mocktoblog

Completely True Story. Honest to God.

So I’m walking to Gym with my friend Blake. Blake’s wearing this t-shirt with the Green Lantern logo on it, right? Yes, that’s important. Sit down and hush yourself.

So we’re walking through the cafeteria, and Blake’s stopped by a custodian, who’s noticed his shirt. I’m going to try and recreate this conversation as best I can, here.

“Whatchoo know about Green Lantern?”
“Wha?”
“Whatchoo, know, about Green Lantern?”
“Well, uh, you know, he’s got the ring, he’s in the Justice League…”
“Yeah? What’s he say when he powers up?”
“Pardon?”
“When he powers up. When he does the ring.”
“Man, I don’t know that much, I just…I just like the shirt, dude.”
“Yeah…you don’t know shit ‘bout Green Lantern.”

This episode, on its own? Easily one of my top five school moments. A large part of it is because Blake is in no way a nerd, or, if he is, he’s very good at hiding it beneath layers of…snowboarding ‘n stuff, man. Yeah, he snowboards. Anyway. In any other situation where he wasn’t wearing that shirt, I would have been the one singled out as the comic book geek, no questions asked.

Now. Apparently, throughout this whole conversation, we’ve been blocking the path of the theater teacher, who makes this quite clear to us. We say something vaguely resembling an apology and continue on our way. Blake’s pretty shaken by being bested at Green Lantern trivia by a janitor. I’m going to try to recreate this as well.

“…I mean, I don’t know that much about Green Lantern, y’know? I know there’s like a couple different ones, right, there’s, uh, there’s a black one and a white one…”

At this point we’re in the stairwell, Theater Teacher walking in front of us, when she stops dead and swivels around, staring in disbelief at Blake.

“Did you really just say that? Seriously? Really?”
“I, I wasn’t trying to be racist—”
“It’s not about the race thing!”
“Oh, see, well, that janitor—”
“It’s about the dehumanization!”
“…what?”
“People aren’t “ones”! People have souls! They aren’t “ones”!”

Blake turned to me, desperate. The look in his eyes spoke volumes: “It’s a cartoon, lady.” He needed me to chime in, to say anything, to throw him a proverbial rope.

“Tell her what he says when he powers up.”