by BB Sheehan
CHAPTER 24
Grades. Got to make the grade. You don’t want to be in a tour bus that gets stuck on a hill. That’s what Mom says because it happened to her once in Jamaica when she went for a short tour with what turned out to be a band of spliff spewing tourists. She didn’t say much about the trip except that Jamaican food tastes like the best food in the world after a trip like that. I tried to explain that in an essay for Mr. Shane and he sent it to the Dean claiming that my parents were encouraging drug use among minors – me.
CHAPTER 25
They always want me to make a list in school. They want me to make a list of things to make lists about.
Things I can make a list about:
1) Making a list.
2) Things to do when not making a list.
3) Everything else.
You have to make plans to make a list. Before you make plans you have to make a list of things that you can make plans for:
1) I plan to make a list.
2) I plan to make more plans.
3) I will list all my plans.
I need to plan my life. To do that I need to do the following:
1) Wake up.
2) Go to school.
3) Go home.
4) Eat.
5) Sleep.
That’s not a good list. I need more details. I need to plan more details. I don’t just need a plan. I need a master plan.
J.P. never seems to have plan written down. She manages to keep it all arranged in her head and she is the most organized person that I’ve ever known in my short disorganized life. Mom says I’ve been dumbed down to the point of not thinking anymore. Dad calls it Zen. Mom calls that, “you say that one more time and I’m going to scream.” That’s what happens when you’ve been married for a long time. I’ll have to make a note on my plan list to never get married. Every time you see a story of those adventurers who make a list of exciting things they want to do before they die you never see marriage anywhere on the list. Marriage doesn’t belong on a list with sky diving and cliff jumping. Marriage makes people jump out of windows, but that isn’t an adventurous kind of a leap.
CHAPTER 26
I, the Shane, live to write again. I can put posters on the wall and like everything else they will be ignored in studious fashion. I can’t say what I really want to say to these apoplectic pygmies. Everyone makes excuses for them. “It’s just a phase that they are going through.” They turn their cell phones on, they turn their I-pods on, they turn on their little game playing devices like somehow it is going to illuminate their dark little existence.
If I could write a program that would cause all these devices to explode simultaneously I would do it. They would probably think that it is all part of the show and run out and buy another one to see if that would detonate again.
If I could write a program that would end the world I would. We are now undergoing a phase that we call death. I’m phasing you out of life. In my soul I’m a dog and I’m making sick howling noises.
I’ve been made this way by the buffoon rube attitude. I can’t do this anymore. I’d rather sell life insurance to rap stars.
Freaks. Trying to exterminate me. Trying to tell me what to do on some intergalactic wavelength. I’d jump out of the windows, but they’ve painted the windows shut.
I’ve got papers to grade. Maybe I’ll just throw them all away and drink and watch the Dodgers or the Angels. Most fans will watch one or the other, but I’ll watch both with manual dexterity and a remote control. I’m tired of English class. Too many words. I should have been a music teacher except that I’m tone deaf and can’t carry a tune. There is a migraine drum beat that is my heart pounding blood to my brain that I don’t want to hear. Maybe someday my head will explode in front of the class just to make a point. They say it is all good unless it is bad.
CHAPTER 27
Sligo and Shane ran into each other at a local sports bar.
“You’re the kind of guy people like to punch in the nose,” Sligo says.
“Are you trying to intimidate me?”
“No, I’m trying to punch you in the nose.”
“You don’t scare me. You don’t look like much and you can’t do that sitting down.”
“I’m going to finish my drink first.”
Then they have drinks and talk about baseball.
“The Cubs will beat the Dodgers this year.”
“No they won’t. They won’t beat anyone. They’ll never beat anyone.”
St. Sligo thinks to slug him, but he decides to have another drink instead. I walk in the bar, since I’m his ride home and it is time to go.
“Time already,” says Uncle.
Shane turns and looks at me like I’ve been sent to kill him. I leave.
“I was afraid it would end like this,” said Shane.
“What, what about my nephew would end like this?”
“He’s your nephew?
Uncle finishes his drink and meets me outside. I explain Mr. Shane to him and he walks back inside.
“Where are you going?”
“To punch him in the nose.”
I can’t grab him so I go to bring the car around.
Shane runs out a side door and is gone down the street before Sligo has a chance to do anything.
At school the next morning I’m called into the Assistant Principal’s office. The Dean, an A.P., and a school police officer are in the office. The Dean is settled behind the desk, the A.P. is in chair by the desk’s side and the campus cop stands by the door.
“We just spoke to your parents.”
CHAPTER 28
“So they think you’re a killer,” says J.P.
“No, they think Shane is a wanker. They were trying not to laugh the whole time.”
“You’re a gangster thug now.”
“I thought I was a redneck hillbilly.”
“You a thug OG redneck hillbilly.”
“Stop saying stupid things.”
“I’m an American, I’ve got rights. You a gangsta goober.”
J.P. did funny country gangster perp walk.
“What is that?”
“I’m trying to do a gangster thug redneck hillbilly walk.”
