The Monsters Without: Chapter Two (Currently Untitled)

 Chapter Two
Currently Untitled

It was years before the next incident. Really, he’d forgotten all about the first time it had happened because of everything that happened after. Months and months of his mother being harassed by the mailman, everything from not delivering her mail to identity theft. The local postal service sided with the mailman and didn’t take any actions to stop what was going on until the mailman, emboldened, started targeting other people of color. Eventually, he went to jail, but not before Jeremiah and his mother were forced to move.

Even though his mother had never been late on a bill, even though his father had died in Afghanistan serving in the Marines, even though there was definitive proof of the mail tampering and identity theft, the only thing the creditors and companies saw was a single, black mother and wouldn’t make any allowances for the things that had happened. It all… wore his mother down. She wasn’t the same person anymore. The fight and the optimism went out of her.

The monster had been completely forgotten, even by Jeremiah, submerged in the tragedy with the mailman. His mother believed that the mailman had done something from outside the house to scare Jeremiah and cause everything that had happened. That wasn’t totally inaccurate.

Jeremiah’s new school, because he had had to change schools – it had been the desire to have Jeremiah in a “good school” that had been the reason for where they lived – was decidedly less good. You could tell because there were almost no white kids at this school, unlike his first school which was almost only white kids. The new school had no working computers in any of the classrooms, and all of the textbooks were clearly hand-me-downs from other schools. Jeremiah was more than slightly ahead of all the other kids in his classes and, so, bored. All the time.

It got him picked on. Being the smartest kid in class is never the way to make friends. But he hadn’t been the smartest kid in his first school, just in the top five or so. Here, though, he was smarter, or, at least, more learned, than everyone. Even some of the teachers. He didn’t know it, but it was that he read that set him so far apart. Reading had been highly valued at his first school, and he had developed a habit. It got him labeled a troublemaker by the administration and a know-it-all by his classmates. He hated it. Every day.

If he had known it was the books, maybe he would have quit. Maybe. But he didn’t know, and he didn’t have any friends, not really, so he read all the time. He thought the problem was with him. Something innate.

He loved science fiction the most. He didn’t know it yet because he was only 11 and not very inciteful, but it was the idea that in the future in there was no racism that drew him to it. People were just people and nothing like what happened to him and his mother could happen in a world without racism. So he loved Star Trek, and he loved books where humanity was humanity and there was nothing made of what color skin anyone had. But he didn’t know that’s what it was that he liked, not yet.

On days when he had had his book taken away by the teacher, like today, because she told him Stranger in a Strange Land was inappropriate reading – when he asked her if she had read it, she said “no” and scolded him for “talking back” when he tried to ask how she knew it wasn’t appropriate if she hadn’t read it, and sent him to the back of the room – he leaned his head against the window and daydreamed.

The glass was cool against his forehead, and he was imagining that he’d been raised on Mars and could do all of the things that Michael could do so that he didn’t have to sit in a boring classroom. He was vaguely watching out the window and vaguely watching the reflection of the classroom in the glass and superimposing the classroom being outdoors and thinking how much better it would be to be sitting outside on the grass having class out there and trying very hard to visualize everyone outside, trying so hard it made his eyes hurt and the kids in the reflection started looking funny, so he glanced into the class, turned his head just enough to see the teacher and everyone in front of him…

Spring Broken

It's spring break here.
Saying that, though, I'm not sure if it has any meaning left.

Let's look at it like this:
You have some "typical" corporate job, and it's a drag, and you have vacation time so you decide to use it. You go to your boss and tell the management asshole that you want to use some of your vacation days to take a week off of work. Your boss gives you that "boss" look and says, "Sure, that's fine. You can skip coming into work next week but, while you're at home, I want you to work on a couple of special projects and bring them back to me complete after your vacation."

"But I wasn't going to stay home..."

"Well, you better just plan to take them with you, then. And make sure you do a good job. Your next raise will depend on it."

What do you do, right? All you want is some time off, a vacation, but you're given even more work to do and there's no real way to get out of it even if it's wrong and, if that kind of thing actually happened to someone, probably illegal.

I don't actually know if that kind of thing happens or not, but I do know that the United States has more unused vacation days than any other country in the world. Why? Fear.
People are scared to use their time off because they worry that taking the time off will reflect poorly on them... in some way or other.
Which is not the point of this post.

It's spring break here.
Spring break is like vacation for kids. Or that's the idea, right? They're kids, and they need a break from school every once in a while. A vacation.
I remember when it was like that. When I was a kid, it was like that. School was out, and there was nothing to worry about for a solid week. Unless you were one of those kids who had put off normal school work and had to use spring break to catch up on that work, but, then, that was on you.

I remember the first time I got a significant assignment over break. It was over summer break between middle school and high school, and I was assigned books to read over summer break. Three or four of them. One of the books assigned was a book I already loved, and I never minded reading assignments; still, I remember feeling like it wasn't okay for them to do that. BUT! I excused it because I was going to be going to a different kind of high school... It was one of the first magnet schools in the country, not that you can turn around anymore without bumping into some kind of magnet or charter school, but, at the time, it was still this kind of experiment, and we didn't know the kinds of changes it would bring... like homework during summer breaks.

