Ninja as Child - #19 - Secret Clubs Part 2

Continuing the story of Mike and Rodney:

Mike has a car magazine and Rodney is standing by him, quiet as usual, looking over at every other page. "Check this one out. The wheels turn 90 degrees so you can park sideways."

They continue to talk about the cars--the conversation withers as I stare at Rodney's shirt. There's nothing special about the shirt itself. I'm actually staring right through his stomach. Suddenly, my fist is at my focal point and Rodney is keeled over, grabbing at his intestines, trying to gasp for air. Mike lowers the car magazine, unaware of what just happened.

"Did you just punch him?"

I'm stunned. I don't know what just happened.

"Wow," Continues Mike. "You O.K., dude?" He grabs his brother and helps him back to their apartment, leaving me shaking my head, wondering why I just punched my friend.

Today, I'm the secret club of the Lonely Fist.

Ninja as Child - #18 - Secret Clubs Part 1

I'm 7 years old and we are moving back into the Sunny Brae Garden Apartments in Arcata, CA. The buildings are the kind of salmon pink you get after a decade of sun wash over a bad idea. These apartments are where I would learn how to skateboard, play video games, tear the legs off of Water Striders, talk about girls in "that way", and, best of all, to form secret clubs.

There were a few other kids around. My brother, of course, two years older and always the wiser, made connections over every child's mutual love, the Nintendo Entertainment System, which we got as a joint present from our grandparents at the previous x-mas. I too used the power of gaming to join social engagements but I had a penchant for the trees and wandering around in secret or unexplored locations.

Mike and Rodney were also brothers. Rodney was the same age as my brother but Mike was a whopping 4 years my senior. Together they were like ancient sage travelers, come to impart wisdom on the unfortunate inexperienced. I made a habit of knocking on their door almost daily.

They would wander with me and we would talk about the birds and bees, and everday, it would seem, we had some new secret club, which was probably my idea after a while--always trying to create consistent patterns.

On this day, we find ourselves lurching through the rain soaked blackberry vines until we all stand staring down at a dead cat.

"Is it dead?" - Me

"I think it's dead." - Rodney

"Yeah, dude, it's fucking dead." - Mike

This is where Mike picks up the cat by the tail and whips it around like he's a human windmill, letting go right at the apex. It soars, spinning out through the sky, beyond the blackberry bushes, until nobody can see where it might land. The second it vanishes from view, someone makes a sound, "reeaooowww!" For a second I think that it was the dead cat, but I remember that thing about dead animals not being able to talk. I piss a little in my pants with a keeled over, gut-clenching cackle befitting a lunatic. This is the first time I remember letting my bladder go at a joke. I mosey on, slightly behind my friends, inspecting my zipper for wetness, embarassed and worried that my social faux pas might be spotted. As we saunter back to the apartments, I whisper, "Hey, now we're the Dead Cat Club."

Ninja as Child - #16 - Swimming

Code Name Alice has started swimming lessons. She has a little trouble at first but by the end of each class, she's splashing and laughing and loving every second.

Recently, as I've been putting on her shoes and coat, her gusto to start the day is reminding me of a specific traumatic childhood memory.

You see, I love swimming. The water was one of my favorite places as a kid. I didn't learn to swim until I was probably around 6-7 years old--I'm not sure when it happened--but I wore those arm floaters in the swimming pool until I learned and thought that was the coolest thing ever. I would just bob there and float. Everyone else was working so hard to stay above the water while I just folded up my legs and Zenned out (or did I zone out? Not so clear on that point).

I'm about 3 years old, standing by the edge of a swimming pool in the middle of summer (it's always the middle of summer, isn't it? Maybe it was actually the tail end of summer or the first bite of sunburn, I'm not really sure). My step dad is getting my arm floaters blown up and I'm just staring at the pool like it's a rabbit and I'm a lion and I'm going to rip that sucker a new one. I think I start to drool. The sun is hot, the concrete is echoing blinding light and I'm thinking to myself, "as soon as I get those floaters, I'm going to jump right into the middle of that giant pool." I can't think about anything else. I'm so wired up and ready. My step dad is putting on my floaters and I'm thinking, "as soon as he gets that floater on, I'm going. ready. ready. READY. NOW!"

And I jump in.

Abruptly, I realize that I've made a boo-boo. As I hit the water, I sink. Then I rise in a furious battle with the thin layer between water and air. But only half of my body rises, just my left arm. To my horror, my memory flashes back to the previous moment and I see that my step dad was only putting on my first floater. I'm only wearing one!

I start to flail in a random, uncontrolled fashion, a fashion that is so out of vogue. I think I'm drowning. I actually think I'm about to die. I start to scream. "Halp... glub...*FLAIL*... blah, I'm ... glub... drown.... ing.... blub *SPLASH*."

My mother and step dad are taking pictures. Between breathes, as I'm pushing my head out of the water, with all my will to live, I see my mother half bent and smiling, the camera in both hands, cherishing this moment of my personal achievement. My step dad is just looking at me and holding up the other floater, like, "duh dude, WTF, of course you're drowning. This is what you get for being over eager."

"I'm D-Y-I-N-G! *splash* *gasp* HELP!"

I think they realize now that I am not actually swimming but rather being kept alive, only precariously, through this meager, air-filled plastic bracelet around my one visible arm. At this point, I let my body sink, leaving my arm as a marker to aid search parties in locating my corpse.

Of course, Nam Dad, with his last minute hero mentality, jumps in and pulls me out just before I breathe in the drink.

I spent the rest of the day in the hot tub, which was just deep enough that at the deepest point, in the middle, I could stand up and poke my head above water. I found that if I squatted down and sunk to the bottom, I could stare up at everyone as they sat around the ring. I pretended they couldn't see me and that I had that little world to myself. My own little heated pool in the middle. I didn't need floaters there.

Ninja as Child - #15 - LA

I don't want to move to LA. Why would I want to? I have to give up my cat, Emily (named after Emily Dickinson). Dad #3 is a wannabe rock star. He covers bad hair band music and writes his own, just as cheesy as the stuff he covers. His band thinks they're going to make it big in LA. So we have to go.

