoms!” because during the first week, we were informed we would be getting a packet of drafting tools (I remember them being delayed, which would become no surprise considering how well the rest of the class went), and the rest of the introduction to the class involved the curtain being violently and unceremoniously yanked back, revealing Selmek and I had been bamboozled.

The true Tech Prep was best described as a glorified woodshop class with obsolete computers. Within the first few weeks, we were cutting wood and making stupid trinkets to reinforce the knowledge that grade school classes are designed mostly to keep us out of our parents' hair by doling out meaningless tasks. Oh, there was some computer drawing and programming, but the definitions were slightly skewed. The only aspects of drawing on computers were with the Computer Aided Drafting programming, which involved typing in random numbers and hoping it produced a semi-coherent picture. The only aspects of computer programming were whatever you could learn on your own so you could reprogram the computers to actually work right.

The deception in the advertising would have been bad enough, but the true memory-maker lied almost solely with the students. Including Selmek and I, there were about a dozen students in the class, though I have serious doubts the other ten had a combined IQ that would add up to more than the two of us, and there was some speculation we each individually might have trumped this number by a sad margin.

The students weren’t the kind of pleasant moron who slumps in his chair and allows drool packets to accumulate on the ground. No, we got the active ones, the kind whose primitive brains were filled with only a few simple commands: club, jump, throw, smack, scream, hump, grunt, urinate, and moan. These were our classmates. They were not humans, but rather a race of sub-humans who somehow managed to survive countless ages and take up residence in the school. They were the Tech Prepains.

The Tech Prepians were the stuff of legends, a story so sensational some people have a hard time believing it happened. I swear to you with the kind of intensity normally reserved for religion that all of what is written here about them is true. I’ll try to dust off memories from just over ten years ago and tell the story in chronological order as best I can. So much has happened to me in the time between now and then I fear important details have long since been forgotten, a thought that brings more sadness to me than the death of most of my relatives. While one would think I’d like to forget these events, I know this would be an injustice to the stream of human history. This story must be told.

It would be best if I cover the biggest instances in order, but I’ll attempt to establish the characteristics and behaviors of the Tech Prepians to help give you a clear picture. The first thing you have to remember is they all looked the same. After a while, it was impossible to tell them apart from one another, making identifying the executor of crimes impossible. Because of later artwork made for a game I designed (more on that later), I attribute them to having shortish black hair with an overhanging brow overshadowing eyes that fail to reveal much going on in the brain behind them. The only names I can remember are Ben, Joey, Kyle, Elias, Brian, and Jacques, but rest assured, all of them were guilty of similar sins.

The next thing one will notice about a Tech Prepian is they have little in the way of attention span, intelligence, common sense, or sense of consequence, but do possess an oppositely proportional amount of energy and hormones. They will run around the room, jump off of desks, scream at the top of their lungs, and generally carry on no matter what is going on at the time, even if its their funeral. They will throw any objected they can lift, be it blocks of wood, tools, wads of paper, cardboard chairs, or anything that isn’t securely fastened. They are also known for hitting anyone and anything with clubs, or, failing this, resorting to aggressive shoving.

Perhaps their most distressing attribute is their unchecked sexual hormones. A Tech Prepian will moan with more perversity than can be found in an adult book store at any time in a high-pitched voice that betrays their normally low-pitched voices. They will also hump just about anything in an attempt to either defeat it or destroy it. If they can manage to rub a few brain cells together, they’ll create artifacts in the shape of penises and proudly display them to the rest of the tribe.

Tech Prepians also make use of weapons, however basic. They mostly used objects they find lying around their environment, like sticks, paper, and dusty work gloves, to attack outsiders with. Their most prominent weapon is the T-square, which they use with an unnatural and frightening skill. If you have no idea what a T-square is, click this link and try not to pass out from the images of all the horrible things that these tools could do to a person. Consider yourself warned.

As I said, it was hard to tell the Tech Prepians apart, but a few had enough distinguishing features that made identification possible. Here are the six that I mentioned were worthy of note:

It's a microphone!

Ben: Ben was the tall, fat kid who Tech Prep lore would suggest was either their leader or their god. The striking thing about Ben was, despite his size, he could move pretty fast and let out high-pitched moans that shouldn’t have been possible for a creature his size. He also frequently crafted the artifacts and was a notch more perverse than the others. One time, Selmek was hunched over to get something out of his locker, and Ben grabbed his head and started thrusting his crotch into C’s face, scarring him with the kind of horror that will probably overwrite any war memory that tries to muscle into his subconscious.

Wait… damn it! He probably killed himself to silence the demons that I just kicked up with that last sentence! Sorry buddy!

Anyway, Ben was a central figure in the tribe, along with…

I want to suck your dick!

Joey: Joey was the short, fat kid who frequently wore ICP t-shirts and didn’t let his smaller height get in the way of his perversions. For whatever reason, he decided to attach himself to me (literally) and tried his hardest to make me want to cram a desk up his nose. He was also in my gym class, providing me with the kind of extra fun that results in a reciprocation that leads to an in-school suspension.

Being that I had him in gym class, Joey was sort of my lens into the mind of the Tech Prepian tribe, one that I could only look through when he was separated from the pack. While we were by no means on friendly terms, I would feel most comfortable posing questions to him. Considering I was only a few degrees away from slapping him upside the head until his brain rattled out of his ear, this comfort was somewhat tentative.

One of the Tech Prepians’ main catch-moans was “Oh Billy!” This could be heard on a daily basis, and though it became background noise after a while, this muttering always confused me because there wasn’t anyone named Billy in the class. While I was ready to chalk it up to lead paint in their nests, I decided to ask Joey if there was any special meaning to the phrase, to which he responded “It means dick.” he chortled, adding “You have a small Billy!”

Joey was more than just a font of erudition, however. While it didn’t happen in Tech Prep, Joey muttered a pair of phrases that will forever be fused to him. One day in gym class, Joey kept rubbing and bumping into me in the sort of blatantly homosexual way Tech Prepians expressed themselves, enhanced by the fact we were in gym clothes, allowing me to feel his sweaty, flabby body against me in the kind of meaningful way that causes people to hurl themselves off of buildings. While he was grinding on, he mumbled “I want to suck your dick!”

Normally, attributing dick sucking to a boy was an insult, but this is the kind of dynamic forward-thinker Joey was. I exclaimed “Ew! Get away from me!” as I fruitlessly pushed him away. He increased his gravitational pull and bonded to me all the harder, protesting “But I love you!”

