The Dumb Adventures Of Billy

“Look, there’s no easy way to put this, Billy,” Billy’s first grade teacher, Mrs. Shelly, said. 

“But you have to stop eating crayons or else you will go to prison.”

 Billy looked up at his teacher, mouth agape. Teachers had been telling him this since he started school three years ago. And yet, still no prison. Billy was beginning to think that school was the prison. Billy laughed in the teachers face and licked a marker. He ran into the coat closet. 

“Billy, get back here!” Mrs.Shelly yelled. 

 The rest of the class went silent. They loved it when Billy went into the coat closet. So did Billy. Sometimes he would leave crayons in there to eat later. It was so quiet. So dark. Billy felt like he could stay inside the coat closet forever. The other kids wondered what he did in there. 

 Tommy had started a rumor that he kept frogs in there, but that was bullshit. It was all based on Billy bringing a frog in for show and tell on a day that Tommy was absent. Tommy just wanted to be included. Tommy liked frogs. 

Mrs.Shelly let him stay in the closet a little longer. She enjoyed the time away from him, and she knew that he just sat in there and ate crayons. Whatever, who cares. As long as she didn’t have to see it. 

 A few years later. Billy was in the fifth grade. He had quit eating crayons. In fourth grade they started using cubbies instead of closets and the allure of eating crayons in a cubby wasn’t nearly as mysterious as a coat closet. Billy wasn’t popular by any means. He might have been if he wore anything besides beige turtle necks with stains on them. He liked to dance when he got math problems right, which was frequent. 

 Billy would ask to use the bathroom and then go sit in the auditorium by himself. He would imagine giving speeches to the whole school. Lots of them. Some about eggs, others about Tony Parker, most about how bullshit class was. He didn’t have any crayons to eat, but he would chew gum and put it under the seats. The oral fixation thing would become a problem when he started smoking in several years, but at 10 it was just endearing. Sort of. It was kinda weird to the faculty, who all saw him sitting there, alone by himself. None of them bothered him. They didn’t want to get involved. 

 Billy noticed this and appreciated it. He didn’t hate any of them. Just the whole rotten system in general. He hated how they accepted that the system was broken. He hated that they refused to try and fix it themselves. 

But he didn’t hate them personally. They were pretty nice, and at least they paid him a little attention. 

 In the 5th grade, Billy started making up stories to tell at discussion times. Discussion times were when an issue in social studies or a book came up and everyone got to say what they thought. Billy would always lead the discussion away from the topic. He was very good at it. He would ask questions to the class, and clarify his question after a response was given. The questions and clarifications were relatable enough to the discussion topic not to arouse suspicion from the teacher, yet vague enough to pique the other students interests. For example, one week the class read a book about Lou Gehrig. Billy raised his had and asked if the Yankees still played in New York. When the teacher said yes, Billy replied saying that his Dad said that they had moved after 9/11. Billy didn’t have a Dad. 

 “No, they still play in New York.” Billy’s teacher replied. 

“Yeah, they’re still in New York.” a few kids echoed.

“Do they play next to all of those big buildings?” Billy would ask.

 And then the whole class had answers. Everybody was talking about different theories about where the buildings were. One kid said they played in a skyscraper. 

 By the time that the teacher got them settled and taught them about all five boroughs, 15 minutes had passed. Billy got really good at doing this about all subjects. Especially science. 

When Billy got to Eighth grade he was really bored. He had started smoking pot behind the loading dock. Sometimes the janitors would join him. They had known him for years, and they had grown quite an alliance. Billy cleaned up after himself and others, and the janitors would give him cool stuff they found. 

 There were two of them. One of them was a tall scrawny pale white guy, with long scraggly hair and thick-rimmed glasses. He was a nice-enough guy for someone who smoked pot with kids. He didn’t sell to them or anything. He kept to himself. 

 The other was a short, fat Dominican man. He was the most normal looking of the two but that wasn’t saying much. He had a lazy eye and a liver spots all over his face. He was old. Tired. He hated everyone at that school except Billy. He didn't smoke. 

 “You know kid if you keep smoking that stuff in public they’re gonna throw you in jail.” The scrawny Janitor said.

 “They’ve been telling me that since I got here. Is that what happened to you?” Billy said. 

