On a Scale from Idiot to Complete Jerk (6 page)

NONNA
(
with heavy sarcasm
). Oh yeah,
right
.
Research
. You think I was born yesterday? Becca, if you think at thirteen you're going to have a boyfriend, you got another think coming! When I was thirteen…

(
Nonna calms down and breezes through several
generations of her family at a confusing rate, jumping
from era to era, using lots of hand gestures and flipping
her suspiciously black hair. She throws in bits of rumor,
gossip and history. I'm not actually sure, but I think she
mentions Napoleon.
)

REBECCA
(
determinedly trying to bring Nonna back
to the relevant points
). So
your
mother and father were nice, kind people…

NONNA
. Angels, angels.

REBECCA
. And Nonno (
looks at the camera
)—my grandpa, who died many years ago—
his
father…

NONNA
. Was an angel. A wonderful man, Papa Silvio, so kind, so sweet…

REBECCA
. But Nonno's mother, Rosa, you say was maybe not—

NONNA
. A she-devil! Mama Rosa…well, the rose smells sweet, but it has thorns! You make me speak this woman's name? I remember the week before our wedding…

REBECCA
. So Nonno's brother, Sergio, was a jerk, and his two sisters, Marta and Sophia, were jerks. And all of their twelve children are jerks. Is that what you're telling me? Seriously, Nonna?

NONNA
(
with the satisfied air of somebody who has
finally made her point
). Yes, yes. And their children's children will be too, probably.

REBECCA
(
sighing
). Okay, let's move on to you and Nonno. You had three children—Frank, Isabella (my mom) and Tania.

NONNA
. Angels, all of them angels. That thing with the police and Frankie? Garbage! Just garbage. The police made it up. Or they got the wrong guy. He was framed.

REBECCA
(
uneasily
). Well, he did get convicted…

NONNA
(
aggressively
). Who you going to believe? Your Nonna or some big-shot stranger sitting behind a desk in a courtroom?

REBECCA
(
her head resting on her hand
). I
know that Frankie's kids are wild, and that Tania never visits and never calls. But Mom
says can you blame her? Anyway, Tania's kids are okay. Sherrie and Brianne?
They're nice.

NONNA
. What do I know those kids? I never see them. Never…

REBECCA
(
quickly heading Nonna off from another
rant
). But my mom and my dad are good people…

NONNA
. Your mother is an angel. Your dad? (
She
shrugs.
) He's okay.

REBECCA
. And they had four children. Me, Susannah, Conor and Brayden.

NONNA
. Such a stupid name, Brayden! Like the sound a donkey makes…

REBECCA
.
Anyway
, it's not his name that's the problem.

NONNA
. No, true, that's the least of that kid's problems. Trouble with friends, school always calling, the things we find in that backpack of his…

REBECCA
(
looking wearily at the camera
). Can we stop now, J.J.?

Conclusions:
I got more than I bargained for in this case study. You were right, Rebecca—that is one nightmare family you got there. And Nonna herself could be the star of some weird reality show.
My Small, Cranky, Italian Nonna!
or something like that. Anyway, in most families, people can barely remember their grandparents' last names, let alone their great-great-great grandparents' names, let alone whether or not they were jerks. So often there is a lot of guesswork involved. But Rebecca's nonna had an encyclopedic knowledge of her entire huge family, and razor-sharp memories, even if they were mostly about old feuds and grudges. So even making allowances for Nonna's lack of scientific objectivity, there seems to be evidence of a strong genetic line of jerks in Rebecca's family. Like, four generations of jerks, most of them on the non-Nonna side of the family.

For every jerk in a family, there's always a bunch of nice people that somehow have to deal with them.

Jerks and heredity could probably be a whole science project by itself. And you'd have to live about seven hundred years to really figure it all out. Gene scientists, good luck with all that. I'm fine with accepting that the science is unclear on the subject of jerks and heredity, and that it probably won't be solved by an eighth grader in one chapter of his science project. (Full marks for effort, though, wouldn't you say?)

Scientific Illustration #4:
Rebecca's Family Tree

This is as close as I could get to illustrating (some of) Rebecca's
family tree. Now remember, this is a science project, not an art
project. Therefore, the following stick people should just be
taken as representing people, not actually looking much like them.
The known jerks are the stick people with angry eyebrows and
the fuming marks coming off their heads. The non-jerks are the
ones smiling or looking uneasily at the jerk beside them.

CHAPTER 7
Jerks in Sports

Like sun, water and soil for plants, sports provide the optimal environment in which jerks thrive. Many elements that contribute to prime jerkish behavior are found in sports—adrenaline, intensity, competition, pressure, physical contact and some spectators your own age. Is it any wonder jerks flourish?

For example, you're on an unexpected breakaway, skating faster than you've ever skated in your life. The ice is a blur. The crowd is screaming. You can hear your own heart pounding. There's only the goalie between you and glory. You wind up and…BOOM! Some faster-skating jerk
from your own team
swoops in, strips the puck off you and scores. This is a very recent example (last night's game) of jerks in sports, taken from my own hockey team. Faster-skating jerk, you know who you are.

In my experience, sports tend to bring out the inner jerk in many people. Is it the competition? The adrenaline? The drive to be the best? The fact that referees can't see or don't call everything? The fact that some coaches never bench faster-skating jerks for stripping the puck off fellow teammates? Whatever the reason, stories about jerks in sport could fill a whole shelf of books. If we include professional athletes, a whole library. And we'd have to come up with a new, expanded scale.

For this project, I only observed junior high school sports. Surprisingly, even where the stakes are really low, you can still manage to find some complete jerks.

Do I have to be all sensitive-supportive and mention that for every jerk there's a really great teammate/coach/fan that has a heart of gold and gives 110 percent for the team and blah, blah, blah? Obviously. If only jerks played sports, nobody else would play with them, and it'd be an all-jerks league. Sports are fun, and lots of nice non-jerks play them. But the purpose of this whole project is to seek out and analyze the bad behavior (see title of science project), so we'll focus on the jerks.

A) Players
    1) Opposing Team Members

Most of the time, it's fun to imagine the other team as a bunch of jerks. It helps stir up the wanting-to-beat-them feeling. It's what any decent rivalry is based on. Sometimes, however, the other team really
is
a bunch of jerks. Take the Violet Mahoney Junior Boys basketball team in our school's league (the Vile Baloneys, as we have cleverly nicknamed them). While my school team wanders out to warm up in mismatched shorts and ancient jerseys that reach down to our knees, the Baloneys make even warm-up a performance. They explode into the gym with blaring music and slide straight into a very slick and complicated passing drill. They all wear new school sweat suits with their names on the back. Their uniforms fit them, and they all have expensive basketball shoes. They wear matching socks. Some of them wear shooting sleeves and LeBron headbands. We heave up random shots, try to minimize our enormous armholes and fight that sinking, intimidated feeling. We despise them.

I'm not just being mean. They don't only
look
like jerks. They really
are
jerks to play against. First—and this is what sucks the most—they're really good. They beat us 107-16 last game. But I mean, come on! Right there, running up the score against a lousy team is a jerkish thing to do. It's just rubbing it in. These guys were pressing and raining in three-pointers when they were up by seventy points. Second, their coach is a jerk. He screams a lot and argues every call, and the team just follows his jerkish lead. Third, it's not just that the Baloneys are a jerk team as a whole. Each guy on the team is an individual jerk. They shove you when the ref isn't looking, pull on your jersey, throw out a knee when they're setting a screen and are generally cheap-shot artists. Especially number five, who usually guards me and who likes to throw an elbow. Just saying.