Months later, I got my revenge when my idiot dandelion-headed friend Tommy and I were having an argument about fighting techniques, because we were big bad cage fighters who knew our stuff. At the time, I was into the idea of using a shoulder smash tackle to knock people over, finally throwing my weight around in a productive way. Tommy insisted this was stupid and was adamant his “jab punch,” which basically involved him making a fist and jutting out his index and middle fingers so get could set up a punch that would break them, was far superior. Who says high school students don’t have important topics of discussion?

As we were walking to the weight room for some mandatory fitness, Tommy decided to seek a greater mind on the subject and asked Joey “Hey, Joey, which did you think is better: my jab punch or Chris’s pushing?”

At the precise moment he finished his sentence, I tackled Joey from behind and sent him flying forward across the floor. Stunned, but able to move, he rolled to his feet, stomped up to me, and tried to get in my face and threaten me as best he could for being a head shorter than I was. Thankfully, the teacher wasn’t around and no one narced on me, so I left class that day with a satisfied smile on my face.

Joey was always close to Ben, so I considered him a sort of Tech Prepian Jesus. One day, both Ben and Joey were apparently suspended for fighting with each other, which I imagined left a lot of work for…

Oh Illeesia!

Elias: If Tech Prepians could be smart, Elisa would probably be the brightest one of the bunch, but only because he was quieter than the rest and didn’t cause as much trouble, though I’m not trying to give the impression that he wasn’t an idiot. In fact, he had the esteemed honor of almost causing the only fist fight I would have been involved in had I not had the chance to think things through (more on that later).

Otherwise, he wasn’t that interesting, outside of the fact the Tech Prepians would occasionally moan “Oh Illeesia!” Since he appeared to be the most intelligent, I pegged him as the priest of the tribe, with his job to interpret the will of Ben and Joey, which was quiet a task when you had a pile of idiots on hand, like…

Messy style!

Kyle: Kyle was always a name that meant trouble for me. I can’t remember one Kyle I’ve ever liked, though I can only remember three. The first was an arrogant pothead who I believe wandered into Camp Storer and came back with us after our sixth grade class trip, and he managed to latch onto my ride through high school ever since.

He was a smart kid, involved in the gifted classes, though the kids in those always seemed to be weird, so maybe they were really special classes. Sadly, his intelligence bolstered his ego, and he was a prominent figure in my gallery of torturers, so bad at one point I wrote a letter of intent to myself stating that if I killed him, the other idiots in his group would scatter in fear. Victory was mine in the end, as I ran into him recently at a wedding, and came to find that he was unemployed, and I was employed with a college, and had a house and fiancée, so it would seem that I have beat him. Yea!

Not that I’m bitter.

The second Kyle was a bit of an inconsequential kid to which we engaged in mutual tormenting before he faded into the background in high school only to emerge years later to chef at my wedding reception for free, so I guess there's one good Kyle in the world.

The Tech Prepian Kyle lost to me the moment I met him, because he was a dumb kid. And when I call one of the Tech Prepians dumb over all the others, that’s really saying something. I’m frankly surprised he didn’t kill himself by brushing his teeth with live utility wires.

Or maybe he didn’t brush his teeth, because he was pretty ugly (and when I call one of the Tech Prepians ugly over all the others…). He also slurred and garbled his speech a lot, adding to the effect. He was one of the most active Tech Prepian as well, making him one of the most dangerous. Truthfully, he probably contributed to most of the Tech Prepians’ catch phrases.

One such phrase was born during a rudimentary and pointless typography lesson which would be forgotten as the stale words pushed into one ear and belched out the other. The teacher, Mrs. Boyer (believe me, more on her later) was explaining that there were all kinds of different types of lettering, like block lettering and italic lettering, pretty insulting stuff if you’ve graduated from kindergarten, and it was precisely this kind of condescending teaching that prompted me to drop an art class later in high school (“There are straight lines, squiggly lines…”). At that point in my life, I didn’t want to be presented with concepts which would cause the core audience of Sesame Street to slap their foreheads in exasperation over being presented with a painfully obvious concept.

And yet the lettering concept proved to be too much for the Tech Prepians, which I suppose is fair, since they had just finished wrapping their minds around cave paintings. Yet Mrs. Boyer pressed on, going so far as to prompt the class to suggest lettering styles. At this point, Kyle burbled out two renowned words: “Messy style!”

The proper way of pronouncing it, according to Kyle, is “mshessy styule,” but you get the point.

Both Selmek and I had individual memorable encounters with him, though Selmek’s were more dramatic. The only thing I can specifically remember him doing (hey, they all looked alike, what do you want from me and my ten-year-old memories?) was hurling a dusty work glove at me and hitting me in the eye. It didn’t do anything that permanent, but it hurt like hell and made me vow that I would set the room on fire with them in it one day, but I kept forgetting either the gas or the matches, and I wasn’t going to leave anything like that in my locker and risk them getting their hands on it, because they would have taken Selmek and I with them in the resulting blaze they would somehow create using only one of the two elements. Or none of them.

C’s bitterest encounter with Kyle was after class, when Kyle elbowed him out of his way, hitting him in the lip. Selmek went to the principal on my insistence to report him, but we didn’t know who exactly did it, so he pointed to a random Tech Prepian, which turned out to be Elias. Elias was punished, and while Selmek felt bad about it at the time, he took comfort in the fact they were all the same thing anyway.

His most legendary encounter with Kyle also occurred after class when Kyle performed the idiot’s most sophisticated comedic routine and book-dropped him. He then shouted “Dropped something, retard!” and burbled off. However, because of Kyle’s underdeveloped mental and speech capabilities, this ironic statement came out sounding like “Zotyummingurtard!”

When Selmek related this story to me, we agreed what Kyle had upchucked was an ideal Tech Prepian muttering, though I apparently misunderstood Selmek and spoke and wrote it as “Zotnummingurtard,” and this word/phrase/verbal vomit stuck as the immortal Tech Prepian word that meant… well, it didn’t really mean anything. It was just sort of a random thing they spewed when their brains shut down while they were talking, and it was also used as a battle cry. The word “zot,” was also something we attributed them to randomly murmuring, a sort of nonsensical word that indicated their brains were humming like a comatose opera singer.

And speaking of savvy minds, we were in awe of the technological expertise of…

I can hack past all that!

Jacques: I’m sure upon seeing the name “Jacques,” you would quickly assume some sophisticated and/or snooty French kid somehow got thrown into the mix. Jacques was neither of these things, instead taking on the guise of an overly aggressive, narcissistic outcast that few people could ever take seriously because he had little to back up his tough talk.