And, damn, my daughter is on spring break, and she has a shit-ton of homework. Her English teacher assigned a major project which is due on Monday after break. No, this is not one of those things where my daughter put it off and, now, has to do it over spring break (she never does that); the teacher scheduled a test for the Friday before break, then took 20 minutes of their test-taking time to explain their 200 point spring break assignment. That's just bullshit.

And she has a buttload of chemistry homework. Her teacher assigned them, basically, a homework assignment for each day of break, including the two weekends, as if they were still going to be in school. My daughter already spends two to three hours a night doing chemistry homework, so she's going to be spending that same time on chemistry over her vacation, too.

Not mention that she got homework in history and Spanish, also. Including watching a movie for history class that most of the students will have to pay to rent, another thing I don't find to be okay.

Oh! And she has softball practice and a game during spring break, too.

Excuse me, but what the fuck? Seriously, what the fuck?

My daughter already spends basically all of her time being stressed about school and had been looking forward to a little time off from that; now, she gets to spend all of spring break being even more stressed about school. Why? Because we actually planned (months ago) a small trip during break, the first time we've done that in something like four years (and only the second time we've ever done it), and, now, my daughter has to balance the trip against all of the fucking schoolwork she has to do.

And that's just wrong.
Inherently wrong.

Not that I blame the teachers. Not exactly. They're just part of a system that no longer works, as has become abundantly clear in the news in the last couple of weeks (and, yes, it's all related), and doing the best they can, which includes burying their students in homework and waiting to see who can rise above it all.

Perform monkey! Perform!

No, I don't have any ideas on how to fix it.
Yeah, I'm lying, but what does it matter if I have ideas about what's wrong with the education system in our country? I'm sure you have ideas, too, and those ideas are probably not the same ideas.
Mine are just better. 😏
[Oh, look! My first post emoji!]
So, no, I don't have ideas on how to fix it; I'm just pointing out an issue. Bringing it up. Not that I expect anything to come of bringing it up; sometimes, you just want to put it out there.
Of course, this isn't the first time I've brought up the crushing amount of homework my kids get, and it probably won't be the last time, either.

Mass Shootings

M is for mass shootings and the Right's lack of care
about our kids dying in their schools,

Day 35 (a future history)

Friday, February 23, 2018

Nothing is getting better. And so much stuff is happening that I can’t keep up with it or figure out what’s going on. I’m going to spend the weekend trying to figure out how to get out of here. Maybe I can take the train, but the train station is all the way downtown, and that’s a long way to walk.

The other thing I didn’t say about Tuesday is that it wasn’t just my school that had all the vandalism. It was all the schools. I didn’t find that out until later though. We were the only school that the soldiers came to, all because of Caleb, and we were the only school with an incident. An “incident.”

The only school with an incident on Tuesday.

Because then Wednesday happened.

Wednesday morning, one of the Nazi bastards came to school early to see if he could catch anyone putting graffiti on lockers. Evidently, Caleb and all of them had been talking big about staking out the school and catching people in the act, but Trevor was the only one of them to actually show up to do it. And he did do it. He caught a group of the basketball players vandalizing Caleb’s locker and burning his stuff.

But he was alone, and they beat him up. Bad.

That’s all we know, and we don’t even know that, because Trevor said it was guys from the basketball team, but they all say they didn’t do it. It didn’t matter, because the soldiers came and took away almost the whole team. All of the black boys on the team. Until they can “sort it out.” None of them have been back to school.

Things like that happened at a lot of the schools. Like gang fights. Gang fights with Nazis.

Parents are protesting.

There was a riot Wednesday night that was supposed to just be a protest, but soldiers went to it and there was fighting and a bunch of people got shot and some of them were killed. Mostly black people.

It’s really scary because I wanted to go to the protest, but mom wouldn’t let me. We had a big fight, and I tried to march out the door anyway, but dad got involved and threatened to lock me in my room except for school if I went out the front door and, like a dummy, I said I would just go out the window, so, now, he’s going to buy bars for my window. That’s what he says, anyway, and I kind of believe him. All I know is that I don’t want to end up locked in my room all the time like some kind of Rapunzel but without all the long hair.

But, then, I was glad I didn’t go because mom was listening to the stuff about it on the radio, and I was listening but trying to pretend not to be listening, and all of the gunfire started happening and there was screaming and all kinds of chaos and mom turned the radio off because she was crying and didn’t want to hear any more of it and all dad could say was how they all deserved it.

And I don’t even know what he meant by that. Black people deserve it? People who protest deserve it? People who don’t like what’s going on deserve it?

I hate my dad.

And that makes me sad when I think about it, because I didn’t used to hate him, but it’s like Trump being president has made him into the worst person he can be. I never knew he was all racist and stuff before Trump started running for president. And I know he used to play football in high school, so now I wonder if he was one of those horrible kind of jock guys that bully people and use girls.

