My junior year prom date was a cool senior named Tyler. We had a great time at the dance. Post-prom we had a couple parties to go to, but I crashed about an hour into the first party and passed out on the host’s floor. I told Tyler to go on without me; I was going to fall asleep right there. On Monday, everyone was talking about Tyler and how he got more drunk than he ever had and peed on someone who had been sleeping. Couple that with the fact that I had told everyone I fell asleep promptly after the dance and — voila! — I was for a short time known as The Girl Tyler Peed On. Luckily, the rumor mill was righted, and I became known as The Smart Girl Who Ditched Tyler Before He Could Pee on Her. Tyler is now in medical school at NYU. — Writer Alice Stanley

I got my first-ever case of food poisoning on the night of my senior Homecoming Dance. I’m not sure if it was the venison or the clams, but by the end of dinner I was sweaty, sallow, and feeling pretty bad. 

Naturally, the best place to go in a situation like that is a crowded gym floor with hundreds of people, blaring music, and enough artificial fog to choke on. After the DJ played Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Jump On It,” which I did repeatedly, I was ready to bolt for the bathroom.

But I couldn’t. I’d been elected to the Homecoming Court, so I had to get on stage for the announcement of the Homecoming King, which turned out to be… me! Yes, I know it’s supposed to be every high schooler’s dream, but all I cared about was finding a toilet, and fast. No luck: after the announcement, I had to do an interview with the school paper, pose for some photos, and of course dance with the queen, a girl about a third of my size who I’m sure she was wondering what was making me lurch around in such an uncoordinated fashion.  

Once Céline Dion had belted her final note, I muttered a quick thanks and ran for the bathroom. I found a stall just as my stomach gave out. But there, sitting amidst a cheap paper crown, a bouquet of supermarket flowers, and the half-digested remnants of my fancy restaurant dinner, I have to admit I did feel pretty good. — Assistant Editor Darryl Campbell

I’ve attended many miserable high school dances, but my sophomore Winter Ball ended with a silver lesson: don’t bite the bad apples, no matter how hard they glisten. My friend Liz had set me up with a friend.

“I know a guy,” she’d said. “He’s your type. Longish hair. Likes books and shit.”

That night, I wore a too-sparkly dress and curled my eyelashes delicately upwards like a question mark. My date wore a fitted blazer, black trousers, and a beanie that matched the color of his eyes. He was a gorgeous thing, and he smelled so damn good — like linens and tea olive blossoms and inoffensive cologne. It made the music sound better and my high heels wobbly. Usher blasted from the circular speaker on the ceiling as the rain audibly hit the roof. I smelled him again and thought, I can stand here smooshed up against this wall sober as a bird with a full bladder and my ears ringing for hours, so long as he stands here smelling like this the whole time.

But when the lights came up briefly at 10 p.m., the true sadness of my situation was revealed: I was dancing with a boy who couldn’t dance worth a shit, who was too drunk to remember my name, who didn’t even like books. He had a pocket of marijuana (which he kept sneaking outside to smoke) and breath that tasted like cat litter. Reconsidering the night, I pulled myself together and stomped home, where reruns of Maury and That’s So Raven awaited me with safety.

If anyone knows the name of that cologne he was wearing, I’d still like to know. — Contributing Writer Vanna Le

The night’s theme is a new Sting song, “We’ll Be Together.” Could we, like Sting and his lady, forget the weather just to be together? Are we in love like that? I’ve got pink mousse spiking my hair, a leather shoelace for a necklace, and serious stress acne. You’re ironically wearing a Salvation Army flower-print grandma dress and seriously wearing multiple layers of blue, purple, and black makeup. We leave the high school gym arm in arm and step into my ride — a Chevy minivan. To the max.

I slide my Siouxsie and the Banshees cassette into the player. I’m pretending to like them to impress you. Where am I taking you now? It’s a secret. I’m equal parts mysterious and skinny. I stop the car in the dark, empty parking lot of the Dominican priory. What’s going on? I don’t answer. I glare. I turn towards you and reach behind your bucket seat. Then I pull it out: the Nerf. It’s football time, baby. Right now. Right here. It’s happening.

You grudgingly catch one soft pass and demand to be driven home. Four apologetic poems later, you tell me to just give up. I retire the Nerf-move indefinitely. — Writer Jonathan Gourlay

Luke asked me to Prom in the most annoying way. He came to school early to post up all over campus 200 sheets of paper he had printed; each had a solo picture of him holding a soccer ball, because he liked soccer, with the text underneath: “JENNIFER WILL YOU GO TO PROM WITH ME.” There was no comma after Jennifer, and no question mark after the question. By second period, everyone had come up to me and asked if I was going to say yes, and murmured comments like, “Luke is so sweet! I can’t believe he printed all those and came to school early to post them all over campus,” and “If Jennifer says no, she’s a cold-hearted bitch.”

He came up to me during lunch period and simply asked, “So?” I wanted to punch him in the face right then, because he was acting very confident; his creepy ass knew my insecure ass too well and that I couldn’t possibly turn him down in front of an audience. I said, “Okay.”

I spent most of Prom night doing exactly three things: 1. Loving the tired theme, “Midnight Masquerade,” because it was easier to avoid Luke while hiding under a mask, 2. Constantly looking over my shoulder, and 3. Wishing I had a Marauder’s Map. Other activities included annoying other couples by being a third wheel, and purposely dancing extremely low to the floor not because I’m a slutty dancer, but because it was harder for Luke to see me that way. The hardest part was dancing low to the floor during a slow song. — Contributing Writer Jennifer Eum

I was rude and round in high school — not a first choice date (nor second, third, or fourth). By the end of senior year I was still dance-less. Nonetheless, with Prom on the horizon, I decided to damn the odds and go for it. I psyched myself up and asked Claire to Prom. She was a long-time crush of mine, and obligated to tolerate me because our best friends were dating. She said yes — reluctantly — and our Prom date was set.

My thought process from there is a mystery, but a week before Prom I called my friend Sam (who hung out with Claire after school), asked to speak to her, and told her that we weren’t going to Prom together.

“Why?” she asked, confused.

“I’m just not feelin’ it,” I said. If I had a better reason, I still can’t remember it.

