Just To Say Goodbye

When Ms. Mencia told our class that we would have to write an English composition for our semester grade, the whole class got real bummed. She’s a real nice lady, don’t get me wrong, but making us write an eight page paper right before summer doesn’t seem very fair. The thing is, it’s different from regular papers I’ve written in the past. She says that it’s supposed to be somewhat like a scrapbook in writing. Something that we can all keep as something to remember how we were feeling back when we were just sophomores. But the thing is, I don’t know if I really prefer to remember how I was feeling this year, because it wasn’t good. I’m not really too excited about it, but she says that she’s going to send everyone’s paper to a writing place in Utah. Apparently, whoever reads this stinkin’ thing, might donate money to our class if they really like it. I think our class really deserves the money, I really do.
Ms. Mencia is a wonderful teacher and she really does a lot of great stuff for us, and not to mention, her son is autistic; he was adopted, so that probably means she’s never had sex before. I feel so bad for the lady, you know, between having to deal with a son that’s autistic and never having her sexual fantasies fulfilled. Anyways, her son is a very sad case, and I really admire my teacher for being such a patient and caring woman. The funny thing about autistic children is that they don’t feel the same way as us. It’s hard to understand, I know. When Ms. Mencia tried explaining it to the class, we all looked at her with our heads cocked, dumbfounded. Autistic children feel pleasure when you scratch them hard or do something to them that would be painful for us, and they get hurt when you tickle them or blow on them. They are mentally challenged, yet they possess one skill that far surpasses many of our abilities. Some of them are great with numbers, some are music prodigies. It’s amazing the talent they possess, it really is. She had her son come in one time and show us his ability. He had an amazing memory, and we played him in jeopardy and he whooped us all. He knew a lot about history and literature, because he has like a photographic memory. He’s kinda’ like the “Rainman.,” if that makes any more sense. He’s really something. I could go on and on about Ms. Mencia and her son, but most people don’t find it as interesting as me.
I think that whoever is reading this now, is a judge, so I took it upon myself to tell you about why I’m even writing this dawgon thing and why Ms. Mencia really deserves to win the contest you all are holding. She reaaaaaally deserves it. I don’t expect that mine could ever win, but maybe someone else in my class has a real good one and they should win the trophy or money or whatever for Ms. Mencia. And excuse me for using any profanity because I tend to get excited sometimes. Oh, and please don’t tell her I added this introduction thingamajig to my composition; I just really love her, that’s all.
My friend Rosy says sometimes I ramble too much, also, but that I really have a good heart. I hope she means it, because Rosy is sure sarcastic, and it’s hard as hell to figure out when she’s doing it. She does it so discreetly. The point is, if I start to do my same old rambling job, you don’t have to read it, you can just skip ahead and save a few minutes of your life. You could really use all the minutes you got in life, especially if you’re as old as I am. I’m almost out of high school and I already feel like I’m falling apart and that the best years of my life have already slipped right through my withering fingers.



I’m not really sure how to write an introduction to a composition like this. Ms. Mencia says it’s always important to start something very interesting so that you can ‘hook’ the reader; kinda’ how William Shakespeare did it. He started a lot of his plays with a real exciting fight scene so that he wouldn’t get booed, and so that the people didn’t throw fruit at the players. It seems awfully mean that an audience would throw fruit at people just because they were a little bored. I’m sure those playwrights spent a lot of time making those scripts, to have them soiled by a bad audience. The point is, I need to start off my paper real exciting so that you can like it. But the only problem is, my life isn’t very exciting; most of the time it’s just depressing.
I think most good stories start off with who the character is, where they live, and what they think. But I personally have always found that so ‘cliché.’ I’d rather have the reader figure that out for themselves, and if they can’t, then the author didn’t do his job.
I’ve decided that I’d just rather be myself, and that whatever I write will be the truth. I won’t just write what I feel you would like to read. I think that’s the problem with a lot of kids these days. They don’t do what feels good for themselves; they do what they believe is normal or what they think their friends would do. I try not to be that way because it seems so phony and fake. But that may be the reason why I don’t have as many friends as other kids. Sometimes it really bothers me, though, and I’d rather just be like everyone else, rather than be lonely. I just don’t like being lonely.