Besides providing a seemly constant stream of grating background noise with his scratchy voice, Jacques fancied himself something of a computer genius, despite the fact he looks like an inner-city thug who would play Russian roulette with a fully-loaded gun. I’m not sure how talented he really was, but his inflated belief in his skills led to a hilarious exchange between Selmek and him and spawned yet another Tech Prepianism.

One day during class, Jacques decided to puff out his chest and inform Selmek that he was going to hack into his computer later that night. No reason was given. Selmek brought up the fact that his computer was password protected, to which Jacques replied “I can hack past all that!” Thus, he chiseled another Tech Prepianism into the rock.

The next day, Jacques came up to Selmek and told him “I hacked into your computer last night. You have some nice files!” He paused for a moment and asked “Do you have Windows 95?”

Selmek mentioned the exchange to me and posed if Jacques really hacked into his computer, wouldn’t he know he had Windows 95? If he was really curious, he would have figured it out while he was poking around, but he didn’t know because he couldn’t hack through a forest of party streamers with a flamethrower that was stuck in the “on” position. He was full of crap, especially the space between his ears.

Jacques would come back to haunt me year later, as it turned out he was friends with my future brother-in-law. Fortunately, the term "friend" apparently had an opposite meaning, so I didn't see much of him.

If you want to talk about people with crap between the ears, one of had a nasty case of it himself was…

Why are you being so defensive?!

Brian: I’ve tried to impress upon anyone I tell Tech Prepians stories to that all of them looked the same to us. Later, I would use this concept and designed a generic Tech Prepian character with black hair and an overhanging brow with eyes that indicated most of life was flowing freely through his ears. This design, crafted more from my limited artistic ability, ended up looking a lot like Brian.

While I attribute a larger potion of my encounters to Brian, he was a fairly unremarkable Tech Prepian in that he was loud, stupid, and had a penchant to destroy things or cause bodily harm. He was the embodiment of the Tech Prepian, and therefore didn’t stand out so much. Because of this, I can’t be very certain the stories I’m attributing to him are his doing, but since Tech Prepians would end up taking the blame for each other because of their similarity, I don’t see why this tradition shouldn’t continue.

While we’re mostly dumbfounded about how idiots can survive in the world despite the fact their mental lackings should have ensured their death a thousand times over, Brian actually did end up dying in a car accident after high school. I haven’t been able to gather any solid details all these years later, but I seem to remember hearing he flew through his windshield and burned to death on his hood after striking a telephone pole.

Hearing about the death of a Tech Prepian was definitely made Selmek and I start questioning social norms. On one hand, he was a fellow classmate, and common decency states that when a person dies, you must feel sad. On the other hand, he unapologetically tortured one of my friends and me for nine months, something that was never reconciled. This is also not to mention I hadn’t seen him in at least five years before he died. I wasn’t sad about it, but I wasn’t happy either. It was sort of a bit of dark humor with a dose of reality.

In any case, I’d like to think as he was flying through that windshield, he was moaning his final words as they tangled in the noise of the wreckage: “Oh Bill-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!”

While we’re on the subject of horrible, twisted wrecks, let’s finish this roster up with…

Mrs. Boyer: The person who was legally supposed to be in charge of these primitives was Mrs. Boyer, a plain-looking, shrill woman with short, sandy hair and glasses. It would have been pretty easy to dismiss her as being an average teacher had in not been for the fact she served in the National Guard and she was pregnant, a situation that makes me stop and ponder to this day, especially having been in her class for nine months, who sunk to the level that would put her in that situation. I’m talking about either of them.

One would think being in the Guard would hone her leadership skills, or at least make her accustomed to the boorish behaviors of men and give her some insight on how to deal with them. The Tech Prepians, however, proved to be too much for her, putting her teaching routine in a rut. It was almost always the same thing every day: after calming the class down (I made a funny!), she would start to teach, and this would act as a mental trigger for the idiots and they would rile again. After far too many seconds of this, Miss Boyer would sharply yet calmly mutter “Gentlemen…” in a vain and completely warped attempt to address the Tech Prepians. When this invariably failed, she would add a loud “Shut up!” in such a way that the two phrases were meant to be together and spawned her personal catchphrase.

After about fifteen minutes into the first day, Mrs. Boyer stopped caring and let the class run amok. Selmek and I quickly learned there was no reason to bother reporting problems with the Tech Prepians, because it was like reporting dizzle during a typhoon. She would usually respond “Well, there’s really nothing I can do about it!” when an idiot attacked one of us. Her apathy was especially alarming not only because she was a teacher, but also because she was in the Guard and was having a baby. You would think either one of these would be motivation enough to give a damn, if not for her obligation of responsibility as a teacher, then for the fact that she could have risked losing her job or having a T-square thrown into her stomach, braining baby.

Instead, she used her National Guard and pregnancy status to play hooky. It seemed like she was out every other week, and I seem to remember she didn’t show up for the last month of school. This left the responsibility of herding the Tech Prepians to a series of wide-eyed substitute teachers whose lives were forever changed as a result of accepting the ill-fated job of Tech Prepian wrangler.

There were probably more, but I only remember three different subs throughout the year taking Mrs. Boyer’s stead. The most unremarkable was a slightly overweight woman who lasted no more than two days before disappearing and never returning again. If she did last two days, she was definitely a changed person. Actually, she was probably changed the moment she set foot in that classroom.

Mister Revel was the kind of instructional residue that dedicated teachers leave behind after they’ve retired. Not content with sitting at home eating Cheetos, Mister Revel subbed around in the Oregon district and earned a reputation as a kindly but stern man who loved flittering away the class time by telling stories.

That stern side came in very useful when he walked into the Tech Prep room, where the locals tested his patience to the point where he shouted at the class to sit their asses down. The fact that profanity, which was not tolerated for students to utter, had been thrown into the room by a teacher caused the idiots to freeze in their tracts and somewhat quietly sit down with stupid grins on their faces. He had accomplished something Mrs. Boyer could not: he shocked the Tech Prepians into submission, if only for a few seconds. Not bad for a substitute teacher, who tradition teaches us are the punching bags of the public education system.

Mister Newman, a man a friend of man identified correctly as a former mortician (really), lasted the longest, and was there for most of the end of the year. He was a scrawny, middle eastern-looking fellow who came off as a fairly laidback guy at first. His second day, he was wiry, paranoid, and snappy, a result of his psyche being humped into oblivion by the Tech Prepian presence. I’m not kidding, it just took one day to break him down. Imagine a whole year with them.

