Thousands of years ago when I was in high school there was this kid who always sat uninvited at our table at lunch. We were a far cry from the “cool kids” table but lunch was always a good time. This kid, whose name was Clay, didn’t have any friends. The reason for this was, quite simply, that he was a dickhead. He didn’t come to our table to be our friend; he came to break balls. He asked us every day, and was refused every day, if we wanted to meet on the weekend and drag race on a newly laid strip of route 45 that cut through some old farmland connecting new subdivisions to the local shopping mall.

One day our friend Jerry, who was on the football team and definitely not one to be pestered was sitting with us and decided to put poor Clay in his place. He turns to Clay and says: “Dude, let me tell you something. You’re never going to touch a woman in your entire life. You smell, you have acne, and your hair is greasy. No girl will ever have you. Now get the fuck out of here before I beat your ass.” For some reason this obvious string of taunts seemed to bother Clay. We had told him all these things before but it didn’t hit him as hard as it did coming from a guy who actually got girls (the rest of us were nerds to which the girls paid no attention.) He didn’t leave our table but he sat there for the rest of the hour without speaking or looking at us.

This would be a relatively minor chapter in the tome of high school lore if I didn’t also work with Clay at the local supermarket. We were in different departments so I rarely saw him. One night while I was at work someone keyed the shit out of my 89 Chevy. I know it was him because at the time I didn’t have anything even close to an enemy. The scratches were all on the roof of the car so I didn’t pay much attention. Come to think of it, the keying really has nothing to do with the rest of the story. Sorry.

At this point it was nearly summer. Clay continued to visit our table at lunch but only when Jerry wasn’t around. He had eased up on the insults but still persisted in trying to get us to drag race him on the weekends. He doubled his efforts and would start showing up at work on his day off trying to get people to drag race him.

Clay drove an 84 Pontiac Firebird. The people he was bugging drove old hand-me-down station wagons and little Ford Escorts that were just begging for a quiet life in the junkyard. Toward the end of the year Clay finally found a drag race opponent and talked about the upcoming race constantly for a week. The guy who agreed to race him was a huge gearhead who had built his own muscle car.

The next Monday Clay was not at school or work. He finally showed up to work the following weekend with a cast on his arm. It turns out that during his “race” he struck a family in their minivan. None of them died but the newspaper reported that the baby sustained serious burns and all of them were in the hospital.

The rest of the year was pretty bad for Clay. We called him “baby killer” and “speed racer” and asked him constantly if he wanted to drag race (followed by “oh! we forgot your car is totaled and your license suspended. Sorry.) Our manager cut his hours at works so badly that he had to quit.

That summer he showed up to the supermarket and told us he was fixing up an ‘80 Porsche. He wanted to know if any of us wanted to drag race.

Whenever I wonder “Whatever happened to Clay?” I hope that he’s either in jail, serving as a pegboy in the Iranian Navy, or pushing up daisies somewhere. I suppose that Atonement is always a possibility but when it comes to mean, stupid people I generally assume that they carry on just the way they are.