And it makes me wonder what my mom ever saw in him because she spends a lot of her time crying, now, and they hardly ever talk to each other anymore. So I don’t know what’s going on at home anymore either, but I don’t know if I care because I’m leaving. I’m going to. I can’t stand being here, and I’m going to go to California.

As soon as I figure out how to get there.

Day 34 (a future history)

Thursday, February 22, 2018

I’m going to run away. I’m really going to do it. I don’t care if I don’t have enough money. I’m not staying here anymore.

This week has been shit.

Tuesday morning when we got to school, we found out that all of the little Nazi boys had had their lockers vandalized. All 18 or 20 of them. I don’t even know how many there are, though I think they’re adding more. yay It was all stuff like

Fuck Nazis

Nazis suck cock

Nazis are LOSERS

Most of us thought it was pretty funny.

Caleb didn’t. Caleb was going around school calling it terrorism and demanding to know who’d done it. Like anyone would tell him. No one liked him before he had his Nazi goon squad, and everyone hates him now. But Caleb whined to daddy. He actually went to the office before school had even started and called him, so there was a special emergency assembly called during first period. It turns out that Caleb’s dad isn’t just in the National Guard but is a captain or a sergeant or something and is the Nazi in charge of the Nazi babies.

Captain Nazi gave us a long speech about how this kind of behavior wouldn’t be tolerated and that the people responsible should turn themselves in to avoid horrible punishment. He also offered a reward for anyone who would turn in the people who did it.

So there’s this guy, Evan, who’s kind of a smart ass. He’s always saying disruptive stuff in class and making teachers mad and, sometimes, making them look dumb. He’s super smart and he knows it. He doesn’t care about any school stuff because he already knows it all. But he really doesn’t try to make people feel stupid. Except for teachers when they act like they’re right because they’re the teachers or people who are really just being stupid. I think he likes the attention he gets from being a smart ass in class because he’s so bored with being in school.

So Evan stood up, just stood up as soon as Captain Nazi-pants offered a reward, and said, “I know who did it.” Everyone got real quiet, and I’m sure whoever did do it was scared. I would have been scared. But I also wouldn’t narc on people bashing Nazis and couldn’t believe Evan was going to, even for a reward. Evan didn’t say anything. He just kept standing there. Everybody was looking at him, and I think he was enjoying it.

Eventually, Nazi-pants said, “Well?”

And Evan smirked and said, “It was your momma.”

Which doesn’t sound very brilliant coming from Evan – that’s the kind of thing a 6^th grader would say – unless he was trying to say the thing that would most piss off Nazi-pants. Or almost the thing that would most piss him off. Because Caleb started yelling, “You take that back! Take it back!” And Evan looked at him and said, “And your momma was watching and sucking a big black dick while it was happening. Two of them, in fact.”

Nazi-pants lost it. He went flying off the stage in a rage but some other National Guard Nazi guy had Evan by the arm and was pulling him from his seat by the time Nazi-pants got there. Caleb was right behind his dad. Evan was freaked out and trying to get away. Caleb’s dad grabbed Evan and punched him in the face. Just punched him in the face! Blood hit the wall and Evan collapsed. Caleb started kicking him and no one stopped him.

Evan is just a kid. Really a kid. He’s in 8^th grade, but that’s because he skipped a couple of years of school. He might only be 10. I don’t know.

I think everyone was too shocked by what was happening to do anything, but the soldiers weren’t shocked; they just didn’t care. Eventually – and it probably wasn’t really very long, but it felt like a long time – Mr. Chambers started yelling for them to stop and headed that way, but soldier dudes got in his way. But Mr. Chambers is a big guy and used to play football and wrestle and stuff, coach stuff, and kept pushing his way through. Then the soldier dudes started attacking him, and he was knocking them all down until one of them pulled out his gun and told Mr. Chambers to freeze.

By that time, Nazi-pants was arguing with the principal, and a few moments later, the police and an ambulance showed up. I guess someone must have snuck out and called 911 during all of the fighting and confusion with Mr. Chambers. Nazi-pants didn’t want to let the ambulance take Evan away, but the police made him leave them alone. I think they may have been trying to arrest Nazi-pants, but I don’t really know. All I know is more police came and, when the more police got there, they made all of us clear out.

At some point, between the police getting there and the more police getting there, the soldiers took Mr. Chambers away. He hasn’t been back to school. Neither has Evan.

Evan, though, is in the hospital. The school did let us know that so that any of us who want to can go visit him. I want to visit him, but I wasn’t really friends with him, so that seems awkward to me. Especially since he can’t talk because of the broken jaw. And broken nose. And cracked ribs. And internal bleeding. His dad is someone kind of important, I think, so I hope he makes bad things happen to Captain Nazi-pants.

No one knows what happened to Mr. Chambers.

So far, nothing has happened to Nazi-pants, at least according to Caleb. He’s been bragging, now, about how his dad can do whatever he wants and no one can do anything about it or stop him. And, according to Caleb, that means he can also do anything he wants and no one can stop him, either. It seems like the teachers believe it, because they are letting Caleb get away with everything, even telling them what to do.