Of least significance was the presence of Brian Rutkowski, the gangly little weirdo who was an unfortunate manifestation for the previous four years of my school career and would hang on for another three, becoming increasingly stranger until his insanity culminated into his disappearance, which was later explained on account of his decision to rape a little boy at knifepoint. One would think his attendance in class would have been very important to the legend, and I have little doubt that it would have changed the story in some drastic ways. However, Brian lasted less than a month before dropping out of the program, which doesn’t say a lot about Selmek and I, who chose to stay.

Had he hung on for the duration, I’m sure Brian would have joined our side of the fight, though it’s doubtful their would be much benefit having him on the team, besides his usefulness as a meat shield and the potential he would have a psychotic episode in the middle of the woodshop with all of those heavy tools while surrounded by Tech Prepians. Now I almost wished he stayed, a notion that makes me upchuck a little in my mouth.

The stage this didactic farce took place in was also a character in and of itself. The Tech Prep area was located in the back of the main school building, tucked away in a dark, unfinished corridor that should have acted as a big, blinking warning light to those approaching, though if this were literal, the light would have been shattered ages ago, with electrical sparks shooting from the jagged remains of the glass, if the electricity were still working at the time.

We started out the year in a classroom located in the middle of everything, which had windows revealing the other rooms to remind us what awaited. The room was actually not that interesting, since all it had besides the desks was a row of aged lockers rising up only to the waist with giant slabs of worn wood on top to make it look sort of complete. We spent most of the first of the year in that room, listening (this term is only theoretical) to the teacher, doing our work (this term is only theoretical), and dodging bullets (this term is only theoretical in the sense we were dodging everything but bullets).

Connected directly with the main classroom was a large, warehouse-like room which hosted two computer labs, a collection of desks positioned in such a way that it gave the impression of a classroom, and enough open space to allow flying objects to pass uninhibited. For some reason, we started using this as a classroom at the end of the year. Maybe Mrs. Boyer thought the reason the idiots acted like idiots was due to poor air circulation. This theory was disproven shortly after.

As I mentioned in my one-sentence description of the class itself, the basic computers featured in the Tech Prep lab were pretty worthless, which is saying something when you consider I was using a 133 MHz Packard Bell at the time and it blew a row of these out of the water. The systems were running Windows 3.1, which was confusing to someone who had just started using 95 a year ago, and were basically useless anyone else.

The purpose of these computers was to run the equally useless AutoCAD program. Now I know there are probably a billion AutoCAD users who are ready to slam out a draft of a missile to send my way, but before you type in your calculations, let me assure you the reason I currently hold the belief that AutoCAD is worthless is because Mrs. Boyer was an idiot.

When she did teach, Mrs. Boyer’s usual method was so mechanical it was impossible to get anything out of it outside of the fact the subject in question may exist. AutoCAD was taught to us by giving us a set of directions to type in random numbers, and viola! We’d have… something! What the directions were supposed to produce was some sort of diagram, but when I did it, it usually produced program errors.

I never learned how to use AutoCAD properly, and would resort to drawing lines manually to match the shapes I believed Mrs. Boyer wanted and turn it in for a C. Naturally, I didn’t learn anything useful from this outside of a few handy tricks on how to trick the teacher.

The second computer lab was a little fancier, but still had obsolete computers. What it had that made it special was a wind tunnel used to measure wind resistance, though I can’t remember for the life of me what we actually used it for. I’m surprised the Tech Prepains didn’t attempt to conduct wind resistance experiences on themselves by crawling in there, but maybe the technology was too great for them and they were afraid of it. Plus, it would have taken a coordinated group effort to throw the thing, which involved more brain work than they cared to expend.

The only thing I can remember doing in this lab was some AutoCAD work (yea!) which involved building a diagram of a vehicle and testing its wind resistance. I specifically remember designing one that was nothing but a straight line with wheels (I can’t remember if the program pointed out there was no room for actual passengers) and a tractor that the program helpfully informed me had the aerodynamics of a tractor. What would we do without this technology?

The warehouse also had a door leading to a storage room and a ventilated paint room. The paint room was fairly creepy, especially the storage room that connected it with the warehouse, but besides providing a place for students to paint their poorly-conceived projects and, just for fun, the walls or each other while they inhaled fumes in an effort to hunt down those last few elusive brain cells, the paint room wasn’t interesting. There was also a storage area ten feet up and only accessible by ladder. I don’t remember anyone climbing up into the it (they had to have. How could they resist a ladder they weren’t supposed to climb, unless they couldn’t figure out the mechanics?), but I always considered this little loft the Tech Prepians’ nest.

On the other side of the hall rested the workshop, filled with sanders, saws, and other high-powered wood manipulation tools common sense would tell you should not have been in the same county as the Tech Prepians, but common sense apparently couldn’t find anyone at Clay in the phonebook. It was about what you would expect from a high school workshop: a large, depressing slab on concrete with large, loud, rusting tools on it, all sprinkled with the dust of fallen wood working projects.

Selmek and I set up home base at one of four large wooden slab tables, the one farthest away from the tools should the Tech Prepians decide to whack the side of the band saw, causing the blade to shatter and fly across the room, free from its bounds in the machine so it could pursue its true desire of flesh. Right next to the desks was a giant tool cage that we were probably locked in somewhere along the lines, and should have probably locked the Tech Prepians into by luring them in there with ICP CDs and South Park VHS tapes, then gassed the thing with fumes from the auto shop’s old beaters.

Surprisingly, there weren’t that many events that popped out from this room. There was the dusty glove incident and the Tech Prepians created their artifacts in here, but there wasn’t anything as traumatic as you would expect from a room full of power tools. No limbs were severed and no heads were pushed into sanders. It was actually pretty anti-climatic and ultimately disappointing.

Maybe it was on account of the safety quiz we were given at the beginning of the year that so many lives were spared. We were required to take this quiz before entering the workshop, a quiz so insulting even a newborn with barely functional motor skills could have reasoned through it. It featured questions like “Is it safe or unsafe to lick the sander while it’s in motion?” or “Is it safe or unsafe to stop the band saw by grabbing the blade?” The questions weren’t really that absurd, but they were living next door. I really wish I still had a copy of this thing, but I’m pretty sure I burned it. You think I’m joking.

