On a Scale from Idiot to Complete Jerk (14 page)

I am pretty much surrounded by big, aggressive, determined birds. I stand there staring them down and defending our garbage for several ridiculous minutes. Then I realize that they are just waiting for me to give up. It seems like they know I have homework and hockey practice. And garbage cleanup.

They fly down and settle into their interrupted garbage picking before I've taken maybe six steps back to the house, which is the first time I think, “These birds are real jerks
.
” The second time I think it, I'm picking up old hot-dog buns smeared with ketchup and laundry lint and trying not to gag.

Conclusions:
This was the hardest case study of the whole project. All the others seemed to point to some obvious conclusions, but even though both my mom and I described the birds as jerks, were they really? Or were we just using the word
jerk
unscientifically?

I did some research (research
within
a case study? Is this guy an out-of-control science geek or what?) and found that magpies actually have very big brains behind those creepy, cold eyes. Like, monkey-smart brains. Recognize-yourself-in-a-mirror brains. Figure-out-how-to-use-a-twig-to-get-a-longer-stick-to-get-food-out-of-a-box brains. Planner brains. But even though this kind of intelligence rivals that of some of my classmates, apparently magpies are considered to think at the level of a young child. Of course, it's humans, not magpies, who are doing the measuring. Anyway, conclusions:

Like small children, magpies probably can't form the intent or do the planning required for true jerkish activity. I'm saying “probably,” not “definitely.”

Further research into their behavior (their morning screeching, their destructiveness, their bullying of other birds) might move them very, very close to being legitimately labeled jerks.

CHAPTER 13
You Be the Jerk!

I think we've learned a lot from these many, many typed pages. Wow,
thirteen
chapters (fourteen including the concluding one), nine scientific illustrations and fourteen case studies! I'd call that impressive.

In this chapter, we relax and kick back with a little skill-testing fun (and hopefully some bonus marks). This end-of-report exercise is called “You Be the Jerk!” You know something is going to be fun when it ends in an exclamation point!

Many normal people can spot jerkish behavior when it happens and even unconsciously rate it on their internal Jerk-O-Meter. But to truly grasp the many elements of jerkosity, you have to put yourself in the jerk's shoes. You have to
think
like a jerk in order to understand jerkish behavior, if not the jerks themselves. This exercise may appear fun and simple, but it really illustrates the immense scientific value in being able to predict jerkish behavior. Because (and this is really a profound question), if you could anticipate the way a jerk might act, could you prevent it or at least avoid it?

Normal people attempting this exercise may not do very well, which is probably a good thing. Other people may get top marks, and, well, you jerks know who you are.

You Be the Jerk! Quiz

So the idea here is pretty simple. You pretend to be the jerk in each question and select the kind of idiotic or jerkish things you might do in a given situation.

1) You're an adult looking for a parking spot in a crowded lot. You:

(a) park properly between the lines in a normal spot

(b) squeeze into a spot that's too small, so the people next to you have to climb through the back of their van to get in and out

(c) whip into an empty spot just ahead of an older, slower driver who's clearly aiming for the same one and who technically was there first

(d) park at an angle using up two spots, because you don't want anyone touching your car

(e) pull into the disabled parking spot even though those big signs are hard to miss

2) You're a junior high student. You see a kid you know up ahead with a Red Wings ballcap on. You:

(a) catch up with him and have a good-natured talk about favorite teams

(b) yell “Red Wings suck!” but in the kind of conversation-opener way that junior high boys understand

(c) ridicule his choice of team to the point where it isn't funny
at all

(d) flick the cap off his head just to see him flail to catch it

(e) pick the cap up and fling it into a nearby tree

3) You're an office worker. You don't bring anything to the office party, but you:

(a) compliment everyone else's cooking

(b) pretend you've helped in other ways by rearranging furniture or bringing some music

(c) stand around and eat the food everyone else has brought, including
all
of the smoked salmon dip

(d) talk loudly about how wasteful staff parties are

(e) laugh about how much money you saved by not bringing anything

4) You're a parent waiting to pick up your child from school. You:

(a) park quietly down the street where parents are supposed to park

(b) park in the bus zone right in front of the school so your little darling doesn't have to walk six more feet

(c) run your car for the full half an hour that you wait, so that the grade-three teachers have to shut the windows to keep the exhaust fumes out