Mom is calling for dinner. More beans and rice, probably. That’s all we’ve had to eat for a week, and I’m sick and tired of beans and rice. But I’m also hungry. Mom is talking about getting chickens, but dad keeps saying no. Mom says we at least need them for the eggs because it’s been almost three weeks since we’ve had any meat, and it was two weeks before that.

But, anyway, all of that was JUST Tuesday, but I’ll have to talk about Wednesday later.

Day 28 (a future history)

Friday, February 16, 2018

I hate school. I mean, I’ve always hated school, but I hate it even more now. Caleb was right about that stupid student patrol thing. Of course, it’s all boys, the worst boys, and Caleb is in charge of it. I think I hate boys, too. They all suck. And they all think they can do whatever they want now. All the time. Even come into the girls’ bathroom.

We got our ID cards on Wednesday, the same day they announced the Trump Youth Brigade. It’s all so shitty I don’t even know what to write about it all.

They gave us our ID cards in first period. And all the rules that go with them. Pages and pages of rules. We have to use them to get into school and to get out of school. We have to use them to get into the fucking bathroom, and we can only go to the bathroom twice a day. The doors won’t unlock for us if we try to use them more than that. We have to use them to ride the bus, the school bus or the city bus, and we have to use them to buy things. Even a candy bar! We have to use them to check into every single class we have. It’s how they’re going to take roll from now on.

They’re going to keep track of every place we go, because we can’t do anything without using these stupid cards! We can even add money to them so that we can buy stuff directly with our ID cards, and I think mom said that all of their credit cards and bank cards are being converted into something like the ID cards, with an extra chip that does all of the same stuff so that all of the information goes directly to the ID center. Or whatever they’re calling it.

It's got some long stupid name that I refuse to use. We’re all just calling it the ID Center. Or the Nazi Center when we can say that without getting tagged by one of the stupid Hitler Youths. I mean Trump Youth Bastards.

The problem is that I don’t really know anything about Nazis or Hitler or World War II or anything. I just know everyone started talking about Nazis and fascists and white supremacists last summer when all of the protests started. At first, it was all funny and stuff because there was that crying Nazi guy who went to jail and a bunch of those guys always whining about stuff, and that’s all I thought it was: funny.

Until Trump pardoned him and gave him a job. “Because he’s a good guy, a really good guy, and the media really really treated him unfairly. Very unfairly.” That wasn’t funny.

Then people started getting killed and it wasn’t funny anymore. Then, I just started trying to ignore it, because it was horrible. Too many fucking guns and people driving through black neighborhoods and shooting them up. And riots with people shooting each other up and police shooting everyone. And I didn’t want to know about it.

But I also feel like I’m only in middle school and shouldn’t have to know about shit like that.

But now I wish I had been paying attention and that I knew what everyone was talking about when all of that started happening. I just thought it would all pass and nothing bad could happen here. Everyone said nothing bad could ever happen in America. Or to America. I don’t know why I believed that. I knew that Trump was shit and that he was already something bad happening to America.

I wish I could remember all of those cheetos jokes about him. Those were funny. And they’re all gone now because of the internet. I bet Trump is happy about that.

So we went from riots with guns to some kind of war that they won’t tell us anything about. And I wish I lived somewhere I could find out what is going on, but I’m also happy that there isn’t any fighting happening here.

Except there was those tanks. And the attack on the air force base.

And Caleb keeps bragging that his dad is saying they’re going to let the youth brigade have guns and that they’re going to get special training and all sorts of things. I want to believe that he’s just bragging and lying, but I thought that last time.

I need to figure out how to get more money for my California box.

Gold Country (part 4)

This is the stream where we panned for gold. I think we lasted about 10 minutes.

Really, I was just more interested in taking pictures.

I did find some pretty non-gold rocks, though, not that I kept any of them.

The path through China Garden.

Day 21 (a future history)

Friday, February 9, 2018

We had to get pictures for our ID cards today. I don’t like having my picture taken ever, but this was even worse. We’re going to be required to carry them “at all times” so anyone who wants to can “verify our identity.” If we ever get stopped for something and don’t have our card, we can get taken to a detention center.

It’s bullshit.

We’re also going to have to use them to check into school everyday. They’re going to have some kind of chip in them, like a credit card, and we’ll have to use them in some in some card reader thing when we get to school AND when we leave school! It’s ridiculous!

Next thing you know, we’ll have to use them to get in and out of our own houses.

We also have to use them anytime we buy something, even if we’re paying with money. I mean paper money. They’re going to start making us use the stupid cards for everything!

If they make us use them to go to the bathroom, I’m going to start peeing on the floor!

Getting the pictures done was weird. A lot of my friends were treating them like school pictures and came to school all dressed up. My mom wanted me to dress up, especially because I didn’t dress up for actual picture day, but I hate taking pictures and I’m certainly not dressing up for it.

But none of that’s what made it weird.

My group went in, and there were still a few people from another class having their pictures done, and no one was smiling. All these girls all dressed up and not a single one of them smiling. They all had these super serious expressions on their faces, even Katy, who always smiles. Always!

Then Joe went up, the first person from my class because his last name is Anderson, and he, of course, smiled.

And they yelled at him for it!

“Don’t smile.”

