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The Drop Out
by Christopher Wilkinson
2007-09-25 09:24:17 |
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I
Life sucks. Nobody cares. Here I am, there’s wars everywhere. My family is a war on wheels. My school is a battle ground. People begging for money all over the streets. Kids next door busted for who knows what. The cops are burning down the town. The mayor is a pig. The King is a Fink. The T.V. is full of shit. Everyone is full of shit. Life is shit . . . . . There’s this girl I kinna like. She’s in love with another dude. I don’t want to fight. I want her, but I’m scared. Big Jim says he’ll hook me up with his sister. The one with the runny nose. Shit! Gregg says that glue makes the day go by faster. He’s looking sick. Maybe he’s right, though. Better to be sick. Everyone’s sick. Everyone’s too tired to do anything. Nobody cares. Yah, the missionaries come by and tell me they care. God cares. Sure! Like all I need to do is become another zombie in their trip and their God will care – care enough to make me a zombie. Maybe the glue is the way to go. Thought about the bridge. Jody did that. Ended up in Bellevue for a few months. Not so easy to die. Who cares if I live or die? Life sucks – THEN you die.
II
Nobody worried bout me. Guess I be worrying bout meself. I’m cutting out. Gotta find somewhere that’s safe -- I mean, not completely totally fucking crazy. . . . .Where? Guess I hit the road, keep looking, maybe find that big rock candy mountain or something. Find somewhere where I can have peace and quiet, nobody bothering me, maybe I’ll even find a girl I like – she like me too – like, no problems. Just love each other and have enough to be happy. I’m outta here.
III
Lookin' and running, hiding, sneaking, surviving ain’t easy. Hard life. Begging for food, work when I can – under age, no social security number – shit! If you ain’t a church zombie you’re a govt. zombie. Get a number and step in line. This life is bad, food’s bad, and there ain’t nowhere where they don’t tell you some other place is better. Where to? There MUST be some kinna place where you can get some peace and quiet, just a rest, just get off the merry go round and stop scrounging for the next chance to stay alive in a world that you’re better off dead.
IV
Well, ain’t gonna find it by running around. Probably better just to sit right down and think a while. Not that thinkin' ever done any good. Easier on the legs, though. Maybe I'll just crawl into a box and sit there till that’s all I am – a box with a guy sitting in it. Maybe I’ll forget about the girls, the food, the money -- all that shit. I’ll just be a box. A box with a guy sitting in it. Might stay that way forever. No one cares enough to look for me, no one needs to find me, yah – I’ll be a box.
V
Gotta take a wiz, man. Sitting in a box – gotta take a wiz. Pee my pants? Na. I’ll take a pee, then get back in. Hay! That guy’s got some soda, just threw away half a can! I could drink it! Na, thirsty, schmirsty. I just wanna be a box.
“Hey, kid – want a ride?” Shit! He don’t want to give me no ride. He wants to use and abuse me, like the whole world. No free rides, that’s what I say. I am a box.
VI
Morning sun. I see that old lady pushing that card full of trash. She been walking the street all night. Pushing that trash. She’s falling down. I’m watching couple hours. Cop comes up and kicks her. She be dead. They’re taking her away. Nobody knows her name. Ain’t from anywhere. No kin – sorta like me. Yah, I’m gonna be like that too. What’s a poor boy to do? Maybe I should get rich and buy myself some great big house and get a car and all that. Then I could have anything I wanted – Have to leave my box. Shit! I ain’t no box. I got life, and I want things. I’m not gonna let all these stupid people with their stupid games and their stupid rules in their stupid schools with their stupid numbers run my life. I’m gonna be somebody.
VII
Been a few years. Got a job. Got a woman. Fighting and loving and laughing. Life, ya know. It ain’t bad. Jim died of cancer the other day. Nice funeral. Glad it wasn’t me. Jody got sent to Bellevue again – tried to jump off the Brooklyn this time. She won’t learn that one. Me, I got it all worked out. Nothin' gonna happen to me. Even decided to start givin to charity – keeps the truth sellers out of my face, and I get respect. That’s it. A man needs respect. I just wish I could live forever like this. Life is fine. . . . .
VIII
That brat is driving me crazy! I mean, crying all night. Wife doesn’t know me anymore. Worked so hard all these years. I remember that box. Why didn’t I just stay in the box? Would have been solid wood by now. O God, screaming, piss, shit, bitch, ain’t got no this and that, go buy the other stuff, get to work on time, no sleep, this ain’t it – no, this ain’t it.
IX
My little brother on the phone. The one who stole my bicycle. Says his wife is sick, bad. Needs ten thousand for the doctor. Shit! I ain’t got ten thousand – and he stole my bicycle – thirty years ago – I was being a box – but the principle of the thing! His wife’s gonna die? She never done me wrong. Sell the car? Hafta get stuff without a car. Didn’t used to have a car. Had a bicycle. Hock the car, help the lady. That’s right. I want to help. God knows, I need help – nobody to help me much – might as well help someone else.
X
They want me to be a teacher. Said I had no GED or diploma or nothing. They said they’d help me through that. Say I’d be good with the kids. Start out on a descent job. Might be able to get my car out of hock. Don’t got much to live for for myself no more. I hated everything, and I wanted everything, and I tried to get everything, and I met a lot of strange people. Think it’s better to spend my days doing what I can. Maybe some other kid won’t have to go thorough the same hell I went through. I’ll try.
XI
Man. We got the kids. Hell out there. The teachers are so burnt out – just trying to survive. Got shot at yesterday. Nothing strange. I think I’ll take the day off and go to the school board. See if I know anyone. . . . .
Shit! Those people are up to their ears, too. Ain’t nobody nowhere got peace of mind. They say it’s the money, or the government, or the distribution, or the allocation, or the corruption – they say a lot of stuff, but it’s the very same shit I saw when I moved into the box. Nothing ever changes here. Think I’m gonna start writing letters to the foreign governments asking for foreign aid to help the kids in America’s schools, send copies of my letters to the department of education – get ‘um all stirred up. Like who be asking for aid from foreign countries to help school children in America? Like me. Like you. Like, lets us teachers all start writing all the governments in the world – and the United Nations too, ask them to get us the books and supplies and the money to teach our children. Yah, sure, somebody’s gonna try to knock us dawn. That’s for sure. And when we fall, we’ll hit the papers, and then it will be a scene. I think the funding will appear. Let’s do it.
XII
My grandbaby gonna get married soon. I been offered a job at the ministry of education or some such – like maybe the ambassador to the U.N. Had to quit at UNICEF cause I didn’t have enough time for my family. Now I think I just might take that job. The office they showed me looks a lot like that box I wanted to be when I was a kid. It is a box. Yah, and it’s full of shit, too. Only good thing about it is that I can compost some the shit and help make a few gardens grow. Better than dying pushing a cart full of trash around town all night. In fact, I think those cart pushing folk ought to get some kinna place to sleep – out of the cold. Think I’ll call the president – “Hey! Joe! What’s the president’s number.”
. . . . . . “No, the American one.”
XIII
Just these things I know are true
You can’t make a horse drink water
And you can’t teach a blind man blue
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