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Monday, November 27, 2006 :
People Person

I was really looking forward to not celebrating Thanksgiving this year. It was one of the things about China that was really attractive to me; No more pretending to have anything in common with my mind-numbingly dull family in order to gleefully celebrate the beginning of our mass betrayal and slaughter of the indigenous peoples that so kindly taught us how to survive in the unforgiving wilderness, with cranberry sauce.

Unfortunately, God hates me, and therefore....

Frogman's father, whom for the purposes of this blog I will call "Dick," and another american that lives in his building, an aged gentleman heretofore known as "Cheese," arranged for the import of a frozen turkey, and even found a restaurant who's chef would cook it to their specifications. Thanksgiving dinner was on, and I had nowhere left to run.

There were others there; some of the business acquaintances that Dick and Cheese have made. And many of those businessmen brought dates. And when I say "dates" I'm not referring to their wives or girlfriends. I'm saying they stopped off at the market for a bottle of wine and a girl.

The real fun began when Dick actually insisted that everyone, including the "dates," take turns expressing what it is they are thankful for. I was thankful that Frogman managed to change the subject before it was my turn.

Frogman, Tankgirl, and I all agreed that the general feeling of uncomfortableness and fierce desire to not be in the same room as any of the other people there, really helped to make this feel like a traditional holiday.

So, I did the one thing that I had not done in a very long time, and really expected to never do again...I drank. It helped.

Thankfully, I did not overdo it. When one of the "dates" began to complain that the recent fall weather had given her a cold, and that she was suffering from a sore throat, my first impulse was to suggest that I had something she could suck on. Mercifully, I still had enough good sense left to not actually say it out loud, and I put my wine glass down for the remainder of the night.

To the credit of the restaurant, they did do a wonderful job on the turkey. They even brought us sweet potatoes fried in garlic that really made my day. The staff seemed a little put off when Dick insisted that he be the one to cut up the turkey, but I think that's because the idea of self-service of any kind (tradition or not) is a completely foreign concept to these people.

As things settled down, and I began to sober up, it was time to leave. As it turns out, we had other places to be. We had gotten a call earlier that night from one of the staff at Friend's Bar and Grill, a local establishment owned by a Canadian friend of ours, whom I will call "Brother" (because that is what he calls everybody else).

As the caller told us, it was Brother's birthday, the staff was going to surprise him with a cake and a card at midnight, and they knew that he would really want us there for it. So after passing out a few cordial goodbyes, we made our way across town for the next social engagement of the evening.

It was slightly less uncomfortable at the bar; the usual mix of foreign businessmen and Chinese girls trying to get money from them. Brother was elated to see us, and gave us free Red Bull for the whole night. The new band was a far cry better than their old one, and played all sorts of good Western music from Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and the like. They even got Frogman on stage to sing "Jeremy" which he has never done sober before. It was an odd experience for him.

The next day, we all felt hung over. Yes, I had well sobered up by the time the night was over, and Frogman and Tankgirl had not drank at all, but come the morning we all felt as though we had been on a bender. It was painful.

My theory is that it was the people. One of the many unifying factors that make Frogman, Tankgirl, and I such good friends is our mutual hate for the rest of humanity. We can't stand the shallow soullessness of the general public (of any nation), nor can we stomach the petty dramas or superficial, short-sighted methods they all employ to try and bring empty meaning to their willfully meaningless lives.

In short, we can't deal with people. Sure, in short term doses we can mingle with the public as though we were one of them, but the effort pains us on many mental, emotional, and even physical levels.

Saint Burton is a rather tall man, and often complains of the back pain he suffers from as a result of having to stoop down for just about everything in the world that has been built for a general populace that is much shorter than him.

The same goes for those of us who have to mentally and emotionally stoop down to the level of the rest of the petty idiots of the world. We can do it, but it hurts, and we really don't like doing it. We avoid it when we can.

So, Happy Holidays, everyone. Now leave me alone.

TTFN

Friday, November 17, 2006 :
Sheer Genius

It's hard to find good porn these days. Trust me, I've looked.

I'm not that kinky of a guy. My sexual tastes are pretty run-of-the-mill. I'm not into BDSM, tying up or handcuffs, toys, diapers, leather, latex, golden showers, shitting on people, asshole licking, fat chicks, old chicks, chicks with missing teeth or hairy legs, or animals. I'm really not into simulated rape scenarios, and I think there's something wrong with the men and women who are.