“What?” looking confused.

“Don’t smile. Just look at the camera.”

Joe looked at the camera more as a reaction than because he was doing what he was told. He had a kind of bewildered look on his face, but that’s when the guy took the picture.

Then they called “Baker, Abigail,” and, of course, Abi smiled, and the photographer yelled at her, too. Abi argues with everyone, so she tried to argue with the guy, “But I want to have pretty pictures…”

“You’re not getting pictures. You’re getting an ID card.”

“But…”

“You don’t get any pictures, just the card. Now, look at the camera and don’t smile.”

Abi scowled, but he just waited a few moments, looking bored, and took the picture as soon as Abi relaxed her face a little. She was so mad! And stomped off like she was going to try to go get him in trouble.

It would have been funny if it all hadn’t been so weird.

After one more of those, no one smiled anymore.

Until it was my turn, because I was mad.

And I never smile for pictures.

“Just look at the camera. Don’t smile.”

“I’m not smiling.” I wanted to be laughing, so it was actually kind of hard to hold the smile.

“I’m serious, kid. Quit smiling.”

“I’m not smiling.”

I got detention, but I’m smiling in my picture.

It was worth it.

Day 20 (a future history)

Thursday, February 8, 2018

I got my mom to give me 20 bucks this morning before school. I told her it was for school, for book replacement since the soldiers took so many of our books. My mom didn’t want to give me the money. She said we need it for food and that the soldiers would just come take the new books, too. Everyone was talking about how the soldiers came to the schools and took all the books, so my mom already knew about it when I got home yesterday. I told her it wasn’t for the same books but different books and that we had to have books and the school said to bring $20.

She really wasn’t happy about it, but she gave me the money.

It made me feel bad for lying to her.

But I wasn’t totally lying to her! I wanted the money for books. Just not school books.

I took the bus to the mall after school and walked over to the BAM!, which I think I’ve only ever been in, like, once, and I still have only been in it once, because it was closed. Not like closed for the day, closed “until further notice,” whatever that means. I bet the army did it, but the sign on the door didn’t say. I tried to look in the windows, but they were those dark windows to keep the sun out and the lights were out in the store, so it was hard to see in. It looked like the shelves were more empty than full, though.

So I walked back to the mall, but there are no bookstores in the mall, which I knew, but I was hoping maybe I just hadn’t noticed one before. Then I checked at Target, but all of their bookshelves were empty except for a few books on one shelf, and they were all by Donald Trump! The Art of the Deal, Think Like a Champion, Great Again. It made my stomach sick looking at his face and knowing that his were the only books available.

Other than those, they only had a few magazines, but that’s not what I wanted. So I checked every store that I thought might have some books, any books, but no one had any books unless they were Trump books. The person I asked at Target said she didn’t know if they were even going to carry books again, just that soldiers – she said army men, which I thought was funny – came and took them all away.

It all made me kind of frantic. Like when you’ve lost something really important to you that you thought you knew where it was but, when you go to get it, it’s not there and you end up tearing your room apart trying to find it. Not that I'VE ever done that! Only this was something really important that I hadn’t known I’d had and, now, it’s gone, and I want it back. I really, really want it!

After the mall, I took the bus to the library even though it was getting late and I knew I might not be able to catch another bus to get home on. Which I didn’t, and I had to walk, which I wouldn’t have minded if my trip to the library had been worthwhile, but, after walking the couple of blocks from the bus stop, I found the library all locked up, too. There was no sign on the library; it was just closed.

I might have made it to a bus, but I stood there staring at the chained up doors for a long time feeling sick in my stomach and trying not to cry. I hate crying. Probably because it makes me think of how weak my mom is when my dad makes her cry. She acts so helpless, and I don’t want to be like that. Strong people don’t cry.

But I wanted to cry, and I had to hold it all in all the way to the bus stop. But no bus came, and I had to walk home, which took two hours, and my mom was freaking out by the time I got home. I started to say, “Well, you should get me a cell phone, and I could have called,” but I couldn’t have called, because cell phones don’t work anymore. They disabled all the towers or something. To keep people from calling places they don’t want them to call. Places Trump doesn’t want them to call. So I didn’t say anything except that I had tried to go to the library, but it was closed, and I missed the bus.

Mom was still mad.

Then I almost gave her back the money but realized while my hand was in my pocket that I couldn’t because, then, she’d know I lied about what I wanted it for, and that made me feel even more bad about the lying. But I put the 20 in my hiding box, so that’s good thing.

Right?

Day 19 (a future history)

Wednesday, February 7, 2018

Everything that was bad about life before all of this stuff started happening keeps getting worse, and all of the good things are gone. Even the good things that I didn’t know about before. Like books. But soldiers came to the school today and took lots and lots of books from the library and came and took books away from us if we had any that were on their stupid list of books they were taking away.

But they only took library books from us, because those books are in the system, I guess, and they knew who had them. They did go through all of the teacher’s rooms, though, the ones who have books that they loan out to us, and took tons of their books, too. Just took them like they took my dad’s TV, but they didn’t offer to pay for the books. They didn’t search us, though. I guess they didn’t have time. That was good, because I still have my copy of Fahrenheit 451 that I got from Mrs. Madison. I only have about 25 pages left, and I would have been SO MAD if they had taken it.

