1. A boy being caught with his shirt tail untucked and hanging out of his pants.

2. Chewing gum anywhere on the school grounds at any time.

3. Not returning an empty cafeteria lunch tray to the dish washing area.

4. A boy’s hair growing over the tops of his ears by a little as 1/32 of an inch.

5. Running in the hallway.

6. Talking in class.

Any one of these crimes against humanity committed within the boundaries of my mid-1960’s high school campus would get one sent to Honor Court.

With the spring thaw well underway, several of our scholars sallied out of SAFA’s cramped archives on an expedition to a nearby river town where caches of anthropomorphic animal figurines, interchangeable mutant heads, and sabotaged diorama components have been discovered in the surrounding hills recently. The town has become something of a cynosure among action figure antiquarians, and our savvy readers undoubtedly have already guessed its name, as Saukinee is also home base to maverick action figure finder Percy Rittle. The budding play-date theorist and midden rat has had an unmistakable impact on the field with his explosive, paradigm-toppling theories and gonzo hermeneutics. Even from the dim reaches of our dusty stacks, SAFA has felt tremors—is the field ripe for a revolution led by this newcomer? It must be said that our own modest analyses of recent excavations in the realm of sandbox stratigraphy and jungle gym anthrosols have aligned agreeably with those of the growing community of Rittle-inspired independent scholars, zombie sibling anthropologists, and alternative paleontologists. Further, there were rumors that Rittle might have triangulated a matchbox battle site or alien cyborg munitions dump. We found the implications tantalizing.  

It was my sophomore year at college, and while my fellow classmates were busy studying for finals, I was training for our local taqueria’s first hot-pepper–eating contest, knocking back as many habanero peppers as I could before passing out. I didn’t have any career plans then and must’ve changed my major at least a dozen times, but the idea of becoming a hot-pepper–eating champion put a fire under my ass, the likes of which I would never experience again. Rather than concocting some elaborate story as to why I was pacing our dorm at midnight while completely sober, I decided to confess my aspirations of becoming Boston’s first hot-pepper–eating champion.

It’s not that I don’t like the set pieces, the wardrobe, or even the screenplay. But frankly, all that to recreate Nosferatu in our bedroom is becoming a bit much.

The Great American Mall is a lesson in extinction. Discovered in Minnesotan suburbia in the 1950s, the species became endangered nearly 60 years later due to digital evolution, economic recession, and general ennui of the American people. Despite attempts to rekindle public interest in these commercial giants, the malls endured for only 15 more years before fading away entirely, their coffin nailed by the rise of other, more advanced commercial species, namely Commercium Virtualis, whose impressive gestation period and compact scale captured the hearts of the nation.