So, this actually leaves me with rather limited choices when it comes to my visual erotica. It seems that the stigma related to sexual content prevents people with any real imagination from expressing themselves in this manner.

Basically, the porn industry has run into the same problem as the rest of Hollywood: It's all been done. In some cases, it's been done to death. They've tried to mix it up over the years. The "pizza delivery" scenario has been tweeked a million different ways. As have "cable guy," "babysitter," "Post-game cheerleader," and I've even seen a handful of "mad scientists."

The problem is, these people that make porn know that they don't have to try. They have chosen two people, almost at random, and video taped them fucking each other in as many visually pleasing (even though, not entirely physically comfortable) positions, ways, and methods they can think of (about 3 to 4). This alone is all they need to sell the video. And just as Hollywood will never stop making crap like Alien Vs. Preditor as long idiots like me keep going to the theater, even when I know full well ahead of time that it's going to suck, the people of Pornlandia will continue to sleepwalk through every production and churn out scene after scene of erotic dren that is just as masturbatory to the brain as it is to...uh, the other part of your brain.

I say all this because I have come accross the acception to everything I just said. Finally, somebody in the porn industry said to themselves, "hey, we're already filming people fucking and sucking...what the hell are we holding back for?"

That, my friends, is what porn should look like.

TTFN

Wednesday, November 08, 2006 :
Was It Something I Said?

It seems, after only a couple months of allowing the people of China to openly view the sordid material found infesting the Blogging community, China has once again blocked Blogspot.com from entering Chinese cyberspace. I can't help but wonder if it might have been, just a little bit, my fault.

Highly unlikely, I know. But a guy can dream, can't he?

At least now I can talk about my girlfriend without worrying if she's going to read it. That kind of underhanded freedom alone could save almost any relationship.

Anyway...

How's that whole 'democracy' thing working out for you folks back in the states? I heard something about fights breaking out at polling stations. What's that all about?

* * *

I've had a little free time on my hands as of late, and I've been spending a lot of it browsing through random blogs and Myspace pages. Because, really, even porn get's boring after a while.

I've been comming across more than a share of online musing written by teenagers and adolecents. My roommates and I have been having more than a few laughs at their expense.

Tankgirl asked an interesting question. Considering the mulititude of public access there is to anything said by anyone on the web, and that more and more young people are jumping on the webwagon every day, it makes you wonder if any of this is going to come back to bite our new generation on the ass someday.

For example, let's flash forward 20 years or so:

Reporter: Excuse me, Mr. Senator, is it true you once operated under the online handle of "10iNcHcRaCkEr"?
Senator: Well, that was a long time ago...
Reporter: So, it was you?
Senator: Well, yes. But...
Reporter: So then, it was you that wrote "Paris Hilton is teh hotness. I'd totally tap that with a spoon."
Senator: Well, I think it's important that you take into account the purveyant attitudes of the era in question...
Reporter: It's a "yes" or "no" question, Senator.
Senator: Well, yes. But I was 14 years old at the time. I hardly think...
Reporter: Do you have any reaction toward Miss Hilton's recent conviction for beastiality, Mr. Senator?
Senator: Now, why on Earth would I have anything...
Reporter: It's a simple question, Senator. You don't have anything further to hide, do you?

Won't that make for an interesting episode of 60 Minutes someday?

I'm so glad I'm never going to have to be involved in politics. Not just because I may be embarrassed by something I once said, but I just can't stand the thought of having to visit every peice-of-shit town in my district and pretend that garbage heap, sheepshit farm, or crack burg is the greatest place in america. I wouldn't even be able to pull it off in places like Chicago or Boise. I'd crap myelf from laughing too hard.

TTFN

Friday, November 03, 2006 :
A Work In Progress

The following is an excerpt from the novel I've been working on for the past six years or so; The Shoe Tree Fables. It details a year in the life of young Nathan Wallace, who is very loosely based off myself in the third grade. I hope you find it, at the very least, mildly amusing.

Neighborhood

I lived close enough to the school to walk home. There was a bus stop almost directly in front of my house, because some folks seem to think that a mile and a half is far too much for a gradeschooler to be burdened with. I, on the other hand, felt that the burden lied in being confined on a six-ton rolling death trap with no seat belts while surrounded by fifty-plus kids with the social skills of baboons.