When we get there, after turning down the place in Compton that was riddled with bullet holes from the previous occupant's assassination, we settle on an adobe box in the center of mexi-town. The house is on a hill, just south of the school where 9 out of 10 students are Hispanic but all the teachers only speak English. This means 3.2 of the kids in my class, including me, are white. This isn't like prison where you can team up with your like kind and form some kind of protection circle. Here, you just hope the other guys are bigger targets than you are and you try not to draw attention. I'm the minority and I'm new. I draw attention and get bullied by a kid with no fingers on his right hand because, as he puts it, "my mama smoke 2 much crack. What? You lookin' at my hand? My brother leads this gang, gringo. He'll fuck you up. Check this knife, bitch." Then he'd pop out a 6-inch steel blade with his good hand and lick it like some creepy cartoon character with Down's syndrome.

Fifth grade is a bitch.

My mom tries to alert the school principal about the weapons and drugs the kids bring onto the playground. He laughs at her, "What do you expect me to do about that? You talk to their parents. Let me know how it goes."

My mother turns on the radio every morning before my brother and I walk to school. The radio tells us whether or not it's safe to breathe the air outside today.

"Today.... is a SMOG day." That means, no. We have to eat lunch in the principal's office and spend recess indoors. The principal is some white dude underneath his horribly mega-tan, sun-torn face. He doesn't talk to us, just stares at us like we're aliens, like we don't belong here, children of some hippy who's overly-concerned with the air quality, like everyone here doesn't just live with it. Three out of five days are smog days. The surgeon general warns that it's not safe to leave your house on those days but everyone does it. They have to do it.

When we moved into the stucco house, we tried to put up some posters. Upon touching the tiny nails to the wall, massive holes broke out. Tape doesn't hold. Nothing can go on the walls, so they remain this ugly color of beige--ugly because it's the color of gringo skin, the white plague, some kind of infestation on this turf.

One Saturday morning, I head outside before my mom wakes up. This guy is running down the hill, frantically wheeling a truck tire as fast as he can. He's taking evasive action because, right behind him, another guy is chasing him with a six shooter, screaming something in Spanish. The guy with the gun fires two rounds but misses each time, the fleeing thief ducking as if to dodge the bullets. The bullets continue through the residential streets, finding homes in whatever gets in their way. I go back inside. It's probably a smog day, anyway.

Ninja as Child - #14 - First Grade

It was 27 days, 3 hours and 22 minutes since the boy who would one day become Sleep Deprivation Ninja began first grade. On this day, the teacher had invited her identical twin sister to join the class. The women wore matching blue and white dresses in the Dutch style that reminisces the wardrobe of Dorothy Gail from the Wizard of Oz. Both women had applied the same grotesque amount of make-up, their eye-liner in thick swirls and rouge filled cheeks, which threatened to halt school buses, all culminating to make them appear to be at least a decade older than they really were.

One of the children began to imagine the classroom as a circus. The eerie twins, never separating, seemed conjoined at the hip like the famed circus twins of Siam. Another student wondered if they would ever learn to apply cosmetics with such horror inducing flair as the twins had managed--Halloween, after all, was only weeks away and the child who wondered this shined a bright, toothy grin of anticipation.

The young ninja only cringed in his chair, lowering deeper and deeper, hoping to vanish into the base of the floor, fearful that the verbal torment of the one teacher would be doubled with the introduction of her twin.

As the students began their first assignment, the teacher twins walked around the classroom, huddling together and whispering, with hands blocking mouths, like little gossip girls. From the back of the classroom, the young ninja could see that they were about to descend upon him. Their faces lit up, highlighting the rouge and eye shadow with emphatic creases and they scurried closer to him until they were blocking the tiny space that would have allowed him to leap from his desk and out the classroom door.

One of the twins then pointed to the young ninja and exclaimed, "See, his eyes are so blue." Her hands folded together in a Clove Hitch knot under her chin, as if trying desperately to contain her exploding enthusiasm.

"Oh," said the other, giving a little shoulder tuck and smile to indicate an agreeable curtsy.

"When you grow up, you are going to have the prettiest blue eyes!"

The young ninja casually adjusted his peripheral vision to take in as many of his classmates as possible. He inspected their faces, hoping that none were paying attention to the horror he was facing. At that moment none were, but as the ninja returned to face the terrible twins, the boy sitting next to him pointed with a chuckle. He had nothing witty to say, only a grin and a finger.

Soon the chuckling virus took hold of the child in front of the young ninja and progressed north by northwest until everyone had caught the influenza. They were not laughing at the boys blue eyes for they were not all that funny. The joke was somewhere in the way the twins were standing, dotingly, crooning in front of the young ninja.

This, thought the ninja, is too much.

At this point, the boy with blue eyes had nothing to say, only an obvious and immediate action to take.

As his eyes were the reason for this treatment, he sought to be rid of them, exchanging them with the eyes of his neighbor. Perhaps you would like blue eyes, Bobby. These words remained unspoken, but were conveyed with clarity as the ninja child reached out to pluck the eyes from his classmate. Perhaps brown eyes will allow me to vanish, unnoticed.

Ninja as Child - #13 - Poor

At the welfare office, you stand with sordid figures, screaming children with mothers that stare blankly at the front of the line as if the needy young ones don't exist, solo street folk who put their signs down outside, lest they appear to have a paying job, fathers who stumble in bedraggled and filthy drunk, desperate families who just need a little help and who barely hold back tears at their situation, and government employees, bored, annoyed and eager to be rid of the whole lot.

I'm standing in line with my mother and watching the other children. Some play, some cry, some hold their mothers in fear of this strange and noisy place. One woman screams at a teller, something about the money not being enough. My mother looks down at me and gives a wry smile, the kind of smile that says, forgive me for this; I'm sorry we are here; we'll get out of this someday. I smile back, the kind of smile that says, I know, mom; I trust you; we are OK.

When we have the welfare check, we are golden. The rent is cheap in our shabby apartment but we have cable TV, heat and a fridge full of food, all packed from the Grocery Outlet, or as we like to call it, the Canned Food Store. Occasionally, we would go there and see a massive pile of cans without labels. 10¢ each. Mystery food. No expiration. We would buy a dozen of them and take them home to discover, yams, cocktail sausages, unidentifiable vegetable masses.

We get Food Stamps in a fat booklet, which, when torn out and stacked, appear to be the loot from a lottery winning or a bank robbery. These are just like cash and look like fancy, large Monopoly bills. You can only buy food, candy, and any other consumable goods with them. My brother and I take a Food Stamp toy $5 dollar bill to the corner grocery and buy two bags of Doritos, Salsa Rio and Cool Ranch, and a few bags of candy bits. The shop keeper gives us disapproving looks but he's forced to take the mock money.

