I’ve been in a grumpy mood lately, and I don’t even know why. Which is unfortunate, because knowing is half the battle, and they never told us what the other half was.

So I’m sitting here in the computer lab, looking at a couple of pieces of trash here yukking it up – talking about this computer assignment they stayed up all night doing, like it was a huge achievement. That’s how I know they can’t be more than second year sophomores – they probably still go to bed at midnight, probably still believe they can make a difference in this world, and that their university education here will actually prepare them for real life, and they’re hanging out in the computer lab. When you’ve spent as many hours in this God forsaken place as I have, there’s absolutely no reason to linger in here any longer than you have to. It’s like needing to go to a bakery where the baker rapes you with a knife – aside from going there to get the bread you need to feed your family, why the hell would you hang out there with the baking knife raper? I realize that’s probably the worst analogy I’ve ever come up with in a lifetime full of bad analogies, but I’m not an English major. I mean, what do you want from me?

So while everyone else is dead inside and just trying to finish their programming assignments, these asshats are laughing it up, bragging about who stayed up longer and who had a harder time doing their wussy Java program, like that’s something to brag about. I don’t want to listen to them, but it’s impossible to ignore them because the lab is dead silent aside from them, and these fuckers don’t seem to be able to control the VOLUME OF THEIR VOICES. And every time one of them drops a funny by mutilating a quote from a random movie or a two year old Chappelle bit (“I have never even heard of juice!”…what?), the entire group erupts in the loudest borderline fake laughter I have ever heard – like the way you would laugh if you wanted to sarcastically mock someone’s bad joke or if you’re trying to convey “OMG THAT IS THE FUNNIEST JOKE I’VE EVER HEARD IN MY ENTIRE LIFE” by overcompensating on the laugh. Or like if you were on a nervous first date, and you’re laughing way too hard at the other person’s jokes, and way too long because you’re trying to stall for time to figure out what to say next. I say “borderline fake” because from anyone else I’d assume it was, but you just know with these jackasses that they actually laugh like that. And when I realize that, I get goosebumps. Not the good kind like when half a million people in a stadium chant your name (“CHO-KING-YAK! CHO-KING-YAK!”) but the type you can when something so soul chillingly awful happens that you actually get physically colder.

I’m a nice guy, but most importantly a wussy, so I just shrug it off, hope they’ll leave, and warm myself with the knowledge that their spirits will be as broken as mine in under a year’s time. But they’re still going strong after half an hour, and one particularly vocal idiot starts whining about how there’s too many differences in the anime version of this manga he’s reading, how they aren’t staying true to the original material, and he starts talking about the movie for The Da Vinci Code and how Tom Hanks’ hair way too curly or something…and I realize that I can’t deal with this, and I don’t want to wait however long it’ll take them to leave, and either they have to stop living or I have to get out. So I’m in the process of charging up my confidence meter, trying to talk myself out of my spineless acceptance of this auditory abuse, and I’m trying to formulate a better line to shout at them than “Shut the fuck up you fucking fuck heads!”, I realize I can’t, and I’m just waiting for the next wave of loud mouthed idiocy so I can unleash my Level 3 verbal super move…and I get it. One douchebag says to the other way – suddenly, and way too loudly, like he just remembered – “Yo, did you remember to declare the path variable at the top?” (or some stupid nonsense, I don’t know) and the other douchebag (complete with ridiculous looking Jew-fro and squinty eyes that are unnaturally close to each other) thinks for half a second and then goes “Yeah dude!” (HE SAID “DUDE”!!!)

And then…it happens.

(Start the slow motion bit here, with all the voices really low and stretched out, and the camera quickly moving to different static images of people’s impressions at that moment in time.)

In celebration, the original douche turns over and starts up his high five animation. Two frames in and I see it, and I’m thinking “Ooooooh shiiiiiit noooooo.” (slow motion, remember?) Arm’s at his side, the palm’s open, he’s bringing it up overhead. And from this point on, I can’t look away. It’s like that steel commercial where that car’s smashing into that other car in slow motion reverse, and they go “You have 1.2 seconds to decide if you want your car to be steel” or something at the end. No one changes the channel during that one. So the other douche, exactly as I predicted, doesn’t see it. The start up goes through, and the guy has to completely slow down the arc to keep the forward motion as to not be left hanging but to give the other guy some extra time to start up his own. Regardless, Tweedledumb is still left hanging in the air for a good one and a half seconds, before Tweedleretarded sees it and rushes through his own and connects. And there’s barely any connection – he got like two half fingers on the palm. There wasn’t the slap sound and the solid recoil on both ends – the first guy’s hand stayed perfectly unmoved while the other guy just kinda scraped his fingers on the side of it.

It was the most awkward completed high five I have ever witnessed in the decade and a half of conscious thought and memory I have had on this Earth.

The important qualifier here is that it was indeed a completed high five. If you flub on a high five, then it’s not a completed high five – it’s a missed high five, and that’s funny because it’s a missed high five. It’s a different thing altogether. It’s like in a dunk contest, and how they only grade successful dunks, and missed dunks don’t even register, and you can keep going. I’ve seen Steve Urkel make some awkward looking missed high fives, but those are funny, if only a little bit funny.

There was nothing funny about this one. It was just horrible to look at. I swear to God, the temperature in the room immediately dropped two degrees, as the universe itself shivered, and the integrity of the very fabric of reality was jeopardized. And I know I wasn’t alone on this one, because I slowly looked over at the guy next to me and he slowly looked back with that classic “…” look on his face – eyes squinted, mouth agape, nothing else going on.

Everyone realized what an awful thing that was, except – obviously – for the idiots, and even the constant sparse keyboard clacking in the room stopped. They had that smug look on their faces like they had just done something cool, and that they were better people for remembering to declare the path variable at the top or what-the-fuck-ever they were doing. The first guy even gave a little tiny George Michael Bluth type of “Yeah!” at the end.

So I freeze. I was completely unprepared for something of that magnitude, I’m stopped dead in my tracks, the “Shut the fuck up you fucking fuck heads!” line evaporates off my tongue, my meter is drained, and I’m suddenly terrified, for no reason. And I realize that I won’t be able to burn that image out of my mind for awhile, and I’m definitely not going to be able to do anything productive in this lab for the rest of the day. So I get up to leave and I burn off the rest of my meter by shooting off the most evilest Evil Eye I could currently muster at them, but no one’s even looking at me, and they parry it like it was the slowest moving fireball of all time.

And I admitted their crushing victory over me, I withdrew from the room, and I let them take it. A bunch of slaw jawed faggots that completely defeated me, shriveled my soul, and did all these things to me without even knowing it. These UofT Computer Science students – I hope they burn in hell.

But they’re already there. They just don’t know it yet.