Thursday, September 16, 2010

The Semester Abridged

Baker Street at midnight, any day. 

Like so many words I'd heard that semester, these stuck like a bolus in the back of my mind, not stirring me to action, but there, clinging.

Fall went by at a drowsy clip. The school bus never went near my house and my parents were too tired from fucking to drive me, so every morning I took the tractor to school. At first, people thought nothing of it, just a kid rumbling down Main Street in a dew-glazed John Deere. But soon they noticed me taking it out every day, stifling what little traffic trickled through Fistwood, until an officer approached me about and I told him to shit blood. When I got to school, I parked the tractor in a wooded area nearby, where it sat for seven hours; my parents never seemed to need it.

Class itself became a vacuum of the intellect, as none of my teachers, let alone my peers, understood my opinions on Tolstoy, and given how rheumy and lost their eyes looked when I used long words, I might have been speaking Sumerian. So I gave up any attempt at an education, shot through my semester workload in a week, and sat in the back sketching Banach manifolds. Other than the rare instance where I'd want to finger-paint a picture or mold some clay, I stayed out of the mayhem all day, content with my drawings and praying there would be no groupwork. Ms. Beauvoir, one of the floral-print marms I mentioned earlier, quit calling on me for answers when I asked her why she had an intact hymen.

Near the end of the semester, classes ended for Thanksgiving. This might have been a boon to your average second-grader, but for me, visiting extended family seemed a duller experience than that godawful school. What I didn't realize then was just how far from dull it would turn out to be, and how my life would change that weekend.

Yes, hold that quilt closer. It's about to get strange.

19 comments:

  1. uhmmm... i don't know what you're doing here but i think you're trying to write or some sorts and i think it's interesting!.

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  2. Fantastic piece. I usually have to breeze through most blogs, but this post got me wanting more.

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  3. A tractor to school?! For serious?!

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  4. Tractor to school.... made me lol

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  5. I.... wha.... that's extremely well written! Can't wait for more :3

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  6. cool! glad you enjoy my blog :) yours is good reading so far, cheers!

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  7. Hmmm looks like an interesting blog.

    following and supporting

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  8. I really enjoy your writing, and you're very good at it. I will be following and reading your blog! Keep it up :)

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  9. bookmarking this page to read up on after i read up on the "Living With the Dead" blog, also a very well written one.
    Following anyway!

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  10. the little things that change your life

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  11. wow, I'm following and interested on how this turns out...

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  12. lol'd @ tractor to school. awesome!

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  13. Thanks for following me!
    I've only read your first post so far and I like it a lot! What made you decide to write this?

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  14. Thanks for the comment/follow. I'll give you some actual feedback after I read your stuff. Looks like you're serious, so I owe you my full attention rather than just a skim!

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