I was barred from the group’s Prom dinner. Claire went with Brad, a loud junior in the throes of a breakup. I didn’t go. Instead, I climbed the town’s cellphone tower, watched cars shuffling through the streets, and felt like a dick. — Contributing Writer Ben Bateman

The night of my sophomore year Winter Dance, my date revealed her theretofore secret and really disgusting love of Fritos, so the evening wasn’t going well to begin with. We had done the usual thing of sitting on the bleachers and watching kids grind, interspersed with the occasional slow dance, which I could handle. The only challenge was finding away to keep my head away from hers to avoid the Frito smell emanating from her. (She didn’t just take down a personal bag of Fritos. We’re talking “Family Size” bag here).

Finally, my date convinced me to dance to one of the fast songs — Mystikal’s “Shake Ya Ass,” if memory serves. Things were going surprisingly well hip gyration — wise when all of a sudden came the noises—first, of a scuffle involving a large group of people, then the noises of a group of girls fighting, and finally the music was stopped by a statistics teacher shouting this gem of a line: “Did someone just throw a fucking scalpel?”

Someone had, in fact, thrown a scalpel. The fight had started between two girls, one of those spontaneous pushing matches that erupt when crowds reach critical mass. Then it turned pretty vicious. In fact, it was one of the worst fights I have ever seen, way more no-holds-barred than others. Apparently, then these girls’ dates started getting into it and one of the guys decided to pull out his handy scalpel and huck it in the middle of a crowded room.

In the end though, the only thing injured was my pride as I made out with Frito-breath after the dance and learned an important lesson regarding that timeless adolescent antagonism between dignity and “getting some.” – Contributing Writer Jeff Merrion

In middle school, there was a girl I really wanted to dance with. I don’t remember her name, and I don’t remember what she looked like. But I asked her for a dance, and she said only if the DJ played “All the Small Things” by Blink 182. In hindsight, more than a decade later, I realize this was her way of saying that she had no interest in dancing with me — “All the Small Things” is not a slow-dance song. I probably knew that then, but this didn’t stop me from requesting Blink 182 repeatedly until the DJ caved. So we danced. Then I requested “All the Small Things” again. I asked friends to request it, and eventually, the DJ got so fed up that he played it a second time. Then a third time. This got me three dances with the girl, and probably ensured that she would never ever go out with me.

If there is a lesson to this story, it’s that I have always been really annoying. — Editor Kevin Nguyen

Illustrations by Hallie Bateman

Arts

• “Fear and Gaming: Being and Nothingness and ‘Minecraft’” by Jonathan Gourlay
• “Portrait of the Young Man as an Artist” by Josh Fischel
• “Ingredients: Cassoulet Showdown” by Daniel Adler

Humor

• “Fact or Fiction: Tardigrades” by Charlie Nadler
• “Instructions for the New Personal Assistant” by Nathan Pensky
• “Conversations with Fruit” by Nick Martens

Travel

• “En Route: Tourism” by Darryl Campbell
• “Cycling South: Murdering and Not Murdering My Best Friend” by Ben Bateman
• “The Budget Side of Non-Place” by Leah Caldwell

Personal

• “Most Shy” by Hallie Bateman
• “Ceremonies: Shabbat at the Synagogue” by Erin Carver
• “Tumorous: Breast Intentions” by Juliet Disparte

Opinion

• “The Affair to Remember” by Kevin Nguyen
• “The Pursuit of Wackiness” by Whitney Carpenter
• “Girls Can’t Drive (By Which I Mean ‘Me’)” by Alice Stanley

Photo courtesy of the State Library of New South Wales

“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”

The idea of Christmas is way better than the actual event, right? The idea of Christmas: twinkle lights and Reese’s trees! The event: cleaning for relatives and arguing with my family about how wasteful wrapping paper is. So, why, although I know this, do I still feel warmth when I see It’s a Wonderful Life? Hear a Salvation Army bell? Because I refuse to accept what Christmas truly is to give myself a sincere hope for the future year, for the state of the world, no matter how cheesy and incorrect I know the sentiment to be.

This is why “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” is my favorite holiday jam. The song was originally performed by Judy Garland’s character in Meet Me In St. Louis to comfort her little sister in the face of impending family drama. To me, this song perfectly captures the “I’m nostalgic and I know it — but for the sake of my mental health” attitude that comes with December 25th.

The original gets me every time. Garland’s performance is so tragic. Knowing that she attempted suicide not long after this film was made makes the song all the more heartbreaking.

I hate this cover—why is it all sexy, mysterious? EW—WHY A JAZZ SAX? I did enjoy the only comment though. Plus, check out 0:54 for sudden creepy eyes!

— Writer Alice Stanley

“Christmas Time is Here”

“I think there must be something wrong with me,” Charlie Brown muses in his eponymous special. “Christmas is coming, but I’m not happy. I don’t feel the way I’m supposed to feel.” Not optimistic, but it’s a common experience, especially when confronted with the season’s garish soundtrack. Christmas music is a forced march towards joy, the dream that treacle and major chords can make the coldest, darkest part of the year the happiest. The only respite from this jingle parade is the Vince Guaraldi Trio’s reserved “Christmas Time is Here.”

It’s melancholy and slow, the gentle melody overshadowed by the children harmonizing it. The lyrics tenderly describe a winter landscape, but don’t give the listener a place in it. On repeat it slips into the background. Nobody sings along. This song is a fireside, not a party, and it’s the only Christmas song that legitimizes the holiday as I’ve come to know it: walking through the decorated world and not knowing quite what to do with it.

Best Version: The untouchable 1965 original.

Worst Version: This delicate, jazzy song could be ruined in so many different ways, but Gatsby’s American Dream’s drum machine percussion, hyper-nasal vocals, and hastily chopped-in choir samples leave nothing to love. It’s that rare gem of a punk track that generates more anger than it expresses.

— Contributing Writer Ben Bateman

“Good King Wenceslas”

At Christmas time in Lutheran grade school, I was forced to wear white robes, march before strangers, and sing while carrying a live-flame. Midwestern adults enjoy spending Christmas Eve surrounded by little children with candles, yelping about virgins and frankincense. It’s a beautiful spectacle. Singing these brainwash carols today, I still feel like a boy dripping hot wax on his hands during the high bits of “Angels We Have Heard on High.”

My choir buddy Stevie and I had a debate concerning the lyrics to “Good King Wenceslas.” I insisted that the “fresh laid snow” was “firm and deep” while he claimed it was “deep and crisp.” We sung GKW in a voice like Speedy Gonzales’ slow cousin and it sounded dirty, especially the orgasmic: “Fu-u-el.” I would sing “firm and deep and virgin.” He would laugh. We’d get in trouble. By the time we got to “the rude wind’s wild lament” we were making fart noises underneath our choir robes.

