Hey, what's happening? ... Right, right...

Well, my name is William Matheson and I'm a first-year student living in
Bedford, Nova Scotia. Oh, I love living in Bedford. Everyone hates Bedford,
that's why. Even us and the guys on our street love making fun of Bedford...
we live so far out in the boonies that no one believes we live in Bedford.
Why is that, you ask? Why don't they believe us? Well for starters, our
street is a gravel road and my driveway is half a kilometre long. Oh, I tell
you that's a ton of fun. Typical monday evening: I'm up in my room, 12:30am
or so, watching Open Mike, and my mom calls from downstairs

"It's green bin night!"

and I get to spend the next ten minutes thinking about how much notice I
would get if I were to be attacked by a bear.

I love it when people give me a lift home, because I get lots of awesome
unsolicited coments about how they hope the rig won't break down so we
don't get mauled by wolves.

As you might guess, we're in the sort of neighborhood where we spend our
free time on lottery tickets. It's kinda pathetic, isn't it? It's like
this corporation is going to pull one lucky person and their family out
of super-duper-lower-middle-class squalor for a month in the riches, then
they just go broke again. Actually, I'm exaggerating, we don't spend our
free time on lotto tickets, and some of us actually have lawns. None of
us want to win the lottery anyway, 'cause we'd be stuck with the unofficial
winning numbers. Wouldn't that suck, getting the unofficial numbers?

"And now, the unofficial winning numbers for tonight's Lotto 6-49 draw:
13 24 42 56 64 and the bonus number is 17."

"That's it, Marjorie! We just won the lottery!"

"Oh dear, Angus, we'd better call the lotto people!"

ring-ring

"Uh-huh... yes... 13 24 42 56 64? Uh-huh? Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, those
were the UNofficial winning numbers. Oh boy, you had me going there for
a minute! ha ha ha! No, sorry, you didn't win anything. The real ones?
Yeah, that's 14 23 44 57 83 bouns 12. ha-ha, sorry! Ha ha! Where do I live?"

I'm not a successful person. I don't entirely blame my high school for this,
but it's like this: Women want men to be either funny or good looking. This
sucks for me 'cause I'm neither.

Speaking of funny... well, this part isn't funny: Isn't it awesome that
mariguana can be prescribed for medicinal use now? Yeah! Oh, yeah. But
the funny part - the weird thing of it all is, what do you do - go up to
your pusher and say like "Here's my prescription"?! Oh yeah, and then
you'd be like "I need the recipt for my drug plan". Yeah, those pushers are
gonna have to start bookkeeping!! Hahaha!

I went to C.P. Allen High School of course... anyone here from CP Allen?
Yeah, that place is a dump, ain't it? Just a BIIIGG day care center for
us not-quite-old-enough-to-be-left-the-hell-alone people. Hey, my stepsister 
used to go here and she was from CPA too... I don't suppose any of you 
remember my stepsister Angela? Nah, this place is too big. And I gotta 
say I like that because for people like me it's a hell of a lot easier to 
blend in. I couldn't do this at my old high school because the whole place 
was convinced I was gonna blow it up.

I am NOT kidding. This had to be seen to be believed. I'd get on the bus,
and people'd be like "Hey Will, you're gonna tell me when you're going to
do it, right?". People went around with this neat little notion on their
minds that one day I'd load the place up with C4 and by golly there were
SOME days I'd wish I'd done it! And then a 'hit list' thing got started...
Let me tell you the story about this... I'm in math class in grade 10 and
this asshole is driving me nuts, right? So I want to know what his name is
so I can complain about him. Fat guy up at the front ain't gonna cut it.
I get his name. And he actually told me the truth. And another idiot asks
"Oh, is this for a hit list or something?". And I'm like, "Yeah! Of 
course!". And that's how that got started... the man who was bugging the crap
out of me then, you might know him... ran the N-quadruple'S'-A conference
last year? Tyson H.. Tyson H., stand up please!

Anyway, at some point I decided that I wanted to grace the Student's Council
there with my presence. "Will" Matheson... maybe if we elect him he won't
destroy the place. By the way, I can't stand being called 'Will', 'William'
is much more pleasing to my ears now after having 'Will' pegged on everything
wrong with that bloody high school. Anyway, the whole campaign went
surprisingly well... made a speech near the end that people are STILL
talking about there... I'm not kidding. People who graduated three years ago
now are still asking me if I made it to the Vice-Presidency. Well... I didn't.
But about the speech. Awesome piece of work. Best two minutes on the school
bus I ever spent. But they didn't let me talk about some of my revenue
generation ideas, and I got a good one that could probably be adapted to any
high school around here.