 “Look around, man!” He replied. The three of them laughed and Billy went to class. He smoked, but Billy still showed up on time for everything, mostly. He wasn’t the best student, but he never had been. It was just the same old shit for Billy.

 High school was easier. He could leave whenever he wanted for the most part, and it was close to downtown. Billy would go into buildings and walk around telling people he had an internship. Everyone knew it was bullshit, but they weren’t going to stop him. He was harmless, even a little boring. For the most part they didn’t even notice that he was there. 

 Billy’s Junior year was a special one. He got a girlfriend and started hanging out with her a lot. Her name was Melissa. Melissa was really gorgeous. Freckled all down her face and her arms, with eyes that lit up when Billy said her name. She was into the theater scene at school and so Billy would make up characters for her and write down stuff for her to say. It was just an exercise, but Billy felt it was sort of symbolic of their relationship. 

 Billy was still going to class all of the time. He had decent enough grades to go to school. His Dad had died somewhere in Montana, but had left Billy some money. He could turn it into at least a year or two of college. He didn’t know what he wanted to study, he didn’t really care. Maybe economics or something. He liked making stuff up. 

 Billy had quit smoking pot. He was starting to get dizzy all the time and didn’t enjoy it as much. He picked up cigarettes, which were much lighter and didn’t require so much maintenance. Billy still felt sick sometimes. 

 Billy graduated on time. He broke up with Melissa after prom. He was sad afterwards, but he got over it eventually, sort of. Melissa didn’t at all, initially. She had thought that they would do long distance or something. She totally wasn’t ready for it. One night after they had broken up, Billy and Melissa drove around and got ice cream. It was the most fun they had had all through high school. They stopped by the lake and walked out to the shore. They saw the abyss of dark blue and heard the silence through the waves. It reminded Billy of the first grade, and Melissa was his crayon. 

 “I can’t do this to you, lady.” Billy said. 

“Let’s go home.” 

 Billy drove Melissa home and then went to bed. 

 College was a fun time for Billy. He sold pot to other students and totally got away with it. It was easy money, and he gave really fair prices. Everyone loved Billy. He didn’t really study anything in particular. It was still kind of bullshit to him. He kind of hated it, but he liked how much everyone liked him. He hoped the real world would be just as kind. 

 It was, sort of. Billy got a job tending bar at some building downtown. He had met the owner in High School, and they had stayed in mild contact. After Billy graduated, he was offered a job immediately. The bar was nice. It was for the business type who didn’t want to be forced into politeness with a soft spoken decor. It was wood chair and a wood bar with hard liquor. These guys got piss-drunk and tipped like there was a currency collapse incoming. 

 Billy didn’t drink much, which was strange. Everybody was sort of bracing for him to overdo it and lose his job. But he didn’t. He would wait for everybody to leave and then go out for a smoke. One day the owner came out and talked to Billy. 

He was thin lipped with slicked-back brown hair. 

“You know, if you keep smoking you’re gonna die.” The owner said.

“They keep telling me that, but I’m still here.” Billy replied. 

 The owner laughed, but he was sort of just being polite. He had heard that retort a million times. “Then why do I keep saying that?” The owner wondered to himself. Billy sat next to his boss for a minute and then went inside. 

 Billy started going to plays on his nights off. He would never admit it, but a part of him wanted to see Melissa on stage. He didn’t expect to, she wasn’t a particularly good actress. But it would’ve made him happy. He never saw her.  

He was better off that way, probably. 

 Then one day Billy drove his car down to San Francisco and jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge, because sometimes life just goes that way.

 A lot of people were sad. But they all moved on, and so will you. 

The Sad Old Man

There was a sad old man who lived across the street from me while I was growing up. Honestly, I don’t know if he was all that sad. We never spoke. But he looked sad. Like he was ready to die. 

 His daughter lived with him. She was probably in her 40’s. She was nice, but also sad. I don’t think she had many friends outside of her Dad.I remember thinking that if I was that old man, I would feel very guilty about wasting my Daughter’s life like that. She was so profoundly lonely. Any time that somebody smiled or waved at her, she would run up to them and start talking. She turned any interaction into a 15 minute conversation about the weather or local politics, as that and her Father is all she knew.