“You know how when you made faces when you were kid and your parents told you to stop it or your face would stay that way?”
“Sure.”
“Stop walking and talking stupid or you’re going to stay stupid.”
“If I become stupid who would notice?”
“Just me.”
J.P. sits down.
“Let’s be serious” J.P. said.
“You’re still making fun.”
“I can’t believe that wanker said he was going to press charges. All you did was drive your uncle.”
“Mr. Shane is the only one taking this seriously. The Dean even said that if Shane didn’t want to have altercations with intoxicated people he should stay out of bars. The administration is just covering their asses. That’s what they do.”
“Nothing is going to happen.”
“It was more like they were telling me to watch out for Shane. They just wanted to make sure I wasn’t hanging out in bars.”
CHAPTER 29
SHANE’S WAY
Another attempt on my life. I am surrounded. This is the season of the saboteur. Maybe I could hide in the mountains for a few months and come back when the heat is less intense. Somehow I must take over the schools and rule them until they see reason.
If the schools need a trial by fire, then I’ll be the one to make them burn. War or metaphor, what will it be?
I will hide and I will seek an answer to all of the world’s problems.
First I will get a restraining order against O’Really’s family especially the uncle, the assassin, St. Sligo O’Shaunnessey. I could challenge him to duel.
I must go back to school and listen to the imbeciles as they babble their i
ncoherent jibberish. Babble on and pay my bills you bastard sons and daughters of Babylon. Young laugh whores. Whoring any sense they may have for a few moments of cheap laughter.
I have a headache. I forgot to eat. I’ve had nothing, but a bag of potato chips in the past two days. There is no point in eating now, my headache will still be there when I am done with dessert.
CHAPTER 30
Now I’m in trouble with the law with the help of my evil accomplice, uncle St. Sligo O’Shaunnessey.
Mr. Shane tells me I have to write an Abraham Lincoln type speech about the Trade Center terror attack of 9/11. That was a few years ago and now I have to pretend I’m Honest Abe and come up with a Gettysburg Address type oratory.
“Four Square and several years ago our fear fathers did go forth and multiply and divide with mathematical certainty and came to this continent to get away from the other continent from which they were no longer wanted in great numbers. It is with disagreeable uncertainty that I speak with you today.”
J.P. says she will write it for me; she volunteered and is serious about it in way that I don’t understand. Mr. Shane wants it Monday which means he wants me to spend my whole weekend pretending I’m Abe the Babe. Maybe J.P. wants to write the speech to practice running for President. She likes some games better than others and she likes playing the ‘play Mr. Shane for a fool game’ more than most games. She was so serious she didn’t invite me over on Saturday afternoon even though her parents were not home.
Monday I’m in the hallway and Shane sees me and asks me if I have my Lincoln speech ready. I nod and he walks away without saying a thing.
English class. Shane announces to the class that I have a special project that I want to read to the class. First he reads the Gettysburg Address and explains the assignment that he gave me for punishment, but he doesn’t explain that it is for punishment or why I would deserve punishment.
First Shane takes it from me and looks at it studiously. He knows something is wrong, but he hands it back to me without realizing that it is not my hand writing. Here’s the speech:
“In centuries long past settlers found in this city a sanctuary to complete their pilgrimage. Today this history remains true as pilgrims flock here to escape the tyranny, intolerance and outright terrorism of a secular creation that plagues the planet.
On September 11, 2001 a testimony of evil threatened the sanctity of our religious expression. This failed crusade took the lives, but not the souls of the great many martyrs of different religions who toiled here in their quest for freedom.
On September 11 of next year let there be a pledge to ring the bell of religious freedom. On the morning of the 11th let leaders of all religions pray on the now consecrated grounds and designate an area where anyone of any faith can come and pray without evil intervention and let the bells toll in every church, temple, synagogue and holy place at that time to remember the fallen, the everyday religious heroes, that their prayers were not in vain and that those who have made a pilgrimage of belief have made a stand to make faith work here and in so doing make it work everywhere ad infinitum.”
I finish the speech that J.P. wrote. A few kids were listening, but most don’t know what is going on, they’re just zoned in a different space, some staring blankly as if listening to music even without the I-pod earpieces hanging on their heads. J.P., usually smiling, is serious, almost frowning, so I’m careful not to make any mistakes. The ones that listen give me weird looks like I had an out of body experience and I was channeling the thoughts of a much more intelligent person.
“O’Really,” Mr. Shane says, “could you stand up?”
I stand up. What does he want now?
“What is that part about the bells? Who are you, Quasimodo? From the Hunchback of Notre Dame. The bells, the bells. Are you high? Do you need a drug test?”
“I’m just an idiot sir. I should be executed at dawn.”
“If we executed all the stupid people there would be nobody left.”
“It would make your job a lot easier.”
Shane covers his ears,
“The bells, the bells.”
I hope he knows what he is talking about. Nobody else wants to hear what he has to say.
“I’m tired of shitake mushroom heads walking around spreading your Bolshevik and acting like you are so smart. You’re so stupid you think you’re smart, because you’re too stupid to know what smart is. If you saw smart you would think it was stupid, because,…,you’re stupid!”