Okay, you know how at high school all the drivers are complete assholes?
They really shouldn't be driving to school unless they happen to lack a
certain substance that turns them into such immature, imbecillic, little
shits. Yep. The 'y' chromosome. Anyway, they drive like morons... and they
PARK like... oh dammit, I can't say that word here. And it's really nice
on those mornings when they come in at two minutes to nine and they just 
decide to stop in front of the line of busses.

Okay, so you've got this twenty-ton school bus riding your rear up the
driveway, and instead of going around the lot like you're frigging supposed
to, buddy will just stop and start to turn his car around the median...
but of course there's three other assholes there doing the same thing, so
he's stuck at the end of the lane blocking all the traffic waiting to take
his frigging shortcut! And then his girlfriend will get out. And then open
the back door to get her stuff. And then she'll go up to the driver's window
and lean in nice like this...

"Bye Jeremy, thanks for the lift."

"Yeah, no problem."

"Okay, so I'll see you inside... wait, are you going to trucker math class 
today or are you going to skip again?"

(Aside... isn't that just LAME?! Skipping classes! It's like jumping day
care! Actually, it IS jumping day care!)

"Yeah, I'm gonna skip... go out to the Pit and smoke, pretending I'm on a
free."

(That's my very very favorite thing about university: They don't give a
shit! And at this point I believe the bus driver would be honking his
horn at those two. This woman should be afraid, I mean just the top of the
hood is twice as tall as she probably is!)

"Well, okay, if I'm not going to see you, are we still on for tonight? You
wanna come over to my house and screw?"

THAT'S IT, we just run the hell RIGHT over them! BOOM! Why would I have
cared, she wouldn't date me?

Actually, I'd like to digress for another moment. There was this one girl
who... well, there were two actually, but the other one's in Texas, so that
don't matter... anyway, there was this one girl there who I always really
wanted to date and I imagine if things hadn't been as stressful as they were 
at the time, maybe we could have gone out a couple of times. Oh well, there
you have it.

So the bus crushes them! Okay, it didn't. I made that part up. But...
wouldn't it be sweet poetic justice for once? This brings me to my betting
idea. Although the most exciting thing to happen in our parking lot only
had a compost truck back into a lamppost and bend the thing like a leaning
tower, I thought we could get a gambling thing going. We could bet on the
bus numbers that we thought had a good chance of running people over.
"Calling all bets on 213 and 206... 213 and 206...". I think it would have
been awesome.

Anyway, so I ended up losing the election, which mean that Colin MacDonald
got to be vice-president. Oh well, power to him. But I got a little cynical.
Like I just keep thinking deep down inside that the thing was rigged. I mean,
when two-thirds of the SCHOOL says they're going to vote for me, and that
they gave me a cherring and stomping standing applause every single time
they mentioned my name during those speeches ("Would Will Matheson "RAH
WHOO-HOO YEAH! WILL! WILL! WILL! WILL!" ... message in the main office, thank
you."). Everyone thought I was going to win, and I lost. But I guess it
happens. I guess it was kind of like when Bart Simpson ran for grade 4
president and Martin Prince beat him.

Ahh... anyway, I finally got out of there. Took an extra year actually,
which was more of a pain in the ass for the bookkeeping more than anything
else. What I mean is that they don't automatically give out High Honours
certificates to Returning Grads. But I don't have to give a damn about any
of that now. But I feel sorry for the poor people who get 'the phone call'.
Perhaps you have heard about this. They give you a call at the end of June
if you didn't graduate so that you don't embarass yourself at the ceremoines
(wouldn't THAT be a scream!)... must make those poor kids who are just 
scraping by a bloody headache every time the phone rings. I imagine they'd
try to break it to them easy so they wouldn't overreact.

"Well, we've got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that
you'll be making lots of new friends next year!"

Well, that's right up there with a poor kid telling his mother "I've got
some good news and some bad news. The good news is that you're going to be
a grandmother." Thanks a lot, you been great!