Free Ant Farm: And Other Desperate Situations by Simon Rich Page A

it’s hard when U know that your death is a 4gone conclusion. It’s only a matter of time B4 my D4med liver ceases 2 function 4ever.
    My innards R swarming w/2morous growths & the pain is excruci8ing. i no longer have any will 2 live. 2morrow i’ll B sed8ed 4 the oper8ion. Secretly, i hope i don’t come 2.
    i’ve decided 2 stop praying. Y should I? i h8 god. He sh@ on me & i h8 him.
    All i can do now is w8 4 death.
    :(

if life were like middle school
    JUDGE : In all my years on the bench, I have never seen a more despicable criminal. You robbed, assaulted, and tortured the victim simply for the thrill of it. Do you have anything to say in your defense before I sentence you?
    CRIMINAL : Nope.
    JUDGE : In that case, I hereby sentence you to forty years in a maximum security prison. I also sentence the victim to forty years in prison.
    VICTIM : Wait— what? That doesn’t make any sense! He attacked we!
    JUDGE : I don’t care who started it.

pen pal
    In seventh grade, everyone in my class was assigned a foreign pen pal. Mine was from Bulgaria, and his name was Bojidar. We exchanged letters once a month, and at the end of the year we wrote reports about each other’s countries based on what we had learned. Here is his report:
    L IFE IN THE USA
By Bojidar
    Of all the boys in the United States, Simon is the most popular. Simon is especially very popular with the girls at his school. I am very lucky that I was assigned the pen pal Simon, because it turns out that he is a very important American!
    To the American girls, Simon is like a matador. Theycarry around in their pockets pictures of his face, and they trade the pictures to each other like they are currency. Rebecca, the most beautiful girl in America, wants to be his girlfriend but she does not say anything to him about it because she is afraid he will say no. The girls are impressed with Simon because (1) he does very well at all the videogames, and (2) he knows all the facts about the planets in outer space.
    The cool things to wear in America are sweatpants, hand-me-down T-shirts, and big braces on your mouth and head. Another cool thing is to wear Velcro shoes. Here is a photograph of my pen pal. The average height for a thirteen-year-old boy in the United States is four feet five inches tall. So although he is small by the Bulgarian standard, in the United States, Simon is a boy of average size.
    In the United States, a normal thing for boys is to go to a speech doctor every day after school to learn how to make the l, s, r , and t sounds. This is not something that is weird in the United States.
    In the United States, a cool thing is to listen to songs from the Disney movies, such as Aladdin, Small Mermaid , and Beauty and Beast . Here is an example about that: One time my pen pal was listening to a tape of Disney songs on a Walkman machine, and Trevor, the leaderof the lacrosse team, opened the machine and saw that the tape inside was Small Mermaid . There were a lot of girls from the school standing near them also. When Trevor looked at the tape, he said something like “That is a normal thing for a boy to be listening to, you are a cool guy.” Then Trevor and the girls came over to Simon’s house and they all listened to the Disney songs together and became friends. That is how things work in America.

a fantasy i had in seventh grade
    Dear seventh graders,
    Congratulations to all of the students who passed the Presidential Fitness Test! In three weeks, you will be engaged in warfare with the enemies of the United States.
    I’d like to give special kudos to football co-captains Lance and Trevor, who both scored above the 90th percentile. You’ll be going directly to the front lines.
    Unfortunately, those of you who scored beneath the 35th percentile will not be allowed to participate in this war. You will, however, get to help out with strategizing—i.e., deciding which soldiers go on the most dangerous missions.
    Also, I have been informed that while