To sum it up, this test was so maddeningly stupid, even the Tech Prepians managed to stab the pages with their pencils in the proper pattern that resulted in a passing score. Selmek and I got every one right, expect for one question that asked if it was safe or unsafe to wear gloves while operating equipment. Kneejerk logic would say it’s not a bad idea to have a sturdy leather glove between you and a whirling blade, but it turns out the glove poses more of a danger than not, as it could get snagged in the equipment and cause your hand to go with it. I can honestly say this was the most important lesson I learned in Tech Prep. At least the most important intended lesson.

Throughout the year, we were tasked with an array of projects, each one intricately designed to extract a unique kind of pain. Despite their basic brains, the Tech Prepians seemed to have a small amount of skill when it came to these woodshop wastes, usually developing something a little better than Selmek and I, who were not at all good with our hands. You could also count on the Tech Prepians coming up with some perverse spin on their creations, especially Ben, who created two of the most prominent Tech Prepian artifacts.

In retrospect, I wish I concentrated on crafting swords, clubs, and other weapons while I had free access to the materials and equipment to do so. Not that I would ever have the danglers to use them on anyone, but at least I would slowly gain the reputation of the weird kid that makes weapons, hopefully sparking some primitive portion of the Tech Prepians’ brains that tells them, like the bright markings of a poisonous animal, to stay away. Or it would have drawn them in even more, because they would have eaten said animal because it looked purdy. Either way, I’m positive the reputation of the weapon-making kid would have served me no end to well less than two years later when Columbine-mania hit America. I’m sure they would have had an expulsion slip ready for when I sneezed the wrong way.

Or they would have put me on the Least Dangerous list, because any weapon I crafted would look like some hilarious parody of itself and splinter to pieces upon being set down on a surface harder than a pillow.

I came into possession of a study piece of wood I would carry around with me to defend myself. In fine Tech Prepian tradition, one of them dared me to hit him with it, an offer I shouldn't have refused. I might have swung it a few times to drive a couple of irate Tech Prepians back, but this stick was sadly not stained with their blood.

Our first project tasked us with building a tower out of paper and glue capable of supporting a heavy weight. I can’t help but think the only reason we were assaulted by this idiotic project was the fact our official Tech Prep kits filled with design paraphernalia (but suspiciously absent of even basic weapons) hadn’t arrived in time for class. I would have forgotten about this project completely had in not been for a reminder from Selmek, who was quick to point out we were making jokes about the glue looking like another kind of white creamy stuff. This sentiment didn't hurt our chances as the most mature students in the class by even a mosquito bite. I’m not sure how the project itself went, but my guess is things turned out about as well as you could expect when you set a heavy weight on a tower made of paper.

Another project was a bottle rocket made from a two-liter soda bottle. Our goal was to create a rocket that would not only blast high into the air, but also stay there for the longest time. Since there are only so many ways you can increase the aerodynamic aptitude of a pop bottle, Selmek and I opted for some basic fins and a parachute made from a cardboard pyramid. I’m not sure why we didn’t use a plastic bag, since that might have increased the hang time by about two nano seconds, but I’m sure it had to do with the requirement of limited use of materials, a design flaw we didn’t have the time to work out, or the fact we couldn’t put a whole lot of passion behind the creation of bottle rockets for a Tech Prep class.

Another idiotic project we were challenged with was to build a chair out of cardboard. To give us motivation, Mrs. Boyer presented us with a scenario involving a homeless shelter or something of that sort that needed inexpensive chairs, and since no one had a pickup truck to drive around on trash day to pick up a discarded chair, cardboard seemed to be the best choice. We were charged with building small-scale mock-ups to demonstrate what the chair design would look like and how much weight it could support. So basically we were designing demos of a stupid product for a fictitious organization. If that doesn’t motivate a classroom of primitive cavemen, I don’t know what will.

Our design basically consisted of a sad-looking facsimile of a chair with a honeycomb structure that, if memory serves, we grabbed from somewhere and stuck it in. Our chair did okay and got us a passing grade. I wish I could have saved this work of architectural brilliance, but the second after the project was complete, one of the Tech Prepians, the one named Brian I believe, let out a typically primordial howl and pitched the chair across the room, shattering it into pieces upon impact. If there was a brawl-resistance grade on this project, we would have failed without hesitation. The student’s punishment for destroying our project, which we painstakingly placed so much love and devotion into? An exasperated sigh from the teacher.

Perhaps the most idiotic project we were tasked with was the bridge project. Our job was to design a bridge out of doll rods and hot glue that could withstand a set amount of weight. There’s a reason why architects get paid so much, as demonstrated by our general lack of knowledge of how to design bridges or get the pieces to successfully stick together without flaking off the next day. Selmek and I managed to eke out a “C” as we watched our bridge snap in half as Mrs. Boyer applied a bit of weight to it, thus ending our ordeal.

Just for fun, we also had to write a report about bridges, and this was the part which trult defined this asinine project. At the time, I had taken a liking to writing for two years, and was confident enough with my abilities to be proud of what I wrote. Of course, now when I take a look at what inspiration had showered me with, I found it was more akin to urine than sweet, pure rainwater. The only inspiration I get from reading my old work now is the muse to hurl myself in front of a school bus.

This gives you a frame to mind to understand how bad the bridge report was. Even after I wrote it, I knew the bridge report was absolute rubbish. Over the course of three handwritten pages, my basic message was, if it had to be summed up: “Bridges iz good.” It was a complete mockery of the English language, and I was overjoyed to purge its record from the history of humanity in a pit of purifying fire. And again, I’m not kidding.

One of the good things to come out of the bridge experience was when our bridge gave way to the modest weight applied to it, a part of it splintered off, propelling itself across the room and into the eye of Kyle, who let out a satisfying scream before dashed around in a panic. He didn’t make it more than a few feet before he tripped over a desk, causing him to fall face-first onto the floor and, you may want to stop reading this NOW if you’re squeamish, drove the rogue doll rod into his head, putting him in a coma for three years before his parents decided to pull the plug. The entire ordeal resulted in a lawsuit against Mrs. Boyer, who lost her house to pay the bill off.

At least that’s what I wished happened. In reality, our reward was less rewarding. The incident happened around the end of class as Selmek was hoisting his gargantuan geek book bag around his back. He always carried a massive pack around, so big at times it would suck in house flies with its gravitational pull. In a way, it was good training for the Army.

