“It’s not your fault, Lace; it’s the Jerk Gene.” I was attempting to convince my best friend that boys were innately lewd, and she wasn’t doing anything wrong.
“You and the Jerk Gene Theory,” she said, rolling her eyes at my emphatic resolve. “I’m getting sick of hearing about it! It doesn’t make the situation any better.”
Lacy was right to be sick of my idea; I had been mulling it over for the past three years, and this, our senior year of high school, was a culmination of more than just our formal education—it was the year my speculation would graduate into full-fledged fact. I was certain that once I began my college education I would be able to finally gather enough research to prove my theory valid—an indisputable truth of nature. I talked to Celeste about it almost constantly, so it was no wonder she’d had enough.
“But it’s so true,” I continued, “There’s no reason to think less of yourself. Every member of the male gender—practically a different species, if you ask me—was born with the genetic makeup of a jerk! Why else would they pull our hair in grade school? Who taught them to do that? Nobody! They just did it because it was in their DNA. And back in Junior High, why did Fred Parker make fun of us at the Friday night dances? Everybody else looked just as ridiculous as you and me. The Jerk Gene, that’s why. And it continues on, even to this day. Why, I ask, did Sean O’Malley just spend all of homeroom flirting with you, only to turn around at lunch and ask that hussy Isabelle Watson to the homecoming dance? It was not because of anything you did wrong, my friend; you have simply been, yet again, a victim of the Jerk Gene.”
I took a deep breath, satisfied to see Lacy smile and relax a bit. As her best friend, it was my official duty to perform these ranting diatribes every so often, to ensure her self-esteem stayed intact through the ever-present artillery of image-disturbing emotional shrapnel, otherwise known as High School.
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