me vs. god vs. the internet

    When I lay down to bed and start counting all of the horrible things I’ve done (sheep are just too scary!), it isn’t god that I’m afraid of.

    Trust me, I was raised as a god-fearing Catholic. While I’d eradicate my future chromosomally abnormal babies faster than you could say, “Cuba Gooding Jr. is…Radio,” I’d probably feel so guilty about it that I’d adopt a family of ten cleft-lipped children from some starving Third World country. You can fix that. You can’t fix Radio. You probably can’t even fix Cuba Gooding Jr. at this point.

    So yes, god is scary. And so is hell, probably. But the Internet is TERRIFYING. And the darkest depths of the Internet are probably worse than hell could ever even dream up.

   God only knows the terrible things I’ve done. And I say, “god only knows” not as a phrase, but literally. I literally do not even remember some of the things I’ve done.

    I’ve got a dark internet past. Don’t act like you don’t. Even youth groups take pictures of themselves stealing street signs and post it under an album called “WWJD? YOLO!!!”

    Mine mostly consists of, but is not limited to, exacting revenge on my exes in the most public way possible. So that no one will ever want to date them, or me, ever again. But for real—that’s what they get for dating girls clearly on this side of the Vicky Mendoza Diagonal. And for stealing my Death Cab tickets right after Plans came out, you ginger.

    Whatever specific Internet crimes I’ve committed aside, face it—it’s hard to see your future as an 8^th grade English teacher in a suburban school while you’re writing terrible shit on the internet about your 8^th grade English teacher in your suburban school. No, man. You were just a kid. Lookin’ for fame and 4chan. How could you have predicted your future?

    So naturally, when I first got to college, I had absolutely no interest in education or the Curry School, which sounded like it’d make a better 12-course meal than a 12-course program. I wanted to write for the paper.

    Unfortunately, both papers at UVA were cliché characters from nineties movies. One of the papers was a straight-A student bulimic girl. The other one was a guy with a beard and a burlap hoodie who liked to make experimental music about insects in his basement. Since I didn’t really know which one of those things I was more like, I wrote equally insufferable things for both. For one, I was making jokes about the Virgin Mary losing her virginity at frathouses. For the other one, I was bitching about the library not being open on weekend nights. Really. Don’t blame me! I can’t be held responsible. For the life of me, I cannot believe I’d ever die for these sins. I was merely a first year.

    Oh, you call them “freshmen”? Hahahaha. You must not have gone to Mr. Jefferson’s University.

    Anyway, the result of those misguided years is this: I dread a Google search of my name.  Not that I’ve done anything so SO bad, but if Culpeper County can ban The Diary of Anne Frank in school, what hyperbolized psychotic confession could the world dig up on me? I DON’T EVEN KNOW!!!

    I don’t think I’d have to be as afraid of the Internet if my name were Anne Smith or something. But it’s not. And there are even things on the Internet connected to my name that I didn’t even create. Like a Ratemyteachers review that says I’m too easy? Really?! F’s for everyone.

    Anyway, to get back to my thesis, which I have strayed from since I am a terrible English teacher: God, do your worst. Consider me that overweight guy wearing a trucker’s hat that says, “I hope they serve beer in hell.” Preferably PBR. But gods of the Internet ,please keep my good name sacred from scorn. 

    P.S. Microsoft Word is autocorrecting for me to capitalize the Internet, but not god. They know, man. They know.