I rather enjoyed the walk home. Just past the school was a large willow tree that grew at the bottom of a short hill. My favorite part of the walk was to gather the willow's branches in my hands and swing to the bottom of the hill, hero style. I would trade off between a Tarzan yell or humming the Indiana Jones theme as I soared through the air, three feet off the ground. It was my few seconds of adventure every afternoon, and I was perfectly willing to brave the epic journey home in order to have that to myself.

The day in question was shaping up to be a very bad day. Colin Park's tantrum had gotten me kicked out of summer school. A disruptive and disrespectful influence such as myself was no longer welcome for the remainder of the summer. As a result, I was to repeat the third grade.

To make the matter worse, as I walked home on this especially hot and humid day, I was weighed down by a handwritten letter from Mrs. Hatfield that argued this idea in candid and painful detail. I was to go directly home and deliver this letter to my mother. I was really looking forward to the willow tree. I needed my few seconds of adventure. I deserved my few seconds of adventure.

As I came to the top of the hill, I was sweating. "Sweating like Colin Park after a deep breath," I said to myself.

I suddenly looked over my shoulder. If anyone had heard me say that, there would be even more hell to pay.

I turned back to the willow tree and smiled. This was mine. My few seconds of perfect fantasy. I pondered for a moment; Tarzan or Indiana Jones?

I made my decision and gathered a few strong fronds of the tree into my hands. After belting out the first seven notes of the Indian Jones Theme, I lifted my feet off the ground.

Gravity played it's role and pulled me down toward the earth. The leverage of the willow's branches took immediate action and swung me to the center of the tree's private plot of land.

It only lasts two and a half seconds. However, when you allow yourself to become a part of the moment, take an instant to let yourself feel every part of the moment; the breeze as you push through the air that has been kept cool by the shade of the tree, the soft willow fronds shaping perfectly to your grip, the complete silence as you float through the air, and the rush of seeing the ground fall away from you for an instant; then the experience can feel like an entire lifetime has gone by in those few seconds.

As I neared the trunk of the tree, I curled my legs up to my chest and let go of the branches. With a satisfying "thump" I landed flat on my back. I lay there on the soft, grassy ground under the willow tree. For a few blissful seconds, I had forgotten everything. I forgot about Colin Park. I forgot about Mrs. Drexler and Mrs. Hatfield. The letter in my pocket, the summer school, the repetition of The Third Grade, all forgotten. I even forgot my own name. It was just me and the willow tree, here and now.

* * *

Over the next few minutes, the events of the day and it's looming outcome slowly restocked themselves into my mind. I lifted myself into a sitting position and rested against the trunk of the tree. I wasn't about to rush home, and the shade of the tree was proving to be far more rewarding than I had anticipated.

With morbid curiosity, I took Mrs. Hatfield's letter out of my pocket. She had not sealed the envelope, so there was no danger in reading the letter before my mother did.

The letter was almost entirely what I expected. It outlined, rather one-sidedly, how I had deeply offended my fellow student and that I was apparently unremorseful in my wrongdoing. I took a pen out of my pocket and wrote the word "unremorseful" onto my palm; a passive reminder to look this word up in the dictionary when I had the chance.

The letter went on to say that my behavior as a whole, along with my apparent disregard for my academic responsibilities, suggested that I may require an environment that the traditional classroom could not provide. I took my pen out again and wrote the word "disregard" onto my palm, just under "unremorseful."

The rest of the letter was nothing new to me. Expulsion for the remainder of the summer term and repetition of the third grade. There was a closing statement about a testing session for the following day.

"Wait a minute," I said to myself, "they're kicking me out of school, but they want me to come back tomorrow to take a test? That doesn't make any sense." I crumple the paper into a ball and threw it.

A few seconds later, I remember that my mother was suppose to receive this letter. I did my best to smooth the paper out, but it was no use. I contemplated for moment going back to the school and asking for another copy, but dropped that idea after realizing that they would most likely put this information into the new letter.

I folded the paper back into the envelope, gave a light salute to the willow tree, and turned towards home.

* * *

Once I turned onto Laurie Street, I was already home. Even though my house was still a few blocks away, it served merely as the roof under which I slept and ate a majority of my meals. My true home was the entire length of Laurie Street.

The first house, on the corner of Laurie and River Road, belongs to Mrs. Castillo. It's clearly the home of an old woman with too much time spent indoors. The front of her house is overgrown with plastic lawn decorations, leaving no room for actual plant life.

Mr. Castillo died before I was born, but my older brother would talk about him once and a while. "He was a mean old fart," Burt would say.