My mother is in school, studying whales and sociology. She's passionate about the environment and social justice. I go with her sometimes, when I don't feel like going to my school. The University is so much better. I sit in her Greek Mythology class and listen to the professor tell tall tales of Zeus becoming a bull so he could carry Europa to Crete, fornicating in the ocean on the way, impregnating her with Minotaur sons. It's awesome. I join in on the discussions and the professor doesn't mind that I'm there. He laughs like none of my teachers ever have, honestly, mercifully, humbly. In my mother's Women's Studies class, I draw on a legal pad, doodling mental mayhem, swirls and swaths of wandering jest.

Outside, we meet up with one of my mother's classmates. They talk for a bit and then he asks if I plan on going to college. Maybe, I say. I don't know. School is a drag, but college is way cooler than what I have to do now. Well, you know, the government pays me to go to school, he says. Really? That's way cool. I'll definitely go to college if I get paid to do it. I'm sold.

Being destitute, we qualified for Medi-Cal, the California Medicare system. Free health care. Shoddy health care, but free. When we ran out of Medi-Cal stamps, which happened every month, we made frequent use of the free clinics who specialized in 3rd world medicine and free prophylactics. As a child with epilepsy, needing frequent blood work, brain scans and experimental mental medications, free health care was as necessary as cable television. Who could live without it?

Ninja as Child - #12 - Licorice

I've always liked black licorice, but it might be attributable to a particular babysitter on whom I had a little crush.

"Here. Pretend it's just your gum." I'm not supposed to have any candy aside from my gum but she hands me the little black licorice chew and I swap my gum for the molasses masterpiece, rolling it around with my tongue, squishing it against the roof of my mouth, all the while miming the jaw marching rhythm of chewing gum. We hide under the cheap apartment complex stairway and tell stories about what the world will be like when we are older. I tell her my dream of flying one day.

"No wings or anything. I'm just going to jump into the air and it'll be like a vacuum roller coaster, sucking me up and twirling me around...but I'll control it. I'll get everywhere that way." She giggles at my naive charm.

Of course she was much older than I was, probably by four or five years. But she was way cooler than the bible thumping granny that my mom fired last week.

The old lady had whipped out a graphic novel version of Sodom and Gomorrah as soon as my mother left the apartment. I followed along in the pages, marveling at the gore and horror within. My brother realized this was not what our mother would have wanted and when she got home and heard what happened, our mom was furious. The wretched old lady is out. The hot young girl is in.

hmmm... got a lot more to say on the subject of black licorice... and cute girls... but running out of evening hours... to be continued...

Ninja as Child - #11 - Bees

I am one year old. I don't remember this but I can imagine it clearly from my mother's stories.

I'm naked, of course, as I have not yet learned to be ashamed of the awesome ability to pee anywhere at anytime. As I wander out onto the back porch, my mother hears me happily proclaim the identity of an insect.

"Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeee....." This is followed by a moment of silence, which is then followed by incessant tear jerking screams of childhood terror and dismay.

My mother rushes out to see what's the matter. "Are you OK? What happened? Did you get stung by the bee?"

As a one year old, caught in a hysterical fit of shock and pain, I have trouble following and answering these questions. So I continue to wail. Suddenly my mother sees the problem.

My penis is turning a bright shade of purplish red and is swelling up like a frat boy at a strip club who just got the shit kicked out of him by a bouncer.

My mother rushes me, naked, to the car and straight to the hospital. The doctors inspect me and recommend several shots and some medication. As a hippy, my mother objects.

"What is the worst thing that can happen if we don't do anything about it?" She asks.

"Well, if the swelling doesn't calm down, it could stay swollen for a while and he if he has to pee, it could get blocked up and that could cause some serious trouble."

"Ok, but do we have time to wait and see if the swelling goes down before we pump him full of drugs?"

"Yes, you can take him home but call me if he has trouble peeing."

We exit the hospital and as my mother is putting me back into the car, I begin to calm down. This is when my penis explodes. I spray urine all over the car. All over it. The roof, the back seat, the front seat, the hatchback trunk, the whole inside of the car is covered in piss. The swelling and discoloration nearly vanish and I'm suddenly fine.

"I go bee-bee..." I say, woozy and fatigued.

Ninja as Child - #10 - Beer

"Why is your beer light and his beer is so dark? They are both just beer, right?" I'm presenting this question to my mother and my first step dad (Nam vet dad or NVD). In my five-year-old mind, beer is all the same.

"Try 'em." NVD suggests.

I reach over to my mother's Pale Ale and fail to notice the absurdly uncertain look on her face as I take a sip.

"Ugh! Gah! Blech! Nyeeyeyeyyeyeyeyeah...." I shake my face in horrific disgust. My tongue is starting to lose all feeling but my sense of taste!

"Now try mine." NVD says, nudging his beer closer to me. I'm urgent to get the taste of the first beer out of my mouth so I hastily grab his with the senseless, caution-throwing curiosity that children are known for having.

"UUGGGHHH." I rub my tongue with my hands and shake spastically like a rat that's just been electrocuted. "I'm gonna throw up! Ew. How can you drink that?"

"It's an acquired taste." NVD says triumphant, sitting back and giving my mother a sophisticated glance.

Needless to say, my first time getting drunk wasn't on beer; it was cinnamon schnapps, interspersed with peach schnapps sips to wash it down. Peach pie. The cinnamon burned a little extra and the peach smoothed it out. This is a story for another time.

Anyway, I now have grown a taste for some beer but I still can't take the light hoppy kind. And I have still not found my dream beer:

Imagine a Guinness or some other thick, dark, bread-like stout, brewed with fennel and sarsaparilla, nice and heavy with the black licorice overtones and a subtle flax grain finish to wash it down. Maybe a dash of clove.

Until I find this brew or convince someone to brew it for me, I usually drink a Guinness with a shot of one of the following on the side so I can blend it together as I drink them both:

1. Kahlua
2. Sambuca, Ouzo or Pernod
3. Galliano

Yeah, call me whatever heathen name you can think for me. I'm just all messed up from that beer experience as a child.

Ninja as Child - #9 - This is My Rifle

I'm back in Florida and I've digressed back to being so young. So many memories there, I'll have to bounce out every now and then just to keep the variety going in these memory posts. When you're 5 years old, which is how old I was when we left Florida, every day is a lifetime. Every moment I experienced at that age seemed so vital. They seem clearer than my memories of last week.

My second dad was in Nam. He went a little crazy and turned to the bottle for sanity or for a good time. My mother was still, at this time, also enjoying the needed drink or two but working hard to quit. She has now been sober over 25 years. I'm proud of my mom.