Mrs. Madison was so mad. I wasn’t in her class when they went in and took her books, but everyone was talking about it after. Evidently, the soldiers had to hold her down while they were taking her books. They had to evacuate the students from her room because of how she was screaming. It was making some of them cry.

Some people said they locked her in her classroom after they took her books, and a bunch of the boys were saying she was raped because there was a lot of screaming while they were keeping her in her class. A bunch of other boys were laughing about it and laughing that some people cried.

Boys are making school even worse than it usually is, lately. There’s a bunch of them that are going around all the time talking about how they get to do whatever they want to now. They slap us on the butts in the hall and one of them, Caleb, grabbed Jenna’s boob right in the middle of class yesterday! That was in Mrs. Madison’s class, and she sent him to the office, but he was back 20 minutes later like nothing had even happened. And he grabbed Jenna’s ass when class was over, too! Mrs. Madison made him stay behind, but I saw him after school, and he was laughing about it and said there was nothing they could do.

Caleb and his group of friends think they are going to get to be part of a new student patrol, but no one knows if they’re making that up. No one has announced anything about that, not even Trump, though I wouldn’t be surprised if he did. But Caleb’s dad is one of the National Guard soldiers who came to the school and took the books, and Caleb said his dad said it’s going to happen.

So maybe he’s talking shit or maybe he knows something he’s not supposed to know. No one knows, and everyone is scared to find out. Even the teachers, I think. Everyone except Caleb’s friends who think they’re all going to be in charge.

But, anyway… Mrs. Madison wasn’t in her class when I got there for 5^th period. She had gone home. Or got sent home. Or got taken away. It really depends on who you talk to. All the boys who had laughed said the soldiers took her away and that she would probably never be back. It makes me so mad that they were saying those things, and I don’t know what to do about it.

I don’t think anyone knows what to do about it either. Everyone is scared, even the teachers. Having soldiers raiding the school doesn’t help.

I think I need to go to the book store and buy some books, because I might not be able to buy any soon. Assuming they didn’t already go to the bookstores and take their books, too. Except I don’t have any money, and books cost a lot. And I can’t order them from Amazon, either.

Not that I even know what books I should try to be getting. Fahrenheit, I know. And Hunger Games. And they took some book about flies, King of the Flies?, from Jimmy, but I don’t know what else. I just know that I want to read all the books they don’t want me to, and I need to figure out how to get some of them.

I used to never care that we didn’t have books in our house; now, I’m kinda mad that we don’t. What’s wrong with my parents that we don’t have any books? And why didn’t they ever tell me how important it is to read? And what is it in these books Trump doesn’t want us to read? I mean, I understand with Fahrenheit – It’s ALL about this! – and maybe I understand with Hunger Games, but I don’t know why they are so scared of us reading these books, and I want to know.

I WANT TO KNOW!!!

"The map is wrong" and Why It's Time To Ignore Trump

Living with an autocrat is never easy, not least of which because they can be erratic and unpredictable. Some of that unpredictableness comes from the fact that they warp reality around their assertions that their view of the world is the one and only correct view of the world. Let me give you an example:

When I was no more than seven or eight, I was having a discussion with my mom about a geography thing I learned at school that day. It was one of those "what did you learn today" moments. As I was telling her, my dad butted in with, "That's wrong."

Now, when I was a kid, I never held that typical belief that my parents were the ultimate authority on things. That was a view I held for teachers. Teachers were infallible. At least, at that point in my life, they were. So, of course, my response to my dad was something along the lines of, "But my teacher said..."

To which he responded, "Your teacher is wrong."

Some of you may have realized that I can be pretty... forceful... about the things I believe, and that has always been true, even when I was a kid, so an argument ensued. An argument which ended with the purchase of a map of the state, upon my insistence, because I was determined to prove that I was correct. We opened the map up, found the landmark, and...

I was right. It was just as I said from what we learned in class.

And my dad said, immediately, "The map is wrong."

I tried to argue. An argument which was cut short by my dad saying, "I'm right because I say I am."

I was, needless to say, flabbergasted. I just could not understand his insistence that he was right when, clearly, reality said otherwise.

It was also the very last time I ever argued anything with my dad. What was the point?

Also, that's a difficult lesson to learn when you're only seven or eight.

My dad also had that infuriating thing that you've probably seen in movies where he would ask me a question then yell at me not to "talk back" to him when I tried to answer. So, yeah, reality warping.

My tactic for dealing with him by the time I was in middle school was to just walk away. Literally. (And I have to say that it was actually quite satisfying, because it would leave him flustered and yelling, spittle flying out of his mouth as he did so. Seriously. (You didn't want to be close to him when he was yelling about something because there was always spittle.)) I refused to engage with him because you could never tell where you stood or what kind of crazy -- I hesitate to call them lies, because he was never "lying." -- untruth was going to come out of him. And you couldn't argue because facts didn't matter. He was right because he said he was. So, yeah, maybe it was disrespectful, but I would walk away, usually to my room but, sometimes, to outside.

