Weird kid...
Apologies in advance for length, this was one very strange boy...

I went to school with not only the weirdest kid , but quite possibly the weirdest thing in the world... ever. Even compared to those fish that the BBC doco crew discovered.

We shall call him Paul, for that was his name. At my highschool on our first day, all the new kids were given their network access details, with a default password of "hello". Now being kids, we all thought that by leaving our passwords as "hello" we would thwart the dastardly hackers that have a slavering need to access 14 year olds rudimentary email programs and banned versions of D&D rip off text adventures... This little security flaw became apparent to Paul very early on, and he quickly learned that he could log on to many many email accounts with very little persistence. Did he use this knowledge for evil? Well, that's in the eye of the beholder.

Enter, the head of IT. A crazy afro'd barrel of a man who had his detention giving priveleges revoked for giving 65 in one day. This made him into a big impotent laughing stock, but still to be feared. He just looked like he'd punch your pubescent nose in, and to hell with the consequences.

So what does Paul do? He sends the head of IT an email every week from a different email account... weird, not overly. He did it every week for his entire time in high school. Six years! Still not weird enough? The email read exactly the same every week from year dot, and it gets weirder. The text in the email was as follows; "There is a staff meeting today. Dirty bottom."

Need another couple of examples about our young friend?

He had a thing about naked people, in that they made him freak out. So life drawing classes were a nightmare for him and he managed to avoid every single one for the three years we had them. Eventually the teach got sick of his excuses and said "Paul, whatever you say or do today, i will not let you leave. You are staying for the whole class, I don't care if the principal has a meeting with you or you haev to go to sickbay. Nothing will make me let you leave". So Paul begged, pleaded, lied. nothing worked. He even dropped an easel on his foot. To no avail.

So the frumpy middle aged model waddles in and disrobes and we all get scribbling. It was then a strange thing happened. Paul seemed to be into it. He was feverishly working on his drawing and didn't seem too upset by the whole experience. As the class went on, he even started to look pleased as he stepped back from his work to admire it. The teacher starts to look incredibly smug, and holds him up as an example of maturity, etc, etc. So the end of the class comes and we all rotate our easels to admire each others work.

Paul, with some encouragement, reveals his masterpiece. A perfectly rendered drawing of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Last one; and it'll be quick. On a school camp out to the wilderness we were all responsible for our own food. We were given lists that suggested what we should bring, but it was up to us to buy and carry it all.

Sitting around teh campfire on the first night, the instructors quizzed everyone about their menus for the week. Paul proudly announces that he has managed to bring a lot of fruit! bananas, pineapples, strawberries and cream. The instructors are intrigued and ask him to show them. He pulls out a bag chock full of sweets, but sure enough, they are candy bananas, pineapples and strawberries and cream.

That was the strangest week of my life, because Paul wasn't allowed to have his medication with him (out of fear that some kids would steal it and get themselves high). Apparently he was on some very strong stuff. Go figure?!
(lessmiserable, Fri 19 Jan 2007, 11:19, Reply)