Anyway, I'm out in a field with step dad #1 and he has his rifle. He's teaching me all about how to use it and how to behave around people with guns. I'm around 4 years old. The gun looks about as mysterious as the wheat field, which I'm still not used to seeing.

This is the same field where I had previously narrowly missed stepping on a cottonmouth snake, saved only by my mother grabbing my arm and telling me briskly 'HALT!' I hovered, my right foot stuck in the air, over the black viper. The snake then curved and wove itself back into the wheat, unaware that I was lingering above it. I resumed walking, unaware that my life could have ended. My mother was a little more shaken.

So, Nam Dad is pointing his gun to the lightly clouded blue mass that he calls 'sky', aiming at the clouds. "Bet you I can punch a hole right through one of those clouds." He says. I hesitate to disagree and decide that he probably can. "Stand behind me! Always stand behind someone who is firing a gun." I rush behind him, edging out only a little to view the cloud, as I expect it will burst in a flare of white smoke and vanish on impact. He holds the rifle out high and looks around back at me, so low by his feet. He shuffles in circles, making me scurry to stay behind him. He laughs.

Then he shoots.

The echo is intense. I don't even see the cloud he was aiming for anymore, I'm so dizzied by the bang of the rifle. The world spins chaotically for an instant and I steady myself, checking to make sure I'm still behind him. He could fire again. But he brings the gun down, looks down at me and laughs. We start to head back along the path. Several steps later he stops me and points to the ground. "You see that?"

I look down on the edge of the path and see a lizard. Not an especially large one but, to my childish eyes, it looks big enough to get me concerned by what my dad is pointing out.

The lizard is dead. Not just dead, but dead with a bullet lodged in it's head.

It lays there as if it had been casually scurrying back into the wheat when an unexpected bullet fell from the sky and landed right in it's cranium. Squish. Pinned to the ground. Dead.

I look up at Nam Dad. He raises his eyes to the sky and back down at me. Then he raises his finger up in the air. "Don't you ever fire a gun straight into the air."

Needless to say, I'm convinced of the danger that gravity poses when mixed with small, heavy, fast moving cylinders of lead. I stay there, squatted to the ground, with the lizard for a second, examining it, covered in dust. A little bit of blood has leaked from it's head and merged with the dusty path. The lizard is a little skinny; a little emaciated; a little too dead.

How much earlier in the day had my dad come out here and stuck that bullet in the lizard's head before taking me out to this field? Did he kill the lizard himself or just find it dead and get the idea to teach me about Newton in his own way? I imagine him, pistol in one hand and a squirmy lizard in the other, pinning the creature to ground, digging the barrel into it's forehead. No, he must have used a hammer to put the bullet in, or pushed it in by hand. These things puzzled me for a while on the silent walk back to the house.

To this day, I tell myself that this event was staged. But I still don't think that was a blank he fired straight into the air.

Ninja as Child - #8 - Jon Bon Jovi

"You don't know who Jon Bon Jovi is!?" This came from Izaak, the 7-year-old kid standing in front of me, wearing a leather jacket with a big "Jon Bon Jovi" spread across the back.

I had, of course, in my ignorance, dared to ask him, "Who is Jon Bon Jovi?"

Queue music:



We are all standing in line, awaiting our release from our second grade classroom, into the open embrace of recess. I look at Izaak who has only half way turned around to give me the same face the Fonz would use to tell someone, "hey, it's cool, I'm cool enough for the two of us."

Izaak is cool enough for the two of us. He is a certifiable badass. This kid knows everything that is cool. He's slick with the ladies. He can always win those toys from the stupid claw machines at the video arcade. Every. Freaking. Time. Sometimes we go to the video arcade at the mall just so he can prove it.

So, I'm standing there, turning red with embarrassment that I don't have a clue who this Bon Jovi guy is and Izaak saves me. He leans in and whispers, "he's a singer, man."

"Oh. Oh, yeah, I knew that." I'm such a smart-ass. Izaak shakes his head, totally not falling for my ruse. "You going to Mike's birthday party tonight?"

"Yes I am." He says and then he throws his hands into the air in a badass biker style "ROCK" just as the bell rings. For a split second it looks like he made the bells ring just by throwing his arms up and giving the signal. I marvel until the vanishing line catches up with my position.

Children pour out into the play yard like a bag full of marbles spilling out onto the floor. Direction is meaningless. Vectors change based only on the terrain. Individuals coalesce into groups, arbitrarily merged based on location, rather than social status. The hordes of children indulge only in fun.

Mike's birthday party that night begins at Angelo's Pizza. There are about eight of us running amuck, pizza in one hand and a fistful of quarters for the video games in the other. Several very large pizza's are quickly devoured. My stack of quarters lasts me about fifteen minutes. Some other kids have more and I watch as they play. Izaak has been playing for over thirty minutes on the quarter he borrowed from Mike. Badass. Within the hour, all the quarters are gone and Izaak has killed the game. This place is spent. But the night is still young. The party continues at Mike's house, where we will all slumber over, living the fort-building, pillow-fighting, video-game addicted paradise.

When we get to Mike's house, I look around at all my cohorts and something isn't right. "Where's Izaak?"

Mike shrugs, "I don't know... I think he had to take off or something."

"Man that sucks." I'm a little hurt. How could he ditch out on the best part. A sleepover! That's just crazy. I'm sad for a brief moment but little boys with their toys and games are easily distracted and fooled. We all forget about Izaak.

The next morning, my mother picks me up and she asks me how it went. "Oh, we made this awesome fort and played video games and ate lots of junk food and it was fun. I wish Izaak was there. Do you know why he didn't come?"

My mother stares out the window of the car as we drive away. She looks unusually distant. "I drove Izaak home last night from the pizza place." Then she looks at me with a pained expression like she is about to cry.

"Why, what happened?" I'm scared for Izaak. Did he get injured or something? Did he have some kind of emergency?

"Mike's mother told me she didn't want him there because Izaak is black." She looks at me. I'm at a total loss for words. "She said, I don't want that negro boy staying at my house with my son. That's what she told me. So I took Izaak and I drove him home and I explained it to his parents.... I'm so sorry." She turns back to the road.

"Mom! Why didn't you tell me? Why did you let me go there? I wouldn't have gone if I knew that." I start to get angry, brooding with my arms folded tight.

"I'm sorry, I should have told you. I regret not telling you."

