Humor Post #22 from Middle School’s Crankiest Curmudgeon’s Blog (and probably the awesomest YA blog too) –
I can’t promise you a whole lot today. As you can see from my picture, I’ll still recovering from my recent encounter with Mr. Locker, a fight which left me injured and dazed. (I guess that’s why they call this daily grind we have to go through “School Dazed.”) But I’ll be okay. Ol’ Crankenfuss promises you that. You can never keep a good crank down, that’s what I like to say. But come to think of it, I’m always down so I guess it should be You can never keep a good crank up.
Oh, never mind.
Anyway, I found out something cool yesterday. After that terrifying locker incident, I was complaining to my friend Max — yes, I do have friends — that I should sue the school for a million bucks, something like that, and I started wondering why we call money bucks. So I googled bucks money origin when I got home and I found out that in olden times, like 200 years ago, pioneers would use deer skins to trade for things. (Except they called them buckskins since a male deer is called a buck.) It was a kind of money, see? For instance what if you were a pioneer in some town and you went to the General Store and saw this nice trail bike for sale? Well, okay, they couldn’t have had trail bikes back then, so let’s say you needed supplies and you saw a big bag of flour and a big bag of nails that you needed. (Work with me, okay?) You’d go up to the guy behind the counter and say, “Hey, podner, what say I trade you this buck here for them there bags o’ flour and nails?” and you’d haul out this big deer skin from your back pack (or whatever they’d call it back then). And the store guy would probably say yes cause that sounded like a good deal to him. (And it would be too.) So now we still say bucks instead of money.
But what I also found out is you can still make real bucks, that is, buckskins. You know there are always like a million pages listed under every subject at Google so I checked out this site called TwoWolves.org and they have a course that’ll teach you how to make buckskins. They’re in New Jersey, for gosh sakes! And it looks like I’d qualify to take the course. Here’s the requirements:
Simply, there are no minimum requirements or skill-levels. Whether you have never even touched a raw skin before, or have a few hides under your belt, you will benefit from a deeper exploration of this art, and taking your skills to the next level. All you need is a willingness to learn and work hard.
Well, that fits me to a C. This looked kind of interesting. So here’s more of what they said.
• Each apprenticeship program is in essence a “one-on-one” course. (Wow, individual tutoring. It doesn’t get better than that!)
• Course meetings will convene at our home facility in New Jersey. Meetings at the student’s residence will require compensation of travel expenses. (Uh-oh! Well, maybe my mom would agree to the extra expense. I mean, to be able to make real buckskins? Even she’d have to admit that was pretty cool.)
• During the duration of the program, students will be free to use all our tanning related gear (excluding chemicals, brains, and hides), to work on their projects. (Huh? Whose brains can’t I use? Theirs or mine? Without brains, this could be harder to figure out. Well, let’s go a little further.)
• All materials are included in the tuition cost, which is $1450. (Wha-a-a-a?)
Well, there goes that idea. But then I saw the picture of one of the guys at that place in his buckskin outfit.
Here’s someone who made some REAL bucks!
Whew! I know we’re into Freaky Dudes here at FDB, but we might have to make an exception for this boy. But hey, you gotta give him props for his self-esteem.
So it looks like the old Crankoid won’t be making real bucks after all. But he did learn something in the meantime and he may even have taught you something. Hey, that head injury I suffered might have changed me after all. I actually did something nice for somebody.
Man, I gotta think about this. Maybe I’m one of those split-personality types. Oh, no! That locker may have literally split my personality in two.
Sorry, gotta go.
From Dr. C