DAY 22: Creeping Easy

It was Mark Twain who said a novel was a confession to everything by a man who had never done anything.

My story doesn’t run the length of a novel-that’s at least 50,000 words last time I checked. Nevertheless, it’s a confession of sorts by a man who had done nothing through inaction or if I had to go the whole nine yards, through indifference.

I used to teach at a troubled children school just down the block. Let me tell you something, I knew a lot of kids back then who would have come to nothing if they were given ten shots at life placed the length of their noses. And then, there were those kids who were in the box because their family couldn’t keep up the love. Victims of a home that’s gone to hell in a hand basket.

Gary fell into the second group. A ruddy, solemn, tall drink of water who had his future cut out for him right from the word go. But Fate has us in the palms of his hands. The day Gary came to Queenstown College I knew a gem was about to be lost. I don’t know how I knew but I did know. The kid didn’t belong in that place.

It was like Gary also knew something was up because he did try to turn over a new leaf. I’d know more of that, if would were could. But before that time, he ran with the wrong pack and made a real mess of a pitiable existence.

I watched that kid through the windows of the staff room from up the second floor of the Administrative Building of Queenstown College. Watched him carry on through like tomorrow was here. I should have stepped in and curbed his enthusiasm when he started hanging around that kid from the Double B Fellowship. But you know they didn’t call that college a school for troubled children for nothing. Some of those kids would be serving time if they was old enough.

I don’t know how he managed it really, but Gary stopped trucking with that cult completely. In Queenstown, when a student decides to stop culting and start a new life, we called it creeping easy. I saw him in the library a few times, reading poetry. He was always going through the works of two great poets. It never ceased to amaze me how he was able to work out such chemical imbalance (the poets’). One was totally off the bend and living next door to hell’s industrious crew (Sylvia Plath) and the other always had a song flung up to heaven and still she rises (Maya Angelou). Maybe, Gary believed the works of these poets helped him understand both the light and dark side of his personality. If so, I prayed that he wouldn’t throw all his weight on the Sylvia Plath Option and tip over the tables all the way to suicide.

And yet the devil came. The cult Gary once belonged to had a clash with some other gang. These kids around these parts used weapons for gang fights-clubs and daggers. Luckily, none of them was ever spotted carrying firearm through out my stay at the college.

This is a confession to everything by a man who had never done anything to rescue a promising young life from the clutches of his own peer group.

Three teenagers are being questioned after a 15 year old boy was stabbed to death near his school. – News.

Notes to myself:

Of course, I’m gonna get this story smokin’ n’ tokin’ in the final draft:

Give the narrator (teacher) a name;

Name at least, one of the cult members.

Is there a need to state the family feud that created Gary’s emotional state?