What The Hell Is Wrong With Randy?
If You'll Kindly Recall, Sonny Bono Died in a Tragic Skiing Accident
Randy is a student in my class, and what I think would qualify as a good student. Supposedly he had been in the service two years prior to his attendance at the College of Mortuary Science, though I was under the impression that there's a weight requirement, and frankly, Randy doesn't strike me as the kind of person to have weighed less than 275 pounds - even as an adolescent.
He wears strictly navy blue suits, thick glasses, and has one of those "mom" hair cuts - part on one side, comb it over, and don't forget to gel. He carries his camera to school and feverishly snaps pictures of the students as they engage in various activities, like sitting quietly in their desks. He never asks if he can take them, never asks us to pose, just snaps the camera. To look at him is to think "dork."
Over Christmas break, Randy went skiing - a bit funny, since Randy didn't strike me as the athletic type, let alone the bending-over-to-put-on-a-ski type. When we all returned to class, indeed, Randy had gone skiing. He had his right arm in a sling and his jaw wired to prove it. The poor guy was going to be forced to lose weight the hard way. He had pulled a Sonny on the slopes, meeting an unexpected tree, fracturing his clavicle and breaking his jaw. He told us all about how he had the task of shooting himself up every morning, injecting some commonly known pain reliever directly into the muscles of the jaw through the cheek.
The sling wasn't a permanent accessory, however, and it was gone within the week. He told me that he was only going to be wired shut for four weeks, which I thought was feasible. His meals consisted of things that could easily be sucked through a straw which he carried in his pocket. He had supposedly tried numerous straws, but the one that he had was the one that caused him the least amount of pain.
One day shortly afterward, our embalming teacher, known to his students as "Mac," was explaining to the class why modern embalmers do not use the siphoning technique to aspirate the thoracic cavity. Mac most likely was around before the electric aspirator (a rubber hose device that sucks the fluid content of the organs out of the body before injecting cavity fluid, aiding in both preservation and disinfecting). He was slow in demonstrating the movements but successfully mimed the process.
It started with a couple of quick jabbing motions into an imaginary abdomen with a marker that was being used to represent a trocar (a hollow metal rod with a point on the end accompanied by rows of holes which aid in suction, that attaches to the electric aspirator). He made a couple of exaggerated sucking sounds, with his thumb and index finger circling his lips to indicate the end of the hose. Mac then simulated what happened when the siphoner hit an organ: he jumped back about a foot, stuck his tongue out, and pretended to spit. When the imaginary organ had finished draining, he jabbed around with the "trocar" and resumed sucking.
The thought of putting our lips on a tube protruding from a diseased corpse and emptying all of the blood, guts, and bile with the same technique used by delinquents to obtain free gas caused many of us to convulse. Poor Randy jokingly complained that now he would have to give up eating altogether (which probably wouldn't hurt, but the local fast food economy would be shaken to its foundations from the sudden decrease in milkshake sales).
Somewhere along the line Randy's jaw became infected and he had to start frequenting the dentist, frequently leaving during lectures. The president of our class became curious to see exactly how his jaw was wired and would approach Randy with this request while I was engaged in conversation with him. Randy would always decline, saying that he didn't want anyone looking in his mouth and that it was embarrassing.
If it was food chunks that he was worried about he should have cleaned better, because frankly, I was curious myself. I had never seen anyone with his jaw wired shut, and it fascinated me. I asked Randy what the doctors said about the progress of his jaw. I sympathized with him and his limited eating ability. I even boasted that I would quit eating solid foods for as long as he was unable to as a gesture of, uh, solidarity. During his last dental visit he had to have his wires cut and another apparatus placed into his mouth because of the infection, but this time he could eat partially solid foods because there weren't any wires obstructing the pathway for the food. It seemed like he was showing real signs of recovery.
Cut to last Wednesday. Two and a half hours into class, our teacher still hadn't shown up. Those of us who remained were chatting it up to pass the time when Anthony, our class president, came in to make an unexpected announcement.
