Scud Saga Part 4
 
C reminded me today that I missed a few bits of information that are crucial to the Scud Saga. During our senior year, Scud worked at Six Flags Great Adventure, which is like 25 minutes from our town. Scud took his job very seriously. I think he worked rides, which seems silly to me since I never thought Scud was the most responsible person. I never thought he had that much common sense either. If I were bringing my child to Six Flags, I would think twice (thrice?) about letting my kid on the ride. Scud cared so much about his job that he would cut class every week to go to work. Every Friday after lunch (2 classes followed lunch), Scud would walk to his car and drive away. He missed those 2 classes multiple times a week for the entire year. I believe that the high school had a policy that you could only miss a class 15 times before you failed the class. Scud must have missed classes close to 70 times. Near graduation, the high school told Scud that he could not miss another day or he would not graduate. There were 2 weeks left. He missed every day of school. He graduated anyway. I assume that high school just finally wanted to get rid of him once and for all. Probably a good call.
 
This is where the stories get really good.
 
While working at Six Flags, Scud met a nice young lady named Morgan. J and C used to joke that she was black. Scud denied it. I don’t really know the truth. Luckily, the truth doesn’t impact the quality of the story. However, given that I trust J and C more than I do Scud, it’s amusing that Scud was so adamant that she was not black. Anyway, Scud was enamored with this girl. Poor girl. I can’t really express in writing how legendary this girl became to our group. We’d see Scud when he got to lunch and ask him how Morgan was doing. He didn’t like it. Soon he stopped bring her up, until this one time…
 
When we moved out of the pit into the cafeteria, we were no longer able to harass Scud to the extent that we did before. J had moved to a different lunch, so C, G, and I were left to mess with Scud under the gaze of the entire lunch room. Fortunately, it was louder up there, so we could still have some fun. One day, Scud came to lunch from GYM sweating brown. Scud was not as pale as A (then again who is), so brown streaks down his face caught C’s attention. C asked, “Scud is that rub-on tan?” Scud, “No!” C, “It is rub-on tan!” If C says something loud enough it has to be true (in addition to things that rhyme), so Scud soon admitted it. He claimed to have applied rub on tan before he drove to school in the morning. Somehow nobody noticed the odd color of Scud’s face. I guess the odd shape of Scud’s face clouded the difference in color.
 
The Scud Finale (nearly the end of my life) will be in Part 5.
D

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With South Park on in the background… Part 3:


Scud considered himself to be an author. In fact, he even wrote a manuscript. I say manuscript because unfortunately it was never published. Since it was never published, few people ever read his literary masterpiece. Scud wrote what we like to call his sex novel. Just like any other author, Scud included characters from his life, including C and G. You can imagine how excited they were to be in Scud’s sex novel. Yeah, really excited.

"It was a dark and stormy night…” Well-read in the classics, Scud paid homage to his favorite writers by beginning his sex novel with possibly the most cliché opening in the history of literature. From what we could see, he wrote nearly 50 pages. I was impressed that he was capable of that. Unfortunately, when we grabbed his novel to take a look and saw the opening, he snatched it back and ran away. Scud destroyed his sex novel. He never mentioned it again. Since we never got to see what he wrote about C and G, we can only assume they were engaged in extremely graphic sexual exploits. Knowing Scud, the story was probably highly inappropriate and nonsensical.

One day, Scud went to the library and left his back pack behind. Briefly, I’d like to mention how much fun frustrating Scud was. He would flail his arms and roar (similar to the ass in face incident). It usually ended in a good laugh. Fortunately, this was one of those times. J and I took everything out of Scud’s bag, turned the bag inside out, and put Scud’s stuff back in. We placed the bag exactly where he left it. Right before Scud returned, a friend of ours (Habib) finally arrived to lunch (not sure where he was). I want to make it clear that Habib had no idea what was going and had no role in our joke. Scud came down the stairs, saw his bag different than he left it (he probably expected us to mess with him), and start wailing. The vice principal, who was nearby at the time, heard Scud and came down the stairs to the pit. He immediately accused Habib of messing with Scud and threatened him with detention for lying. J and I stepped up and admitted it was we who had fucked with Scud’s bag. The whole time Scud did not realize that his stuff was inside the bag. He must have thought we burned it or threw it in the garbage. It’s possible he never realized it. This was the last day we were allowed to eat lunch in the pit. The vice principal forbid us from going down there, and we were forced to eat in the cafeteria for the rest of the year. Fortunately, the best Scud stories happened after this point.

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I just watched Duke lose their first game in a long time. It was rough, so I’m going to write the rest of the Scud stories to cheer myself up. Scud has a way of doing that: making you remember that very few things are worth getting upset about (especially sports). Scud never let his “accidents” stop him from making future “accidents.” Some people think not learning from your mistake is a problem. I am usually one of those people. I have a friend at college who has made the same mistakes for 4 years. Each mistake is predictable, so when he ignores my advice I get frustrated. Sometimes really frustrated. On the other hand, I don’t make mistakes anymore. Since I certainly don’t know everything or even most things, my success is really from a lack of taking changes. Scud took chances. Even if they were dumb chances, he still did what he wanted, whether or not people thought he was stupid. I don’t know why Duke losing made me think of this, but apparently Scud is somebody who I should emulate in the future. (A note from B to D, are you sure emulating Scud is the best idea).
And now more stories…

All of the following stories took place senior year of high school. I was (un)fortunate to have lunch with Scud, C, J, and G (B hasn’t named him I assume because we rarely see him.)

