Mirrored with permission from Outpost Nine and Azrael

The Three Stooges

The Ghetto School has many problems. It would be hard to isolate just one. But I'm going to focus on the one that's currently bothering me at this very minute.

There are three ninensei girls who I have dubbed "The Three Stooges." To put it bluntly, they suck. They stopped going to class, so now they just roam the hallways, and hang out in the teachers room and be loud and generally annoying. I can't call them the worst students, but since they're so hard to get away from they are the most annoying.

And now, a quick rundown of the Stooges...

Moe - This girl is the ring-leader, by far. I think it was her influence that made the other two as bad as they are now. As an ichinensei, she never did her work - just sat in the back of the room, glared at the teacher for 50 minutes, and in general copped a bad attitude. Now we'd be lucky to get her into a classroom at all. While she doesn't necessarily have the real Moe's violent disposition, she is a Wheelchair Girl-calibur Nasty Bitch. ...Seriously, all she needs is a wheelchair and a taser to complete that transformation.

Super Power - This girl is simply the loudest creature to have ever existed in the history of the universe. Everytime she laughs, my ears bleed. I think I'm only hearing half of her actual laugh though, the latter half is probably only audible to dogs. She even puts Noisy Fucker to shame. ...Yes, it's that bad. The next time I want to talk to my parents back in the states, I think I'm just gonna have her stand on a coast and shout my message across the Pacific.

Larry - She's probably the least annoying of the three. As a ichinensei, she was rambunctious, but never that bad. At least, not before she became friends with Moe. I get the feeling she would have been okay if it hadn't been for the company she runs with. Sad.

Super Power - Has the ability to get out of anything/everything by simply saying "darui!" (tired/sluggish). The teachers sometimes get her into a class, and she lasts approximately 2.47 seconds before saying "darui!" and escaping to the nurse's station in the teachers room. She doesn't take any tests either.

Of the three, I feel her abilities are the most useful. Man, I wish I could have gotten out of class/tests so easily when I was in school. It's a power that would even be of great use now...

Principal: Ok everyone, I know it was a long weekend, but it's time to put our noses to the grindstone and work hard!
Me: ...Darui. (goes to the beach)

Girlfriend: Hey baby, turn off the TV. We have to have "a talk"...
Me: ....DARUI! (goes to play video games with the guys)

It's like a "Get Out of Jail For Free" card. Goodness knows we could all use one of those.

Curly - You all knew her as Breasts Girl. Like Larry, except for space and time-warping "BREASTS!" attacks she was never that bad...however since hooking up with Moe and subsequently Larry she's become a lost cause.

Super Power - Since becoming a Stooge, she's lost her teleporting abilities. Now, she just hits people. Boys in particular. No rhyme or reason to it, she'll just smack the nearest person with a penis whenever she feels like it. I've seen her walk down rows in the classroom (the few times she's in one) and just whack every boy sitting in a row. The boys don't retaliate because they're afraid of her. She's tall and lanky, and taller than most of the boys in the class, sure. But I think it's more of a fear of the team than the individual. They could counter-attack, but then they'd have to deal with Moe on point screaming their eardrums out of existance, and then Larry on anchor to "darui!" the Stooges out of any possible consequences. It's a good thing Curly lost her teleporting abilities, I don't want to imagine a world where she could just warp in and out of places and smack boys whenever she felt like it. That's almost Jack Bauer-broken.

Incidentally, she still doesn't have any breasts. ...For the record.

But Az, you say, aren't you being a bit harsh? They're just kids, after all. But you know what, somebody has to be harsh with them. These kids have gotten bad partly because the teachers don't do anything about it. Japanese middle schools don't have much in the way of discipline options, true, but it's like the Ghetto School teachers don't even try. The Stooges will come into the teachers room at lunch, pull up the teachers chairs, and talk loudly while eating their lunches. ...This, of course, is a big no-no. But the teachers will just joke around with them, maybe occasionally say "you guys are too noisy" or something like that, but nothing further. Compare this to my other two schools, where if the toes of a student crossed the threshold of the teachers room, there'd be no less than 7 teachers descending down upon them with lightsabers and shit screaming "GET OUT!! GET OUT!! NO FURTHER!! THOU SHALT NOT PASS!!!"

It may not be the teachers fault though. I talked with one of my teachers about it once (the one who made the remark about the little monsters never getting sick) and she said they wanted to discipline the kids, but they just couldn't. They might tell the parents, but then the parents would immediately shift the blame onto the other kids, or the teachers themselves, which actually not doing anything about their own bastard kid. ...Some of the parents just didn't care, and after seeing some 40-50 year old mothers come to the school with brightly dyed hair all frilled and puffed up, tight little t-shirts, and a hideous mini-skirt, that's not that difficult to believe. These women make crack whores back home look like soccer moms, and everytime I see one a solitary tear runs down my cheek, like the Native American on the side of the road watching his native land get littered with pollution.

She also said that sometimes, these are the kids of politicians/wealthy and influencial businessmen in the city. Sure, you could come down on the bastard kid, but then the school suddenly loses it's funding for the computer classroom next year. She also hinted that some of these kids may be the sons/daughters of yakuza..."sometimes we have parent/teacher conferences" she said, "and the father looks like quite a, hmm...serious individual." Here, she held up a four-fingered hand (with her pinky tucked in) and gave me a shifty look.

This conversation did take place two years ago though, and that teacher doesn't even work there anymore, so I don't know how much of it is true now.

The "Ghetto School" isn't just some cute nickname I made up. It really is bad. ...Actually, according to the rumor mill, The Ghetto School is one of, if not the worst school in all of Kyoto Prefecture. ...Sweet.

Of course, there is also the possibility that the Ghetto School teachers are loving every minute of it. The Japanese seem to thrive on suffering as much as humanly possible. Put on your bravest face and say "Ganbarimasu!" and suffer splendidly. In this case, the teachers at the Ghetto School are more Japanese than anybody. Sure, other teachers can get on that 8PM train back home and say "I'm tired," but they can't say their students liberally kicked/punched them, spent the whole class period listening to rap music in the back of the class, and told them to "fuck off" in English when they were politely asked to maybe please do their homework.

We keep spendin' most our lives, living in the Ghetto Paradise...

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