 On TV and in Movies, old men who live across the street are mysterious. They have dark secrets or mystic powers, and it’s always the kid’s job to find out what they were. It was painfully obvious to me that this old man had no mystery about him. His daughter told everybody about his ailments and medical short comings. There was no mystery there. I knew he was weak. 

 I remember one day, I woke up early and went outside. The old man was lying down on his lawn. I went up to him. He didn’t smell very good. There was a bag of bird seed spilled next to him, but no birds. 

“What are you doing out here?” I asked him. 

“That’s a good question.” He said with a chuckle. 

His voice was soft, but deep. He sounded as if he were struggling not to whisper. It was the first time I had seen him smile. I smiled too. He suddenly felt more human.

 “I think I’ve broken my leg. Would you go inside and get my    daughter?”  He asked.

I looked down at his leg. He had rolled his pant up to his knee. His shin was all swollen and purple, and it looked bent in the middle. 

I didn’t want to go get her, but I didn’t know what else to do. I especially didn’t want to keep staring at his leg. Maybe he’s dead, I thought. Maybe I’m imagining this whole conversation. I went up the stairs and knocked on the door. I turned around and looked at the old man. He smiled again. I hoped he wasn’t dead. 

“If she doesn’t answer right away, you can go inside.” He said. 

I waited a minute, then did as he said. 

 Their house felt stale. It was a struggle just to breath the air. There was a stack of old newspapers by the TV, and a bag of medical equipment on the couch. Other than that, it was pretty clean. 

“Is anybody home?” I shouted.

“Who is it?” A plain voice said from the kitchen. I followed it. 

It was the daughter. She was slumped over a sink of dirty dishes. I wondered for a second how a sad old man and his daughter could have so many dishes. Maybe they had a party, or maybe she had put them off for a few days. I wasn’t sure how to broach the subject of what was going on outside. I felt sorry for her, but I also didn’t want to get in trouble.

“Your Dad is outside. I think he broke his leg.” That seemed as good a way as any to tell her. 

“Ah, shit.” She said as she threw her sponge in the sink and ran outside. I followed her.

 When we got outside, a few other neighbors had come out to check on him. They and the old man were all smiling and laughing. The old man now had the bird seed in his hand. A few cardinals were in the yard, too. They didn’t seem to mind the crowd.

“You old fool! What were you doing outside without me? Aren’t you sick enough?”

 Nobody said anything, but I could feel how uncomfortable her anger made everyone. Except for the sad old man, he seemed used to it. 

“I’m sorry, Martha.” The old man said. “I wanted to feed the birds, and you were still asleep. I didn’t want to wake you.”

Martha sighed. She knelt down and kissed her father on the forehead. I couldn’t tell if she was appearing less angry for the crowd’s sake, or if her Father had won her over again.

“Well, I hope you enjoyed yourself. Look at your leg. This will be the last time you’re able to leave the house for a while.”

 The other neighbors and I helped Martha get the old man into their car. When she and her father left, they all turned and congratulated me on doing the right thing. 

“You’re a hero.” One of them said. 

 I didn’t feel like a hero. I felt like a stranger who was intruding on someone’s life. I looked over at where the sad old man had been lying. The birds were still there. They didn’t give a shit about the sad old man. They just liked their seed. 

 I told my parents what happened. They said that we should all go visit the sad old man in the hospital. I found that to be strange. We never spoke to him much while he lived across the street from us, why would we travel to the hospital to do so?

 My Dad said it was so he knew that somebody cared. I thought about the birds.

I had never been to a hospital before, even when I was born. My Mom had me in a taxi cab in Philadelphia. It felt stale, like the old man’s house. It was much more chaotic, though. There were people in different colored uniforms, running around taking sick and injured people to different colored rooms. I wondered if any of them cared about the sad old man. Probably not. But that was understandable. They all looked pretty busy.

 When we got to the old man’s room, I felt out of place. Like I had on his front lawn. There were balloons and flowers at the table. Why couldn’t we have just sent those? What were we going to talk about with this sad old man? I wanted to go home, but I was also curious about how the old man was doing for some reason.

 The old man looked at me and smiled. He didn’t say anything. My parents and Martha talked for a bit about how warm it had been recently, and the new city councilman. I sat by the window with the old man. We sat and watched the birds outside. Neither of us said anything. It was nice, but he still seemed sad.

