Brian Kabob
Nothing I have to say is of any interest, even to me. I've told them everything I know, apologized for it's lack of helpful or fascinating content, and asked that they believe I have no more to give.
But they keep asking me for details. Details, details, details. That don't exist. I guess when someone dies, people expect some kind of supernatural reality to unfold momentarily, or great storylines or something. But at least in my case, watching someone die was not particularly well directed, cast, written, or received. Here's what happened.
We were jumping around in the bottom of the hole that will eventually be the basement of a house. They dug it up like, last year, but still no house. So it's just this massive hole that of course we play in. We being anyone and everyone who lives in my neighborhood, or visits it or whatever. Parents don't even tell us not to play there anymore; maybe they forgot it exists. The construction workers seem to have.
It was a Sunday night after a three-day weekend, because of President's Day. We were off of school the Friday before. It was after dinner, the end of Fall, and none of us really wanted to get home or back to school.
So, big deal, we are all sliding down the mud wall where it's crumbling and slanting and you can be way up by the tree and slide all the way down the chute to the bottom, and Brian Howard, he comes down right when Terry is lifted up the pole. Terry couldn't see Brian because it was pretty dark already, and plus brian always wore black; he fancied himself a poet. So Terry slides the pole into the chute just in time for Brian to ram into it and be skewered. It was a Brian Kabob, and I don't say that because I think any of this is funny. It's just what happened.
*****
I am in the waiting room of Sun Meadows. It is a Mental Hospital for kids. Even though I am twelve, I am a kid still. I guess that is fair. My mom just dropped me off because she says she doesn't know what else to do. It is because there's nothing else she wants to do. She wants me gone.
There's a lot of dirt on the floor here. It is creaked down into the pattern of the tile, so you really can't notice it very easily. It is the blending of the dirt that makes me happiest right now. Let them think it is clean here, but me and the dirt, we know it is just all about blending in for the people who feed us.
It is just about keeping on going. But why don't I tell you a story, instead. It is about a guy I met last night and the store we broke into.
He was cute, the store was empty, he asked me if I wanted to have a coke with him, I said yes. In we went. He works there, the back door of the place had a key under the mat--it was hardly breaking and entering.
But now I am here. I wonder where the guy went. I never even got his name. We had a good time, I gotta say. He was a very decent sort of guy. Poured me a coke over ice and served me and everything. Acted very charming the whole time. It was Kresge's we were in. We pretended it was the 40's and we were just a couple of kids at the soda fountain. Top hits of the day included the Andrews Sisters, which it turned out we both liked. We were dancing to "Stranger on the Shore" when the police busted in. They are the only ones who broke to enter last night.
I have nothing with me, and they already took my purse and checked my pockets. If it takes much longer to get the check-in process going, I'm afraid I'm going to have to leave and just deal with the consequences. Except that my purse has something very important in it that I can't leave without. Shit.
"I'm thirsty," I tell the large-headed woman behind the reception desk. "Can I get a Coke or something?"
She puts down the papers she has in her hand. I think she was filing. So I waited to be polite and try not to start off on the wrong foot. I can appear to have an attitude where none exists, experience has shown. She smiles at me, but I'm not sure if she means it. She has large teeth but is sort of pretty in that older kind of way. There's no wedding ring.
"Over by the ladies room," she says. "There's a drinking fountain."
"Okay. Thanks."
* * * * *
My dad always comes in the room when I talk to my mom on the phone. He pretends he isn't, but we all know what he's doing. He just jokes it off. But stays in the room. He wants to hear all of the conversation he can, and then ask endless questions about it after I hang up. Always very friendly, genial, like he's just a regular guy, buddy, who happens to be around when the call happens so asks some normal, polite, interested questions. But he can't stay away and he won't butt out. He will come to whatever room you're in.
"So, how's your mom?"
"Hey Am, tell your mom I said hi."
"Tell your mom we got her Christmas card and it was really nice. We really appreciated that."
And you have to tell it right then and let him hijack the conversation.
* * * * *
We go camping every summer for two weeks in the upper peninsula. My state is Michigan and we have a mitton shaped land as the main part of the state, and then a completely unattached piece that is actually part of another land mass that is also part of our state. That is the upper peninsula part. The two pieces are connected by a bridge that is like a mile long. The Mackinaw Bridge. Except it is also called and spelled the 'Mackinac' bridge, which is annoying.
Also annoying is spending two weeks of constant contact with Nick where there is not even the hell of school to escape to. No friends houses to visits. I tend to spend a lot of time in the woods during these two camping weeks, except Nick figures out that I am happiest doing that and usually limits drastically the amount of time I can escape. Escape his rule. He must not nkow what to do without me around to absorb all his hate molecules. Ha ha.
We are in the van now, heading up there. We will go to the Porcupine Mountains and Taquamenen Falls like we always do, one week at each place. Nick has Nicked out the van, of course. It is all stuff he built in here. Made of plywood or something that is unfinished and good and splintery. Idiot.
Along the side of the van behind the driver's seat is a long bench thing that the seat lifts up and inside is storage. Then on the passenger's side there is the double doors of the van, and let me not skip over describing those to you, because inside each one, where I guess a normal van door would have some sort of panel or something, there is no panel; there are big hollows of the door that are totally filled up with that kind of expando foam that hardens in a bubbly styrofoam kind of substance that looks very cool and which you are not allowed to pick at.