As he turned, his backpack swung around and knocked over one of the Tech Prepian’s bridges that was precariously balanced on one of the desks, causing it to crash to the floor. There wasn’t any damage, and it really was an accident (at least that’s Selmek’s claim), yet a Tech Prepian (probably Brian again), using his usual clouded perception, started yelling at us, saying “You’re trying to break our bridge cuz your guys’s sucked!” So we got a Tech Prepian quote for our trouble, though it was so awkward and specific, we could never use it for anything, so you could say it wasn’t worth it at all outside of the satisfaction of pissing off one of the locals.

There were two projects I actually enjoyed, neither of which involved designing anything that was supposed to withstand weight or be all that specific. The first was a random workshop activity where we had to design something out of wood. I ended up creating this odd hybrid of the peg jumping game (Selmek ended up making one for this project) and checkers, all based around the Tenchi Muyo! anime (I had been in anime for a little under a year at that point and was experiencing great levels of pathetic enthusiasm). I even designed a full-color instruction sheet for it that impressed Mrs. Boyer and represented perhaps the only compliment she ever gave to me.

This project was also most likely the source of one of Ben’s artifacts. He crafted a dildo out of wood, and when Selmek asked him what the hell that was supposed to be (not that he didn’t know. He wanted Ben to confess), Ben mumbled “It’s a microphone!”

The other project was the air compressor car project. We had to design actual cars that would have a tube inserted in a hole drilled behind them (yaa!) and fired off using the miracles of air. They would travel along a string to keep them on track (though this was pretty stupid, since it slowed them down). The purpose was to see which car either went further or fastest, demonstrating the importance of aerodynamic design, though at that size, there wasn’t a whole lot to be said for wind resistance.

My car was a fairly basic model that I built with the idea of sticking an action figure in a seat. I actually went to the local comic shop (then the only source for obscure anime wares) looking for an Oh! My Goddess figure that most likely didn’t exist yet so she (yes, she) could ride around in it). I painted it all black and used some adhesive spray to stick randomly printed pictures from Oh! My Goddess and Tenchi Muyo! on the car with a revised school mascot which read “Clay Cabbits.” If you have no idea what a cabbit is, here’s a primer on the only cabbit you need to know about.

The car was nothing but a jumble of my random obsessions smashed together in a misguided fashion typical of my high school days onto a mutilated canvas (divine characters on a black car? Works for me!), and therefore remains one of my most cherished relics from a more innocent era, despite the fires of Hell I had to roast in to forge it.

Of course, this was Tech Prep, so any joy was efficiently kept in check by the idiots. It was almost time to do my test run, but I refused to do it until the decals were put on the car (ah, such misguided devotion!). One of the idiots, Kyle, I’m sure, quickly grew impatient and demanded I hurry up so we could get started. I dismissed him and continued working, a clear defiance of whatever primordial pecking order his tribe had established, and he was more than willing to mark his territory again.

Kyle grabbed the can of adhesive spray I was using and, in a stunning display of strategic planning, sprayed it at my face before grabbing my car and running off. I chased him into the workshop and found him spraying adhesive around my wheels. I shooed him off and looked over the car, only to discover the moron had gummed up the axle with the spray, causing the car to not move so well.

Panicked, I scrounged for parts and replaced the axel and one of the wheels and prepped it for the race. My car made it half way down the track before the wheel popped off because I didn’t have time to properly secure it. This caused the primates to start hooting and pointing as I scooped the parts in while bearing the humiliation. I think I was allowed to race again, but it wouldn’t surprise me if Mrs. Boyer didn’t let me, even if I did explain it was all the idiots’ faults, and by that extension, hers for not teaching with firearms. It was also a perfect example of Tech Prepian logic: if someone isn’t moving fast enough for them, they must do everything in their power to delay them further.

Ben, in a fit of his usual brilliance, designed a penis-shaped car he dubbed the “Dildomobile.” Why I didn’t immediately club him to death with a block of wood and take this thing from him for evidence, I’ll never know. I was a foolish and scared child back then.

There were several random incidences which I can’t place on any kind of timeline, but were important milestones in the Tech Prep saga. The first occurred during a typical bout of Tech Prepian pandemonium, with the imbeciles bouncing off each other like crazed radioactive atoms. One of them, again most likely Brian, suddenly jumped off of one of the desks and towards Selmek, who instinctively put his elbow up in the air to intercept and hopefully kill him. The Tech Prepian pulled himself back once he saw this and burbled “Why are you being so defensive?!” with no irony whatsoever. It was just one of the little things in Tech Prep that demonstrated why irony wasn’t allowed through the door. It also spawned another Tech Prepianism

Another incident was the introduction of Marvin. Around the time Ben and Joey disappeared, Kyle suddenly had with him a cardboard cutout of a smiling head he called Marvin. No reason was given, so Selmek and I assumed it was because Ben and Joey were gone and the rest of the tribe was hurting for a replacement god.

Kyle would walk around with Marvin propped up on his shoulder and pretend it was talking. Considering his intellect, he probably convinced himself by accident that the head really did talk, and ended up arguing and shouting at it for hours before punching it in the face, causing it to fall off and make Kyle believe he had decapitated himself, tricking him into thinking he was dead for a few more hours before he woke up and forgot what he was doing. Upon seeing Kyle and Marvin in action, Selmek pointed out that the Marvin head was smarter than the other one. This has since been proven scientifically.

Marvin was of greater significance to us because he represented our first aggressive rebellion against the Tech Prepians. In an action in line with their own tactics, I snatched Marvin away, ran into the workshop, and proceeded to saw Marvin in half with the band saw. No one did anything, leaving me to assume they were so struck by my boldness and the loss of their god they didn’t know what to do.

I gave one half of Marvin to Selmek and kept the other half, forcing him to await his fate after the nightmare was over.

Another time, a cricket had foolishly wandered into the Tech Prepians’ lair. Kyle seized the cricket and pretended to eat it, which I’m sure was traumatic enough for the poor creature, but I’m sure he started humping it when no one was looking. A friend of mine who was in another, more sane Tech Prep class (kept in check a stricter teacher, who legend says threw a hack saw at a students head, which embed itself a foot away from him into the wall, though this story is highly suspect) found some crickets and subjected one to a gluing to the table and another to a head buff in the sander. They got off lighter than Kyle’s victim.

The final big event was perhaps the most telling about how unrelentingly insane these dufusses were: they made me strike out at one of them. This may seem like the natural, and daily, thing to do, but I had shown a quiet restraint throughout the year. I had grown up with idiots and bullies bothering me all my life, and I quickly learned it was pointless to bring the matter up with an authority figure because the offender would either not be punished or not be fazed by the pitiful punishment handed out.

