On a Scale from Idiot to Complete Jerk by Alison Hughes Page B

long period of time (such as, for example, a whole school day), though some very special jerks (such as some celebrities) appear to have set records in this area.

    ***A note on jerks and bullies: Are complete jerks always bullies? How about bullies? Are they always complete jerks? The way I see it, bullies are always complete jerks, but complete jerks are not always bullies. Now that’s getting pretty philosophical, but it’s scientific too. For example, a person can be a complete jerk in one random situation (say, standing up and deliberately rocking a canoe at camp when all the other kids are terrified of falling into the leech-infested water). But unless this kid keeps targeting certain other kids over a longish period of time, he doesn’t quite enter bully territory. Bullies, the super-jerks of the world, are a topic all on their own. But that’s a science project for another day.
    CASE STUDY #9
Graphing Solo Jerks and Groups of Jerks
    Subjects: The popular kids in grade eight
    Laboratory: The lunchroom
    Experiment: I secretly studied this group over a series of lunchtimes, my notebook hidden under the table. I didn’t actually need to be very secret, because this group never notices me, and they expect people to watch them. What’s the point of being popular if nobody’s looking?
    Observations: Unlike Kevin, the jerk from Case Study #8, the popular kids in grade eight aren’t all obvious jerks. In fact, many of them behave quite normally, if maybe annoyingly. But I sacrifice four lunchtimes to science and observe many jerkish events, best displayed on another amazingly scientific graph, this time one of those very official spiky, heartbeaty-looking graphs.

    Scientific Illustration #6:
Graphing How Jerks Respond to Jerkish Events

    This graph took a lot of time. While it looks complicated
and very impressive, it is actually pretty simple. The different lines
on the graph represent different people. I only picked four,
but believe me, I could have added more. There’s Miss Dot,
Miss Dash, Mr. Solid and Mr. Wavy. This may sound like the intro
to a lame preschool TV show, but trust me, it gets better.
    Note that each line spikes on the jerk scale at certain times, shown by the letters A, B, C and D. These are jerkish events. Here are some examples.
    â†’ Jerkish Event A : A non-popular girl comes into the lunchroom. She has a very unfortunate, drastic new haircut. One side is way shorter than the other (like, scalp-showingly short) and the remaining hair is dyed a purple shade not found in nature. Most people just sort of ignore the bad hair and eat their lunches. We’ve all made some mistakes in the hair department. I won’t get into a brutal bowl cut I once got at a cut-rate “salon” my mom dragged me to. Anyway, non-popular girl’s friends make room for her at their table, being careful not to stare too long at the purple mess. But two girls from the popular group burst out laughing, cover their mouths and whisper loudly, “OMG, bad hair day has a whole new meaning !” Note on the graph that Dot and Dash (both girls with perfect hair) really spike to total jerks at this event.
    â†’ Jerkish Event B : I stumble on a fold in the carpet as I walk past the popular group. “Hey, walk much?” calls Solid (a jerkish guy who I can’t stand), and he sort of mimics my stumble, making it seem way bigger and way more embarrassing than it really was. The whole group laughs. Okay, so maybe this isn’t a hugely jerkish thing, but it was mean, it happened to me, and I happened to be walking near a certain girl who also happened to look up…Anyway, that’s B.
    â†’ Jerkish Event C : So Solid and Wavy think they’re extremely cool because they’re on the senior basketball team. Solid carries around a basketball all the time so nobody forgets that fact. So they start passing it around in the lunchroom, keeping it away from any non-popular