I can't stay mad at my mother. I stare out the window and I imagine that I am Izaak, sitting here in the passenger seat, being driven home from the party. Did he cry? I wonder, did this happen to him a lot? I had no idea someone would ever do something like that to him. Why? WTF? Why?

Fuck. Now I'm fighting the tears just remembering this shit. And yes, ninjas do cry, but it only happens when a ninja relives some of the tragic memories that eventually combined to create the need to become Ninja. I can still choke a Jabberwock with my pinky.

Izaak just keeps cool. On Monday, in class, he just shruggs like the Fonz when Mike and the others ask him what happened to him. "Hey, I just had to go, you know." Izaak didn't miss a beat. Mike doesn't even know his own mother is a racist bitch.

I look around the classroom. Tiffany has red hair. Brian's hair is black. I have extreme blue eyes, about which the teacher makes frequent creepy comments. I'm the only one in the class with eyes this blue. Tiffany is the only one with red hair. Izaak has really dark skin. It's darker than peter's and in a different way. Everyone's hair is different. Everyone's eyes are different. Our noses are different, our chins, our height, the size of our hands. Everyone has a different skin tone. The only thing we see in each other is difference. And difference is cool.

This classroom is full of hippie children. Most of our parents were hippies. Some still are. We live in a little town full of natural food stores and local bars where everybody knows your name. In this town of monotonous living, conformity is tantamount to wearing a shirt that says 'Dull'. So we all look at each other for the differences that make us cool, all trying not to blend in with anyone else. Until we get around to learning about discrimination in school, none of us has any idea the world is full of such things. Sure, we notice we are all different but by what scale could we even dare to label any of these traits better than others? The only thing that matters is that you know who the fuck Jon Bon Jovi is. That's definitive.

Many years later, I'm about 15 years old now, and I'm at the grocery store getting a bunch of stuff for my mom. When it's my turn in line, I unload a full cart of food onto the conveyor belt and when I look up, I recognize the woman at the register. It's Mike's mom. She's older but she still looks the same. I remember Izaak and as I think about him, recognition dawns in her face too. She knows who I am. She knows I was friends with both her son and with Izaak. I think about screaming at her or just casually asking her what it's like to hate people like Izaak for such stupid reasons. I look behind me and see that the line is long. Everyone is waiting for my heap of goods to be purchased so they can take my place and interact with this woman.

No, not this woman. I look at the ground and lick my lips, clenching my fists, ready to bash her face in while she's calmly beep-beeping my groceries. I look up at her and slowly shake my head. I can't do this. I can't make this transaction.

I leave. I just walk out. The pile of groceries sits on the conveyor belt and yields to no one. She doesn't say anything. I know as I leave the store that she is just staring at my back and she knows exactly why. It's not much resolution but at 15, I am not yet a ninja. I'm still just a little boy who doesn't understand the world. Not even a little.

Damn. That was the saddest stroll down memory lane I've taken in a while. I'm getting all of these memories written so I can remember them when I'm old and so my daughter can have an idea what the world was like when I was a kid. I had forgotten when I started this project that so many of the memories that stuck are pretty shitty. I've got a million more. But that's why I eventually cracked and became Ninja. Time for something to laugh at. This seems relevant:

Ninja as Child - #6 - Cereal and Waffles

In the cafeteria, at my kindergarten school, in Jacksonville, Florida, I'm standing in line, waiting for my turn to make the biggest decision of my life: Cereal or Waffles.

Unbeknownst to my five-year-old self, this choice will mark a turning point in my life. It will serve not only to populate my morning with the most important meal of the day, but also to teach me a valuable lesson in respect, humility and hand-eye-coordination.

For the first three days of school, I had chosen cereal. It seemed quick and easy, familiar and comfortable, tasty and nutritious. My favorite was Rice Krispies with a child's handful of smuggled in sugar.

"Cereal or waffles... cereal or waffles? CEREAL OR WAFFLES!?" The chef is staring down at me, hands on hips, awaiting my answer.

"Waffles today." I'm going for something new. I start to think of myself as worldly, soon to be experienced in the ways of variety. Waffles. I'm the man. The chef hands me a plate with two little waffles and two cubic packets of maple syrup.

I wander to a free table and set my tray down, sliding in coolly in front of it. The waffles are still slightly warm from the toaster-top pickup window where they have probably been waiting all morning. They smell great. Fork in hand, I'm ready.

I grapple with a packet of syrup. The metal-paper lid is stuck hard. I can't manage to peel it up but I give it the old elbow-grease.

*MMMMMMMHHHHRRRRRRRRMMMMM* rip!

That little rip is the sound of syrup screaming "Freedom!" from a vacuum sealed prison. My fingers, hands, even my elbow are all covered in syrup. The table captured most of the brown goop but somehow the waffles dodged the explosion completely. The packet is spent. It has nothing left to offer.

"Good lord, son!" The principal is glaring down at me. She's this tall, slender, black lady in a purple Victorian dress. She is furiously disappointed. "Just look at that mess you made!"

I go for the other packet.

"Boy, you best not open that." She holds her arms akimbo, burning me with the Fire Stare™ she learned in Academic Administrative training. She's too late. I'm already gripping it with both hands and yanking with the force of a hungry child. Again, the packet gives way without warning.

This time, the waffles catch some of the sauce. I ignore the remainder of the syrup as it flies out over the heads of my neighboring classmates and I shove the entire first waffle into my gaping maw with fervent voracity. I swallow half of it before the syrup reaches peak height. On its way down I jump up, holding the plate with the remaining waffle. I dive low to the ground to catch a glob of sweet sap. It lands with a palpable splat, filling the fried flower pockets.

Before I get back to my seat, the Principal is there, hand on my arm, pulling me away.

Her arm drips a sugary brown and I smile. When I get home, my step dad teaches me never to choose waffles again.

The next day, I choose waffles.

Ninja as Child - #6 - The Whistle

I am, once again, sitting at my desk in kindergarten, attempting pay no attention to anyone around me. I do this well. My pockets are full of knick-knacks and I have one of those round, metal pea-whistles that gym teachers use to shut people up. The wooden ball inside rattles around and I'm wondering how it got in there. It's too big to fit through the air hole, so there must be another opening.After a thorough inspection, I deduce that the ball must have been put in the whistle before it was fully pieced together. The edges of the whistle are tight but it's clear that the whistle wasn't manufactured in one single piece.

The teacher continues to talk, given some lesson, to which my young, distracted mind is not privy.