To me, GKW is a joyful song about friendship and subverting authority. Especially sung in an offensive accent and sprinkled with flatulence and dirty lyrics.

The Best Version of GKW: Mel Torme jazzes up GKW so the song is actually bearable, even hep.

The Best Thing Done to the Worst version of GKW: Nothing captures the way I feel about GKW like these guys dancing to the Manheim Steamroller’s horrible ’80s synth version.

— Writer Jonathan Gourlay

“Sussex Carol”

If you look forward to the moment when every store and shopping mall starts piping Christmas carols through its PA system, you were probably never in band or choir. I joined band when I was ten: I have probably played “Silent Night” and “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” a few hundred times by now, and a young adulthood’s worth of playing Leroy Anderson’s “Sleigh Ride” made me very good at making horse whinny noises on my trumpet.

So that leeched the cheer out of all the well-known Christmas carols out there, and a lot of the lesser-known ones, too. The ones I still like tend to be simple and very traditional; no big orchestral flourishes a la Barbra Streisand’s “Jingle Bells,” no kitschy “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer.” My favorite is the “Sussex Carol,” and specifically this version, which features the choir of King’s College, Cambridge:

Contrast that to the King’s Singers/Mormon Tabernacle Choir version here:

The only way this version could burst with more Christmas cheer is if Santa flew down from the North Pole for the grand finale. Poinsettias all over the stage, a mic’ed-up choir within a choir, a key change every 20 seconds, bell ringers wearing tinsel—it’s all a little too much for me. — Assistant Editor Darryl Campbell

“The First Noel”

Does “Kidnap the Sandy Claws” count as a Christmas tune? No? I guess I like a Christmas song the best when I can’t really tell it’s Christmas music at all. Holiday songs are such a musical free-for-all; when Bing Crosby, Miley Cyrus, and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir are allowed to cover the same song, the soul is sucked right out of those Jesus-exalting lyrics.

This may be why I’m partial to someone like Annie Lennox singing “The First Noel.” I was interested to see how a self-described agnostic would explain creating an Christmas album, so I watched an interview with Annie talking about the album. To her, most of the songs are nostalgic or recall a time and place in her childhood. I don’t know what “The First Noel” is actually about, and I doubt Annie has much religious interest in it. That’s fine with me.

Ella Fitzgerald does a great job as well:

Anyone who is able to listen through the Tobymac and Owl City rendition earns my respect:

— Writer Jordan Barber

“Angels We Have Heard on High”

This isn’t actually my favorite Christmas carol, but Gourlay stole my pick. (And by “stole,” I mean, “turned in on time, unlike me.”) I was locked in on “Good King Wenceslas,” so when I had to go looking for a second choice, I was stumped. That’s when I had a (pretty obvious) revelation: all Christmas carols stink. I like GKW because my grandfather sings it every year in a big booming voice, so it reminds me of my childhood Christmases, also known as “the only good Christmases.” But I would never enjoy it otherwise. So instead I picked “Angels We Have Heard on High,” which is my mom’s favorite Christmas carol because her mom used to sing it. Second-hand nostalgia is the best I can do.

If you like “Angels We Have Heard on High,” it’s probably because the “Glooooooo-o-o-o-oooooo-o-o-o-ooooooria” bit sounds nice when sung by a good singer, which you could say about millions of other songs. But whatever, it’s better than most of the crap you hear in commercials, and my mom likes it. Good enough for me.

The song was originally French, so the best version is gonna be by a French woman with pipes. So while it sure looks like Mireille Mathieu’s voice is dubbed into this clip, I love the way she comes in and totally dominates the little kid with the ridiculous haircut:

It’s impossible to nail down a “worst” version of this song since so many are ridiculously fucking terrible, but the lettering that appears around 1:40 into this video gives it a comedic edge most lack:

– Editor Nick Martens

Illustration by Hallie Bateman

“Confessions of a Former Puck Tease”

by Katie Baker at Deadspin

When I was growing up in the ‘90s, my parents did very little to restrict my internet usage, but I was told explicitly to never enter chat rooms. Don’t talk to strangers. Don’t give out personal information. And under no circumstance should you try and meet someone from the internet. Chat rooms were like the internet equivalent of the elephant graveyard from The Lion King — the only place I wasn’t allowed to go.

Katie Baker, on the other hand, did all the things kids weren’t supposed to do. In her delightful personal essay “Confessions of a Former Puck Tease,” Baker recalls chat services long extinct and long forgotten. At age 13, she was a paid chat-room moderator for a long-extinct service called Talk City. She made and met many friends in person, and even went out on a date to see American Pie with user twice her age from a Philadelphia Flyers newsgroup.

But the piece works not just as a profile of her adolescence on the web, but as a compelling portrait of the internet’s formative years. Today, anonymity allows users say whatever they want without consequence (hence trolls), but in 1995, the same sort of anonymity allows Baker to be accepted among a group of much older peers, even after they learned she was 13. Yet her adolescence seems to parallel that of the web’s. As she gets older, Baker begins using that anonymity to construct a fake identity for herself, and eventually, her teenage cruelty has real-world consequences. It’s a modern coming-of-age story.

Growing up with the internet is a new but relatable experience, it’s nice to know that the internet grew up with us.

“The Lie Guy”

by Clancy Martin at The Chronicle of Higher Education

Oddly, my second pick is also about lying. In fact, it’s all about the business of lying (a.k.a. the jewelry business). Clancy Martin, then a University of Texas dropout, reflects on his life as a professional con artist, upselling the grade of diamonds to unsuspecting shoppers. He quickly gets to the root of dishonesty:

If you want to be an expert deceiver, master the art of self-deception. People will believe you when they see that you yourself are deeply convinced. It sounds difficult to do, but in fact it’s easy—we are already experts at lying to ourselves. We believe just what we want to believe.

But years of self-deception start to wear on Martin (“though I don’t believe in the existence of a soul, exactly, I came to understand what people mean when they say you are losing your soul”). The revelation isn’t as fascinating as Martin’s escape from the lying life… into academia of all places! It turns out that there’s a similar level of phoniness that pervades campus life, but at least Martin feels a little more settled, a bit more honest with himself.