 The man died a few months later, and Martha moved away. I went over to their house from time to time to feed the birds, but they rarely ever showed up.

Patience.

Journey

 I’ve been taking walks for as long as I can remember. It started when I was around 7 or 8, and I would take walks to sneak out of my Grandparent’s dinners. This year, I took a walk during thanksgiving dinner. Nobody noticed. The great thing about living in a city is that there aren’t a lot of places you can’t walk. And when you designate that time to thinking, you get a lot of it done. 

 Whatever has been going on in my life, I’ve been able to walk away from it for about an hour and consider it. Failures, successes, deaths, breakups. It’s all relative. I can think about it and process it and make myself believe that I’m better because of it.

 It wasn’t until we said goodbye one last time that I realized how her nose wrinkled when she cried. I had seen it happen dozens of times over the years, but nothing helps you gain an appreciation for something like watching it disappear as you sit underneath a motel awning. 

 Our relationship wasn’t sexual. It was a true friendship. But neither of us could appreciate that. We outgrew each other like a kid outgrows their favorite shirt: quickly and unwillingly. We didn’t want to get rid of what we had built, but it was collapsing on itself and if we didn’t get out soon we would be crushed by its sheer weight. If only the base hadn’t been playing cards. 

 To be honest, I only left because she left. I yelled her name a few times, and I cried for a few hours when I knew it was over, but I accepted the fact that I had to leave. Even then, though, I tried to get her to come back to look at what we had built, but she wanted nothing to do with me.

  It wasn’t until we said goodbye one last time that I realized how her nose wrinkled when she cried. I had seen it happen dozens of times over the years, but nothing helps you gain an appreciation for something like watching it disappear as you sit underneath a motel awning. 

 Our relationship wasn’t sexual. It was a true friendship. But neither of us could appreciate that. We outgrew each other like a kid outgrows their favorite shirt: quickly and unwillingly. We didn’t want to get rid of what we had built, but it was collapsing on itself and if we didn’t get out soon we would be crushed by its sheer weight.
 To be honest, I only left because she left. I yelled her name a few times, and I cried for a few hours when I knew it was over. But I accepted the fact that I had to leave. Even then, though, I tried to get her to come back to look at what we had built. She wanted nothing to do with me.

 It took me a little while before I started going on my walks again. I found myself unable to do it, though, without some sort of inanimate companion. I was getting too distracted by my thoughts and  surroundings. I’ve always prided myself as being comfortable in my own skin, but for the first time I was itching to get out of it. My thought process is very forward. That’s why the walk is so beloved. If my body was moving onward, so was my mind. In my walks, I was usually able to maintain internal sidebars without letting them derail me, but now this was not so. I would try to think and my stomach would possess an empty feeling that could not be filled with food. So I just wouldn’t think. And eventually my brain would fill with thoughts that were supposed to be had, and I would feel the need to light a cigarette or listen to a song just so that I wouldn’t have to be by myself. 

It wasn’t just my internal watch that noticed a change, though. It was the physical world around me. The trees seemed to be thinning, and the sky was further away. The river didn’t meander the same way that it did before. I was not naive enough at the time to think that I was changing nature, though I was not sure of what was happening. It scared me, certainly. But I kept walking.

 I kept walking until I couldn’t recognize the buildings. This bothered me more than it probably should have. It’s obtuse to think that one could know all of the buildings in an international city. Still, this new territory did not jive with the theme of my walks. I stopped in a diner and got a very angry cup of coffee from an impatient waitress. It was like she knew that I didn’t belong there. Like I was disease. A vagrant. A stowaway.

 There was a point, though, where we made eye contact. I want to believe that she saw the fear and confusion in me, because her face softened for a second. I know she felt a connection, because she turned around almost immediately and returned with my change. I left a tip, but I don’t know why.

 The wind began to nip. I zipped up my jacket and kept walking until there weren’t any more buildings. It was just houses. This made me feel a little better. It’s not strange for houses not to be familiar. It doesn’t matter much though, because soon the houses were gone too.

And then nothing was around me anymore.

  I looked down at the road that had been supporting me and found that it was there no more. I looked back to see when it had left me, but could not see that far. There’s comfort to know that one does not always need a road to walk on, but it’s difficult to come to terms with the fact that the road eventually stops serving a purpose. 

