“Well, well, how are you?”
After all the disappointment and tension, I broke down and began to cry. My dad was quite taken aback.
“My dear child! What is the matter?”
“They fired me from the meat counter at Glæsibæ,” I sighed between sorrowful sobs.
“Now, now, why?” he asked, surprised.
“Because of my haircut.”
Dad looked at my haircut but didn’t seem to notice anything wrong with it.
“Because of your haircut? What is it about your haircut?”
“They feel that it just isn’t okay,” I answered and wept.
My father had often said and done things that seemed strange to me and was probably the strangest man I’ve ever met in my life. But what he did next, I have always felt was the weirdest thing he ever did. He stood up and said:
“Clean yourself up and come with me.”
He got his coat on, and we went out in the car and he drove me out to the Suðurver mall. He had clearly already decided on a plan but didn’t tell me what it was. He killed the engine right outside, opened the door, and told me to come with him. He went straight into the hair salon. The hairdresser came over to us with a curious expression.
“Good morning.”
“Good morning. Don’t you have a wig for a kid like this?”
The hairdresser looked at me.
“Yes. What happened to your hair?”
I explained mohawks to her and punk and everything. She had me sit in a chair and brought over a few wigs on plastic heads. Dad chose a thick, reddish brown wig with heavy and large curls.
“This is exactly what his hair was like!”
The wig was nothing like my hair. The hairdresser put the wig on my head and combed it. My father was delighted, but I was skeptical. He was so happy on the way back he hummed the whole way. He felt he had apparently solved the problem very well. Maybe this wasn’t such a stupid idea, after all? Maybe this was absolute genius? This way, I could continue to work at the meat counter, but also be a punk. I would definitely reconsider things; Dad had grown in my opinion. The next day I turned up at Glæsibæ undeterred and revitalized; I went right into Guðmundur’s office with the wig in place, excited and full of expectation. Guðmundur was sitting at his desk and looked up when I walked through the door:
“Hi, isn’t this good?”
Guðmundur looked at me with amazement and sadness in his eyes. After a while, he said:
“Poor Jón. And I had such high hopes for you.”
So ended my career as a meat industry person.
In the spring it came out that I hadn’t been going to the school and hadn’t learned a thing. Mom had talked to the principal.
“Why don’t you attend school, Jón?”
I hated that damn school. I hated the building and everyone inside it. I hated the whole damn group. The principal was hateful and the teachers all idiots. I was apprehensive about going there. When I walked onto the school grounds, I got a knot in my stomach. I felt like I was suffocating. Most of all, though, I despised the Morons who always hit me and bullied me. I’d rather die than go to school. I feared school more than anything else. I felt like there was nothing for me at school. It wasn’t there to teach me anything I was interested in learning, and what I was interested in wasn’t taught there.
“They’re always teasing me,” I muttered. It meant nothing to my mom. She didn’t get it.
“Just stop talking to those kids.”
Stop talking to them? I never spoke to them. They just followed me upstairs. I intended to never go there again.
“I’ll never go back to that damn school,” I said, resolutely.
“What do you plan to do, then?”
I wanted to go away — anywhere at all, far away from everything — to start over where no one knew me.
“Can’t I go to some boarding school?”
“A boarding school? What boarding school?”
I had met a few kids who went to Laugarvatn. It seemed like an extremely enjoyable school.
“I always wanted to go to Laugarvatn.”
Mom shook her head.
“You can’t go to Laugarvatn. It’s too close to Reykjavík.”
I didn’t know anything about it. I had no idea where Laugarvatn was, whether it was near the city or not. It could very well be out west or far east. But the kids who went there were happy, and no one beat you up.
“Whatever, I’ll never go back to this crappy Réttarholt School. I hate it. Can’t I just skip school?”
Later that summer, Mom and Dad called me down and asked me to sit with them at the kitchen table.
“I’ve found a school for you, Jón,” said Mom. “We are going to enroll you there this fall.”
“What school is that?” I asked.
“Hérað School at Núpur in Dyrafirð.”
Núpur in Dyrafirð? I had never heard of it before. What was it? And, what’s more, where was it? This sounded exciting. I was happy and looking forward to getting away from everything.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JÓN GNARR was born in 1967 in Reykjavík. As a child, Gnarr was diagnosed with severe mental retardation due to his emotional and learning differences, including dyslexia and ADHD. He nevertheless overcame his hardships and went on to become one of Iceland’s most popular actors and comedians.
In the wake of the global economic crisis that devastated Iceland’s economy, Gnarr formed the joke Best Party with a number of friends with no background in politics, which parodied Icelandic politics and aimed to make the life of the citizens more fun. Gnarr’s Best Party managed a plurality win in the 2010 municipal elections in Reykjavík, and Gnarr became major of Reykjavík.
His term as mayor ended in June 2014, whereupon he served as artist-in-residence at Rice University’s Center for Energy and Environmental Research in the Human Sciences in Houston, where he finished work on the final book in his trilogy of childhood memoir-novels: The Outlaw.
He plans to use his post-mayor years to continue writing and speaking on the issues that are most important to him: freedom of speech, human rights, protecting the environment, tolerance, compassion, the importance of philosophy, and achieving world peace.
Gnarr currently writes weekly columns for the newspaper Fréttablaðið and serves as the head of domestic content for 365 Media in Iceland, overseeing the production of original entertainment in the Icelandic language. His first big project is to produce a television show about a man who runs for mayor of Reykjavík as a joke — and wins. Gnarr, of course, will star as the mayor.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
LYTTON SMITH is the author of two collections of poetry, both from Nightboat Books, and several translations from the Icelandic for both Deep Vellum and Open Letter, including Jón Gnarr’s The Indian (Deep Vellum, 2015), The Ambassador, by Bragi Ólafsson (Open Letter, 2010), and Childreen in Reindeer Woods by Kristín Ómarsdóttir (Open Letter, 2012). He has received awards from the Poetry Society of America and the Icelandic Literature Fund. He is Assistant Professor of English at SUNY Geneseo in upstate New York.