What's in a Name?

Arnold Zabka

Arnold Timothy Zabka- Mexican (mother); Polish (father); Arnold Zabka is a quiet and introverted young man whom develops an unrequited attraction to Tyna Smith in high school and participates in a board gamers club alongside her older brother Jeffrey. He is shown to be very reserved and studious and tends to lack confidence in himself, particularly when it comes to the opposite sex. He was raised in a Catholic household with a father who was a heavy drinker and was considered the youngest of three siblings. He is of partial Hispanic descent on his mother's side and became aware of his privileged background as a person whom passes for being white with his light complexion. Arnold enjoys reading books and loves the library, and his best friends were shocked after he left a book on the ground one day while being in a rush to class. He remembers reading many exciting books during the summer and is a fan of the classic novels "A Clockwork Orange" and "A Separate Peace", which he read for class projects. At times, he helps out his best friend Carl, a fellow gamer who has a general dislike in homework, as he feared was falling behind and would have to repeat the 10th grade. He is the champion of the school's spelling bee, has been playing the piano since he was 7 years old and is one of the founding members of the high school's Pride committee. While Arnold has shown immense skills in winning game shows, he often backs out at the last minute and has demonstrated that he doesn't enjoy contests. He has resorted to cheating on some occasions and will otherwise use other people's ideas in order to help support his own. He is seen playing many sports throughout his adolescence and usually plays baseball and soccer with his friends, and at one point, he daydreams about playing golf with the president. 

Despite being a relatively friendly person, he sometimes has a tendency to break the promises that his parents have given him, such as not touching the computer during his mother's tax season, cleaning up his room as he is told, not digging in the yard, and practicing the piano on time. There are times in which Arnold is very focused on his popularity to the point of coming across as awkward, and he often does not understand other people's jokes and takes advantage of them in an attempt to gain popularity. He tends to be extremely insecure in regards to his looks, particularly the fact that he is short and overweight and admits he has never been close to dating a girl. The constant rejection he has received from the opposite sex has led him to adopt a negative perspective on women and treat them in a degrading way, to the extent in which he has resorted to desperate measures and asked his friends to set him up with prostitutes. His distant relationship with his mother also gave him a distorted perception of love, as he continues to feel resentment towards her due to her absenteeism. Arnold is known to mumble his words whenever he evades somebody's questions and is also known to "play with his glasses" whenever he lies, which his sister has caught him doing before. He sometimes lies at first, but then he changes his answer to an exaggeration, although he usually confesses immediately afterward. Carl has come to refer to him as "the World's Greatest Gleeper", and he is occasionally referred to by his full name when he gets into trouble, including his middle name "Timothy". Despite having a reputation for eating too much food, he also loves to eat desserts and is regarded as a messy eater, as he tends to eat any junk food he can find.

Arnold has the potential to be an intelligent person but tends to be someone who doesn't use much common sense, much to the annoyance of his parents. He is a lonely person deep down who tends to suffer from several phobias, although he has demonstrated he can be kind and a loyal friend at times. He genuinely appreciates his friends and loved ones and is always willing to come to their defense and offer them unconditional support during difficult times. He ultimately desires affection from others and is also shown to have a deep capacity for caring that tends to surface periodically. Arnold has also proven to be incredibly good at working with his hands, which prompted him to want to go into the trades rather than pursue a formal education, and likes to listen to Pink Floyd while doing woodwork. His father later encourages him to attend college instead and pursue a career in cybersecurity, which he believed would give him better job prospects. He has some hidden depths, desiring to use his love for technology in order to proactively help underprivileged populations in Third World Countries have access to computers. He also has a desire to travel and has gone on road trips with some of his friends in the past, in addition to having ambitions of traveling to Italy one day. Arnold is also not one to get angry very easily, but when he snaps, the other kids are often quite frightened by it, as shown when he goes on a tirade when his friends do not play his jingle the way he wants. While cleaning up the park with his pet dog for company, he passes by the a group of older boy who litter right in front of him and tease him about it, but after his dog starts choking on their garbage, he angrily scolds them to help him clean up. He is generally seen as having self-control however and tends to remain calm in most situations, appearing rather laidback in his encounters. 

He can also be quite resourceful and tends to adapt to big changes as they come, taking setbacks in stride and serving as a pillar of support people can rely upon. Arnold first develops a crush on Tyna Smith when she is seated in front of him in his geometry class during their sophomore year of high school. He admires her for her kindness and is fascinated with her natural hair, observing her from a distance several times as he is waiting for the bus after school. Despite his timidness, he finds her on social media one day and decides to add her as a friend, sharing an hour long phone conversation with her one night. He proceeds to ask her to a school dance a few weeks later, which she politely declines after admitting to him that she didn't feel an attraction and only liked him as a friend. Arnold is shown to have his share of quirks, as he tends to dislike large but warm sweaters and tends to eat the crust of his pizza first. He also insulted his classmate Mia Vasquez-Rivera more than once by saying she was a "Marshmallow" and did not apologize to her, although they later made up when he became worried about her safety. He is interested in model planes and panicked when his younger brother tried to make the plane "fly" out the window, warning him not to touch it. He and Carl also play in a checkers tournament, and while he is Initially excited meanwhile his best friend is bored, his starting pep rallies to support him and shun Carl. Arnold has a soft spot for his father and firmly believes in the good in him and his capacity to change as a person, accepting him despite his mistakes. He no longer attends church as frequently as he used to as a child and claims he stopped attending because he felt his religion was not benefiting him in the long run. 

He behaves selflessly when he decides to pay visits to his elderly neighbor Ms. Torres and helps her in carrying her groceries while making occasional stops by her house to have conversations. He is also good with animals and seems to have formed a natural connection with them, having kept many pets throughout the course of his life and considering his dog Maxie his most loyal companion. Arnold is an overweight boy who wears glasses and stands at 5 ft 4 in tall and has black hair, dark brown eyes, and a light complexion. He is considered below average in appearance by many of his female classmates and was ranked the second lowest in a list that was created by the popular girls judging the boys in terms of attractiveness. He tries to compensate for this by being well-groomed and being a "snappy" dresser, keeping his hair neat and wearing plaid shirts with khakis. He loves to eat tortas, which he states are the Mexican equivalent to hamburgers and is also a fan of Thai food and Italian cuisine. Arnold mellows out over the course of time and is seen as a hard worker who advances quickly in his career, finding employment at a government job and eventually moving to Columbus, Maryland to work for the Department of Defense. He has a few casual relationships with women and experiences several sexual encounters, but prizes his freedom and prioritizes his career above anything else. He gets married at a later age and finally settles down with a younger woman when he is 40 years old, becoming the father of triplets by the time he is 47 years old. He moves back to Texas, considering it his home and raises his kids in a nice neighborhood near Bulverde, a small town just a few miles north of San Antonio. ISFJ 6w5