And you know what? It would shut him up. I mean, after the "don't walk away from me while I'm talking to you!" part, that was the end of it. He never resumed anything later and there were never any consequences. Well, okay, there was the occasional "you're grounded!" that followed the bit about not walking away, but he never paid enough attention to ever enforce that; it just made him feel good to say it. Like he was actually doing something, I suppose.

Now, here's the punch line:
Trump is just like my dad. Or like my dad would have been if he'd had someone to give him a "small loan of a million dollars" to get him started off in life.

I realize what I'm about to say is more than impractical, but the way we need to be dealing with Trump, as a society, when he starts spouting nonsense is to "walk away." Ignore it. Deal with the actual business at hand and not pay any attention to his untruths. Because I'm pretty sure that Trump, also, isn't "lying." He's just saying stupid shit because
1. He's not very smart. and
2. He's right because he says he is; therefore, to him, anything he says is reality.

So here we are, two weeks later (as I write this and, probably, three weeks later as you read this), and we're still talking about Trump's completely unsupported and demonstrably false statement that he was wiretapped by Obama. Why are we still talking about it? Because we have allowed Trump to warp or reality. Rather than talking about him and his ties to Russia or any number of other things, we are now focused on whether Obama, the least scandalous President ever, had Trump under surveillance. With the British! Because Trump has to continue to warp reality to keep us focused on the wrong things. On non-things.

All of that to say this:
It's time to move the conversation back to where it should be, on Trump and the evil of his cohorts and how they are trying to ruin the world for everyone except the very wealthy. Because, actually, some of Trump's untruths are lies and, certainly, the people around him are lying all the time, just look at Flynn and Sessions for starters.

What we need to learn, as a society, especially the press, is that when Trump offers up something that comes without proof, something like "I was wiretapped," we need to not even acknowledge it. You stay focused on the actual story (in this case, it was the story about Sessions and how he lied under oath, but we haven't heard anymore about that since Trump made his completely fallacious claim) and resist chasing the squirrels that Trump is tossing into the room.

Personally, I think it would be great if we really could just walk away from him, just like I did with my dad. I bet Trump spittles, too, when he yells.

Day Ten

Monday, January 29, 2018

Why do people say, “Excuse my French,” before they cuss? It doesn’t make any sense. I only thought of that because I almost wrote it, but why do I need to write that; no one is reading this but me, so I don’t need to ask anyone to excuse me.

Anyway…

It was so fucking cold today! Not because it was actually colder than normal, but I had to wear a dress to school because of my stupid stitches. I hate dresses, and today reminded me of why. The air just went right up my legs, and I spent the whole day being cold and uncomfortable. AND everyone saw my stitches because the dress wasn’t long enough to cover them up when I was sitting down.

Not that it mattered because Toby saw me leaving the junkyard with the blood all over me and told everyone about it, so I didn’t even get to make up an excuse for how I got the stitches. It was SO embarrassing. Or it would have been except that no one really seemed to care, and a lot of my friends had the same kinds of stories about having to go out and scavenge. But none of them got stitches from it.

I guess everyone’s desperate for news, and there aren’t a lot of good places to get it. No one really realized how dependent they’d become on the internet for information. I wanted to look up lockjaw just to make sure I couldn’t get it, but there’s no Wikipedia anymore. And we don’t have any encyclopedias or anything like that. I don’t think we even have a dictionary in the house. I had to wait till I got to school today, then I wasn’t ever able to get to the library. The library has become very popular.

But it’s not looking stuff up that has people upset; it’s not knowing what’s going on. Trump is going to be having a daily broadcast so that he can tell us what’s happening – the first one was today, and we HAVE to watch them – but I don’t believe anything he says. Anything. And I hate his stupid voice. And tiny t-rex hands. And flapping lizard throat.

TODAY, he told us that we are at war with China and that China has taken over the whole west coast in a secret attack. He said it was China that was responsible for that message on the Internet from the Statue of Liberty, but that doesn’t make any sense. Why would China say something like that? And he didn’t even talk about New York and those other states that aren’t on the west coast. Didn’t even mention them.

Maybe we’re supposed to think Canada captured them.

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…”

Yeah, China didn’t say that, and that’s what he wants us to believe?

I want to know what’s happening, and I don’t know how to find out. No one knows how to find out, but everyone has opinions and wants to talk about them. My friends tell each other what their parents said, but most of them don’t seem to believe any of it, especially if it goes along with anything Trump has said. None of us believe Trump.

My dad does, though. He’s on a rampage about China and how we’re going to kick the asses of those Reds. He keeps saying we need to nuke them. That caused a fight, another fight, with my mom. My mom said that was terrible what he said, but he didn’t seem to care. They had a long fight with a lot of shouting which only ended when the door slammed. He hasn’t come back, yet, and I haven’t asked Mom if he’s going to. I don’t know if I care, right now.

Mom seems to not like Trump anymore. She hasn’t said that, but… Mom really hasn’t been saying much anymore. She’s quiet all the time, now, and I have to say stuff to her three or four times before she even realizes I’m talking to her. She doesn’t even listen to the news on the radio anymore.

