"I'd Rather Throw It On The Floor Than Give It To You"

Here is the story behind probably the most influential 12 words of my sophomore year of high school.

We're sitting at lunch, all of us crammed around the table in the sectors, wings, and outer rim (this could be another post about high school lunch in itself. People practically fought to the death to get a sector spot. Ridiculous.) Haley finishes his lunch, pushes his tray forward, puts his silverware on top, scoots his chair back and relaxes. Clearly finished with his meal. Somebody (my money is on somebody like Delisle or Brun-sack, I can't really remember) starts to reach for his unfinished french fries, stops, and asks, "Hey, you're done right? Can I have these?"

Haley, for whatever reason (what reason did Haley ever have for doing anything back then?) looks at him, slowly grabs a fistful of fries, and asks him, very slowly and deliberately (think De Niro in Goodfellas) "These fries? These fries right here?" And then threw them full force into the ground at his feet. "No. You can't have them. I would rather throw them on the floor than give them to you."

Ohhhh boy that's all it took. A phenomenom was born right then and there. For the next three or four months, you couldn't ask anyone for anything without it getting dumped on the floor. People would purposely not finish their lunch, just in the hopes that someone would ask for something, then you could whip it at the ground, crushing their hopes for your leftover breakfast bagel or garlic breadstick in the process. Virginia, the lunch lady, was NOT impressed, but this led to one of our favorite catchphrases of the year, when one day she was picking up our collection of smashed food off the ground and we heard her mutter (in a British accent, for some reason) "Damn sticky-fingered children."

So one day, months later, I was tiring of this whole game. It was getting out of control. I mean obviously I've never claimed to be mature by any means, but c'mon. We were throwing food around like it was kindergarten again. Daily. So I figure if I can get Haley to call it off, everyone else will follow suit.

So Haley and I are in the locker room before basketball practice. I'm munching on one of those giant boxes of Goldfish, like the milk-carton style box that had probably 7.5 pounds of Goldfish in it. Pretty typical pre-basketball 'snack' for me.

Haley looks over and innocently asks if he can have some. I stop and ponder in my head. This thing was completely full. Oh well, fuck it. And I look at him, and I smile, and he knows what's coming next. I pour out the ENTIRE carton of Goldfish on the locker room floor and tell him, "I would rather dump out this entire box than give one single Goldfish to you."

As Haley was rolling around on the disgusting locker room floor, desparately trying to salvage whatever Goldfish were stacked on top of other ones, he repented over and over again for starting such a vicious and unnecessary game. And I smile and say, "Worth it." And that was the end of that.

P.S. Bergman has started a blog, his shit has been linked. As long as this doesn't turn into a replay of when we were 14 years old and he copied everything I said and passed it off as his own, to the point where people would dismissively shake their heads at me and tell me "you sound just like Bergman" then we'll be cool.