I got home eventually. My legs were cold and I wanted to got to bed. The walk had fixed me, for I had not felt tired in days. Although one thing that perplexes me to this day is that there was no point in the walk that I remember turning around. I’m still not sure whether or not I turned around at the point in which nothing was around me, or if I just kept going forward. 

Typing II

I walked over to room 556 and opened the door. I looked back over at the repair man. He was just standing there, staring out into what I still assumed was Kansas. 

I entered the room and looked around. The room was nothing like 555. For one thing, it was about three times larger. It was also dusty, crooked and damp. It reminded me of an attic from an old World War II flick. 

There wasn’t much inside. A few half-finished paintings,some empty luggage, and that was it. I walked down towards the other side, and couldn’t find a stair case or any windows. I heard rain pouring on the roof, and figured I was still in Kansas.

I reached the back of the attic. There was a large wooden desk with a new, polished type writer on top of it. I walked behind it and sat down. I looked through the three drawers on the left side and found nothing. The right side only had one drawer.

Inside of it, I found another envelope. This one was yellow, and it didn’t have my name on it. I wasn’t sure at first if I wanted to open it, but it appeared to be my only way out of this place. I slowly opened the three fold and read in horror the five words hastily typed. 

kIlL the rEpAIR MaN befORE iTs TOO LATE.

I dropped the letter. The blood was frozen in my veins. I didn’t know what to do. I looked up at the door, and tried to make my decision. I could answer any of the questions my brain was throwing at me.

 Was this another test? I had no idea who this guy was. How could I kill somebody I didn’t even know? I guess that would make it easier, wouldn’t it? Could I even kill this person? He was so much bigger than I was, and he had all of those tools. He would destroy me. 

Still, this stranger seems to be the only person I can trust. If they say I have to kill him to escape, that might be the only way I can see daylight again. Maybe I missed something. I looked down at my desk to see if I had.

In life, a lot of things come and go that people are sure they want and need. Cars, sex, a new promotion, a big house. They get upset to the point of throwing tantrums after they don’t get what they want. I used to be one of those people. I used to cry until I got what I wanted, and I thought I would be satisfied with material items for the rest of my life.

 After sitting down at that desk, and seeing and reading that note, thinking about what it said, all I wanted to do was read it again. I would have accepted not reading it, so long as I could see it and feel it, just to know that at one point it had been there. For when I looked down and saw that the note had disappeared, I lost any remaining trust in my sanity. Once that trust is lost, it can’t be brought back.

I tore that attic apart looking for that note. Every crevice, every trunk, box and drawer. It took hours. I must have broken down at least three times.  I didn’t know what to do anymore. I was in hell.

I sat back down at the desk and opened the top drawer on the left side. Inside was another envelope, pristine white. The color made me feel safe. I wasn’t even concerned that the other nine times I had opened it the drawer had been completely empty. I was just relieved to have some instruction. 

I carefully opened the envelope, making sure not to damage the flap or the letter inside. This was my only contact with the outside world. It was the one thing that I could rely on to get me out of this attic. I needed to make sure I treated it as a relic.

Ray-

 We’re sure you have questions, and at the right time there will be answers for them. You must understand though, the answers you’re looking for are not in the attic. If you look for them, you will be wasting your time and ours. We highly suggest that you do not attempt to find anything, for the sake of your own sanity.

In regards to your job, there has been a slight delay. By the time you are done reading this letter, however, you will be ready to start. A man is about to bring you in a new letter, and you will transcribe the words in that letter on your type writer. When you are finished, put it in the right drawer and exit.

I looked up as the door opened. In walked a man wearing what appeared to be the most meticulous suit on the market. His blank face looked like it had been in the room for hours, and his body was just getting with the program. He was very slim, and took long, slow strides towards me. I was startled. I stood up and pointed at him.

“Hey man, I don’t know who the fuck you are, but you better tell me what the hell is going on or I’m out of here.”

A smile started to crawl along the left side of his face, but stopped once it reached daylight. 

“Out of here. Out of here? Out? Here? If you knew where you were, neither of those words would have been used in that sentence.”

I paid attention to his wit about as much as I understood it.