I think I’m scared; I just don’t know what I’m scared of.




A Note from the author:
I hope you are enjoying this piece of FREE! serialized fiction. At least so far as it is fiction. For the moment. Who's to say what could be happening a year from now considering where we are at this moment in time.
Speaking of FREE!, because this is FREE!, it would be great, if you are enjoying this story, if you could support the author by purchasing one of his other stories. For a change of pace, try What Time Is the Tea Kettle?, which has been described as "deliciously absurd" and "quirky fun." Besides, it has cats. How can you go wrong with cats? Um... Forget I asked that.

It's always great to feel supported.

Thanks!

Day Five

Wednesday, January 24, 2018

There’s no school today. Not now, anyway.

We were actually on the way to school when there were a bunch of explosions. I couldn’t tell where they were coming from at first, but then smoke clouds rose up in the direction of the air force base. There were sirens almost immediately and that loud air raid siren thing they always use in movies. I didn’t know that was a real thing. I stuck my head out of the window of the car so I could look for airplanes, but Mom yelled at me and started pulling on me and swerved all over the road. She didn’t like it when I yelled at her for trying to kill me.

Mom took me back home even though I didn’t want to go back home. Home is so boring, now, with no internet or TV that I WANTED to go to school! But it turned out that they closed school, anyway. Everyone thought we were under attack.

I think the radio is stupid. I mean the news on the radio is stupid. So, of course, Mom had to listen to the news all morning, not that she wasn’t already doing that, but she was more insistent about it because of the explosions and wouldn’t even let me talk. At all! She just kept shushing me!

But the radio is stupid because they just speculate all the time. It’s dumb! No one knew what had happened at the air force base, and it took a long time for anyone to find out. Hours. So they spent those hours talking about what might have happened. Were we being attacked? Should people go to bomb shelters? Was it the Chinese? If it was the Chinese, how did they get here?

Lots of people went to bomb shelters. The radio said they were all filling up. Mom wanted to go to a bomb shelter, but she wouldn’t go without Dad, and she couldn’t get through to Dad. All of the phones were jammed up with people using them. As it turned out, Dad was in a bomb shelter.

Mom was SO mad even though he didn’t have a choice. Everyone from Dad’s work was sent to the bomb shelter because everyone thought there was an attack. There was no way for him to call Mom about it, but she didn’t care. She was just mad at him and didn’t talk to him all night. Not after telling him that SHE COULD HAVE DIED while he was all safe and stuff and she was never going to wait for him again.

He said “good” and “fine” and, after a little while, once he figured out that she wasn’t going to talk to him anymore, he went off to… I don’t really know. I went to my room and stayed and am still here. Mom is still listening to the radio. I’ve been reading a little bit.

Oh, yeah, I got a book at school yesterday, Slaughterhouse-Five. I wanted Hunger Games, but she didn’t have any copies left, so I wanted Animal Farm, but she didn’t have any of those left, either. Slaughterhouse sounded like a cool title, though, and there wasn’t a lot to choose from, so I picked it.

I don’t understand it, though. I think it might be good, but I can’t figure out what it’s about. It’s the only book I have right now, though, since I couldn’t trade it for something different today. If I can’t figure out what it’s about by tomorrow, I’ll try to get a different book since reading is the only thing to do, right now. IF there’s even school tomorrow.

There will probably be school tomorrow since we weren’t under attack. Maybe. The radio said the base was sabotaged. It said they were going to send out planes to bomb somewhere on some secret mission but, as soon as the planes started getting ready to take off, they all blew up.

It wasn’t just here, either. It happened at bases all over the US. All the planes that were going to go on this secret mission all blew up. Well, not all of them, but a lot of them. Or most of them. Hundreds of them. I don’t know. They don’t give a lot of details on the radio, just a lot of talking about nothing.

And then they had Trump on talking about nothing, too, because he said it was a great attack on the sovereignty of the US by horrible, terrible enemies and terrorists and about all of the brave brave men who had died except they had already said on the radio, at least at our base, that no one had died. The explosions just crippled the planes and made them no good, but the explosions hadn’t killed anyone.

Trump also said they had a glorious success on the mission. It was beautiful. But he didn’t say what the mission was, only that there was a mission and that it was a success.

I don’t believe him.

Dad said it sounded like Yemen and Jalalabad and Mosul, but he wouldn’t tell me what he meant. Probably because Mom was mad at him. Nothing good, though.

So I think there will be school tomorrow, because, so far, everyone is trying to pretend that everything is okay. Everything is normal. But everything is NOT normal. I wish it was normal and that there was still the internet and I wasn’t stuck reading a book I don’t understand.

A Note from the author:
I hope you are enjoying this piece of FREE! serialized fiction. At least so far as it is fiction. For the moment. Who's to say what could be happening a year from now considering where we are at this moment in time.
Speaking of FREE!, because this is FREE!, it would be great, if are enjoying this story, if you could support the author by purchasing one of his other stories. Look, there are links all of the page and many different types of stories available.

It's always great to feel supported.
Thanks!