I like to draw. I like to draw so much that I always have a pencil and a sheet of plain white paper--and I mean plain white, not ruled, not lined, not tainted with any pre-artistic renderings; it's just white. So, I decide the best way to examine my whistle is to draw its parts and try to figure out how it goes together. Beginning with the easiest bit, I turn the whistle over on its side and begin to trace the outline. Who needs that freehand methodology when you have a live subject to trace?

After the pencil makes it all the way around the whistle, I look at the result and I'm disappointed. It's not right. The outline is too big and some parts are jaggy, especially around the back of the whistle where it has a chain knob that got in the way of my pencil. I try again. It's still not right. Again, I trace the whistle. And again. And again.

As I'm tracing the whistle, the room is getting louder. The teacher isn't the only one talking anymore. Everyone is gabbing randomly at each other. Two voices next to me blend in with the four to my other side. Further voices mingle in with the fray to contribute more chaos and wild confusion. I'm now tracing faster and faster, trying to focus against the verbal cacophony around me. Soon, there is no more room on the paper to put another prototype of the whistle and I start to overlap my tracings. Now, my paper is coated with graphite in big swirly masses and subtle hints of form. The noises grow louder and I cannot distinguish any of them. I cannot focus with all this racket!

I pick up my whistle and blow. I blow hard and long.

*bbBBllLLLLeeEEErrRReeErReEReEEppPPPP!!!!1!11!!!!one!!1!*

Silence.

For a second, my mind melts into peaceful focus and I see the inner workings of the whistle. The whole system is clear, brilliant, beautiful, a perfect machine, perfect in its simplicity.

"Who did that!?" This from the teacher, who was looking the other way when I ripped the atmosphere with rolling metallic ringing.

Every single student in the classroom raises an arm and points directly at me. They hold this pose for, what seems like, several minutes. I'm surrounded from all directions by pointed fingers and glares. Nobody is smiling; all are accusing.

Suddenly flustered by the onset of guilt and shame, I fail to notice the teacher standing in front of me, demanding my whistle. I just stare straight through the statue-esque figures and absorb what remains of the silence. The teacher raises her voice several times, each time louder, sterner, more an echo of impending punishment. Finally, I am jarred to reality and I loosen my grip on the whistle. She snatches it away and it's gone. It's all gone: the whistle, the perfect image of the mechanics in my mind, my inner tranquility, my dignity, my desire to explore the unknown.

I am but a boy, one breath away from living. I hold that breath within me, tightly, fiercely, unwilling to release myself into this unwelcoming world again.

Everyone looks away. The noise continues as if uninterrupted.

Ninja as Child - #5 - F

I'm in kindergarten, sitting at my desk, attempting pay no attention to anyone around me. I do this well. My pockets are full of knick-knacks and I'm fiddling with a piece of chain that I've been carrying around for a few days. Contemplating the links and how they got attached to each other, I start to imagine someone manually compressing each metal ringlet, one by one onto the chain. This doesn't seem right, so I stare intently at the chain; the perfect clamps puzzle my young mind.

In the middle of my inspection, a massive thump causes my head to instinctively jerk up to see my teacher who has just unloaded a stack of magazines onto my desk.

"To-day, klahs.... yoo wil bee ta-king theez mag-a-zeens and ser-ching fawr a let-er uhv the al-fa-bet." She addresses us using phonetics. As if we don't understand her, she speaks with a slow voice and high inflection on the vowels, bobbing her head as she slurs her speech. I wonder silently if she has an impediment or if she doesn't realize we all started talking about four years ago. She looks right at me. "Teyk wuhn." She holds up a finger as if I don't know how many one is. "And pas the rest uh-lawng." She points down the row of desks.

I grab a National Geographic and 'pas the rest uh-lawng' without looking at my neighbor. The magazines vanish from my hand and I pull it quickly back in.

"Suhm-bod-ee's shy-eye!" Teacher exclaims, like a children's show host on ecstasy.

I'm not shy, just ĭn-trə-vûrt-ed. I don't respond. Instead, I leaf through the magazine and admire the freedom of the wild caribou.

"Oh-kay. Wee wil go throo the al-fa-bet uh-round the room. Your uh-sahyn-muhnt iz too kut owt az men-ee uhv your let-er az yoo kan faynd and peyst them awn your sheet uhv kuhn-struhk-shuhn pey-per. Ri-mem-ber your let-er." She begins to go around the room, pointing to each of us. "A... B.... C.... D.... E... F..." That's me. I'm F.

I open the magazine and begin scanning the lines for the letter F. Gobs of words and pictures, maps and page numbers whirl past my eyes, but I see no letter F.

Frantic, flustered, furious and fixated on photographs, I'm fantasizing a transformation into a feral ferret, becoming wild and free, frictionless in fine fur, forgetting all about this foolish assignment.

"O-kay, ev-ree-wuhn... yoo shood hav found plen-tee uhv let-ers bahy nou. Ahy wil giv yoo uh-nuhth-er min-it too grab a kuhp-uhl mohr and then wee wil see hou men-ee yoo found."

My eyes dart from my blank, red construction paper to the girl sitting next to me. Her paper is full of the letter E. She has over a dozen of them already. The letter E! My mind fills with the woefully whiny voice of discontent. That's the most common letter in the English language. Why didn't I get the letter E?! This is so unfair.

My magazine is defective. It doesn't contain the letter F and I'm freaking out. I'm running out of time. Fuck! Hey, that starts with an F, I think, maybe that's in here. I've heard it a million times; I know it's a real word... I focus. I find my Zen. Going back to the magazine, I put my finger on a line and I start to follow it for miles, discarding every letter that is not an F, searching for 'fuck'. Finally, I find an F! It's not F for 'fuck' but it's an F!

"There it is!" I grab my scissors and as I pick the magazine up off my desk to put it in place for a cut, the teacher plucks it out of the air and away it goes in a heap with the others.

"Oh, it looks lyke yoo did-nt fynd a sing-guhl let-er F? Wuht wur yoo doo-ing heer this hohle tyme? Wel yoo get an F, nou." She says this last part with a frown as she bends over with a red marker and scrawls a massive letter F on my red construction paper. She circles it for emphasis but it's barely visible, red ink on red paper. The marking is slightly darker than the page, only from the wetness of the ink. She walks away, leaving me to stare at it for a few seconds until the ink dries and you can no longer see the traumatic loogie the teacher just spat in my face. It completely dissolves like a joke that nobody gets and I'm staring blankly at a blank red page.

I put the paper down and resume inspecting my chain.

It's beautiful.