"We've been lied to by one of our fellow students," he said solemnly. He had found Randy sobbing in the library, he explained. Randy had confessed to him. Randy hadn't run into a tree and broken his jaw, hadn't fractured his clavicle, hadn't had his jaw wired shut, hadn't had an infection, hadn't been sucking all of his meals through a straw, probably hadn't even left home over Christmas Break. That attention absorbent sponge, that manipulative, sympathy sucking parasite had made it all up...
...And done a damn fine job carrying it off. I must take a moment to pity Randy. Despite the fact that he toyed with my sympathy and filled our only conversation with lies, a part of me knows that I should feel bad for the friendless chump that had to fake serious injury to attract the interest of others. He would probably make a good actor, if there were room enough on the screen for anyone else (a love affair with a divorced, very drunk camera).
I am baffled as to why he chose not to play it out to the end. Four weeks had passed and indeed he had his wires taken off and it was just about time for things to start becoming normal again. He had done so much already-he should have taken all his "equipment" out and slowly but surely recovered from the pain. He was days away from victory but he had to go and tell Anthony that he had fabricated the whole ordeal. He wanted to get caught. He had wanted us all to know how desperately he wanted us to like him, to pay attention to him.
Having been duped into sympathy once, I now find myself overcome with suspicion. I saw a homeless man begging for change in a wheelchair. He was covered in a blanket, only his face and hands showing. As I passed this man I thought, "He's probably not crippled, he probably just fished that wheelchair out of a dumpster and is using it as a ploy."
Whether or not I would have thought that a few days ago isn't the issue, it's the fact that now I associate that feeling with Randy, whose coddling mother and father were probably his best friends throughout his adolescence. Randy, who had crafted his own wire mouthpiece to trick us all into trusting sympathy.
Obviously he wasn't exaggerating when he said that he had absolutely no friends. It probably took him all of his free time to think this up and keep it going as long as he did. I doubt that he's any less lonely for all his trouble.
If it were me, I wouldn't have wanted to get caught. I would never have admitted to a lie of that magnitude--I don't think that I could live with myself, which makes me wonder how much longer he'll be able to. Maybe it's just because I have friends, because I don't have to make up stories for people to talk to me, but I would never have fabricated a story like his. I don't know what part of someone's brain makes them think that making up something like this would be a smart thing to do.
What in the hell is wrong with Randy?! None of us had ever seen anyone's jaw wired shut in real life, and with his confession, we find that we still haven't.
He wears strictly navy blue suits, thick glasses, and has one of those "mom" hair cuts - part on one side, comb it over, and don't forget to gel. He carries his camera to school and feverishly snaps pictures of the students as they engage in various activities, like sitting quietly in their desks. He never asks if he can take them, never asks us to pose, just snaps the camera. To look at him is to think "dork."
Over Christmas break, Randy went skiing - a bit funny, since Randy didn't strike me as the athletic type, let alone the bending-over-to-put-on-a-ski type. When we all returned to class, indeed, Randy had gone skiing. He had his right arm in a sling and his jaw wired to prove it. The poor guy was going to be forced to lose weight the hard way. He had pulled a Sonny on the slopes, meeting an unexpected tree, fracturing his clavicle and breaking his jaw. He told us all about how he had the task of shooting himself up every morning, injecting some commonly known pain reliever directly into the muscles of the jaw through the cheek.
The sling wasn't a permanent accessory, however, and it was gone within the week. He told me that he was only going to be wired shut for four weeks, which I thought was feasible. His meals consisted of things that could easily be sucked through a straw which he carried in his pocket. He had supposedly tried numerous straws, but the one that he had was the one that caused him the least amount of pain.
One day shortly afterward, our embalming teacher, known to his students as "Mac," was explaining to the class why modern embalmers do not use the siphoning technique to aspirate the thoracic cavity. Mac most likely was around before the electric aspirator (a rubber hose device that sucks the fluid content of the organs out of the body before injecting cavity fluid, aiding in both preservation and disinfecting). He was slow in demonstrating the movements but successfully mimed the process.