“The Year of Wonders”

by Alex Shakar at The Millions

What is it like to score a six-figure book deal? After selling his first novel to HarperCollins, Alex Shakar finds himself suddenly a part of the publishing institution, attending parties with literary luminaries, and of course, with more money than he’s ever had. (He writes, “I was 32. I’d never made over $12,000 in a year.”) It’s a fascinating read for anyone that has even a passing interest in the publishing industry, although everything turns out be short-lived — even the money, which turns out to be less than Shakar had expected:

Part of the purpose of a large advance, I understood, was to gain a book publicity. But I told nearly no one. Instead, for weeks, I did math in my head. I subtracted my agency’s cut and divided the figure by the five long years I’d lavished on the book and came out with a perfectly reasonable — boring, even — middle-class salary.

See Also:

“Review: Infinity Blade” by J. Nicholas Geist at Kill Screen

“State of Play” by Mike Deri Smith at The Morning News

“My Classmate Saif Qaddafi” by Doug Flahaut at Zocalo Public Square

—Editor Kevin Nguyen

“In All The Wrong Places: A Response to N+1″

by Matthew Burns of Magical Wasteland

I want to pull a quote out of every paragraph of this piece because it’s all too perfect. The argument over whether videogames should be considered art is one of the dumbest, least productive debates imaginable (the highest profile critic against the notion was someone who has never played videogames*) so it’s some sort of perverse justice that it would spawn such a smart essay. Burns does a ton of patient, methodical heavy lifting, clearing away the cruft of lazy thinking that seems to have built up around the gaming medium. The part that resonates with me most strongly begins:

Much of the consternation about games and art seems to arise from the application of a critical apparatus from some different medium — literary or filmic — and finding games disqualified to be considered at all.

It’s a long piece that covers a lot of ground, but once I reached this point and it’s eventual culmination, I felt there was nothing left to say on the subject.

*I know Ebert recanted, but still.

See also: Tom Bissell on L.A. Noire for Grantland

“The Best Animated Sports GIFs Of June: A 20-Act Play”

by Jon Bois of SB Nation

To be honest, I don’t need any extra motivation to click on a list of sports-related animated GIFs. But I’ve been surprised and delighted as Bois’s round-ups of such have become both more frequent, from yearly to seasonly to monthly, and more gleefully fucking bizarre. Bois seems to have realized that describing and contextualizing GIFs is boring and unnecessary, so instead he’s turned the captions into a platform for deeply strange humor writing of the best sort. In this month’s edition, figures in each animation are given lines of dialogue, whether it’s the arm of a knocked-out MMA fighter making awkward smalltalk with his opponent or a baseball bat pleading to be dropped by a hitter who holds it too long. And if those descriptions don’t make any sense now, well, they won’t really after you read the piece either, but you’ll emerge with a smile on your face.

See also: Bois’s guide to pick-up basketball

“Some Approaches to the Question of Chewing Gum Litter”

by Nicola Twilley of Edible Geography

It’s no secret that we’re huge fans of Edible Geography. And, in a nutshell this piece is why. Twilley raises an easily overlooked aspect of how food relates to our environment, in this case dots of mushed chewing gum that blacken the pavement of urban areas worldwide, and rather than posturing or lecturing or berating, she explores the topic in a way that both illuminates and humanizes it. After I read this post, I couldn’t stop staring at the street when I went out. In fact, I never step away from an EG post feeling anything other than enlightened, and in a world of noisy and useless rhetoric, that’s truly valuable.

See also: Geoff Manaugh’s interview with Hellboy‘s Mike Mignola on EG’s sister site BLDGBLOG

—Editor Nick Martens

“Our Psychic Living Room”

by Rebekah Frumkin at the Common Review

It’s been a bonanza year for remembrances and reappraisals of David Foster Wallace, not least because of the publication of his unfinished The Pale King. And, because I’m someone who usually considers Wallace somewhere between uninteresting and unlikable, I’ve found the frenzy of attention a bit obnoxious. Thank god, this essay is not a breathless panegyric, or a sentimental eulogy, or even a hyper-critical dismissal. Which is to say that it is atypical of most criticism about Wallace. Instead, in good faith, and without much pretense, Rebekah Frumkin walks the reader through the main points of Wallace’s fiction and biography, tying them together into the surprising conclusion that Wallace’s fiction was in fact an exercise in simple philosophy, and that “ultimately it turned out that what he was trying to say wasn’t that complicated.” I’ll leave it to Frumkin to explain exactly what she means, but suffice to say, she introduced the tiniest grain of doubt into my mind that perhaps I ought not to be staunchly indifferent to David Foster Wallace.

“On Expectations (And a Writer’s Lack of Same)”

by S.J. Culver at The Awl

The publication of Mark McGurl’s The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing led to a frenzy of soul-searching about MFA programs in creative writing: Are they good or bad for students, professors, and/or literature? S.J. Culver’s take on the whole thing — she has an MFA, and is in it for the long, professional haul — is a lot more personal, and palatable, than any instance of big-picture hand-wringing or bitchy cross-publication sniping that I’ve read. In other words, she avoids the Scylla of hyperventilated melodrama and the Charybdis of ethereal pretense that tend to hang around most accounts of the writer’s life and gives us something that’s understandable and, miraculously, even relatable. (Full disclosure: S.J. has written for the Bureau, too; go read that when you get a chance.)

“The frailty of man, as reflected in the daily paper”

by Philip Schaenman in the Washington Post

“I am offended by being considered, as a reader, kinsman of letter writers who are without senses of humor and who are perfection bigots.” So begins one of the funniest and most correct letters to the editor ever written. I don’t remember who said this, but in most newspapers, the only place where readers can actually leave a mark is in the classifieds and the letters to the editor. If true, the Washington Post should be proud of its readership.

Honorable Mentions

“How Do You Hire Mercenaries?” by Joshua Keating in Foreign Policy

(Your average “down-on-your-luck autocrat” has at least one thing in common with the Pentagon: recognition that sometimes, mercenaries are the best way to go.)

“How to Cure a Hangover” by Sarah Walker

(“Other rules on your Life Rules list include, ‘Go home if you catch on fire, even if it’s just a little bit’…Rip these rules up! Even if you’ve laminated them!”)

