Are you on Instagram or Twitter? I am!

IG: local_rando

Twitter: mestrin

Back to the story!👇

They say you're supposed to ignore the haters. But if everyone in your school is a hater, what you're really doing, if you follow that advice, is killing your own social life.

Not that I had much of a social life at John Wayne High School to begin with. When I arrived earlier this year, I rode whatever "new guy" mystique I had right into a spot at the rejects table. Which was fine. The rejects at John Wayne High School are guys who don't play football and girls who don't date football players. 

The thing is, this is Texas, so pretty much everyone defines themselves in relation to football. What you do on a Friday night in the fall tells the world everything it needs to know about who you are. 

If you put on pads and a helmet, you are a football god. The world is yours, even if you never play a single minute in a real game. You're part of the team. And here in Texas, that's everything.

If you date a football player, you are a football goddess. In some ways, that can be even better than being a football god. After all, you wield enormous power over the school's social life, but you don't have to stay late for practice, or risk having your head smashed in by a football god from another school. 

If you're neither a football god or goddess, you're a football subject. This means you care about football, or at least you pretend to. Most students at John Wayne High School actually fall into this group, but like the masses in society, they have no real power, because they've been conditioned to accept jocks and mean girls as their superiors. High school is a good primer for the real world that way. Or so I'm told. 

Finally, there are the rejects. We're an eclectic crew of math nerds, science geeks, bookworms, exchange students, artsy types, losers, goofballs, burnouts, theater freaks, and other random humans who can't be easily type-cast into the cliques that define the high hierarchy. Collectively, we are the rejects, either because we have rejected football culture, or football culture has rejected us. 

The rejects are my people. Or at least, they were my people. As a card-carrying reject, I could sit at any reject table in the cafeteria. I could partner with any other reject on a homework assignment without fear. But this is not to say that I was friends with all the rejects, or that they were friends with me. In point of fact, there were rejects who I disliked, and vice versa. But up until "the incident," I was welcome in their ranks. 

But here I am, standing in the cafeteria, AKA the scene of the crime, and not a single reject table will have me. The math nerds have literally done the math and calculated that their odds of escaping the torments of the jocks and mean girls increase exponentially with the distance they keep from me. The science geeks have concluded that I carry some sort of social virus that has no cure. Pretty much everyone else, even the exchange students, look at me with smirks and sideways glances. Because even the kid from Kyrgyzstan knows that everything is bigger in Texas. Everything but me, that is. Which is why even the losers won't be seen with me, although I get the feeling they're grateful to have someone they can mock without fear of retribution.

So I find a table in the back, where I hope I won't be noticed. Ignore the haters, right? But that doesn't last long. Because the Becky Spade's of this world don't just rule the school, they preside over social media like self-appointed rulers of a virtual sphere where anything goes. In real life, they are mean girls. But on social media, they are meme girls.

In my case, they have ample material to work with. Well, maybe that's not exactly right. If they had ample material, or rather, if I had ample material, the Peter's Little Peter meme wouldn't be a thing, and #PLP wouldn't exist. But because every kid in school got video and pictures of my dick, along with the mortified look on my face when Nick Spears pantsed me, the trolls of John Wayne High School have an endless library of material at their disposal. 

Not that I'm on social media. Not anymore. I chose to ignore the haters. I deleted my accounts a week ago. But that only made it worse. Because based on the way the other kids at school treat me, I can tell that I am internet-famous. Or maybe, the better way to put it is that I'm internet-infamous.

As soon as I sit down, a hush falls over the cafeteria. All eyes are upon me. This is the power of the meme girls. Evidently, they just can't get enough twisted joy out of sharing photos of my tiny dick. And even though I'm pretty sure what they're doing is against the law, there's no way any teachers are going to stop them. After all, the teachers merely teach the football gods, passing even the dumbest among them so that they can strap on their helmets to seek glory under the Friday night lights. Same goes for the football goddesses. They keep the gods happy, so why disrupt their mean girl agenda? 