In an instant, I'm gone, traveling to another world, riding above and below the lemniscate chain link waves, running along a valley of mobius strips, surfing on a sea of infinite possibilities.

Ninja as Child - #4 - Hand-Me-Down Heroes

Hey kid! Yeah you. Listen up:

When I was your age, we were poor.

I didn't have the same heroes as my friends. They would talk about GI Joe and the X-Men and I would say, "Who? What men? They ain't from the guvunment, yeah?"

We had hand-me-down heroes.

In 1986, 7-years-old, I listened to Davy Crockett records on a cheap, plastic 45 record player. It whined and drawled out tales of his daring adventures in the wild west frontier and I sung along with the theme song. "Davy, Davy Crockett! King of the wild frontier!" I knew the god-damned political propaganda lyrics front to back.



I thought someday I could colonize a new world and tame the wilderness by killing savages too. But I would need a 'coon hat first.

Although I sang along with Davy Crockett, my favorite record was called The Reluctant Dragon: Staring Touche Turtle & Dum-Dum, a 1965 Hanna Barbera production:


This album came into sharp moral opposition with Davy Crockett and his kill or be killed ways. The Reluctant Dragon was a pacifist and Touche Turtle had sympathy and ended up convincing the town that they could live peacefully with the natural inhabitant(s) of the land, the harmless two-headed dragon.

I started thinking maybe my records had secret messages hidden in them. Like the cipher disks that Ovaltine sent out to fans of those old radio shows. Maybe if I just spin the record in different ways I could find a cohesive thread.

After weeks of playing with my records, backwards, forwards, DJ-spinning them in wacky configurations of wickity-whack, zip-zap, scratch, I finally found something.

While negotiating peace with the dragon, Touche Turtle can be made to say, "I...aM Davieee Crock-ett." It sounds strange but it's definitely what he said. I tried to get more out of him but aside from cryptic mumblings about rutabagas, he didn't really elude to the wild frontier. I tried to rationalize ways that Davy could have been magically transformed into a turtle, moving to a life of pacifist-sympathetic chivalry. It all started to make sense.

When we could finally afford a TV, we got an antique.

We were so poor, our television only got reception for shows broadcast at least twenty years in the past. We watched Leave it to Beaver and I Love Lucy as if they were modern, all black and white, in the height of technology. I walked around saying, "Golly, Gee Willikers. Ah, Shucks!" and, "Gee that's swell!"

When I said this to a friend at school, he nearly blacked out in shock. "Dude! What was that?"

I started blankly at my friend who was dressed like a New Kid on the Block and suddenly realized I was a little out of touch.

Ninja as Child - #3 - The Great Tree

A fantastically large, deciduous tree sits embedded in the center of the lawn, in front of my kindergarten school. As I pass under it each day, I stare up and admire the light filtering through the leaves. Someday, I could climb that, I think.

In late November, countless leaves fill the grass surrounding the tree. Yellow, orange, gold, brown, umber, burnt sienna, I think of all the Crayola colors that I know to name. They don't do justice to what I witness; I am unable to name the subtle hues and patterns of the cross-hatched leaf mesh or the crunching-crackle and squishing-sludge sounds as I walk through the half dry and crisp, half muddy patches of leaves. Running inside, it begins to rain and I spend the rest of the day watching the droplets pelt the classroom window. I dream in class, not looking away from the wet glass. The teacher mumbles incoherently.

After school, I walk outside and stop at about, what seems to me, a mile away from the base of the trunk. There is a dark lake surrounding the tree, filled with leaves. The rain has subsided and now wavers between a soft drizzle and nonexistence. The wind is gentle but it blows several pieces and clumps of leaves, which are floating around in the water. I stare.

I stare at the lake and dream of leaves and the microbiological worlds traveling upon them from the great distance where I stand to the base of the tree. I stare until all the other children have fled our daytime institution.

There is a tiny bug, floating there on a leaf, facing the wind and the water, fighting against uncontrollable forces, so far from its destination. It has so much space to travel, so much to see, to do, to experience, so long before it gets where it wants to go. This bug is so young, so vulnerable.

The sky grows grayer and the rain begins to trickle steadily. I continue to watch the leaf as the water from above beats it into the water below. The leaf with my bug vanishes into the depths of the lake as I watch it go down. I wait for it to come back up to the surface, bearing the little adventurer, the bug with no fear, the one who faced it all without objection. I wait.

I am shook awake by my mother who is standing hunched over in the rain, her arms on my shoulders, staring me in the eye. "Are you OK? Where have you been? You were supposed to be home two hours ago!"

I look up from the dead leaves and the water, into the eyes of my mother, and cry.

Ninja as Child - #2 - How I Started Liking Girls

Jacksonville, Florida. Kindergarten. First day of school.

We live just a few blocks away so I walk to class. Before I leave the house, my mother makes certain I'm prepared.

"Do you know where to go?" She asks.

I nod, as I do whenever an adult asks something that I think expects a nod. In reality, I know where the school is but expect something miraculous and new will happen once I'm there, like I'm going to learn all about the world without even stepping into a classroom.

The school has one large deciduous tree in the middle of the front lawn. The leaves are still lush and green from the summer. The tree is not the only thing that's massive. The school itself is enormous. My five-year-old mind can't fathom the extreme monstrosity of the building. The elementary school is attached to the side of a high-school. This city block has more kids than I thought existed in the entire world. It's obvious everyone is heading into the double doors that tower over the children like the entrance to a sacred temple, seeming so massive they must have been built thousands of years ago by dinosaurs.

I follow. The second I step inside, I'm lost. All the children of various heights are briskly walking passed me, knowing exactly where they are going.

I stand three feet into the doorway, lower my head to the ground and begin to sob.

Children stare in horror at this sad wretch who's lost his way, all ignoring his plight in favor of a quick exit to their destination points, until three girls walk by and stop.

"Oh, look, he's lost," exclaims a pretty girl in a blue dress. Blue is my favorite color.

"We can help you. Do you know what class you are supposed to go to?"

I shake my head slowly, not giving up the tears. This is awesome! Older girls are talking to me! The girl in the blue dress takes me by the arm and one of her friends in red grabs my other. We skip merrily to the administrative office. Soon, I'm in the hands of a real adult and the three girls are waving goodbye and wishing me luck.

I am the last one in class. In the days that follow, I become exposed to an alien world. Teachers, a frightening Victorian principal, overhead speakers, the pledge of allegiance, sitting in a little desk in a row, staying quiet until spoken to, friends, enemies, girls and boys, toys in class are not allowed, being afraid of using the bathroom stalls that live in the back of the classroom.