His face is red. The bulging veins in his neck are blue.
“I, I,…,”
He sputters and makes animal noises. I think he is going to attack me and put a choke hold on my neck.
He slams his fist on the desk and screams.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid.”
Time to state the obvious.
“Sir, are you calling us stupid?”
I’m baiting a wild animal. He steps towards me like he will attack.
“Yes, I’m calling you stupid.”
I can barely hear his voice.
The Dean walks into the room.
“Is everything alright?”
“Yes, fine,” Shane says, “we were just acting out the speeches of Abraham Lincoln.”
“The famous you’re so stupid speech?”
Shane forgets that he is too mad to breathe and the Dean leaves the room.
CHAPTER 31
Me, Quasimodo, do hear them Parisian cathedral bells ringing, pounding in my estranged brain. Some guys like Shane never quit, always looking for a new and interesting ways of making an ass of himself.
“He’s like a one man show,” J.P. says. “My Mom used to take me to these little theatres and sometimes they only had one performer and they would rant and rave about all their problems.”
“Maybe the actor couldn’t afford a psychiatrist.”
“They couldn’t afford props or lighting. This was low to no budget.”
“Sounds like a reality show.”
“I don’t think these people would be allowed on TV except for a triple homicide.”
“What kind of show would Shane do?”
“He could do a one man show about his sex life.”
“Mr. Shane, the Amazing Jerkaton. He’d have to make stuff up.”
“He does that all the time.”
“I think he is putting a hex on my brain.”
“Try not to think about it.”
“I can’t get it out of my head. Once I heard this stupid song about summer during the summer and couldn’t get it out of my head until September.”
“What was the song?”
“Ahhhh, now that song is in my head again.”
“Maybe you’ll forget about Shane.”
“Ahhh, I’ll have to kill someone.”
“You are going crazy. If dogs start talking to you, you don’t have to listen to them.”
“What?
“Made you think didn’t it? It’s a zen question. What is the sound of one dog talking?”
“Ruff, ruff.”
“There is no sound, there is no dog.”
“Ruff, ruff.”
“A dog with fleas cannot flee.”
“Woof, woof.”
CHAPTER * *
He is going to flunk me. Teachers have to send out notices to the parents eight weeks before the end of the semester if they think there is a possibility the student will get a failing grade.
My card is on the table. Mom put it there, but she refuses to look at it or talk. She will come up with a family conspiracy theory as to why I’m failing. Mom is going to think that I caught some kind of alchy slacker virus from Uncle Sligo and that I’m doomed to a downwardly mobile descent into a skid row vomitorium.
CHAPTER 32
Mom and Dad together are plaid. They’re like the clothes that you want to wear around home, but you don’t want to be seen with at the mall. Things are wearing out for the
m in a feeling old vein; too much of the sunrise/sunset makes their eyes tired and I think the best way to help them would be to leave and take my idea of fun somewhere else because I think that my idea of fun is a part of what wears them down.
The neighbor’s kids have all moved out and a lot of Mom and Dad’s friends have moved to condos and they always remark on the young couples with their little children who have moved into the old houses recently. Sometimes Mom looks out the window like she’s not sure where she is for a few seconds. I see it in the older relatives, that look like they knew it was going to happen, but they didn’t expect to get old so fast. They’re shocked like they paid too much to see a bad horror flick. A song came on the radio once and the singer screamed, “Hope I die before I get old”, and Dad turned it off and said, “Too late for that”.
CHAPTER 33
The ballgame on the radio dream.
Lon and Ron with the play by play.
LON: This game will be underway faster than you can say, “That’s right Lon.”
RON: That’s right Lon. And today we will see the debut of a pitcher who will give us the preview of what looks to be a stunner of a career. All before you can say “That’s right Ron”.
LON: Right you are Ronnie boy. The Catalina Kid, Mickey O’Really is on the mound for the Big Town Bombers. He has got a smorgasbord of stuff in his pitching pantry.
RON: I get hungry just thinking about it.
LON: That’s right Ron. He pitches what looks like an all you can eat platter, but the batters walk away hungry every time.
RON: Batters think they are going straight for dessert, but they strike out on the appetizer tray.
LON: I get hungry thinking about his fastball.
RON: A plump and juicy hot dog.
LON: With ketchup and mustard.
RON: And relish.
LON: Lots of relish. Sometimes it looks more like a polish sausage.
RON: A German frankenfurter.
LON: A foot long frankenfurter.
RON: With sauerkrauten.
LON: With enough sauerkraut to invade France.
RON: Just don’t tip over the pastry cart.
LON: And always tip your waitress.
RON: Always be nice to the people that handle your food.
LON: The Catalina Kid is serving it up today.
RON: That’s right Lon. And how about his curveball?
LON: It’s on the takeout menu.
RON: Don’t get me started on take out, I’ll never stop eating.
LON: Oh so right you are Ronnie boy.
CHAPTER 34
“What did the cannibal say to the headhunter?”
“I don’t know, what?”