Chapter 61 - Delinquent Diaries (5)

Ahoy Sea Criminals!

Have you ever played make belief as a child? What about make-belief as a middle schooler with an obsession with Sherrif and gangster movies? Well, I'm introducing Mr Delusional with the eighth-grade syndrome.

For those of you who are hearing this for the first time, Eighth-Grade Syndrome is a condition whereby an individual, usually around thirteen or fourteen years of age, who want to stand out very desperately and have convinced themselves that they have some hidden knowledge or secret powers become delusional. In other cultures, this is also known as Chinubyo.

How did I know Mr Delusional had Eighth-Grade Syndrome? Easily enough, he was the only member who invited himself into the gang and pushed his way into acceptance. Most of the delinquents usually join in by recruitment or by challenging Junior into a fight. However, that wasn't so for Mr Delusional. He knocked on the door one day very much like what Casper did and asked if he could join.

Mr Delusional wasn't actually very wild looking. He had natural dirty blond hair and brown eyes. It didn't seem to give me any 'wild' image even if he did try to make his hair spike up. According to Mr Delusional, the spikier the hair, the cooler you were. According to him, real men apparently had gravity-defying hair. That was something I couldn't quite understand. Another thing I didn't get was the tattoo sleeves he insists on wearing to school. There was just something about the boy that screamed coward to me. Tattoos were manly and piercings were not so cool according to Mr Delusional. However, I bet that Mr Delusional is just afraid of pain so he doesn't get piercings and can just say that tattoo parlours don't allow anyone underaged to get them so he can continue wearing his sleeves and get away with it.

Mr Delusional could fool almost anyone into thinking that he's the real deal as a delinquent but he won't be fooling me. I recognised where he gets those classic and absolutely cool one-liners that he occasionally throws. The Godfather was a true classic but in context, Mr Delusional sounded like a third-rate actor imitating it. No offence but he can be a really cool guy when he stops trying to be one. All this does for me is convince me that he's greasy and creepy when he pulls those one-liners out.

Some small signs I noticed about Mr Delusional early on in my observation stage before I started interacting was that he could be rather fearful and socially awkward. Mr Delusional doesn't have a lot of self-confidence and feels the need to do something to fit in with the gang. At this point, I'm slightly concerned. This group of delinquents aren't truly part of the mafia, they were just a bunch of middle-school children who didn't have any place to go to. I'd be more worried if they were actually up to more than just jumping on poor kids to threaten them for lunch money. If one of these kids were a son from the yakuza or something, I'm sure Mr Delusional would have thrown himself at their feet and begged to be accepted into the group.

Mr Delusional isn't born tough. He jumps at almost everything, or at least now he flinches to conceal the fact that he doesn't have nerves made from steel. Just yesterday, he got startled by a fluttering curtain he was seated close to and fell out of his chair. Of course, falling out of a chair would warrant teasing from the class but Mr Delusional did well and played it off as him dozing off in Casper's very boring lesson. Nobody else saw it because he was seated at the back of the class but I did. Mr Delusional was rocking his chair on its two hind legs and balancing a pencil on his nose when the wind blew the curtain into his face and startled the poor fool. His flailing against the 'ghost' made him lose balance and sent him kissing the ground. It must have hurt a lot too seeing how his head made a solid cracking sound on the ground.

That's just an example of what he did that made me think he was actually quite a jumpy guy. Other than ghosts, Mr Delusional was also afraid of bugs and birds. Basically, anything that flutters around isn't alright with him. I have evidence of it because all the other boys were trying to rescue a sparrow who flew into the class and got hit by the ceiling fan. The dumb bird was still alive but bleeding so someone had to carry it to the school doctor for fixing. Mr Delusional quickly stood the furthest away from the animal and declined when someone asked if he wanted to volunteer a trip down to the infirmary.

As for being socially awkward, Mr Delusional wasn't very good at joining in conversations. There could be a bunch of boys just playing a game of flipping erasers that they called Eraser Brawler and poor Mr Delusional just didn't know when to join in. I could see his eyes darting to and fro as the kid opened his mouth several times to say something only to close it because someone else said something that might have covered him. Mr Delusional was always searching for the right timing often to insert his awesome one-liners. Some of the boys thought he was cool while others thought he was crazy because whenever he spoke, it sounded like a true overlord.

Some of you might be wondering what Eraser Brawler is so I'll briefly explain the game here. Two or more boys choose their eraser of choice to bring to battle and flick them with only their pointer finger each turn. Their aim is to flick it over their opponent's eraser and if it is done successfully, they can keep their opponent's erasers. For the record, the boy with the most erasers so far is Lanky whom I will introduce tomorrow.

In a nutshell, Mr Delusional isn't a qualified nutcase but if I doc.u.ment this, I'm sure he will feel the burn of shame when he becomes an a.d.u.l.t. I'm not sure how many people out there share this Eighth-Grade Syndrome but if you do, please drop me a message to let me know how you were cured.

That's all from me, ya sea dogs! Till next time!

Fair winds.

Pirate S.