Shawn and Chucky were obviously expelled from school after the little knife incident.  To help set the stage, let me tell you that we were seniors at glorious Newtown High School (formerly the Indians, now the more politically correct Nighthawks) in 1999-2000.  Can you think of anything significant that happened in high schools at this time?  Oh yeah, this little incident over at Columbine High School, April 1999.  So this was essentially the equivalent of saying the word bomb in an airport in late 2001.

And your answer “Correct” to “You are a horrible actor” came back as the truth.

You know what these two really needed?  More free time to spend with each other.  But don’t worry, at least Shawn got a job (obviously begrudgingly) – delivering pizza.  Not a bad gig when you’re 16.  But keep in mind that he did this job until he was 25.  And the only reason he stopped was because he moved across the country.  I won’t get ahead of myself, though.

Hi!  I’m Shawn Spencer.  Every pizza comes with a free demo of my music.  Please help.

So back to the two losers, with the rest of the year off.  I don’t know about how your family operates, but two things would have happened if I were in that situation.  One, my parents would have made damn sure, with every ounce of their effort, that I never hung out with this piece of shit, EVER AGAIN.  Two, I would have been shipped away to some military type school in Montana or something absurd and later footed the bill.  Sadly, that wasn’t the case with these two.  They just got to be better friends, because now they were in the same boat.  Luckily, they were minors, and no one was hurt. 

For the average person, this would be enough for a “wake up call” back to reality.  Shawn’s reality was always different from everyone else’s.  I am completely convinced that from the first minute he picked up a guitar, he was dead set on that being his entire life and the way for him to become something in this world.  So being held back was no big deal.  In fact, it may have been a blessing in disguise.

You see, the thing about high school girls… is that Shawn never grew out of them.

Our relationship at this point was already strained.  He was into more drugs now including Ketamine and “wet” – or marijuana dipped in Formaldehyde.  Why is that even a thing?  To hide the fact that it’s shitty weed, of course.  Oh did I forget to mention he had recently started dating an ex girlfriend of mine?  Yeah, that was pretty awkward too.  Some of the only times we wound up hanging out together was our weekly ritual of egging someone’s house.  Shawn’s family had a minivan which made it incredibly easy for a ton of us to load up and ship out for this sort of mischief.

This is Shawn’s brain on drugs.  And now, even off drugs!

It was around this time I started getting ready to go to college.  I chose UMass specifically to avoid going to high school part 2, or UConn.  I lost touch with a lot of people from home because of this.  Mind you, Friendster wasn’t even developed yet and cell phones were just becoming the rage – but definitely not text messaging.  Lots of us chose this path called growing up.

Zoolander was Jewish, after all.

This is Shawn’s senior photo.  Usually reserved for people who graduate, guess he got a pass; but more likely they had just already sent the books out to print and didn’t want to start over.  He wasn’t featured in the 2001 yearbook.  And below is his baby picture.  Read closely.  You can already see the emo side of him yearning to break free.  The only problem is that he didn’t make good on his promise.  The world DID change him, long before he did anything to change the world.

When I grow up I am going to smoke meth!