“I mean it man,” I replied. “If you don’t start speaking quick, I’m busting out of here.”

The man sat down in a seat in front of the desk. If I was a betting man, I would put all of my life savings that the chair hadn’t been there until he wanted it to be. 

“Let me ask you a few questions first, Mr. Conan.” He said, glaring at the type writer as he spoke.

He pulled out a cigarette and stuck it in his mouth unlit. 

“Please, have a seat. I am not a threat to your well being.”

“Yeah, that’s what they’ve all said.” I scoffed.

“And are you injured?”

I thought for a moment, and then sat down.

“Mr. Conan, does your blood smell of vinegar?” He asked.

“I, um.....what?” I stammered.

“Your blood, does it smell like vinegar to you?” He asked, this time more impatiently.

I couldn’t stop staring at the cigarette. The butt was getting damp, as the man’s mouth was clearly soaked with saliva. I didn’t know how, this had to be the driest room I had ever been in. Why wouldn’t he light it?

“I suppose you wouldn’t know the difference if it was, anyways.” He said.

“Why?”

“Well, Ray, you seem to me to be the type of person who has been spoon fed mayonnaise his whole life, and is experiencing his first days without it. There is no more sodium to slow your body, or cholesterol to clog your arteries. You’re noticing buildings, interacting with people. You’re becoming human again. You’re becoming real. But at the same time, there seems to be a bit of a withdrawal process. Some paranoia as well as an inability to follow directions are persisting. You also have a sore throat.”

Break down

I want to try something new.

 Nobody does that anymore. They say that they’ll try something new, but the don’t do it. They’ll try half of a new thing and get bored, and say that it isn’t for them. I really want to do something that I’ve never done before, and if you’d join me I would really appreciate it. Here’s the thing though, you can’t do it half-assed. You’ve really gotta do it. Don’t skip steps, don’t quit in the middle. If you start this, you have to finish it. Deal? Okay, good.

 Close your eyes for 10 seconds and relax. Done? Okay. Now do it again. Except this time, I want you to picture all of your small belongings. Hand-held items like your keys, wallet and cell phone. You ipod, your TV remotes and keyboards. Tiny things that are relatively easy to replace. Have them all? Now get rid of them. They no longer exist. How do you feel without these items? Any different? Has your world changed for the better, or for the worse? Just think about it for a second, and we’ll move on.

 Okay, we’re gonna take a step forward now. I want you to close your eyes again,and this time picture all of your big-ticket items. Think about your television, and about your computer. Picture all of the furniture in your house, including all of your kitchen appliances. I want you to also imagine all of the things that you associate with these items. Clothes, food, valuables, etc.  When you open your eyes, they will be gone from your life. 

 So now you’re just about completely out of physical possessions. What I want you to do now is imagine any property that you own. Be it your apartment, or your house, or a storage space. Any shelter or any large area that belonged to you has now evaporated into thin air. Along with it goes any physical possessions that you owned before this exercise.

 Now how do you feel? Is there any stress building up? It’s cold outside, and you have nothing to your name. You see everyone in their homes with their possessions, and you feel something. Is it jealousy? Anger? Pity? Do you feel like you could relatively go on without the things that they have? Remember, you can always go back and take 10 seconds to relax. Just make sure that you come back to where you left off.

 Now think about all of the world’s infrastructure. Buildings, roads, sidewalks, telephone line, the internet, police and fire stations, parking lots, all of it. It’s all gone. The world is completely empty of man-made creations. It’s just humans now. 

Everybody is now on an even playing field. Nobody has any resources or powers or tools. We’re all just savages on a big blue marble. Do you feel any better or worse about losing your possessions? Ask yourself why that is.

 Before we go on to living people, let’s think about historical figures that fill the mind. Writers, artists, musicians, Kings, Queens and religious figures. I want you to pretend like they never existed. If this is too difficult, just think back to a time before you knew who they all were. 

 Now we move on to something a little bit more important: living people. Close your eyes. Think about all of the people in the world that you have never met and have no association with. These range from complete strangers on the bus to the entire population of a country that you’ve never visited. Now they’re all gone. Unless you’re very popular, this is the majority of the world gone in the blink of an eye. What did it feel like to rid yourself of them?

