Failure To Thrive

Sorry

 Author's note: height and weight are mentioned; please do not try to "compete" or use the numbers for inspiration, you will only suffer if you even live long enough to do so.

August 26, 1996

Blah, blah, blah, couldn't this dumb lady just shut up already? Picking at a piece of food stuck between his braces, Butt-Head extracted it and flicked the soggy chunk at Beavis, who had been sticking a booger onto the underside of their shared chair and shoved him closer to the edge in response. Barely two weeks into the school year, they'd already been sent to the counselor by Mr. Van Driessen; although the marks on Butt-Head's forearms were pretty faded by now, of course the hippie had remembered seeing those fresh cuts on the handful of times they had crossed paths during summer vacation. At first, the lady had kept asking a bunch of dumb questions about the faded scrapes on the brunette's forearms even though none of them were fresh nor deep; needless to say, he was being uncooperative and derailing every question with something fairly irrelevant. He did still feel tempted to watch the blood flow out, but he hadn't so much as punctured his skin ever since Beavis had walked in on him a few weeks ago. Something about having the person he was closest to seeing him doing something so private, so weak, had been humiliating, to say the least. It would've been less awkward if Beavis had walked in on him masturbating, which had actually happened a lot and wasn't nearly as embarrassing as most people assumed it would be; well, they'd masturbated together plenty of times in the tool shed next door, to Mr. Anderson's dismay, so maybe that wasn't the best example. He vaguely remembered something about some stinky counselor in middle school complaining about his attention span, wondering if that dumb guy might have been sort of right but not caring enough to really do anything about it. He glanced at the lady, who was now lecturing about drugs or something like that with a pointed look toward an oblivious Beavis who was too stupid to even know how to get high on paint thinner without Butt-Head showing him how. Having a memory worse than a catfish or something, Beavis had almost tried to drink it just last week before Butt-Head had smacked it out of his hands. They couldn't get high if there wasn't any paint thinner left, he had reasoned, though Beavis had probably already forgotten that by now; it was nearly impossible to predict what he would remember and what he would forget, so it was best to assume the latter. While the lady rambled about fulfillment and all that crap, the teens squirmed in the plastic chair, eager to leave. One time, he and Beavis had been sent to this weird camp thing where they were forced to listen to a bunch of dorks talk about being sad on the same week that one of those chainsaw massacre movies had been in theaters, so neither of them wanted to say anything that would risk them getting sent back there and missing something cool again; they hadn't entirely understood the situation, not in the slightest, but this conversation felt pretty similar to the one they'd had before getting sent to that boring place and neither of them had forgotten how much it had sucked there. Even the hot dogs there had been tasteless. Huh? Oh, finally, the lady was letting them leave. Without a second to spare, both teens dashed out of the office and down halls sparsely populated by the few geeks that stayed after school to go to extracurricular clubs, eager to escape this wretched building before they both spontaneously combusted from overexposure to the cloying atmosphere within. Barging through the front doors and leaping down the concrete steps, their feet pounded down the scorching pavement as they ran home in the steamy air, giggling and racing each other to the TV waiting at home. Beneath his discolored pants, Beavis' knees occasionally clacked against each other, barely keeping up with Butt-Head instead of outrunning him like usual. Head pounding, the blond slowed to a standstill in front of a house with peeling white paint while the brunette obliviously continued running. He felt like he was going to be sick, his limbs hurt severely, and his head was killing him. Instinctively, he sat down right there in the middle of the sidewalk, hunched over with his knees to his chest, everything taken over by a fuzzy blackness as the sun beat down relentlessly.