My Dad said that he and Mom had named me after a weed – on account of the way I had sprouted up where I wasn’t supposed to be – whatever that was supposed to mean. That guy sitting across from me? That little fellow, with his hair poked up like a hay stack that can’t spell “comb” if his life depended on it and that freckly bent up nose, slightly running? That’s my buddy Jemmy Daniels. His real name is Jeremiah but we all call him Jemmy on account of Jeremiah has about three too many syllables. Jemmy is my best friend – which is another way of saying that his head had been swirly-dunked nearly as often in the boy’s room toilet bowl as I had been – by Billy Carver and his so-called friends. Jemmy had one short-coming. Jemmy actually liked going to school. Which was weird. I don’t really know why I hated going to school so very much. I always have. It was like I was born hating it. Nearly everyone else in the school seemed to be getting along all right – or else maybe they just took a while to catch on to the fact that school just plain sucked – but I knew that school sucked and high school sucked even worse than that.