 After that, think about all of the famous people in the world. Celebrities, talking heads, politicians, world leaders, business men and women. They are all gone. Forever. Nobody is left to influence how you see other parts of the world. It is a society of people who you can relate to.

 Now it’s time to start dividing up the people that you know. Let’s start with those whom you only know by coincidence. Neighbors, your usual waiter and waitress, coworkers and bosses, fellow students and teachers. People whose association to you is simply based on being at the same place at the same time. They’re now gone. 

 We’ve reached the bloodline. Think about all of your extended family. Aunts, Uncles, Grandparents, Cousins, Nieces and Nephews. While you’re at it, picture all of your friends and pets. This time, I really want you to think about them. Picture their faces, and what they meant to you. Now eliminate them from this existence. Was this harder to do to any of the other choices? Why is that? Does it make you view the other choices any differently?

 I realize that some of you may not have a Mom and Dad, but I like to believe that everyone has a parental figures in their life. Take your time to say goodbye to them. Think about all of the things that they’ve done for you. All of the influence that they’ve had on your life. Now close your eyes and wish them away.

 Did that hurt? Why? This is just an exercise. What is the intrinsic value of wishing away your family, and did it hurt more than getting rid of all of your possessions? If you could live without your possessions to keep your family, would you do it? Why? What would be the point? I’m not saying that there isn’t a point, I just want you to think about what it would be.

 So, you’re alone in the world. It’s just you on a pale blue dot. The world and all of its beauty is yours. The oceans, the mountains. Desserts and forests. Lakes and rivers. What would you do with it all if it was yours and yours alone. With overpowering beauty like this, would you desire to share it with anyone else? How do you know if you have never experienced this yet? Enjoy it for a moment, and then let it go. You’re hurdling through space all alone.

 This next part might be hard to conceptualize. I want you to imagine your physical body. All of your muscles and your organs, your bone structure, your physical features and characteristics. They are gone now. What do you have left that’s still redemptive? Your thoughts, opinions and ideas? What good do they do you? What is the point of having them without a physical body? What was the point of a physical body if you have nothing to stand on?

 Throughout life, you have accumulated an infinitum of opinions, beliefs,emotions and knowledge. Many people say it’s the crux of an existence to know as much as you can. Those people don’t exist anymore. Where did you get all of this knowledge? From your possessions? From people? From your body? From the world? Why do you feel the need to keep the things that you know inside of your body? What made you decide to make that a part of your existence? Take them away, and what kind of weight is lifted from you? 

 What can you say about your existence still? Do you still feel like you? If so, what do you have left? What is it that gives your existence the most purpose? If not, at what point did you stop? Why do you hold so much weight in these things? 

Just think about it.

Broken like the rule book.

 My legs hang over the windowsill of my bedroom window as I look out unto the neo-communist utopia that is the Jefferson Park skyline. The moon is at it’s brightest at 2:00 AM, and I’m disappointed that my neck hair doesn’t stand up as I thought it would. I feel guilty, and not in a way that excites me. Rather, in a way that I know whatever I’m about to do is something that I’ll never be tell anyone, not even my closest friends. Not because it’s an adventure. Not because it’s a secret. But because it makes me feel stupid to talk about, and it would make me sound as if I were bragging, rather than confessing.  

 Whenever I do something that is, for lack of a better term, wrong, my Dad takes it so personally. When I lied to him at the age of six, he told me I’d grow up a disgrace. When he found my weed, he said that I wasn’t his son anymore. This is the manipulation technique that he has used to get me to hate myself for breaking his rules. So far, it has worked. Anytime that I’ve gotten in trouble for doing something, it was because I misjudged the consequences.I really didn’t know at the time the difference between truth and a falsehood. I brought weed into the house thinking that if I got caught I would be given a lecture on drug safety. Instead, I was given a screaming match followed by a silent treatment that lasted four days.

 I remember in the third grade, I said that I was going “out.” My parents assumed that I meant to the front yard. I meant I was going to a friend’s house who lived a block away. My friend had a rough home life, his parents had split up when he was 8. As a side effect, his mom was always “grounding” him. Maybe it was to keep him home, or maybe to take out some frustration. But it wasn’t because he was a bad kid.

