The Birth of Shabuta Jenkins

The Idiot and I had a really great Creative writing teacher when we were in high school. Not only was he brilliant, but he had the sharpest sense of humor of anyone I have ever met.

He liked the kids, (and only the kids) who he thought showed potential. The ones that could write (because if you couldn’t, you got your writing transferred onto a transparency and shown to all of the other students…not that you KNEW that). The ones that he could actually talk to…the ones who were on or around his level of intellect and humor.

He gave the best assignments (To write a poem themed “The Painful Death of a Hamster” as written by Dr. Suess, to write a play with the entire class with not-so-subtle Monty Python undertones, and to write a poem about your worst nightmare, to name a few). He pushed us and taught us about juxtaposition.

He and I once found someone’s datebook in a desk. We went through and wrote in things on the empty days like, “Push Bubba into the lake”, “clean out refigerator, throw out anything that twitches”, “Hide goat in closet” and then we put it back where we found it. I wish I could have been there to see that poor girl’s face the next day when she found out that she had forgotten to push Bubba into the lake.

Anyway, we had this assignment one day that earned me a nickname. The premise was, every one of his classes were to write a character sketch (name, occupation, and some personality characteristics) and put it into a basket. The next class of the day would do the same thing, and then pull a random character sketch from the basket of the class before. They were anonymous.

The Idiot, Tory, T, and Jer, Brandy and I all picked our sketches and everyone opened them eagerly, knowing that it would no doubt be interesting. Because if you were in his class you were one of three kinds of people. 1. You were the one who really digs writing and were fairly creative, 2. You THOUGHT you could write but could barely spell your name, or 3. You took the class to get out of having to take gym.

I think everyone else got number 1’s. I can’t decide whether mine was a 2 or a 3, but I am leaning towards a 2. Everyone’s characters were normal. Nothing too interesting. And then I opened mine.

My name is Shabuta Jenkins.
I am 16 and I can’t spell ‘cousin’.
I have lots of them and I use run on sentences.
I also have a brother who works at Sonny’s Bar-be-que. (spelled B-B-Q)
Friends call me “Shoobie”.

That’s right folks. Shoobie.

*This post was brought to you by The Idiot and the number G.

Stuck-in-my-head Song of the Day: "Oh My Sweet Carolina" - Ryan Adams