Burt had a girlfriend that lived just a few housed down River Road from Mrs. Castillo. Whenever she saw Burt walking past her house on the way to Gail's, she would call up Gail's father at work and inform him that "the devil-child Wallace boy," was on his way over to "have his way" with his daughter. Gail's father was not appreciative of the calls, but he still made a point to put a stop Burt's visits.

When I was in the first grade, Burt sent me over to Mrs. Castillo's house to distract her as he made his way to Gail's. Then, after breaking away from her, I was to hide in the bushes in the front of Gail's house. My mission was to pound my fist on the side of the house if I saw Gail's father drive up, then run for home as fast as possible. Some days, I sat in those bushes for hours.

Across the street from Mrs. Castillo is the Shane Family. The Shane's seemed to have nothing better to do than annoy Mrs. Castillo. They had trained their dog, a husky named Bear, to shit on her driveway. Whenever she called them to complain about it, they simply dared her to leave the house and do something about it. They new full well that Mrs. Castillo hadn't stepped out her front door since Mr. Castillo died, and so the issue never went any further.

Burt Liked to hang out at the Shane house. They had two boys, Donnie and Dicky, about the same age as Burt, and they would spend whole weekends fixing cars in the front yard. Their younger sister, Desi, had a crush on Burt, and would always bring him soda and lemonade whenever he came over. She was still in Junior High, so Burt never gave her a second glance.

One day, I suddenly realized that all of the Shane kids' names start with the same letter. Burt told me not to mention it in front of any of them.

Next door to Mrs. Castillo was the Rinway Family. Jason Rinway was a year older than me and was sort of a friend of mine. This means that when we both have nothing better to do, we'll go to the river together and throw rocks while we talk about how much we both hate school.

About a month before the school year ended, I made a comment about the outcome of my grades seeming inconsequential. He asked me what "inconsequential" meant. I had just recently learned the word myself. I looked the word up in the dictionary after I had overheard Burt talking on the phone to a girl. He told her that her being a virgin was inconsequential. I never bothered looking up "virgin," because it was apparently inconsequential.

I explained this best I could to Jason. He stared at me the whole time, then stopped talking. A few minutes later he mumbled something and went home. I was left alone at the side of the river, wondering what the hell happened. That was the last time I had seen him.

In the middle of Laurie Street is Linwood Park. Not a big park, but enough to play Touch Football.

In the corner of the park was The Shoe Tree. The Shoe Tree had been there for as long as I could remember. In the spring and summer, it was hard to tell why it was called The Shoe Tree. But in the winter, with all of the leaves gone, the myriad of sneakers and tennis shoes hanging from its branches made everything clear as day.

Next door to my house was Lena Cort. Her parents and my parents seem to think we were born to be a couple, as we had been born within a month of each other. They threw us together every chance they had. Lena was more of a staple in my life than my own mother was.

I stopped halfway up my driveway and looked across to Lena's yard. She wasn't there. She had said something the day before about going to the river. I was mad as hell that I was going to be stuck in summer school instead of going to the river with my friends.

For a moment, I considered turning right around and heading for the river. My mother was not expecting me home for at least another two hours.

I stood in my driveway, rolling over all the possible cause and effect of this plan. Before I could come to a conclusion, a voice called out behind me.

"Nathan, is that you?" the voice said.

I turned to see Mr. Cort standing in his lawn.

"Hi, Mr. Cort." I said sheepishly, waving.

"What are you doing back so soon?" He called out, a little louder than I would have liked. "Lena said you'd be in Summer School all day."

I couldn't get mad at Mr. Cort, he really had no idea what he was doing.

He began chuckling a little. "They didn't kick you out already, did they?" he said.

You bastard.

My mother, hearing Mr. Cort's shouting, stepped out the front door. We locked eyes for a moment as my mind went completely blank.

"Well," she said, "answer the man."

* * *

My mother had been on the phone for an hour.

After reading the letter from Mrs. Hatfield, she sat me down at the kitchen table and told me not to move. She started with her sister, Aunt Nancy, and worked her way down the list.

One after another, she would explain to my aunt, uncle, grandparent, cousin, doctor, dentist, or whomever was unlucky enough to be available for a phone call what I had done that day. Tears would then well up into her eyes and she would beg for advice, any advice at all on how to handle such a frustrating boy like me. Apparently she had tried everything she could think of, and nothing got through to me. In the course of the first hour she had said this no less than seven times.