 I got to his house at about 4:30. We went to his room and played Gamecube until 5:15, which is the time that I had decided would be a good curfew. It was Kirby, by the way. I couldn’t stand Kirby. 

 I remember, so vividly, entering my living room. The Astros and the Cardinals were playing in the NLCS on TV, and my science project, which was due that week, was sitting in the corner. I looked at the TV. Edgar Rentaria was on third base for the Cardinals, and Rodger Clemens was pitching for the Astros. In my peripherals, I see my Dad, in his recliner, watching the game with glassed over eyes. He looks up at me. 

“Where the fuck have you been?” He said over a Clemens fastball. I look back at him.

I had heard my Dad swear once before, and it was on a phone call. I would have never dreamed he’d use an f-word towards me.

“Are you kidding?” I asked, in hopes that this was one of his classic, light-hearted jokes.

“The hell I am. Do you know where your Mom is right now?” He demanded.

At this point I realized I probably wasn’t supposed to have left the front yard. Through this, I realized that if my parents thought that I was lost for almost an hour, they would be frantic.

“In the backyard, looking for me?” I asked him, in hopes this time that maybe things had not escalated too far yet.

“She’s at the police station, saying that her son is gone.” He said.

The way he said “Her son”, as if he had nothing to do with it, broke my heart. It’s dumb, I know, but I still think about that.

What followed was a long, long lecture from my Mom, my Dad, and Officer Drew on the importance of safety and telling adults where I am at all times, all of which does not contribute to the story. 

 I was grounded for a week. That night I cried myself to sleep.

 I remember, it was a Sunday when all that happened. So Monday morning, I walked to the school bus stop. I went up to my friend Rich, whose house I had been at the previous day, and told him the story.

“Here’s the thing.” I relayed to him. “I’m grounded for a week.”

Rich’s jaw dropped. This wasn’t supposed to happen. I was the neighborhood angel. I’d never been grounded in my life. I was who other mothers wanted their kids to be like. I was the model citizen of our little lower-middle class community. 

“No way! Wow, man. How does it feel?” Rich asked, still not totally sure if he believed me. They way he phrased it made it sound like a right of passage, which confused me. There was no doubt how to feel about this. To me, being grounded meant that I couldn’t see my friends, my parents hated me, and I was a bad kid. There were no positives to take away from this.

“Bad. I hate it.”

Rich shrugged his shoulders. 

“The first one’s hard. You’ll get used to it. Congratulations.”

 But I never did get used to it. I felt bad enough every time that I stepped outside alone, even with my parent’s permission. To this day, I still feel uneasy leaving the house in broad daylight. It was a while until I got into that kind of trouble again, and it was when I was a teenager. By that time, I could process punishment at a marginally higher level than a 3rd grader could.

 So, as my frayed canvas Vans hit the cold dirt that paves the gap between my room and my neighbor’s house, I keep that feeling of guilt inside of me. It lines the pockets that I keep my American Spirits in.I light a cigarette as I drag myself down the alley between the Metra tracks and the copernicus center. The blue line runs 24 hours a day, so any chance of a new experience goes through that.

 The car shakes and I jump with a bit of excitement. Nobody is here with me, but I feel someone’s energy. Maybe it’s residue from all of the commuters today, but I think it’s someone else. I think it’s that kid in third grade who knew all the answers in class, and always impressed Rich’s Mom. The kid that I could’ve grown up into if I wasn’t always trying to fix him. 

 By the time that I get to Clark and Lake, a few people have come on the car. A homeless-looking guy, and a suburbanite and his drunken hook-up. I side-step past them as I get off.

 I walk to the beach by Navy Pier, on Ohio Street. This is a nice place for me to sit and think, but I don’t know why. Chicago’s spine lights up, and it’s beautiful. But I’m just staring at the homes of rich people. Rich people who probably don’t even live here but a few months out of the year. 

 This is it. I’ve snuck out. This is what all of the books and movies and TV shows have told me is the most exciting thing about being a teenager. Except, there’s something missing. I’m not sneaking out to go anywhere. I’m just sneaking out to prove to some kid in the third grade that he shouldn’t be afraid of his Dad. I’m just trying to show myself, all versions of myself, that I can do it. That I’m not afraid of the consequences. But I still am. Not even of my Dad, but someone. And I cry on the beach, like a fucking third grader.