Does anyone realize that there will always be one particular ‘special’ student in our class in school that always isolate himself/herself from the rest of group? He/she would have a peculiar behavior and doesn’t have much no friends to play with… and has penchant for unconventional hobbies (collecting pubic hairs, etc)? Well, Ray was that person in my class when I was in my late secondary years.
He wasn’t a bright guy and flunked most of his subjects in every exam. He didn’t like to talk much and had very few friends. He wasn’t active in sports either. Ray was interested in only 2 things — pornography and hip hops. Well, not exactly only hip hops but, more like anything with bass on it. Rap, techno, just anything. There was once I saw him bob his head when some Indian boys drummed the Thaipusam theme on a wooden table. You get the idea.
Anyway, despite having such hyperactive taste in music, he remained a very quiet guy in a world of his own and never caused any trouble at all. Oh, I almost forgot, he looked kinda weird too. He somehow has both his hands longer than usual… and that kind of made me suspect that he’s probably a direct descendant from our apish ancestors.
So, he pretty much slept through the whole few semesters in our class, until MC Hammer launched that hit single ‘Too Legit To Quit’ (or something like that). That was about the time MC Hammer triggered a massive cult following of ridiculous looking baggy pants and shaved heads back then. Ray, was nuts about MC Hammer. It was during one of our school funfair that he decided to transform himself into a self envisioned hip hop dancer, when he realized that he was able to garner some attention by simply flailing his limbs loosely to the ‘Too Legit To Quit’ song. But little did he know, that people weren’t looking at him because he could dance. But it was because he sucked so bad at it, that it was damn fucking funny.
So, the situation was pretty much like that William Hung case. People started to shower him with attention and encouraged him to humiliate himself more by doing something goofy… only that Ray’s doing MC Hammer’s ‘Too Legit To Quit’ dance and was a few trillion times goofier than William Hung’s audition. I in particular, laughed the loudest, because it was so fucking funny that I suffered cramps.
Not long after that, Ray’s new found fame began to spread. It wasn’t long before everyone in our school started to talk about him. That actually changed Ray’s character altogether. He started to socialize and he never walked again. He actually capered everywhere he goes… *smacks my own head.
Soon, Ray became out of control from the provocations (from all the students). Everyone was fucking with him – telling him to dance whenever he was in sight. And he did, he would dance every time he had the opportunity… to the amusement of the people around him and phony friends. He would dance during our recess time, during our PE lessons, during our seminars (at a quiet corner) and everywhere. Even without music. And each time he did that, he never fails to pique a massive crowd around… with tears and laughter.
Then, one day, his madness reached the boiling point – with the delusion that he has the gift to become a famous hip hop dancer, he actually enrolled himself in a dancing contest at a local disco. And when his big break came, he kind of stunned the whole fucking disco and turned the whole place into an epileptic center. That was when some of the meanies there started to ridicule him and probably threw him out. I could tell that whatever he encountered there, had a negative impact on him and his self esteem – for he was never seen dancing in public again.
It was a rather cruel ending. This wouldn’t have happened at all if someone were to hoot Ray on the first day itself. He would have learned the fact that he can’t dance and the situation probably wouldn’t have snowballed to gain that much momentum to make him enroll into that stupid contest. Poor Ray.
I mean, isn’t this the same as what William Hung is experiencing now?