It started with a couple of quick jabbing motions into an imaginary abdomen with a marker that was being used to represent a trocar (a hollow metal rod with a point on the end accompanied by rows of holes which aid in suction, that attaches to the electric aspirator). He made a couple of exaggerated sucking sounds, with his thumb and index finger circling his lips to indicate the end of the hose. Mac then simulated what happened when the siphoner hit an organ: he jumped back about a foot, stuck his tongue out, and pretended to spit. When the imaginary organ had finished draining, he jabbed around with the "trocar" and resumed sucking.
The thought of putting our lips on a tube protruding from a diseased corpse and emptying all of the blood, guts, and bile with the same technique used by delinquents to obtain free gas caused many of us to convulse. Poor Randy jokingly complained that now he would have to give up eating altogether (which probably wouldn't hurt, but the local fast food economy would be shaken to its foundations from the sudden decrease in milkshake sales).
Somewhere along the line Randy's jaw became infected and he had to start frequenting the dentist, frequently leaving during lectures. The president of our class became curious to see exactly how his jaw was wired and would approach Randy with this request while I was engaged in conversation with him. Randy would always decline, saying that he didn't want anyone looking in his mouth and that it was embarrassing.
If it was food chunks that he was worried about he should have cleaned better, because frankly, I was curious myself. I had never seen anyone with his jaw wired shut, and it fascinated me. I asked Randy what the doctors said about the progress of his jaw. I sympathized with him and his limited eating ability. I even boasted that I would quit eating solid foods for as long as he was unable to as a gesture of, uh, solidarity. During his last dental visit he had to have his wires cut and another apparatus placed into his mouth because of the infection, but this time he could eat partially solid foods because there weren't any wires obstructing the pathway for the food. It seemed like he was showing real signs of recovery.
Cut to last Wednesday. Two and a half hours into class, our teacher still hadn't shown up. Those of us who remained were chatting it up to pass the time when Anthony, our class president, came in to make an unexpected announcement.
"We've been lied to by one of our fellow students," he said solemnly. He had found Randy sobbing in the library, he explained. Randy had confessed to him. Randy hadn't run into a tree and broken his jaw, hadn't fractured his clavicle, hadn't had his jaw wired shut, hadn't had an infection, hadn't been sucking all of his meals through a straw, probably hadn't even left home over Christmas Break. That attention absorbent sponge, that manipulative, sympathy sucking parasite had made it all up...
...And done a damn fine job carrying it off. I must take a moment to pity Randy. Despite the fact that he toyed with my sympathy and filled our only conversation with lies, a part of me knows that I should feel bad for the friendless chump that had to fake serious injury to attract the interest of others. He would probably make a good actor, if there were room enough on the screen for anyone else (a love affair with a divorced, very drunk camera).
I am baffled as to why he chose not to play it out to the end. Four weeks had passed and indeed he had his wires taken off and it was just about time for things to start becoming normal again. He had done so much already-he should have taken all his "equipment" out and slowly but surely recovered from the pain. He was days away from victory but he had to go and tell Anthony that he had fabricated the whole ordeal. He wanted to get caught. He had wanted us all to know how desperately he wanted us to like him, to pay attention to him.
Having been duped into sympathy once, I now find myself overcome with suspicion. I saw a homeless man begging for change in a wheelchair. He was covered in a blanket, only his face and hands showing. As I passed this man I thought, "He's probably not crippled, he probably just fished that wheelchair out of a dumpster and is using it as a ploy."
Whether or not I would have thought that a few days ago isn't the issue, it's the fact that now I associate that feeling with Randy, whose coddling mother and father were probably his best friends throughout his adolescence. Randy, who had crafted his own wire mouthpiece to trick us all into trusting sympathy.
Obviously he wasn't exaggerating when he said that he had absolutely no friends. It probably took him all of his free time to think this up and keep it going as long as he did. I doubt that he's any less lonely for all his trouble.
If it were me, I wouldn't have wanted to get caught. I would never have admitted to a lie of that magnitude--I don't think that I could live with myself, which makes me wonder how much longer he'll be able to. Maybe it's just because I have friends, because I don't have to make up stories for people to talk to me, but I would never have fabricated a story like his. I don't know what part of someone's brain makes them think that making up something like this would be a smart thing to do.
What in the hell is wrong with Randy?! None of us had ever seen anyone's jaw wired shut in real life, and with his confession, we find that we still haven't.