Jackass

I will be the first to admit my enjoyment of Jackass is pretty out of character. I dislike comedic displays of violence -- or violence of any nature for that matter. Still, as someone who likes being a part of dumb hijinks, I oddly find myself respecting the Jackass participants for slamming their testicles in books in the name of an adventure. Sure it's stupid, but it's definitely interesting.

When Jackass first debuted, it received a lot of flack for creating media that would provoke copycats. Various kids died or injured themselves trying to replicate stunts that were never meant to be performed in the first place. I never minded too much because I believed that society benefits from stupid kids kicking the bucket. Heck, as a teacher, I still believe that. As I saw it, intelligent people would not be susceptible to such idiotic behavior.

I saw the first Jackass movie when it came out my freshman year of college. A whole bunch of us went, but only Jenna, Amelia, and I got tickets because it sold out. Consequently, we had to sit in the front of the theater and absorb the blood, vomit, and nudity far more up close than necessary. The whole experience riled me up to the point where I became aggressive. I wanted to jump, play, and hurt.

After the film, Amelia excused eirself toward the restroom, at which point Jenna and I conferred. We would run across the lobby right toward Amelia and smash into eir from both sides. 1, 2, 3, go! We sprinted toward an unsuspecting Amelia as onlooking movie-goers watched in curiosity. Simultaneously, we bum rushed eir, smashing our bodies against both sides of Amelia's body, projecting eir forward and off of eir feet. We giggled like the little jackasses we were as Amelia took an unexpected tumble. Accidentally, however, we had also gone bowling, since the knocked-over Amelia also took down an eight year old kid walking in front of eir.

Startled, a confused and embarrassed Amelia apologized to the kid's family as both individuals picked themselves off the ground. Jenna and I, also a bit embarrassed to have caused collateral damage, distanced ourselves while laughing nervously. We spotted a theater security guard approaching us, so Jenna sprinted to the bathroom to hide. I was about to make a similar move, then decided a true Jackass needs to take responsibility for the actions and decided to accept the punishment. Fortunately, the security guard was hardly intimidating. Ey told me, "I know you just came out of that aggressive movie, but you can't do that. You need to be careful. You can't let a movie make you do things like that." If I hadn't already realized that by simply nodding and apologizing there would be no consequences, I would have argued. I wanted to argue that I wasn't one of those kids. I'm not one of those of those idiotic kids that lets a movie make me do something stupid.

But wasn't I one of those kids? Sure, it was a "joke," but what I wasn't able to accept then was that in a way I was one of those kids. Maybe I didn't light myself on fire, but I was influenced by the film. Sometimes when I start to feel intellectually superior to someone, I try to remind myself that just because I didn't try to ski off my roof, I'm capable of jackdumbass decisions, too.