More to the point, why waste an opportunity for an obvious joke? Today, they're serving hot dogs in the school cafeteria. For all I know, they're serving hot dogs because of some online petition circulated by the mean girls. Or maybe Becky Spade herself just ordered the cafeteria workers to serve hot dogs, because in the ass-backwards culture of a football-obsessed Texas high school, kids can totally tell adults what to do. Well, some kids can.  

For a moment, I'm locked in a standoff with the entire school. They want nothing more than for me to lift my hot dog off my tray and slide the phallic symbol, filled with pig parts, chemicals, and god knows what else, into my mouth. But I want nothing more than to disappear, to vanish into thin air. I don't even like hot dogs, but that's the only entree the cafeteria is serving to today, because of course it is, even though they usually have two or three choices. 

Speaking of choices, mine go right out the window as soon as the crowd begins chanting my name. 

Peter! Peter! Peter!

If I close my eyes, I might be able to pretend that I'm one of those contestants in the hot dog eating contest they hold in Brooklyn. I might be able to pretend that the crowd is cheering for me. But I know that's not true. I know that today's lunch is just more fodder for the meme-machine. And I know that if I don't eat the hot dog, the meme girls will just think of some other way to humiliate me. Because while the meme girls may control the chanting crowd, they can't afford to turn their backs on it. That's just not how the crowd-mentality works.

Peter! Peter! Peter!

Plus, I know something else: I'm starving. And I have a math test after lunch. The way I see it, high school will end someday, but if I don't get good grades, I'll be stuck in this crappy Texas suburb. I need to eat, so that I can focus, so that I can get good grades, so that I can get into a college as far away from Texas as possible. 

I try to tune out the noise.

Peter! Peter! Peter!

As soon as I lift up the hot dog, the chanting stops. That's the good news. The bad news is that the phones come out. The second I take a bite, the meme-machine will have its next meme. But I don't care. Because what's the point of caring? I'm already a school-wide laughing stock. A joke, to both the cool kids and the rejects. Nothing I do can change that. I have a tiny dick. Everyone knows my penis is small, and here in the state of Texas, where size definitely matters, and manhood is everything, having a tiny dick is a crime that ranks right up there with hating football or saying something nice about Oklahoma or New Mexico. You just don't.

Except, I can't make my penis bigger. If I could, I would. I don't need a huge porno-dong. Just a regular, average penis would suit me just fine. Because then maybe the girls wouldn't snicker. Maybe the cool kids wouldn't make fun of me. Maybe the rejects would take me back. With an average penis, I tell myself, I could be anonymous. But then I remind myself that I can't change who I am. As far as the kids at John Wayne High School are concerned, I am Peter with the little peter, or simply Little Peter, or for the sake of brevity, LP - which is what some jerk painted on my locker. 

The second I bite into the hot dog, I will contribute another installment to the Peter's Little Peter meme. Which is what I do, because like everything else in my life since "the incident," my plan has been to get through it as quickly as possible. That's my operating theory for life, for high school, and certainly for lunch.

So I take a bite, then another, and another. I ignore the taunts, the cheers, the jeers. I try not to think about the meme girls and what they'll do with today's material. I just eat my hot dog as fast as possible. 

Then I reach for my napkin, so I can wipe the ketchup and mustard off my lips and get the hell out of the cafeteria. But to my surprise, there's a note written on my napkin. It says: Meet me at Coffee Fix after school. I may have a solution to your little problem.

There's no name on the note, but it's signed "a friend." Which gives me pause, because as I look around the cafeteria, I don't see any friendly faces. But the truth is, I'd do anything for bigger penis. And even though I'm pretty sure this is a trap to humiliate me yet again, a part of me can't help but wonder if I should meet this stranger after school? 

Thank you so much for reading! Please comment and vote! Doing so means a lot, and comments and votes are a great way to support this story!

What do you think of the story so far?

What do you think of Peter?

Do you think Peter should meet the stranger after school?

A) No way! It's a trap

B) Sure. What's he got to lose?