—Assistant Editor Darryl Campbell

Read our Required Reading list of 2010

Illustration by Hallie Bateman

“Take Me Over” by Cut Copy

Does the sound of music change during the summer, or do we change in how we take it in? Must be us — when you’re wearing shorts and a tank, it’s hard to act hard. Music that sounds happy triggers the sense memory of how awesome being out of school was as a kid; a feeling of ultimate possibility and adventure. It’s a sunny state of mind that Cut Copy perfectly reflects on “Take Me Over”. After a brief, shimmery intro, it hits you like a bouncier “Land Down Under.” Don’t let that throw you; go with it. Beneath the veneer is a beat ready for banging out on picnic tabletops, complete with disco snares and bongo drums. The lyrics alternately evoke a nighttime safari and a tropical paradise, and they both sound like places you want to be. Add to that the typical Cut Copy layers of fluttery vocal cooing and flickering synth lines, and your barbecue dance party is dee-jayed. — Contributing Writer Joe Berkowitz

“Donald Trump” by Mac Miller

It’s summer! Time to go outside and do whatever you want — barbeques, driving around with the windows rolled down, excessive drinking, etc. So it’s time to turn on your music and annoy everyone else around you. It’s time for some summer anthems.

Fittingly, Mac Miller’s “Donald Trump” is about doing whatever the fuck you want and doing it with class, like getting high and riding around in a Cutlass and taking over the world, flipping off everyone else along the way. That’s a little laughable because a Cutlass is a terrible vehicle, but when you’re “on your Donald Trump shit” it doesn’t matter; you’ll win anyway. — Writer Jordan Barber

“Banana Ripple” by Junior Boys

Junior Boys tracks have always sounded like indoor songs. The duo softens the harsh beeps and beats of their production by taking melodic hints from R&B, but it’s always felt like a pasty-white sort of sexiness. “Banana Ripple” sounds like Junior Boys with a tan. The interplay between the bouncing blips and wavy synths lift Jeremy Greenspan’s falsetto to sunny new heights. The song is over nine minutes long, but with all of its false endings, “Banana Ripple” seems like it could play on forever. And you’ll wish it could. — Editor Kevin Nguyen

“Thunder on the Mountain” by Wanda Jackson

What’s a summer? A confused jumble of heat, itchiness, and the oppressive need to be doing something. Summer makes me feel like a damp blanket tumbling in a hot dryer who is also supposed to be working on a novel. Nothing captures the propulsive but directionless need to be a-doin’ like Wanda Jackson’s cover of Bob Dylan’s “Thunder on the Mountain.” The song was produced by Jack White to celebrate Dylan and Jackson’s collective 144th birthday. It sounds as if Jackson threw the verses up in the air Dada-style and sung them as they hit the ground. So what if she scrapped the verse that rhymes “sons of bitches” with “orphanages”? (Too sacrilegious?) This woman has been ferocious and every synonym of ferocious for over fifty years. Her take rolls and tumbles and enunciates in a way that Dylan doesn’t attempt much any more. The pointless insistence of “Thunder on the Mountain” make it the perfect song to accompany my favorite summer activity: sitting in a dark, temperature controlled room wondering how to age gracefully while everyone else is at the beach living forever. — Contributing Writer Jonathan Gourlay

“Alien Observer” by Grouper

For most of our young lives, summer exists as three months between spring and fall semesters. Past and future crowd a sudden freedom in which everything seems possible, but temporary. So we sleep until 2 p.m., stop wearing shoes, drive long distances at night and experiment with drugs just to locate and lose ourselves before school starts again. The days are long, the summer is short, and like Grouper’s mesmerizing songs they are best described by the iTunes label “unknown”. Liz Harris’s new double album A|A is surreal and blurry and the perfect backdrop for a lengthy, revelatory drug trip. The title track “Alien Observer” is a great summer jam, especially if you spend the summer being hypnotized at the bottom of the ocean by a giant, quiet cloud of jellyfish. And hey, while you’re down there you might as well listen to both albums all the way through. — Art Director Hallie Bateman

“Tomboy” by Panda Bear

I’m not the biggest fan of the sun; that’s why I live in Seattle (cf. my entry in our “Archnemeses ” staff list). So I don’t really celebrate when summer rolls around, and the songs that define the season for me are not bright, upbeat, or poppy.

I picked the title track off Panda Bear’s latest album because it reminds me of videogames. Specifically, it brings back memories of summers I spent with the blinds shut, playing RPGs until four in the morning. I don’t care how antisocial that sounds; I savor those thoughts. And since I work summers now and find the heat oppressive, nostalgia is all I’ve got.

To be clear, I don’t think “Tomboy” sounds like a videogame track (though the wavering opening chord would make a totally badass fight theme). I think this song, and all of Panda Bear’s solo music actually, sounds like nostalgia itself. Not that it feels old or dated, but rather it evokes the emotional sensation of longing for a fondly remembered past. Which I plan on doing frequently this summer as I sweat in an office chair in front of a computer screen. — Editor Nick Martens

“Rider” by Okkervil River

To me, the ultimate summer song has to be something you can listen to while chewing bubble gum and skateboarding and drinking a mint julep and putting on sunscreen and slapping a mosquito and maybe busting out the twist or the mashed potato — all at the same time. Okkervil River’s “Rider” comes pretty darn close to meeting all of those requirements. It’s good for hanging out of car windows, it’s good for mixing lemonade in a friend’s cramped and sticky kitchen, it’s good for holing up in your room and closing the blinds to the sun and heat, it’s good for night bike rides, and most of all, it’s good for throwing up your hands and shouting along when Will Sheff sneaks in that old familiar refrain, “rock, rockaway beach.” – Illustrator Yael Levy

“Look at Me Now” by Chris Brown (feat. Lil Wayne and Busta Rhymes)

The heat and vacations of summer lead to less clothing and strangers seeing more of your skin. Strutting your stuff at the pool takes confidence, and who better to teach you how to think highly of yourself than Chris Brown? Brown is so fresh, he even had to write a song about. “Look at Me Now” is a fun summer jam with a slow, heavy beat that anyone can keep up with punctured with verses of very fast rapping. This song is a single from Brown’s album F.A.M.E., but he’s overshadowed by Lil Wayne and Busta Rhymes. Since Chris Brown can’t rap, he sets the listener’s expectations low with a funny-but-poorly-delivered first verse, then hands it over to the pros. Busta Rhymes is so crisp with his delivery, you can hear every syllable, but he’s so fast you’ll look like an idiot if you try to show that you know words. Lil Wayne shines in the third verse and you just have to smile as he curses at you and your friends because you had no idea English could sound like that and still be understood.

