Like most of you readers I have a Myspace account, and also like many of you my Myspace has been neglected for ages since I discovered the much more elegant and efficient world of Facebook. Two things have been holding me back from deleting my account. The first was my Max Magician group, which I just finished migrating to this site. The second is my collection of illustrated short story blog posts with which I am doing the same thing now. I will post a new one of these old personal essays every few days. All of these were written during my college years, and I hope to get back in the habit of writing stuff like this again soon. I’ll kick things off with some high school tales.
This story was originally published online on Tuesday, September 13, 2005
This is a story of transformation. It details the metamorphosis and development of a true hero. The hero isn’t one that you or your little sister or your great grandfather from the civil war would know. This hero’s name is Higgins. His story, like all the best stories, takes place in high school.
Higgins, although he really does exist in this material world, was largely a product of Three Happenin Guys’ collective imagination. The one true source of entertainment at school for Clint, Chris, John Teschner and myself was to observe other students who we referred to as “characters”. To qualify as a character one had to have distinctive and unique traits. You had to be one of those kids that made people laugh even though you weren’t trying to be funny. You had to be weird, or just incredibly unattractive.
Now don’t get ahead of me. This sounds like a setup for the typical high school ‘popular kids pick on the misfits’ story, but it’s the exact opposite. I’ll continue.
To enter the catalog of characters you had to have a distinctive and unusual trait that was name worthy. For instance, if you were a hardcore punk rocker with an incredibly normal kid looking face you would be named Normal Face Punk. If you looked like a stupid ace goose that you just wanted to punch in the f’n face you would be called Goose. If you were a kid that wore a trench coat that made you look like two little kids, one on top of the other’s shoulders, who put the long coat on so they could look like a teenager and be able to sneak into the high school unnoticed, you would be called Two Kids Sneaking In. If you were a really fat guy who was surprisingly good with chicks you would be called Fat Guy Good With Chicks, or eventually just FGGC.
Three Happenin Guys were lucky enough to exist in a world filled with these people. We observed them like they were true life characters from some insane TV sitcom. Would Ugly Boyfriend and Ugly Girlfriend ever break up? Why did Goose rip the partition out of the boys bathroom, and why did his girlfriend get stabbed in the eye with an umbrella? What shirt is Thief Of Shirts going to rip off next? Their habits and day-to-day exploits were what made our time at school exciting. As much as we admired them, we intentionally separated ourselves socially from the characters because meeting them would humanize them and destroy the mythos that we had created. Those people had no idea how important they were to us strangers.
Higgins and his sidekick Turtle Boy were two rare characters that maintained their character status even after we met them. Higgins started off as just any other slightly unusual kid. He was skinny and pale with rosy cheeks. He had the fashion sense of a little kid, he had a nasally voice and a somewhat gay southern accent, and he lacked basic social skills. He also had a name that wasn’t Higgins, or anything close to Higgins, but his real name wasn’t important.
One day all of those things changed. It would be the first of a series or incredible transformations. This kid who we had never paid much attention to suddenly decided that he would be a fine scholar. More and more we noticed his increasingly scholarly behavior until he was finally deemed Professor Higgins. Professor Higgins wore corduroy blazers with leather elbow pads. He tucked in his dress shirts and turned up his nose at ignorant commoners such as ourselves. At lunch he would sit alone and read books while slowly sipping his tea. He was the poster child of higher education.
Then, without warning, and for reasons totally unknown to us, Professor Higgins changed over night into Street Fighter Higgins. Street Fighter Higgins didn’t give a F. If you looked at him out of the corner of your eye he’d probably say “What are you looking at, buddy?” all threatening-like. He had stubble. He wore a black leather jacket and two bad ace leather gloves with the fingers cut out. Street Fighter Higgins wore the bad ace gloves because he was a bad ace. He had moves and postures similar to Michael Jackson circa 1989. Street Fighter Higgins rolled with Turtle Boy, but he was still a one man army, a desperado-slash-renegade.
Street Fighter Higgins would surprise you with his moves. He’d just start punching at the air like the air was some kid who he had to teach a lesson. You’d see him walking to class and then he’d just take off running like he was running from the law. He probably was. He was a bad ace. He was such a bad ace that one day he decided that fighting people in the streets wasn’t hardcore enough. He had to take on machines. It was time for his next transformation.
Street Fighter Higgins turned into Truck Fighter Higgins and tried to fight a truck. After school one day he was crossing Union Street, saw a truck coming, and decided to fight it. HE TRIED TO FIGHT A F’N TRUCK. Or at least that’s what we believe. The truck hit his ace, BAMMMMMM, and flung his body through the air and onto the sidewalk. Now I ask you, could any person, other than a true hero, take on a truck going forty something miles per hour, visit the hospital briefly, then show up at school the next day? Truck Fighter Higgins did it.
Eventually Three Happenin Guys had to meet the Truck Fighter in person so we broke the ‘don’t talk to the characters’ rule. We had to meet him for the same reason you would want to meet Santa Claus. We had to know he was real. Somehow through tactful introduction we found ourselves seated at Truck Fighter and Turtle Boy’s lunch table for our one and only meal together. Truck Fighter Higgins was quiet and discerning throughout the meeting. At one point a member of Three Happenin Guys offered him a packet of ketchup to which he responded “What’s your problem?”
Turtle Boy, who is called Turtle Boy because he looks like a straight-up turtle, dominated most of the conversation. He told Three Happenin Guys all about Pokemon, anime pornography, and his interest in writing his sexual fantasies online in a form of fiction he called a “lemon”. He showed us a folder full of Pokemon, anime porn, and lemons that he had printed out. The only thing on our minds though was the battle between man and truck. We finally came out in the open and asked Higgins about the fight.
“What’s it to you?” he snapped.
What a bad ace.
Since high school Higgins has made another transformation that is much less exciting and more than a little depressing. He is now Hobby Lobby Higgins. He works behind a register and wears a blue vest with a name tag that doesn’t say Higgins. He’s now just another member of the real world with a real job and an everyday life. I guess we all have to settle down at some point. I still like to remember the Higgins who was my high school hero though. The street fighter who did whatever the F he wanted, even if it defied logic, or the law of inertia. That’s the Higgins that I’ll never forget, even if he was partly a figment of my imagination.