This is not to mention tattletales were not looked well upon by teachers and students, which is in a lot of ways contradictory to the message we force down our kids’ throats about the proper way of dealing with a bully. If we weren’t so hypocritical and apothecial, I’m willing to bet the most devastating tragedy to ever hit any American high school which occurred the year after the Tech Prepian ordeal could have been prevented.

It’s not that I would have felt bad about hurting morons. Quite the contrary, I had fantasies, as I’m sure every nerd had at some point in their life, of punishing these fools by any means necessary, something two teens felt they were justified in doing the next year. The problem was I cared about the punishments I would receive for my vigilantism, mostly because my mother would find out and be Very Disappointed In Me. This put me at a huge disadvantage, because I was basically a good kid, and cared deeply about keeping my VDIM score in check.

Despite the constant torment, I never lashed out against other Tech Prepians, no matter how much they hurt me, even though I could have theoretically gotten away with it when you factor in Mrs. Boyer’s commitment to discipline (though when a good kid fights back, the teachers somehow develop their own spider sense and haul them in, aghast at how a human being could possibility treat another like that). Even in the class I could get away with landing a blow or two, I was too concerned about my VDIMs to do anything about it.

Instead, I went with the hated tattletale route. In the spring, I began reporting the treatment Selmek and I had been receiving to Mister Heintschel, the principle, whose wife had inspired me two years earlier to get into writing. Sadly, Mister Heintschel’s leadership was less inspirational, as most of complaints were met with apathy. After a while, he actually asked me what I wanted him to do about, a question in which my answer could have landed me a trip to the school councilor. These were pre-Columbine days after all; if we were in the paranoid era following the shootings, Mister Heintschel would have been authorized to shoot me on sight if I muttered such an agressive comment.

Today, I can only vaguely appreciate the situation he was in. It was socially illogical to punish an entire class, since suspending or expelling a classroom of students would stunt the educational growth of too many young minds. It was not logically illogical, however, because these young minds were actively stunting the educational and emotional growth of those around them, so it was best to pull the switch and deal with the minor losses. I’m also suggesting Mrs. Boyer should have also gone down with them for her ineptitude.

The Dean of the Students (aka the Dean of Sadistic Tortures) did allow all of the boys in my gym class to be punished for skipping class one year because the teacher told everyone to leave class at the end. What she meant was for us to change clothes and wait for the bell, but we interpreted it as leaving class, and she had a pile of detention slips waiting for us the next day. Despite the fact it was a really stupid situation, the Dean refused to listen to reason and we were all punished as a result, so detention genocide is possible.

I also know Mister Heintschel couldn’t punish a teacher unless she walked into class naked and started having sex with her students. This would have been a moot point, however, because I would have had to take actions into my own hands at that point to save what little of my sanity that would be left, because Mrs. Boyer was not a looker, and seeing a bunch of naked hairy apes is not something that would leave my brain unscathed. He dismissed me so he could get back to not helping other students.

The feelings of helplessness and rage boiled over one typical day as the idiots were being idiots. Selmek was working on a computer and trying to drown me out as I was standing over him, complaining about the Tech Prepians per my usual and repeating angrily “I’m going to Mister Heintschel!” as if either the threat or the action was going to do anything.

Just then, Elisa repeated what I muttered in a mocking tone, and this is what it took to rip the camel’s back in two. My friend and I had been assaulted, molested, and spent the most of the school year in constant fear of what would happen to us in that third period class, and the last straw was a sardonic repetition of my intention to squeal on my tormentors. I stomped over to Elisa, full of wrath and ready to do something I should have done from day one.

I’ve always had a nasty temper when I’m pushed too far, though I’m usually able to vent it down to reasonably safe levels in short order. I took three stomps towards Elisa, each one giving me enough time to think and whittled down my retribution to something that would have gotten me in less trouble. Had he been right behind me, I would have spun around and slugged him, then let the momentum carry me. Instead, I tried to poke a hole in his skull.

When I reached Elisa, I jabbed my finger roughly into his head and started yelling at him to shut up. All he could do in response was stare up at me with a stupid grin that I was deeply tempted to wipe off his face. I still wonder what little activity was going on behind those dull, vacant eyes of his. Was he amused or surprised that the punching bag finally struck back, or was he frozen in fear, wetting himself at the seething figure hunched over him, actively trying to add some ventilation for the remnants of his brain?

We’ll never know, because Mister Newman, who was subbing at the time because Mrs. Boyer didn’t feel like coming in, noticed one of the non-Tech Prepians was being hostile. He shouted at me in a panic to leave Elisa alone, to which I protested “They’re being idiots!” He left it at that, because he couldn’t argue with me without being tied up and thrown into a padded cell.

I mentioned to Selmek that I was writing an article about Tech Prep, and as we started talking about it, I realized there were a few stories I had forgotten, including one big fight I had somehow wiped from my mind, as told in his words:

For the first couple weeks, when we weren't having our heads smashed into Ben's crotch, we were being miraculously whacked with T-squares in the back of the head. In fact, it seems to me the other students would purposely block Mrs. Boyer's desk so she couldn't see the rest of the room while any of this was going on, which postulates an almost impressive collective intelligence about the Tech Prepians.

On one particular morning, I guess I was having a bad day. I remember I was writing something, possibly homework from another class, but it seems to me it was something we were supposed to complete in class which you and I stupidly started while we were in class. I don't remember what you were doing, but I was keeping myself tense even while I was trying to appear relaxed because I knew the Tech Prepians were running around humping each other behind me.

Finally, it happened. I felt the T-square sting against the back of my neck, and without pausing for breath I gripped my own ruler and lashed out to my right, which seemed like a good idea at the time but was apparently a miscalculation. Instead I hit Brian (or one of them who looked the same), who seemed or at least pretended to have no idea why someone would attack him like that. Amazed that I would actually trying to defend myself, he grabbed me and tried tipping me over my desk to land on the floor. Instead, as actually happened, I knocked my desk over and several of the desks next to me in an effort to brace myself from being pinned to the ground. As innocent as I was, I still knew that would be a bad idea.

As it was, we were at a standstill. Brian (or whoever) couldn't get me down and I couldn't get up, and we might have stayed that way for the rest of class period if Mrs. Boyer hadn't started to come back. God knows where she was while the students were circling around me, but nobody mentioned it even after she got back.

Somehow, Selmek and I survived until summer, which will forever be known as the Summer of The Great Climb Out of Hell. We had beaten the Tech Prepians, surviving their onslaught and living to see another school year.