Oh, yes, we have bathroom stalls in the classroom. None of the children want to use them and you can see in the faces of all the children toward the end of the day that we have been holding it in for hours. You think that we are jumping around because we are excited about learning? Oh, no, this kid has got to go, bad. Every once in a while, one of us has to go that bad and as he moseys to the back of the class, we all sit, feeling uncomfortable and embarrassed for our unfortunate peer, while the teacher continued speaking as if uninterrupted by the flatulence and plops of child shit.

There's this girl in my class and she is sooo cute. She always wears dresses and I totally dig her but I don't know what to say. I mean, hey, I'm five. WTF? Anyway, I like her so much that one day I whip her in the mouth with a necklace chain.

Here's how it goes down:

On the playground, I play alone. I have this fascination with chains. The longer, the thinner, the stronger, the better. Somewhere, I found this necklace chain made of steel. The links are tiny, even to my eyes and it feels much too heavy for what it is. But it's unbreakable and it's long. It's so long, I can tie up one of my hands to the metal bars on one of the playground pieces and still have enough to carry it over and wrap it around my free hand, providing the illusion that I'm trapped in a dungeon, chained to metal bars, unable to escape. At least, unable to escape until my bad-ass powers erupt forth and rip free, swinging the chain like a battle axe, in furious vengeance. I froth at the mouth when chained down and emerge a gallant and suave hero when I am free.

I've already learned from movies that the best way to get a girl to go crazy for you is to be in danger and through force of your own will, escape with only minor bruises, which she will fawn over and swoon. I construct countless scenes to capture the unrealistic effect on girls that I see in movies to no avail. I trip and fall, watching peripherally for a girl to gasp in fear that I might be endangered. She would come running over and kiss me as if I could die tomorrow and she should get me while the getting is good. The getting never gets good. I will not realize the foolishness of movie logic until many years later, after having made a fool of myself countless times.

One day, I'm doing my prisoner scene and the girl I have a crush on walks in front of me just as I'm doing the break-free routine. WHIP! The chain stings her lip, which immediately quivers as tears fill her eyes. I'm immediately apologetic but it's too late. That's it, I think, I've ruined my chances with her. She hates me now, I know it.

I heave the chain as far as possible into the bushes.

A few weeks later, in class, all the children are drawing. It's quiet, peaceful, everyone consumed with their own art.

The room is filled suddenly with the sound of gushing liquid like a Quick Stop™ Big Gulp® dumped upside down on the classroom floor. We all look up and the smell of urine and shame reeks from the cute girl's desk. She begins to cry, her dress ruined, her life ruined. It's over. She will never have friends again. She thinks this. I know. And yet, I know and I can see in the eyes of all my classmates that not one of us thinks this is funny or shameful. We feel embarrassed for her but only because we know it could happen to us. We share her sadness, looking back down at our art, pretending not to notice as the teacher makes a scene. A janitor comes to clean up the mess and the girl's mom comes early to get her. The whole while waiting, she sits in a puddle of pee, a dripping faucet of tears.

The next day, on the playground, she sits alone and I bring her a daisy. She smiles. I smile. Together we smile.

Ninja as Child - #1 - Typewriter of Destiny

My love for writing begins in the second grade. The idea of becoming a writer has already appeared to me in a dream involving cross-bred animals, sea-life, a world filled with water and an itch to type on the only typewriter left on the planet. It is my typewriter, a supposedly portable Underwood, which is absurdly heavy for a seven-year-old boy, whose ninja powers have not yet bloomed. I lug its whopping 12lb bulk to and from school every day for several weeks.



At the back of the class, I clack and clang the metal levers with finger-pointing prowess befitting a future ninja, beginning story after story, never getting further than the 3rd fragmented sentence before starting on a new idea. My teacher allows me to type only during active work time and during recess. She thinks my pounding keys while she speaks is a distraction, but her speaking while I'm typing is the real culprit of lower education. Bitch. I'm a sponge and I've absorbed all I can for the day, now I need to drip and pour the filtered waters of information in which I have been drowning. Give me a break. Allow me this single interest before my mind evolves into that of a bitter, cynical, apathetic, nihilist.

I've been doing this for weeks: following rules, being quiet, malleable to authority. Today is different. I awaken with a new sense of purpose, destiny, power.

I walk into the classroom and instead of putting my heavy typewriter in the back of the class, I walk into the center of the classroom, setting my typewriter right on my desk. It looks magnificent. I feel the surge of a writer within me, some ethereal relic of an author from centuries ago, who has gone forward and backward through time-space and discovered the ultimate meaning of life.

I begin to type.

Mrs. Funky Face (not her real name): "Ok, class, let's get settled... um... the typing needs to stop."
Sleep Deprivation Ninja (as child): *...clack-clack-clackclackclack-click-clack-clack-clack...chrrrrr-ding! clack-click-clack...*
MFF: "...hellooooo.... typing must stop!"
SDN (ac): *click-click-clack-clackclackclickclackclackclack-clickityclickclackclackzipdingclickclack...*

I'm on a roll. I'm feeling the souls of dead poets moving my hands, the scrolls of Alexandria unfolding in my mind, the dark history of Atlantis bubbling from within and gushing out in a tide of metallic clicks. The whirring and banging gets louder as my speed increases. Soon, I find myself filling pages as fast as I can rip them out and shove in fresh sheets. The keys are getting hot. The machine begins to smoke but I can't stop. The letters turn red, scalding my fingertips but I just push the keys faster.

In a thunderous clang, all of the keys bang together in unison, hitting the page and mashing into each other as the typewriter refuses to accept them against its unwilling harness, shooting the typebars away from the page with explosive force and fiery suicide. The keys go in all directions, bouncing from wall to person to desk to chalkboard, books to backpacks, foreheads to forearms, imprinting living poetry wherever they hit. Now the whole room stares at me, silently decorated with alphabetic tattoos. I am sitting behind a metal inferno as I read their faces, arms and desks.

Poetry. Pure, uncensored poetry. Upside-down, sideways, letters spaced beyond normal perception of word formation but I see it. My eyes swell with tears from this marvelous beauty, which the teacher mistakes for a cry of pain.

MFF: *stunned*
SDN (ac): "I'm out", pushing hands away as if finished with a meal.

Walking out of the classroom, the sky seems a deeper blue. The trees sound a little crisper in the wind. The smell of smoldering typewriter is a little sweet and savory. I head out into the field and into the future.