I have officially been pleasantly surprised. In fact, my residential electricity class has been a proverbial bucket full of surprises.

For one thing, I’m not the only girl in the class. There are two older, black women in the class who are sick of their husbands promising to install doorbells and then failing to follow through. I feel their pain. My husband laughs in the face of ‘Honey Do’ lists. In fact, if I ever made him a list of things to do around the house, the only thing I’d be guaranteeing was that they would never, ever, ever get done. My husband would shun the list completely out of principle. Or spite. You pick.

The old black women were extremely happy to see me. When I walked in the door, they squealed with delight, “Yay! Another girl! Want a piece of gum?”

“Gum for girls?” I said as I took a piece of juicyfruit, “I can get on board with that! Thanks!”

The rest of the class consisted of men who were, like I thought, looking to get into the wonderful world of electricity. However, they did not seem the least bit ruffled or annoyed with the women in the class. In fact, I would go so far as to say they were more than accommodating and helpful.

For example, I came to my first class sans the book. If college taught me anything, it is to never buy a book for class without first consulting the professor. I cannot count how many times I spent $65+ on a required text only to show up for my first day of class and have the teacher tell me, “My exams consist completely of things we go over during my lectures. The book…uh….makes a good reference, I guess. Or you can just take notes.” After that, I would attempt to sell my brand new, never read, still in the plastic wrap book back to the store only for them to offer me $5. Of course, I took it gratefully because, Hey! Free lunch! But, I’m digressing again.

Anyway, in Residential Electricity, the teacher uses the book. Halfway through the first class, he asked us all to turn to Page 24 and I immediately started looking around nervously. Thankfully, I was not the only one too cheap to drop $30 without being forced. Another guy raised his hand and said, “I haven’t gotten the book yet. Is that OK?”

I instantly backed him up, “I haven’t gotten mine, either.”

Wham! Before I could even apologize to the teacher, no less than 4 different books were shoved in my general direction.

“Here, use mine!” the book owners insisted.

See? Helpful and accommodating.

Although he seems like a nice enough guy and he does have over 20 years of experience, I do have a couple of gripes about my teacher. For one thing, he often stops teaching to relay shop stories. We’ll be in the middle of discussing power outlets when all of the sudden, he’ll say, “Hey, that reminds me of this one time…”

I appreciate that he’s trying to make the class interesting, I really do. But if I hear one more story about an Amish guy removing the steps (Unbeknownst to him) to a house he was wiring while he was upstairs working or this kid he used to work with that was really annoying or blah, blah, blah, I am going randomly shout, “Hey guys! Want to have sex?” Then, I’ll claim I have tourettes. I swear to God I’ll do it.

My other gripe with him is he recommended shitty tools. On the first day of class, he put a list of tools and the blackboard and specifically said, “These are the tools I’m going to need you to bring to class. Now if you don’t already have these at home, please don’t go out and spend tons of money on them. Just go to the dollar store and pick them up, instead. There’s really no difference.”

What a fucking liar.

There’s a huge difference between cheapy tools and good tools and I found this out first hand, in class, while we were installing a 3 switch light. I fumbled around like a goddamn idiot simply trying to strip a fucking wire with a plastic pair of wire strippers. I might as well have tried to strip a wire with my fucking teeth.

“Are you alright?” One of the men whispered to me.

“Yeah,” I whispered back, “I just have these really shitty dollar store tools.” Then, because I’m immature and bratty, I started mocking the teacher, “You don’t have to spend a lot of money on tools, he says! Just go to the dollar store, he says! Now I’m sitting here with this bullshit and I look like a goddamn monkey!”

The guy laughed and said, “Here, use my wire strippers.”

I was just about to politely refuse, because he paid for the class just as much as I did and I didn’t want to take away from his Electricity Experience by hijacking his book and his tools, when the Overachieving Fuckhead interrupted us.

Now everyone who has attended college knows full well who the Overachieving Fuckhead is because every single course in the history of the world contains at least one. The Overachieving Fuckhead is that snide, sniveling, fat loser who sits in the front row and makes it his personal mission to show the teacher up at every opportunity. Every utterance out of the teacher’s mouth will be over examined, searched for fault, and criticized by the Overachieving Fuckhead and the entire class will become dominated by their arguing. The Overachieving Fuckhead is so socially inept that he doesn’t realize that the rest of the class isn’t impressed by his pompous antics. Instead, he fancies himself as a regular John Bender trapped in a Brian body oblivious to the fact that everyone secretly wants to kill him.

I have mostly tried to avoid the Overachieving Fuckhead in residential electricity. Nevertheless, the Overachieving Fuckhead took it upon himself to insert his dumb ass into my conversation about my crappy tools. “You better not say that!” he said as he cut his eyes pointedly at the older, black women.

“Say what?” I asked, “Goddamn?”

“No. What did you just call yourself..?” he asked me in one of those condescending voices people use when they’re speaking to dumb children.

“A fucking monkey?”

“Shh! Shh!” He hurriedly hushed as he again looked pointedly at the older, black women.

And people call me racist when I simply describe someone as ‘black!’ Don’t you all know the world possesses Overachieving Fuckheads out there who assume that anyone with dark skin will become automatically offended by the word ‘monkey?’

I was just about to scream ‘MONKEY! MONKEY MONKEY!’ at the top of my lungs and kick Mr. Fuckhead in his fat, racist gut when the teacher interrupted us.

“Are you doing OK, V?” he asked me.

“Well,” I replied, “I actually do understand the concept of what I’m supposed to be doing here. I know where all the wires go. I’m just having trouble putting everything together because I’ve got these gay ass tools here…”

Everyone got quiet for a minute as they stared at the mess I’d made on my table.

Then, I looked at Overachieving Fuckhead and mockingly said, “Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to be offensive. What I meant to say was: I’ve got these homosexual ass tools here…”

Everyone laughed heartily and the teacher lent me his tools for the rest of the night. Now I know how to install a 3 switch light thingy.

Electricity rocks.