In our high school, seniors had the “privilege” of sitting in the pit, a small basement to the main cafeteria. At some point that year, we caused enough trouble to lose that privilege, mostly related to Scud. Wherever Scud walked in the high school, he always wore head phones. Most people assumed he was listening to music. I assumed he was listening to music so people would leave him alone. I was half right. One day Scud took off his headphones and walked up the stairs to buy lunch. Scud would never let us see what he was listening to, so we took the opportunity to take a look at his CD of choice. Scud’s CD of choice was nothing, and by nothing I mean THERE WAS NO CD IN THE CD PLAYER. Scud was walking around the whole day listening to nothing. Although I have no way of knowing whether he ever actually listened to music, I believe that Scud just walked around listening to silence while wearing headphones so that people would leave him alone. See: I was half-right. He received so much crap from people. He just wanted some alone time with himself, his thoughts, and his empty CD player. Now that we knew Scud listened to an empty CD player even 1 time, we were not going to let him off the hook anymore. Another day, while Scud was walking listening to “music,” somebody grabbed his headphones and yanked them off his hand. Fortunately for Scud, the CD player did not fall from his pocked and smash on the floor. Unfortunately for Scud, he must have put on the wrong shorts in the morning since there was no CD player at all. The headphones were connected to nothing. I don’t know if Scud even realized it.

I’m tired. More for another day.
D

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I can’t remember when I first met Scud. Regardless, all of my memories of him are from high school, and all of them are hilarious (at least we think so). Those of us who had the good fortune to be bystanders to Scud’s antics regularly reminisce about him. Whenever my college friends visit my NJ friends and I, the Scud Saga is my go-to ice breaker. Everybody can relate to his story. Even while writing this, my mind is burgeoning with excitement to relive the Scud Saga with myself. Unfortunately, I normally co-tell this story with C, who was the only witness to certain Scud stories. Although I will do my best to relive the Scud stories, the tale will be lacking the physical and audio imitations provided by C of Scud’s movements and voice (if you’ve seen “Scud Falls,” you already have an idea of Scud’s presence). Also, the stories may not be in chronological order. The time Scud almost killed me kind of shook up his story in my mind to the extent that Scud became a fleeting moment in my life, never to be seen again.

A quick background: Michael Scudero was born in Brooklyn, NY (I presume) at some point in the late 1980s. Anthropologists have spent years trying to narrow it down to a specific year, but as you can imagine, Scud’s existence is known more through word of mouth than by official documentation (other than a marriage certificate- more on that later). Scud was lovable but physically awkward. One of his arms was longer than the other (can’t remember which) which caused him problems in all aspects of physical movement: walking, running, standing, reaching. Additionally, Scud was oddly shaped: not particularly overweight but with fat layered non-uniformly across his body. He was far from graceful. Imagine a heavy dog with only 3 legs: definitely still lovable but prone to accidents. Although he was very strong, his coordination and athleticism were poor (not poor enough for my health unfortunately – more on that also later). Finally, Scud spoke in a heavy Italian accident which he picked up from years of living in Brooklyn. Although his speech pattern suggested otherwise, Scud was surprisingly intelligent.

Scud and C played football together for a few years (these are the stories that only C truly knows). One year, Scud did not show up for training camp on time. Rather than being angry at him for his absence, the team was amused that nobody had heard from Scud for the entire summer. He finally arrived weeks late for camp. He burst through the doors to the weight room, and before anybody could ask him where he’d been for months, Scud wailed his arms and shouted in his thick Italian accent, “I lost my virginity!” The room exploded into laughter, and Scud was welcomed warmly back to the team. Only Mike Scudero could miss 3 weeks of training camp without an explanation and suffer no punishment. Out of respect to Scud, I will not share wear Scud actually was, but use your imagination. Wherever he went, I didn’t notice any difference upon his return.

Another Scud story only C was a witness to: Scudero was driving C and a friend around town on a commercial highway. Sitting in the back seat, C pulled his pants down in an attempt to moon Scudero in his rear-view mirror. C told Scud that there was a cop behind him. Rather than use his mirror to look back, Scud turned his head and jammed his face into C’s ass. Scud screamed, flailed his arms, and let go off the wheel. The car shot through two lanes of traffic until C’s friend grabbed the wheel and prevented an accident just in time. I still don’t know why C agreed to be in a car while Scud was driving. Ask C when you see him.

More stories next time.
D

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We went to high school with this kid. Eventually the boys and I will have to sit down and write all the crazy stories we have about him. There are plenty...

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1) No Politics
2) No Religion
3) No spitting..... (directly instated due to T)
4) No vomiting..... (I've mentioned this before, A has a problem. lol)
5) No Guns... (But machetes are alright.)
6) No crying.... (No one has actually cried in the garage yet. We'd like to keep it that way.)
7) No Bro Ice-ing.....(Except for A)

These rules are subject to change at anytime, and we reserve the right to add more if necessary.

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Dearest A... This is what you get for calling me the "c" word... Payback is a bitch.



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