Insanely Sane - Joker short story

A Bad Week

Things weren't going quite the way I wished they would've that week.

For starters, next week was the start of 11th grade. That means all of this week I was meant to complete whatever school shopping I had yet to finish. Honestly, I usually just reused old school supplies from the previous year, but moving out of state required me to pack as little as I needed to survive.

And of course I procrastinated the trip to Walmart to get what I needed until the week before. That means that almost everything I needed was next to sold out, making my search for the supplies on my list annoying to say the least.

To find and keep a binder was a struggle. After walking up and down the school supply isles twice thoroughly, finding no binders on the shelves, I catch a glimpse of a short hob nob looking middle schooler holding a blue binder in his hands at the end of an isle. So I approached the kid as nicely as I could. A few short questions asking where I could find one like his and a few obnoxious responses later, I may have threatened to choke him until his eyes popped out of their sockets and then take the thing from his cold, dead hands.

I may have been escorted out of the store...

But that wasn't the worst day of the week. No, it was when we went clothes shopping. That was a very irritating and depressing day. Don't get me wrong, clothe shopping was one of my favorite things to do, it's what my mother told me on our way there.

She sighed as her grip on the wheel tightened for a moment. "Jack, look, you're not going to like what I'm about to say."

I turned my head to her from where I sat in the passengers seat, cocking an eyebrow. "On a scale from 1 to 10, how mad am I going to get?"

"Well, I'd say a 8 on the sad scale," she started as I gave a disapproving hum. "I know you're not trilled about being enrolled in a religious private school-" she began tapping her fingers on the wheel, "and they have a slight dress code..."

Um, no. No, no, no. How did I not know about this before hand? I am not about to let some random people tell me what is appropriate for me to wear and what's not to fit their ridiculous religious standards.

"But that's not the part you'll necessarily hate," her mouth draws into a thin line before she opens it to speak again. "Jack, you're not allowed to wear your makeup."

My eyes go wide as my head turns back to look at her. "None at all? Not even a little eyeliner?" I asked, disbelieving the words that just left her mouth. She just gave a small shake of her head. "I'm sure they wouldn't even notice though..."

"And that's why I'll be confiscating all your beauty supplies," she said in a small voice, and I knew she wasn't doing this because she disliked the fact that I wore makeup, but because she had to. She knows that I'd rebel against the rules if I could. Instead of trying to protest any farther, I slouch back into my seat defeated.

Half of the time we were at the shop, I was tearing up by the makeup counter they so conveniently had. It felt like the owners were silently mocking my grieving mind as I whispered my 'sorrys' and 'goodbyes' to the glittery eye shadow pallets and high pigmented red lipsticks desperately calling out to me, begging me to buy them.

0O0O0

Sometimes school can be such a pain in my rump.

3 weeks into the new school year, and I'm pretty sure all the teachers hate me. I don't know if it's because I walk funny, make too many Hitler jokes, or because I reflect the opposite of what their religion stands for. It might have been the fact that I started to laugh during the 9/11 documentary our History teacher played to commemorate the passing holiday.