According to his friends, family and anyone he has interacted with since completing his university exams last week, 22 year old Francis Brand is making the comment that he’s “too cool for school” a bit too much now.
“This mildly annoying ordeal began the moment we came out of our final history exam,” explained classmate Orla Buckley. “He turned to me, undid his tie, put on some shades and laughingly said ‘I’m quite literally – too cool…for school’, riffing off the popular expression ‘too cool for school’ and the fact that he was finished his exams and school.”
Orla claims she laughed uncomfortably when Francis made the joke and gave it little further thought, assuming it was the sort of throwaway inconsequential jokey comment that people sometimes say and then become embarrassed by, until Francis repeated the comment twice more that day much to the discomfort of those present, many of whom felt it was “one note that he was playing over and over again, like the sonorous tone of church bells at your own funeral”.
“I think he just finds it genuinely funny, or the exams have seriously messed with his brain,” speculated Orla who says that Francis has repeated the comment about 25 times in her company since finishing exams and has even used it as a status update on Facebook which she claims was rewarded with 10 likes. “I’m hoping that the novelty of being finished college will finally start to wear off and that maybe he’ll stop saying it, but that could take all summer and even til after official graduation.”
It was at this point in the interview that an overwrought Orla broke down weeping and making the pathetic whimpering sounds of someone who has been undeniably pushed to the limit.
Francis’s parents shared Orla’s concern claiming that they’ve had to put up with repeated variations of the joke whenever college is mentioned. “I asked him did he have any plans to go into postgraduate work maybe,” confided Francis’s dad Matthew. “He turned to me and said ‘Dad, that’s school and in case you didn’t know, I’m too cool for school’ and then laughed almost mechanically.”
“I just took him in my arms, stroked his head and soothingly said ‘yes you are son, yes you are,'” he added.
“Sometimes you just want to sit him down and make him stop,” concluded Matthew, “tell him he’s being an unfunny fool and embarrassing himself because you’re his parent and you love him but sometimes you just have to let them make their own mistakes in life, an important one of which is knowing when to stop repeating a joke that’s run out of steam.”
