Sometimes I Feel Like a Nut Read Online Free PDF

musical guest, was holding court. I nervously approached him, the only kid at the party, with the friends of the family who’d scored me the entrée.
    “Um, Mr. Henley? Hi, um, I’m Jill. I’m so sorry to interrupt you but I just wanted to say, um, I love your records . . .”
    He looked at me with the same glare as Mr. X and responded: “Please. Go. Away.”
    Yes. To a child. What a fucking douchebag. Like, beyond. Tears burning their way to my retinas, I was in the cab home within minutes and stormed into my apartment. My parents had waited up to hear all about my night and I ran past them into my room. I kneeled down and took out my Eagles and Don Henley cassette tapes, pulled the wheels to let out some slack, and yanked at that thin brown tape with all my might. I pulled and pulled and pulled until all that remained was the empty plastic shell printed with the song titles on each side and a garbled web of tape. Fuck. That. Mother. Fucker. I was enraged. I wish I had said something. I wish I had told him he was a jerk. I wish I had stood up for myself.
    A week later, I was back in science class. We had completed the senses of sight, having to label all the parts of a human eye on another quarter-paper pop quiz, as well as sound and taste. Then came the sense of smell. He went around the room and asked each girl to say what her favorite smell was.
    “Gardenias!”
    “Chocolate-chip cookies!”
    “Cinnamon.”
    Jill’s turn:
    “Gasoline.”
    Crickets. The silence was deafening as Mr. X’s face warped into a mask of sheer unbridled rage.
    “How dare you be fresh with me?!” he roared.
    I saw the girls in their plaid uniforms around the room straighten in fear for me.
    “I’m not,” I whispered meekly.
    “ Gasoline?! You can get up and leave my laboratory. Your experiment is canceled .”
    Normally, like any other girl who was cast into the humiliating flames of the hallway, I would have shaken as I gathered my pencil case and notebook and put them in my backpack. But not that day. My young face twisted to match his ire.
    “GASOLINE IS MY FAVORITE SMELL! I’M NOT BEING FRESH!” I yelled at his face. “IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN MY FAVORITE SMELL.”
    “You GET OUT OF MY LABORATORY!” he screamed, his arm shooting toward the door like a Spartan arrow.
    “FINE!” I yelled back at him, eyes ablaze, noticing in my peripheral vision the shock of my shivering classmates. “I’M CALLING MY PARENTS AND THEY WILL TELL YOU IT IS MY FAVORITE SMELL!” I stormed out of the lab, slamming the door behind me. On the staircase up to my homeroom, I burst into sobbing convulsive tears. Fuck assholes. Fuck Don Henley. Fuck Mr. X. I opened the door to my floor and ran to the office of Miss Anton—the head of the lower school.
    “My goodness, Jill, what is wrong?”
    I didn’t answer. I reached for her phone, dialed 9 for an outside line, and called home. My mom answered.
    “MOM! TELL HER! TELL HER WHAT MY FAVORITE SMELL IS!”
    “What?”
    “TELL MISS ANTON MY FAVORITE SMELL!”
    I handed Miss Anton the phone, chin jutting out and defiant as my mom issued testimony.
    “Miss Anton, my daughter’s favorite smell is gasoline.”
    I told Miss Anton that I was kicked out of class because Mr. X refused to believe that my favorite smell was gasoline. Miss Anton walked me back down to the lab. I had wiped away my cataracts of tears and was pink faced but empowered as I burst open the door with squinted eyes.
    “Mr. X, a moment?” she said, gesturing to my science teacher. Miss Anton pulled Mr. X aside and whispered as I took my place back at the long black table. The girls looked at me like, What the hell? But I sat proud and tall. He listened to her and then glanced at me and then back at her. He thanked Miss Anton for visiting and then apologized to me in front of the class. And guess what? He never messed with me again.
    And for that matter, no other guy has. At ten years old, I somehow decided that I was a badass. My