There is a man at Xavier who is made of the stuff of legend. He is the lobster liberator, the friend of Block, and the famous bear fighting mountain climber. He seems to have been everywhere, and even wrote a book of poetry. His Wikipedia page proves this elevated status. But how and where are these legends of his early life conceived?  Are they even real?  No one knows.  All anyone knows is that five minutes to the bell gives a window into either the fantastical creativity or the illustrious life of Mr. John Popielaski, or as students refer to him, J-Pops.

When I asked students about him, they say that he’s quite a character, despite his monotone speaking style.  But what I heard most was that he’s had an unusual and fascinating past. The stories he’s told seem to have originated at the dawn of time, and since then have been passed down by word of mouth from student-to-student, perhaps stretched beyond the believable along the way.

The stories that I have heard most often are the Lobster Liberation, Block and the Ten Year old on a bike, and the hiking of Mt. McKinley. They are exhilarating tales that you would be sorry you never heard.

The greatest known myth I have heard was the Lobster Liberation. His lobster liberation was a while back when he and his friends were catching lobsters. J-Pops had taken a lobster and the lobster had told him to set him free. Being the understanding man J-Pops is he told his friend and threw the lobster back. His friend punched him into the water and left him in the middle of the sound at 11 at night. 45 minutes later a boat had come by and invited him on board. His friend came back stunned that J-Pops had managed to “tread water” for so long and thus the brave lobster liberator was born out of a long time of swimming.

The other well known legend is of Mr. Pops and his friend Block. Together they were best of friends and often walked down the streets of Washington D.C. together. One fateful night when J-Pops and Block had been strolling down the streets they came across a boy estimated ten years old just riding his bike back and forth down the street until eventually J-Pops and Block were stopped and mugged by this kid. The kid had taken ten dollars from J-Pops which had greatly upset and dipped into his pockets of wealth quite steeply. J-Pops and Block knew the kid and had a brilliant idea to get revenge on him for his illegal actions but using their better judgement did not right the wrong with another and instead let the whole incident go showing the great heroic and level-headedness during times of great struggle of self.

The last myth of J-Pops is the monumental climb of Mt. McKinley. Him and his friend Jamal had planned the trip a month before and when proceeding to the mountain base found two more people by the name of Craig and Richard. Together they were climbing when they ran into two bears and three cubs on the climb. About a thousand feet into the climb they were far from help and didn’t know what to do. Mr. Popielaski decided that he would wrestle them due to his recent degree in bear wrestling that he earned in night school two weeks before. Valiantly, he charged at the bears and brought one down with a karate chop to the thorax and the other by jumping on its back and riding it until exhausted when the bear finally fell. Together him and his friends finished the climb but the hero of the whole event was clearly the bear wrestling of Mr. Pops

Disclaimer: All events in this article are true. Except for the false events. They are not true and its your job to figure out which ones are or are not.