“Look at Me Now” is fun to dance to, the verses are still engaging after multiple listens, and the chorus is easy to sing along with. Oh, and if you’re feeling a little down on yourself in a swimsuit, just remember you’re fresher than a motherfucker… and you never have to live a day as Chris Brown. — Writer Caitlin Boersma

“Gangsta” by tUnE-YaRdS

The thrill of listening to “Gangsta” is the sense that the song may at any moment completely fall apart and crumble into a dissonant heap. Propelled by clattering drum beat and an exuberant bass line, the song is built with one joyous, cacophonous layer on top of another. Then the song actually does collapse into a series of brass notes and voice-as-sirens. It’s a loud, chaotic bricolage of noise and, like all songs of summer should be, bitchingly catchy.

“Gangsta” reminds me of a rougher, deconstructed version of M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes.” Both songs are mischievous and rousing with a hint of violence. In fact, they each incorporate gunshots — or their vocal equivalent — into the mix, but tUnE-YaRdS sounds like she’s having more fun. Which is good, because we’re having fun listening to her play. — Contributing Writer Tim Lehman

“Houseboat Babies” by Reptar

Remember Reptar from the Rugrats? He was the green dinosaur. Some band in Georgia took it as their name and has managed to put out some great electro-pop tunes.

Their song “Houseboat Babies” doesn’t seem to have anything to do babies on houseboats, but it’s a great summer song. It’s a bright and breezy song about fun and sexy life moments. “Can you feel it?” shouts the band during the chorus. Yes, I can feel it, whatever it is; that summer feeling, maybe. — Jordan Barber

“My Terrible Friend” by the Pains of Being Pure at Heart

Summer is a time for hookups that may or may not make it past Labor Day. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart are able to capture in their sound both the excitement of suddenly having someone worth losing, and the wistfulness of realizing you might have to let them go. Their name may be too precious by half, but TPOBPAH work hard enough to be forgiven for it. A heightened keyboard riff drives “My Terrible Friend” along, while skittering percussion shakes away beneath ethereal background vocals. The overall effect sounds like sneaking away from a party with someone because time is precious. If John Hughes were still alive and making movies about high school love, he would totally use this song on the soundtrack. — Joe Berkowitz

“Hair” by Lady Gaga

Lady Gaga’s songs have always sounded like pop Frankenstein — a series of catchy hooks sewn together and shocked to life by studio production magic. Even Gaga’s best song, “Bad Romance,” sounds like three or four different songs in a random order. But “Hair” is perhaps the most cohesive sounding Lady Gaga song yet. It’s not the best track off Born This Way, but it’s definitely the most fun. “Hair” is a bombastic anthem about hairdos as a form of self-expression — a stupid but entirely likable message — but Gaga is more digestible when she’s not being pretentious (“Born This Way,” “Judas”). Even the ‘90s sounds, like the soft piano notes, “oh ohs” in the chorus, trills from a jazz saxophone, seem comfortable among an aggressively modern production. — Kevin Nguyen

If you’re an Rdio user, you can listen to the songs mentioned on our playlist. Also, see our favorite songs of last summer.

Illustration by Yael Levy

I’ve talked about my very first website before, but my second site was the first with a real audience. And naturally, it was a Pokemon fansite.

Pokemon Online, as I had unimaginatively titled it, was made up entirely of static pages, managed with Microsoft FrontPage 98. This was about two or three years before platforms like Blogger would make dynamic sites a possibility for non-programmers and/or 11 year olds. And despite the technical hurdles of running a site in those days, I can’t help but admire the ambition of my fifth-grade self — the site covered the Gameboy games, N64 games, collectible card game, collectible toys, the television show based on the game, the films based on the television show based on the game, and so on. It was an era before reliable analytics, so I can’t say for sure just how successful the site was (not that I would have understood what a pageview was anyway). But I received a handful of emails daily with fan art and episode summaries, so I felt pretty confident that people were reading.

And yet, even at the height of Pokemon’s popularity, I was always sheepish about telling people about the site. Not even my friends knew I ran Pokemon Online after school. Which, actually, isn’t too different from today. Sure, in a crowd of techie, internet-y people I talk about The Bygone Bureau. But in most circles, I’m reluctant about declaring my authorship of a blog. The difference is that when I was in fifth grade, having a website was uncool — nobody did that; now it’s like “dude, everyone has a blog so shut up about it.”

But Pokemon Online taught me a lot about the web at a time when I was impressionable. Today, I work for the internet, so I have to thank Pokemon for that, and for inspiring two of the most popular things I’ve written. — Editor Kevin Nguyen

When I was probably eleven and my little brother was probably eight, we made a comic book. “Hallie’s Pokemon Adventures” is about twenty pages long and goes like this: Ash gets Pikachu from Professor Oak. Ash declares that they are “a match made in heaven” after they fart at the same time. They set off into the tall grass where Pikachu is immediately torn to shreds. Ash collects his scattered body parts and brings them to a Pokemon Center to be “fixed up.” Once he is better, they eat a celebratory dinner during which Ash chokes on a rat skull. He runs to a girl standing nearby (Misty) and sputters in her face, asking for help. She punches him in the stomach and he vomits on her face, then steals her bicycle. She catches up with him and calls him a “filthy jerk” and he throws her bike in the river. The rest of the story is basically about Misty’s violent quest for revenge, which ends abruptly when Ash captures her in a pokeball. — Art Director Hallie Bateman

I was, I have to admit, pretty into Pokemon, but by the grace of one year I was saved from full-blown, life-long Pokemania. I played the hell out of my copy of Red in sixth grade, and I sheepishly cop to watching the cartoon, though I knew even at the time it was pretty bad. But what pulled me in most strongly was the calculating, capitalist clutch of the Pokemon card game. Turning the game’s ethos, “gotta catch ‘em all,” into tangible products for parents to throw money at must surely be counted as one of the great business moves in modern history.

My interest in the childish fad grinded against growing concepts of adolescence as I entered middle school in seventh grade. By then I was in deep, to the point of having a regular Pokemon card haunt – a little nerd shop by the ice arena where I practiced hockey that sold Japanese cards, which were obviously cooler because obviously. Anyway, a rich friend at school had somehow procured a prized Charizard card, an extremely rare, ridiculously overpowered piece of cardboard that went for $25 at the time. He either gave it to me, I bought it from him, or I traded for it, I don’t remember, but somehow, I got it. I was the Pokemon master.

Then, in short order, I lost it. I was admiring the card in class when a teacher confiscated it. She turned it into a bit of a spectacle, reading the card’s text to all the students.