But they keep asking me for details. Details, details, details. That don't exist. I guess when someone dies, people expect some kind of supernatural reality to unfold momentarily, or great storylines or something. But at least in my case, watching someone die was not particularly well directed, cast, written, or received. Here's what happened.
We were jumping around in the bottom of the hole that will eventually be the basement of a house. They dug it up like, last year, but still no house. So it's just this massive hole that of course we play in. We being anyone and everyone who lives in my neighborhood, or visits it or whatever. Parents don't even tell us not to play there anymore; maybe they forgot it exists. The construction workers seem to have.
It was a Sunday night after a three-day weekend, because of President's Day. We were off of school the Friday before. It was after dinner, the end of Fall, and none of us really wanted to get home or back to school.
So, big deal, we are all sliding down the mud wall where it's crumbling and slanting and you can be way up by the tree and slide all the way down the chute to the bottom, and Brian Howard, he comes down right when Terry is lifted up the pole. Terry couldn't see Brian because it was pretty dark already, and plus brian always wore black; he fancied himself a poet. So Terry slides the pole into the chute just in time for Brian to ram into it and be skewered. It was a Brian Kabob, and I don't say that because I think any of this is funny. It's just what happened.
*****
I am in the waiting room of Sun Meadows. It is a Mental Hospital for kids. Even though I am twelve, I am a kid still. I guess that is fair. My mom just dropped me off because she says she doesn't know what else to do. It is because there's nothing else she wants to do. She wants me gone.
There's a lot of dirt on the floor here. It is creaked down into the pattern of the tile, so you really can't notice it very easily. It is the blending of the dirt that makes me happiest right now. Let them think it is clean here, but me and the dirt, we know it is just all about blending in for the people who feed us.
It is just about keeping on going. But why don't I tell you a story, instead. It is about a guy I met last night and the store we broke into.
He was cute, the store was empty, he asked me if I wanted to have a coke with him, I said yes. In we went. He works there, the back door of the place had a key under the mat--it was hardly breaking and entering.
But now I am here. I wonder where the guy went. I never even got his name. We had a good time, I gotta say. He was a very decent sort of guy. Poured me a coke over ice and served me and everything. Acted very charming the whole time. It was Kresge's we were in. We pretended it was the 40's and we were just a couple of kids at the soda fountain. Top hits of the day included the Andrews Sisters, which it turned out we both liked. We were dancing to "Stranger on the Shore" when the police busted in. They are the only ones who broke to enter last night.
I have nothing with me, and they already took my purse and checked my pockets. If it takes much longer to get the check-in process going, I'm afraid I'm going to have to leave and just deal with the consequences. Except that my purse has something very important in it that I can't leave without. Shit.
"I'm thirsty," I tell the large-headed woman behind the reception desk. "Can I get a Coke or something?"
She puts down the papers she has in her hand. I think she was filing. So I waited to be polite and try not to start off on the wrong foot. I can appear to have an attitude where none exists, experience has shown. She smiles at me, but I'm not sure if she means it. She has large teeth but is sort of pretty in that older kind of way. There's no wedding ring.
"Over by the ladies room," she says. "There's a drinking fountain."
"Okay. Thanks."
* * * * *
My dad always comes in the room when I talk to my mom on the phone. He pretends he isn't, but we all know what he's doing. He just jokes it off. But stays in the room. He wants to hear all of the conversation he can, and then ask endless questions about it after I hang up. Always very friendly, genial, like he's just a regular guy, buddy, who happens to be around when the call happens so asks some normal, polite, interested questions. But he can't stay away and he won't butt out. He will come to whatever room you're in.
"So, how's your mom?"
"Hey Am, tell your mom I said hi."
"Tell your mom we got her Christmas card and it was really nice. We really appreciated that."
And you have to tell it right then and let him hijack the conversation.
* * * * *
We go camping every summer for two weeks in the upper peninsula. My state is Michigan and we have a mitton shaped land as the main part of the state, and then a completely unattached piece that is actually part of another land mass that is also part of our state. That is the upper peninsula part. The two pieces are connected by a bridge that is like a mile long. The Mackinaw Bridge. Except it is also called and spelled the 'Mackinac' bridge, which is annoying.
Also annoying is spending two weeks of constant contact with Nick where there is not even the hell of school to escape to. No friends houses to visits. I tend to spend a lot of time in the woods during these two camping weeks, except Nick figures out that I am happiest doing that and usually limits drastically the amount of time I can escape. Escape his rule. He must not nkow what to do without me around to absorb all his hate molecules. Ha ha.
We are in the van now, heading up there. We will go to the Porcupine Mountains and Taquamenen Falls like we always do, one week at each place. Nick has Nicked out the van, of course. It is all stuff he built in here. Made of plywood or something that is unfinished and good and splintery. Idiot.
Along the side of the van behind the driver's seat is a long bench thing that the seat lifts up and inside is storage. Then on the passenger's side there is the double doors of the van, and let me not skip over describing those to you, because inside each one, where I guess a normal van door would have some sort of panel or something, there is no panel; there are big hollows of the door that are totally filled up with that kind of expando foam that hardens in a bubbly styrofoam kind of substance that looks very cool and which you are not allowed to pick at.
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