(d) light up a cigarette just as your child gets in the car

(e) flick the cigarette butt (and your breath-freshening gum wrapper) out the car window on your way home

5) You're a grade-two student. At “sharing time,” one of your classmates is telling a new joke she learned. You:

(a) listen attentively because you also like a good joke

(b) sort of listen, but focus more on picking some old gum off the bottom of a nearby desk

(c) get into a scuffle with another kid on the polka-dot mat because you consider the blue dot your own personal property

(d) yell “BO-RING!” as the joke teller launches into it

(e) if you've heard the joke before, blurt out the punch line before the joke teller gets to it

6) Your school's fire alarm goes off. The school is evacuating onto the front lawn (like that's not going to be a scorcher of a place when the fire really takes off). Anyway, you:

(a) file out in single file, quick-walking in an orderly fashion

(b) break into a trot and jockey to butt into the front of the line

(c) two-hand push other kids in the back to get to the nearest door

(d) scream “Fire! FIRE! We're all going to DIE!”

(e) lie when they find out that it was you who pulled the alarm in the first place

7) You're in gym class. It's the swimming unit, so you:

(a) enjoy the harmless aquatic exercise and the break from the smell of the school gym

(b) crowd up against other kids in line for the slide, because other kids probably don't mind that when they're nearly naked

(c) tell the scared kids that there have been reports of a shark in the deep end

(d) dunk other kids unexpectedly when the teacher isn't looking so they get that raw, bleachy-burny feeling in their nose, mouth and throat

(e) dive deep and pretend to be the shark, targeting the scared kids' legs

8) You're the teacher in the gym class above. You:

(a) pretend that the swimming unit is actually going to be fun for more than, say, three strong swimmers

(b) enforce the pre-swim shower rule, then keep kids shivering and blue-lipped on the side of the pool while you explain obvious safety measures for half an hour

(c) let the lifeguards look out for potential drowners while you text your boyfriend

(d) make everyone do endless lung-inflaming lengths

(e) make everyone go off the high diving board (even those kids who might be afraid of heights or depths or sharks)

9) You're a kid at recess. When the bell rings, you:

(a) return promptly to the school and change into your indoor shoes so as not to muddy the school's floors

(b) return promptly to the school, smearing muddy streaks all the way to your classroom

(c) steal the ball the other kids were playing with and run into the school

(d) stash the ball in your backpack before they can find it

(e) when the other kids tell on you, lie to the teacher and then the principal about what happened and accuse
the other kids
of bullying
you

10) It's picture day at your school. You:

(a) smile nicely for both your personal picture and the class picture

(b) mess up your picture so you can miss class again when the retakes come around

(c) smile nicely for your picture and then make loud rude noises so that the kids getting photographed after you jump and look alarmed in their pictures

(d) smile nicely for your picture, then open your mouth hideously for the class picture

(e) smile nicely for your picture, then make rabbit ears on the two kids beside you in the class pictures so that they look back years later and think, “What a jerk”

You Be the Jerk! Scoring Key

Here's the cool part about this test—you grade yourself! Or not, because it's just for fun. Sweet, I know.

This is how it works, for all you try-hard keeners who'll actually take the time to do it. You may already have guessed that the answers in the quiz generally go from being normal (a) to being a complete jerk (e). We give each letter a number rating (see the chart at right)—the higher the number, the bigger the jerk. If you selected more than one answer to a question, add 'em up (which will pretty much guarantee complete jerk numbers).

CHAPTER 14
Drawing Some Conclusions
(and a Cool Pie Chart)

It is important, apparently, to have a concluding paragraph at the end of any project. Even though you might be sick of the topic and have said everything that can possibly be said about it, teachers
love
the concluding paragraph. They tend to dock marks if you don't write and write and write a decent-sized, multi-sentenced concluding paragraph. They like the wrapping-it-up, making-it-all-sound-sort-of-finished aspect of conclusions. This is, apparently, why concluding paragraphs are seen as important for essays, reports and projects.

But instead of lamely and boringly recapping the entire project, cutting and pasting all the conclusions I made during the other chapters and summarizing the massive amount of research I've done, I think I'll do something different.

Even though I've already written two concluding paragraphs (see above), I still have one last scientific diagram that is very, very conclusive.