As Your Principal, You’ve Left Me No Choice: I Am Taking Disciplinary Action By Giving Your Mascot A Tragic Backstory
By: Ryan Ciecwisz
Students and faculty, this is your principal, Mr. Weardis, speaking. I wish I could say “Good Morning,” but there is nothing good about it, for this morrow has been tainted by the sins of your adolescent depravity. Yesterday, my car was defaced with the words “Mr. Weird Ass” written on my windshield. I have no choice but to take disciplinary action by giving your mascot a tragic backstory and debilitating depression.
Eddie the Eagle, the fun-loving bird who was a cherished fixture at pep rallies and home games will now be a shell of his former self. Instead of cheering and dancing, Eddie will quietly sit in the corner with his head down before sleeping for 14 consecutive hours. He will be taking SSRI’s to help improve his state of mind, but canonically, Eddie will be constantly in a state of transitioning medications, so his mood will be perpetually erratic.
Originally, the story for our Eddie was a charming tale of overcoming self-doubt. The smallest eagle in his mother’s nest, Eddie was too scared to take flight until a gust of wind blew him out and forced him to flap his wings. He discovered that he could fly all along. This story has been extensively retconned; Eddie is no longer an eagle but a human man who grew up in a devout Catholic household with emotionally distant parents.
After years of being resented for surviving when his siblings did not (this was the 17th century and smallpox wiped out many young children), Eddie went to seminary school, foolishly believing that it would earn him his parents’ love. He devoted himself to God in the unrealized hopes that the Lord’s divine love would fill the emptiness inside his heart. He was sent on a missionary assignment in Japan, where he was captured and subjected to torture until he renounced the Lord’s name, damning his soul for eternity. Following this experience, Eddie renamed himself “Esau,” whom, in the Book of Malachi, is hated by God even before he was born.
I don’t care if I get fired for bringing religion into a public school. It will be worth it to forever make you associate your mascot with tragedy. It goes without saying that Eddie’s/Esau’s picture will be repainted on the gymnasium floor. He will no longer be smiling and giving his trademark thumbs up, but instead, weeping and holding the funeral prayer card for his grandmother, the only person who showed him kindness. Though the school board will not allow me to depict this in the iconography, I want you all to know that his gaze will be fixed at an off-screen pile of sleeping pills and a handle of Jack Williams that he keeps on his kitchen counter, hoping that someone will see and implore him not to throw his life away. But even if you or I were to tell Esau that his life mattered, it wouldn’t make a damn difference. He has to be willing to discover that on his own.
Gone away is our previous chant. I encourage you all to join me in saying it one last time. “Eddie, Eddie, flap your wings/and your praises we will sing!” Our new chant will be as follows: “Endless emptiness abounds/Where is God? I hear no sound.”
Before every game, the official Esau Twitter account will post a series of depressing tweets about how he doesn’t matter to anybody. NO ONE is allowed to interact with these posts. They are not healthy ways for Esau to cope, and even if you think you’re helping by throwing him a like, it will only reinforce negative behavior that will make things harder for him in the long run.
As most of you can probably guess, all of this isolation and loneliness has resulted in Esau getting red-pilled. The hate that he harbors for himself in his heart has grown too much for him to bear, and he has unloaded some of the burden by partially redirecting it towards others. Even if you wanted to show him love, his abhorrent beliefs would make fostering a connection incredibly difficult, as he proudly identifies as an incel. Please keep in mind that anytime you act up, I will be making his depression worse.
Anyway, good luck to our Eagles at tonight’s state championship game against Fairview. I know you’ll do us proud.