I, for one, had a hard time understanding why she was so upset. There were kids in my class that liked to poison cats for fun. All I did was tell a fat kid that he was fat. Not something that called for capital punishment in my book. It wouldn't have been a big deal if Colin Park would just own up to the fact and try to lose some weight.

Besides, I was the one who was going to be subjected to the humiliation of repeating the third grade with a bunch of little kids. I had a hard time seeing where further punishment was called for.

After she finally hung up the phone she sat down at the table, the wrinkled note in front of her.

"Why," she said to me, tears in her eyes, "Why do you do this to me?" This had become even more confusing to me. Not only was I being accused of cruelty to Colin Park, but now my mother was ascertaining that this was some sort of aggression against her. People were actually fighting over who got to be my victim.

"I mean, my god, what were you thinking?" she went on.

I hadn't heard that question. I was still trying to figure out what it exactly it was that I had done to her.

"Do you enjoy hurting me like this?" she said.

"What are you talking about?" I said to her finally. The look of shock on her face was far too much for me to comprehend, so I continued.

"I told Colin Park he was fat. What does that have to do with you?"

I had never seen my mother's face turn such a dark shade of red.

She stood up so fast the chair fell over with a clatter that echoed against the linoleum loud enough to be mistaken for a gunshot.

"Go to your goddamn room!" she screamed.

I needed no further convincing.

* * *

Since my youth, I've come to realize that being confined to your bedroom is rather merciful as punishments go. But at the time, it felt as though I were the victim of a war crime.

To make matters worse, I still could not fathom what I had done to deserve a punishment at all, let alone this amount of cruelty. I was humiliated, expelled, doomed to repeat several months of further humiliation, and bombarded with dehumanizing accusations from my mother. Along with this, I was yet to learn what additional suffering I would be put through once my father returned home and heard of my supposed wrongdoing.

All of this chaos and drama was being thrown upon me simply because Colin Park is incapable of coping with the simple truth that he is offensively obese.

I sat on my bed, staring at the wall, playing over the events of the day. Juggling one set of events with another, playing out possibilities and lost opportunities, each one playing out logically to the same or worse conclusions.

Where did I go wrong?

Had I chosen to ignore Colin Park when he first approached me, he would simply have began yelling at me, forcing a reaction of some kind. This brings us back to the events as they had occurred originally.

Escaping from the room would have landed me in the playground, a place of more egomaniacal danger than can be measured by any insurance adjuster in the nation. Again and again, I ran my mind through the day, each time solidifying my theory that the only way for this whole thing to have been avoided would be that if Colin Park were not so grotesque.

I don't know how long I had been sitting there, but it must have been for a few hours. Either that, or my mother had called my father in a panic and demanded he come home immediately to deal with his hell-spawn of a child. It would not have been the first time. Either way, I was still very confused when he stepped quietly into the room.

He sat down next to me and took a deep breath, looking directly at me as he did. This is his usual approach to any kind of conflict. This was his signal to me that we are about to have a very unpleasant conversation.

"Well," he said to me, "care to explain?"

Not really, I thought.

"Would it make any difference?" I asked.

My father blinked at me, not sure what to make of my question.

"What did you say?"

"Would it make any difference?" I repeated. "It seems to me that everyone has already decided that I'm a deeply flawed young man. Whenever I try to explain anything to anyone, they just yell at me and I get in more trouble."

My father mulled this over for a moment.

"Try me," he finally said.

I took my own deep breath, and went into the story. I made every detail very clear. I wanted to make sure that my father understood exactly what kind of situation I was in.

Five minutes into my story, he stopped me.

"Okay, I get it," he said to me as he interrupted. "He's fat. Now move on."

"You don't understand, dad" I pleaded, "He's not just fat, he's--"

"I get it, Nathan!" He said, getting louder, "Move on!"

I continued with the story. I even made sure to point out how I valiantly resisted the temptation to run home instead of going to Mrs. Hatfield's office. Dad seemed less than impressed, so I decided not to press it.

When I reached the end of my tale, horrific details and all, I stopped and waited for my father's reaction.

He was silent. A part of me held onto the hope that he was going to suddenly realize that I had been persecuted and would suddenly put everyone back in their place. "You're lucky your mother didn't kill you," he said. Yet again, all hopes shattered before my eyes.

"Come on, dad!" I heard my voice go up an octave, into the childish whine that I always hated myself for. "I didn't do anything wrong. Why do I have to go through this?"