Now, these weren’t really mean, bullying, or judgemental kids. One of them turned to me and asked, earnestly, “was that a good card?”

“Yeah,” I said, “the best.”

I meant it as a boast, but soon after the words left my mouth, they felt silly. How could I take pride in owning something so trivial? Even though nobody teased me, for some reason I was ashamed, and I knew I needed to change. I got the card back at the end of the day, but by then it had already begun its slow fade from all-powerful monster to ink on cardboard. — Editor Nick Martens

At least once a day, I tell my teenage students to put away their cell phones. The school’s policy on phones prohibits the kids from using their devices until school gets out at 3:20. The threat of confiscation is usually enough to prevent abuse of the rule, but lately I have encountered a new enemy — Angry Birds.

Now, you’d think that as a child of the late 1990s, my experience with that era’s addictive handheld game, Pokemon, would soften my stance on the digital distractedness of today’s plugged-in youth. Sure, I remember the blue and red cartridges peeking out of the tops of Game Boy Colors (Game Boys Color? great name for a chillwave duo!) in the grips of my peers during break, lunch, and even class time. But, you see, I was a closet Pokemon player. In public I scolded my peers for playing such an inane game — why waste your time (and allowance) when Chrono Cross and Tony Hawk 2 were just coming out?! But curiosity got the best of me, and in the summer I discreetly bought Pokemon Blue and beat it during a family trip to Maine. I had to admit, it was a pretty awesome game, and I totally memorized all 150 Pokemon. Back at school, I nearly blew my cover when I let it slip that I had “caught ‘em all”. Luckily, no one noticed.

These days Angry Birds rules the roost, but the kids don’t seem as concerned over whether it is more or less cool than any other game. So they all play it. During school. When they’re not supposed to. I tell myself that when I rebuke them for playing video games, it’s in the service of maintaining a distraction-free learning environment. But I’m really just repeating my hypocrisy, over a decade later. What they don’t know is I already beat Angry Birds last year, before it even became popular. — Contributing Writer Daniel Adler

One year can be enough to open a generation gap. Consider this: Pokemon launched in the United States in September of 1998, when I was just starting high school. My class had seen the worst of the schoolyard bartering crackdowns—first Magic cards, then Pogs, then the great leap into digital with Tamagotchi in 1997. But as I left middle school and pre-adolescence behind (I officially became a teenager the summer before high school), my attention turned from the abstract competition of collectible card games and the metonymic violence of Pog-slamming to the much less figurative world of Quake, laser tag, and high school dating. At best, Pokemon was a punchline on The Simpsons (“Battling Seizure Robots”). Which means that, on some level, the cultural distance between me and someone that’s four months my junior is in some respects much larger than the cultural distance between me and my parents. Now that’s scary. — Assistant Editor Darryl Campbell

When the first Pokemon hatched in 1996 I was shacked up in Philadelphia with a frizzy-haired girl and a smooth-haired dachshund. I had facial hair and paid taxes and all that. So fuck you, Pokemon generation. From hell’s heart (a multiplex playing Clash of the Titans and Tron) I stab at thee. “Not the smallest atom stirs or lives on matter but has its cunning duplicate in mind.” And so this curse: may all that made your childhood dear be puked up in technicolor and muddy 3-D on multiple platforms. What once fueled your imagination shall now dampen it. Pikachu shall be the name of an ugly rash only middle-aged men contract. And your precious Pokemon will be seen in cunning duplicate on a thousand screens, only lesser, sadder, and stripped of all vitality. Jeff Bridges will narrate. — Contributing Writer Jonathan Gourlay

Photo by winterwined

Moderately successful, sometimes-not-boring online publication seeks a part-time Art Director to join an editorial staff of moderately successful, sometimes-not-boring twenty-year-olds. Candidate should be an independent worker and unabashedly nerdy.

We’re also looking for someone with an eye for design, the chops to illustrate, and that’s a whiz at Photoshop (pirated versions OK — scratch that, encouraged). Candidate should be comfortable communicating mostly by email and reaching out to other artists. Being funny on Twitter is a plus.

The commitment is roughly a few hours a week. This position, like every position at this moderately successful, sometimes-not-boring online publication, is unpaid.

Dear Bygone Bureau,

I found your job posting in the bathroom of an Amsterdam nightclub, Handboogstraat 11. I wiped it off, and after reading the job description I think I am more than qualified to fulfill this position.

I usually work alone, and when people try to speak to me or bring me food or water I just scream, “NOT NOW, MOM!” and slam the door so hard that my Star Trek: The Next Generation poster falls down, revealing my Degrassi: The Next Generation poster hung up directly behind it.

I certainly have an eye for design. It’s on my forehead, right under my bangs, so nobody notices usually, and it’s sort of my own interesting, strange little secret with myself. But when I’m working alone, I just lift up my bangs, and the eye just sort of bulges out of my forehead, and I can see everything in stunning and glorious detail.

I learned Photoshop at a very young age. I had yet to grow bangs and my mom would always look at me and say, “You have your grandfather’s eyes.” But she would say it in a really mean way, with her eyebrows all angry and ashamed, and sometimes she would start crying. So I had to photoshop my eye for design out of a lot of pictures for family photo albums and stuff.

As far as internet communication, I’m mostly experienced with using Gmail but I’m sure I could get a hang of Email very easily — after all, they’re only two letters apart, and I’m very intuitive with these things.

I hope you will consider me for this position, as I have already quit my high-paying job at the mall where I sell dentures to old people, and am prepared to make a huge fortune working part-time for your online publication. You were totally kidding when you said “unpaid” right?

