Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Chapter 3: How I became an above average Unicorn fighter


You don’t go through life, specifically junior high and high school, unscathed with a name like Chester. One could say that I had my fair share of brushes with bullies, stuck up chicks and high school career coaches. Perhaps it is the way that “Chester” leaves your lips or how it is usually associated with cuddily, chubby and cardigans. My friend Georgie once explained it to me this way. “When I hear your real name Chesty, I think of a red sweater wearing Englishman with a handle bar mustache and a curved pipe.”
Perhaps if I had been born in Victorian England just before the turn of the century, I would have had a bit more luck with the bullies, ladies and guidance counselors, but luck is a wily vixen that I have yet to snare in my embrace.
So as my right foot crossed the threshold of Royal Palm Junior High on the 29th of August too many years ago to remember, it was open season on Chester Vaughn Higgendorf. It seems that the game and fish were giving out a lot of tags for the “Chester” those years, as I was hunted mercilessly through the locker rooms, cafeterias and hall ways of the Arizonan public schools.
I truly believe that there was even a section at the local Sportsman Warehouse where they sold “Chester” blinds or “Chester” calls or maybe even “Chester” camouflage, because the spit wads, swirlies and wedgies would come out of now where.
I would be walking down a hallway, making my way to Chemistry and before I knew it, my head would be in a toilet with my hair spinning like a pinwheel.
I didn’t even know where they got the toilet, or how I got into the bathroom, they were that good. In fact, if I hadn’t been the benefactor of the act, I would have been supremely impressed with their stealth and skill set.
What does this have to do with the Unicorn Wars or how I became a Unicorn fighter? Why do I bring up this unflattering aspect of my past, you ask?  That’s easy. The daily attacks, the snide remarks, the career advisements to not bother with going to college, as I “am not a good fit for traditional education” and that I should “find happiness in the services industry”, molded me into a human patriot missile.
Not a blunt weapon of war, but an instrument of precision, sharpened to an edge. My whole post pubescent life had been a training ground to fight supposed mythical creatures, that appeared benign, but inwardly vicious. Freak-a-zoid! I had been fighting those type of creatures my whole life. So you see, a pony with a bone mass on it’s forehead isn’t going to give me too much trouble, I had already dealt with Samantha Davidson and Chase McDermott. So when I first saw the news report about the battle at Disney World, I knew my time to shine had come. I laid my Taco Bell hat down on the front counter. I told my manager to “stick it”, got into my geo metro and I sped home to my Mom’s basement to pack and tell my Mom I was going to volunteer.
Little did I know of what lay ahead.