"You're kidding me, right?" He said to me, almost laughing. "You made that kid cry."

"I didn't make him cry. I didn't put a gun to his head."

"He cried because you called him fat."

"He is fat! Weren't you listening?"

"Why did you feel the need to tell him that?"

"Because he asked me why I was staring at him. That was why."

"So, why didn't you apologize when your principal asked you to?"

"Because I didn't do anything wrong, and I wasn't sorry."

"You should've apologized anyway."

"That would have been lying."

My father stopped suddenly. A confused look on his face. I had seen the same look on his face before when Burt once told him that if he didn't buy Burt a car, he would have no choice but to get rides from Todd Linfield, whom had been arrested twice for drunk driving in the middle of the day. This was the look my father took on when hit with a moral paradox. I was at a loss to understand what the paradox was. It seemed clear to me; I told the truth, therefore no wrong done.

My father's gaze lowered.

"What's that on your hands?" He asked.

I looked down. I had completely forgotten that "unremorseful" and "disregard" were written on my left palm. I opened my hand wide so my father could see them clearly. "I read the letter," I told him, "these were the words that I couldn't understand." My father stared at my palm for a while, as though he was amazed or confused by it somehow.

"Have you looked them up yet?" He asked.

I shook my head, lowering my hand back down into my lap.

"Unremorseful means you don't feel bad for doing bad things." He said to me, quiet and direct. "Disregard means having no respect for anyone or anything."

"Really?" I said, looking back down at my palm, amazed at the apparent meaning of these words. "In that case, Mrs. Hatfield is a liar." I said, as matter of factly as I could.

This took my father back something good. He was obviously as confused by all this as I was.

"Why would you say such a thing?"

"First of all," I stood up from the bed as I spoke, I suddenly found myself to be very upset. "I do feel bad when I do bad things. This one time, I accidentally tripped Lena when were playing, and I felt really bad about it. But she said she wasn't hurt so it was okay."

My father interrupted me again. "Then why don't you feel bad for making that kid cry?"

"Because I didn't make him cry!" I was getting frustrated with this line of the discussion. "He's fat, so I can't stop staring at him! He asks me why I'm staring at him, and I tell him! So, he decides to be a baby about it. What did I do wrong? Why should I feel bad?"

"Okay, now" my father said, "calm down."

"And as for "disregard" I --" I stalled for a moment. I knew for a fact that I respected many people and many things, but at the moment I couldn't come up with any examples where I showed that respect.

"I...."

"Go ahead," my father was thinking the same thing I was.

Then it came to me. "Bear!"

"Bear? The Shane's dog?"

"Yeah. Mrs. Castillo hates it when Bear does his business on her driveway. So if I ever see him go over there, I shoo him away."

"Really?" My father had never seen me do that. In fact, I made sure that nobody saw me do it. If the Shane's new I was ruining their favorite form of entertainment I'd never hear the end of it.

"It's true," I said, "and that is a lot of respect to show to a mean old bat like Mrs. Castillo."

My father stared at me, not saying a word.

"You should've apologized to that boy," he said.

"But that would have been lying," I was about to start crying myself.

My father stood up and turned to my door.

"Sometimes you have to lie," he said to me. "For instance, I'm about to go lie to your mother. I'm going to tell her that you're very sorry for what you did and that a mere week of grounding should make sure that you never do anything like this again."

I rolled my eyes at my dad.

"I'm being held back, dad," I said to him with a sigh, "I've been grounded for a year."

He nodded. "That's the other thing," he said, suddenly remembering something. "You're going back to the school tomorrow for some testing."

"Yeah, I know," I replied, "I don't get it."

"They want to test you for a learning disability," he said "Burt will drive you there in the morning. Dinner will be ready in a few minutes."

He exited the room, leaving me alone with my utter horror.

A learning disability?

At the time, I had never heard of things like Dyslexia, Attention Deficit Disorder, or any of the other character traits that were considered detrimental to society. But I had heard the term "learning disability" in context enough times to know that it meant you were dumber than you look. A learning disability meant you didn't bathe often enough and usually smelled like sweaty feet. A learning disability meant that the teacher never called on you, even if you know the answer, because you're always wrong. A learning disability meant you were like Colin Park.

They had thrown the book at me. I was sentenced to spending the rest of my life as a fat, smelly, stupid little boy who will be a year behind for ever and ever.

This was all Colin Park's fault.

Previous Posts
Me Write - You Wrong
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