Soon after school ended, I invited Selmek up to my mother’s cottage, and we had a ritual wherein we lit a bonfire and ceremoniously burned all of our Tech Prep papers and confessed with mischievous glee how we cheated on the assignment or half-assed it, mocking Mrs. Boyer and the idiots the entire time. While it provided a wonderful closure, I sometimes wish I kept or made a copy of the idiotic safety quiz and the bridge report for future mockery. The final, glorious conclusion came when we each revealed our halves of Marvin and tossed them into the hungry fire, laughing as the Tech Prepians’ temporary god shriveled to ash, a symbol of our victory over them. We expressed some concern that united the two halves would resurrect Marvin, but these fears were cast aside after some well-deserved video game time.

While we have been free of the Tech Prepians’ for over ten years now, their influence can still be felt, even if their land has long since disappeared. The next year, a dental hygiene class was built in the room with the computer labs, wiping out their habitat and potentially their race. It was just another victory for us.

Our time with the Tech Prepians made a lasting impression that I imagine will be stamped on both Selmek and I for the rest of our lives. On a social level, the very existence of the Tech Prepians confirmed what we had suspected for years: our classmates were idiots. It also showed us not all authority should be respected or trusted. Mrs. Boyer was completely unqualified to be a teacher, yet she went unpunished to our knowledge, outside of the self-perpetuated punishment of being in the presence of the Tech Prepians. I guess she had enough common sense to realize she could never control them, so she just didn’t bother showing up as much as she should have. Ditto for Mister Heintschel!.

The Tech Prepian concept heavily influenced our creative side all through high school and beyond. Selmek and I both wrote stories about the Tech Prepians, his consisting of a sci-fi element wherein the Tech Prepians were an evil race who hatched from pods and assimilated my character into their sinister ranks. Tech Prepians also appeared in his version of the crudely-drawn comics we both penned at the time, referred to as “orcs.”

The Tech Prepians may have had a stronger influence on my imagination. At one point, I created a mock-scientific study on the Tech Prepians and their culture, dubbed the “Tech Prep document,” which sadly disappeared into the obscurity of my paper and computer records and has yet to be relocated.

Their influence, however, is felt strongest in a series of projects which took just about my entire high school career: the DOOM WAD. During Freshman year, I got hooked on DOOM II before it was deemed a school shooting simulator by the ignorant mass media. I discovered it was fairly easy to change graphics, sounds, levels, and even the core data, and using the resources of the extensive DOOM community that was thriving at the time, I created my own series of conversions.

The first was based on my first anime series and was a test kitchen for what was to come. The next was self-importantly entitled Chris Zasada’s World WAD and was based on the elements in my life I considered to be absurd. Considering I started the project at the end of my Freshman year, it was a safe bet (1/1 odds) the Tech Prepians would be making a bit of an appearance:

The whole Tech Prepian gang and their Judge
The whole Tech Prepian gang, Mrs. Boyer and their Judge

I put some serious effort into the project, altering the graphics by hand, recording new sounds, and learning how to alter the very mechanics of the game to add some interesting twists. I even dragged my buddy Bob into it as an artist, and bothered the creator of the ambitious yet unfinished Twice Risen conversion Michel Niggel on a near-weekly basis for information on data hacking, likely leading him to suicide in the Fall of 2002 (well, maybe just his project). I finished the game a week shy of Christmas of my Junior year in 1999, even if there wasn’t much of a point, since the world was going to become a flaming inferno in two weeks anyway.

I wouldn’t know it at the time, but the World WAD and its world would have a profound and lasting effect on my life. After the first game was done, I started the sequel, which I worked on until around December of 2000. An interesting footnote on this game is I used it for the big Senior Project, a massive, year-long affair wherein Seniors had to go out into the community and take on a task that would help them grow as productive members of society. Instead, I worked on a freebie conversion for a game that was six years old. Of course, those lovable Tech Prepians were there in full-force.

The World WAD also spawned a short story that read like checklist of the stuff I was into at the time, with references to Breath of Fire 3 and American Pop, starring more of those wacky Tech Prepians, and a more-monstrous Joey made an appearance. A fun fact about this story, which I included in the packet for my Senior Project, was one of the evaluators called me out on using the word “Dildomobile,” to which I defended my artist creativity by shrugging and saying “It really happened.” As if this justified offending their virgin ears.

Tragically, that wonderful world of paper wad-throwing primitives and evil aunts ended once I was handed my diploma. All future DOOM projects faded into obscurity, and I never made another Tech Prepian-based effort again. This article represents the first significant piece of work I’ve done on Tech Prepians since high school.

But as the old saying goes, you can take a self-righteous social introvert out of the seething cesspool of high school society, but you can’t stop him from fanaticizing about smacking the lot of his classmates upside the head. Every now and then, I’ll be taking a walk or driving from my nine-to-five, and I’ll suddenly be besieged with images of a CZWW that should be, coming up with new scenarios and ways to flesh out the original story. Rest assured, when I finally get off my lazy duff and win the lottery, one of my first orders of business will be establishing a video game development company whose sole purpose will be to bring the World WAD to the masses.

Do I regret joining Tech Prep? Not in the least. Like those courageously stupid people who climb Mount Everest just to say they did, Tech Prep was the kind of defying experience that helped me grow as a person because I was stubborn enough to survive it. Had anyone known what it would be like, they would have told me I was an idiot for even attempting it, just like climbing up big rocks.

The inspirations that have come from my experience is priceless and represent the kinds of things I used to think and feel during this mystical days of high school, where surviving Tech Prep, girls, and maybe some marching band events were the most challenging things I had to face. As I look up into the night sky after work, with all of my new responsibilities piled on, a weighty reminder of my adulthood, I reflect on that time.

I wonder what happened to those primitive people after their habitat was destroyed? Did they go extinct (well, at least one did)? Or did they integrate themselves into society, getting jobs in important fields like fast food preparation, where I imagine they would chuck burgers at customers, then start running around moaning at the top of their lungs before tripping and falling face-first into the grease vat.

There is a small part of me that hopes they will one day return to their habitat and rebuild. As I look up into the nothingness, this notion gives me a small comfort, a realization that no matter how uncertain things are, sometimes there is a way to go back to a special time where things were less complicated.

As I silently dwell on this, sometimes I swear I can here a reaffirming sound echoing softly from somewhere in the darkness:

“ZOTNUMMINGURTARD!"