Earnestly,

Hallie Bateman

Arts

• “Down the Inrun: The Last Outpost of High School Ski Jumping in America” by Josh Fischel
• “The Comment-Box Poets of The New York Times” by Darryl Campbell
• “Explaining My Obsession with Cover Songs on YouTube” by Nick Martens
• “The Immaculate Collection of Lady Gaga Interpretations on YouTube” by Jordan Barber
• “Ingredients: Bánh Mì a la Sheraton” by Daniel Adler
• “Get Into the Kitchen: An Interview with Mark Bittman” by Darryl Campbell

Travel

• “The Benevolent Sun” by Chas Carey
• “Seeing and Being Seen: Winter in Chile” by Emily Guerin
• “Nowhere Slow: An Introduction to Some Ghosts on the Road” by Jonathan Gourlay
• “En Route: Up, Up and Away” by Darryl Campbell

Humor

• “The Seven Most Annoying Coworkers (Who are Actually Face-Eating Aliens in Disguise)” by Ralph Gamelli
• “Your Day As A Freelance Writer” by Connor O’Brien
• “Familiar Horror Movie Scenes Ruined by the New iPhone” by Nick Martens
• “Arthur Neville Chamberlain Answers the Information Technology Help Desk Hotline” by Zachary Martin
• “Gone Daddy Gone” by Hudson Hongo

Personal

• “Tone-Deaf: A Personal History of Karaoke” by Kevin Nguyen
• “The Grotesque Gastronomy of Paula Deen: A Dinner Party” by Kevin Nguyen
• “Shirley, You Can’t Be Serious” by Jonathan Gourlay
• “Woman vs. Two Quarts of Ice Cream” by Alice Stanley
• “Root Words” by Jimmy Chen
• “House Hunting: Moving Out, Moving In” by Whitney Carpenter
• “Still Life, with Grandmother” by Garland Grey

Opinion

• “On Gossip” by Whitney Carpenter
• ” ‘Asian Flair’: A Case Study of the Culinary Middlebrow” by Darryl Campbell
• “Your Favorite TV Show Isn’t Art” by Daniel D’Addario

Squid

• “D&D 101: The Party Harasses a Guy for No Reason” by Jordan Barber
• “Staff List: Dial-Up Memories” by the Bureau Staff

(Also, our favorite illustration by Hallie Bateman: this bear.)

Alongside The Morning News and The Millions, two sites we’ve long admired, we have the pleasure of introducing The Staff Recommends, an advertorial network that promotes only the books we like and we think you’d enjoy as well. The selections are made by a small team led by John Warner. You might know him as a commentator for The Morning News’s Tournament of Books, an editor at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, or perhaps by the clever nickname that illustrates his uncanny book-recommending expertise, the Biblioracle. Trust us: you are in good hands.

The first TSR selection is Paul Murray’s wonderful Skippy Dies, which will delight you in that funny-while-breaking-your-heart sort of way. I adored this book, and I laughed so hard that spit up my coffee all over page 173. But you don’t have to take my word for it. — Editor Kevin Nguyen

Talk about Almond Joyless. It never occurred to me to simply not eat the bad candies. My mouth would water for the Reese’s and Twix (the top tier), but I would shovel in Sweet Tarts and Sixletts in hopes that I could get to at least a Snickers by the end of the week. Of course, every year my jack-o-lantern candy bucket would begin to look disgusting to me. It became a symbol of all the nasty licorice and Russell Stover-brand marshmallow ghosts I forced myself to consume. I would lust after the candy less and less. By March I would finally have access to the cream of the crop — only to find it stale or feel like a freak for packing bat-decorated 100 Grand Bars in my pockets. I would toss it for my Easter haul. Repeat process. — Contributing Writer Alice Stanley

When I was six or seven, my family flew from Boston to California. For long flights, my dad usually bought me Twizzlers at the Hudson News at the airport, but since it was just after Halloween, he told me to bring something from my candy stash. I chose a box of Milk Duds.

There’s a reason they don’t sell Milk Duds at the airport. They’re impossibly chewy, arguably disgusting. When stale, Milk Duds are like chocolate-covered vikings that’ve come to pillage your mouth of all its worth — that worth being your teeth.

On that flight, a Milk Dud claimed one of my loose teeth. I was bleeding all over my seat, and my mother, embarrassed, dragged me to the lavatory. I rinsed my mouth of the caramel and blood and fished my tooth from the center of a chewed up Milk Dud.

You’d think that the six- or seven-year-old version of myself would have the common sense to stop eating the Milk Duds after that. But an insatiable boredom set in around hour three of the flight and I started chewing on the caramels again. This time, the Milk Duds took out a tooth that wasn’t quite ready to go. I bled everywhere.

I returned to the lavatory again, cleaned up, and hoped that my mother hadn’t thrown away my box of Milk Duds. But she had, and even six- or seven-year-old me understood that she had made a good call. — Editor Kevin Nguyen

When I was about six, I had a fairly rough Halloween. Not only had I been genuinely scared by a neighbor’s lifelike Frankenstein display, the combination of the rain and my frayed nerves meant a reduced candy haul. To compensate, my parents gave me the leftover candy at the end of the night. That meant a lot of candy, but of only one type: mini white chocolate bars. Which, at the time, I loved.

So much so, in fact, that I inhaled about twenty or thirty of the things — more white chocolate, by volume, than I’d ever eaten in one sitting, even more than the white chocolate Easter bunny I’d eaten half a year earlier.

After I finished the last one, I began to feel weird. Not nauseous or hyperactive, but a strange combination of overindulgence and disgust, probably not that dissimilar from the feeling that Adam felt after he ate from the tree of knowledge — a confectionary Original Sin, if you like. Maybe that’s going a bit far, but I did not eat white chocolate for almost 15 years after that Halloween. — Assistant Editor Darryl Campbell

When I think back, the first person who sparked my interest in English literature and language as a legitimate field of thought was my 7th grade language arts teacher, Ms. Whaley.

I was a pretty bad student in middle school, but not because my intentions were bad. I was one of those bouncing-off-the-walls-with-too-much-enthusiasm-for-anything-but-school sort of kids. This led to me being the only student in the “honors” program (for kids who cared even a little bit about learning) to not make the “honor roll” (for GPAs 3.0 and up).

Ms. Whaley was the one teacher I didn’t drive completely insane. She, in fact, seemed to like having a constant disruption in her classroom who never did homework. The one example I remember most clearly came when the class was working in groups of four. Instead of helping my group, I was listening to the neighboring foursome. I heard one of the kids try to overreach his young vocabulary, saying, “anec-DOT-ull.”

In my loudest voice, I shouted, “It’s anec-DOTE-ull, you fool!”

Ms. Whaley snapped at me, “Nick, come to my desk.”

I walked over with my head bowed, expecting a deserved reprimand. Ms. Whaley reached into her desk, pulled out a packet of Fun Dip, and handed it to me.

“Very good, Nick.”

Why an adult responsible for shaping young minds would reward such blatant smart-alecking I’ll never understand, but from that point forward I was sold on books, writing, grammar, and the rest of it.

I know that sounds pretty good, but the moral of the story is I owe my English degree, and all the student loan repayments that go with it, to Fun Dip. — Editor Nick Martens

Photo by Juushika Redgrave