Have you ever seen the show "The Middle"? Brick is a socially awkward kid that has his quirks. I was that kind of kid. One of the oddest habits I had was to chew on and or eat things that you would never think to put in your mouth.

The first dumb idea I got was from "The Never Ending Story". Do you remember the rock biter? His name is self explanatory. Well I could not bite rocks, but what better way to show how awesome I was by swallowing them. Hey, check this out! I actually was able to swallow a couple of rocks. I was surprised at how easy it was, I mean, it was all about the size. I must have been six at that time, but I never found out what happened to those stones. Use your imagination.

I think I liked to chew on things to cope with boredom. What is more boring to a kid than church? Being forced to sit through the same thing week in and week out on rock hard wooden benches with no air conditioning. My church had these yellow colored enameled pews that were kind of old at the time. I remember I would see those pews with certain areas missing their lacker. One day I thought it would be a good idea to latch on to the pew and just start gnawing away at it. My family usually sat in the same area, so I would return to the same pew each week and work on trying to make the hole in the pew complete. Weeks went by, I became out of control. One week it was just my father and I. Now I went for it. I started at my regular gnawing hole and chewed up the hole pew about 10 feet along the rail until a reached the end. Another parishioner noticed the damage I was doing and told my dad, who was obviously zoned out. He left in embarrassment with his proud beaver in tow.

So, who finally put a stop to this? Why my middle school German teacher. I had the unfortunate privilege of sitting at the front of the class. I had this love hate relationship with the German language, or any language: that stupid thing called grammar. By the time we had gotten to the gender of nouns, I had tuned out. I mean, it was like boring math for language.

I don't know why, but I found chewing on the binding of my German book and looking out the window more interesting then class. There I was, minding my own business, when the German teacher stopped the class, grabbed the book and proclaimed "Ladies and gentlemen, Kevin likes the class so much, he devours the book!" I guess he was not the subtle type, being from Germany and all.

Yup, all in a days work for the Weird Kid.