There was a very bad time in my life when I was always alone. I think I had more conversations with myself than with anyone else. It was the summer right after I moved houses and I didn’t know anybody. I remember having to move and I even remember how I felt about it. Most people would’ve been so excited for a new experience; some change. But I don’t like change nearly as much as anyone else. It’s scary, sometimes, because you don’t ever know what you’re gonna’ get. I missed my old neighborhood and my old friends. We played kickball in the streets all day long, and rode our bikes to the park, and played fort when we were younger. None of us worried about our first car and we didn’t let it bother us when a girl didn’t feel the same way for us as we had for them. We just kind of shrugged it off and went back to ping pong. I’m not really sure if it was because I had moved or because we were all growing older, but those things changed. We changed. Each time I went back to visit the old neighborhood, there was less purity and innocence in everything than the last time I had visited. It made me very sad to see what we were becoming. We weren’t the same old, dirty kids we had been before who enjoyed the simple things in life, who didn’t let other people make us feel bad about ourselves.
That sure was a terrible time in my life. But since then, things had gotten better. They really had. I made new friends. People learned to love me as much as I would learn to love them. They didn’t possess the same youthful innocence as my old friends, but it was about time that I grew up and stopped trying to avoid change so much.
I got my first girlfriend in time. She was a real sweetheart; she really was. I didn’t really like her at first, just because I didn’t really have those types of feelings for anybody before. They felt weird, and when something feels weird, I tend to avoid whatever’s making me feel that way. It’s change and I don’t particularly like change. But I was talked into it. And I was so happy that I had, because she was a real sweetheart. And I know I already said that, but I don’t really know how else to describe her. I was still young.
I still remember our first kiss, she practically had to force it on me I was so nervous. But I liked it, it was one time I remember really liking change. I had such a glow on my face that I don’t think you could’ve slapped it off me. Kickball was starting to look like a real jip compared to this.
Everything in my life at that point seemed pretty good. I don’t really remember feeling particularly good at that time, but looking back on it now, I really wish I could still have such good days.
I would recall one terrible part of that time. It happened right when things were looking so good. It always seems that when you are truly happy, something has to happen to fuck it up real nice. Something so devastating that it makes you forget that happiness can really exist in this world. It was the night that I got a phone call from the police telling me that they needed to talk to my parents. I always remembered getting so scared whenever I would get a phone call during the night. It always meant something bad. Something that made life a little harder for me, and something that I felt might just go away if I just didn’t answer the goddam thing. At first I thought they were just going to tell my parents that my brother got caught with some drugs again. It had happened before and even though it didn’t go over well in the family, I couldn’t have been prepared to hear that he was being held in jail for something much larger. I cried so hard when I got the call, and I hadn’t even known why I was getting the phone call in the first place. I just knew it was bad, very bad. My parents said I couldn’t go with them to the jail to see my brother, and now, looking back, I’m glad that I hadn’t.
It was drugs again, but not the same thing as it had been before. My brother’s friend Robby was dead. I know this seems pretty melodramatic for a stinkin’ composition, but it’s all true. Robby had overdosed while my brother was at his house. The officers thought my brother was the one who gave Robby the cocaine, but the truth was, my brother was too scared to even try the shit, excuse my language. My brother had to watch the poor kid take it, and he warned him all night, but he couldn’t stop him. He just kept sniffing the shit, until he couldn’t breathe out of his goddam nostrils anymore, and he was dead. My brother’s best friend had died right in front of him, and he was now being accused of causing the murder. He was a mess at the jail, crying and drooling about the thing. I assume that’s why my parents left me at home; they didn’t want me to see his anguish. They wanted to protect me from the harsh reality that I may never see my brother again, unless it was behind a goddam glass window.
Never before in my life had I been through so much. I was still young and it seemed like the end of the world. My parents were falling apart and I hadn’t heard from my brother for weeks. My girlfriend started not liking me anymore. She said I was “too scarred and broken, and that I needed time to pull myself back together again.” I couldn’t expect her to understand the extent of my pain, because she was only an eighth grade girl from a wealthy family with no painful scars to show for. My friends were the only people keeping me from crumbling into a million little pieces.
The thing, too, is that you didn’t know whether to feel worse for Robby or for my brother. At least Robby didn’t have to get locked up and accused of such an evil and heinous crime. But yet you felt so bad for Robby. You wouldn’t understand unless you had to sit through his funeral and watch his parents cry their heads off because they lost the only son God had ever given them. Even though Robby’s parents were upset, they knew the truth; they knew that my brother hadn’t caused it.
I picked a pretty dandelion the morning of his funeral and put it on his coffin to say goodbye. Robby had become somewhat of a brother to me when I was having a difficult time meeting friends. He actually set me up with my girlfriend. He really meant a lot to my family, and when they finally lowered his body six feet under, it felt so surreal that I thought I might stop breathing myself. And it wouldn’t have made a goddam difference.
Things slowly started to get back to normal after my brother was acquitted of the crime and was able to start up his life again. He never recovered fully and ended up having to attend some shitty community college up the street because he couldn’t stay focused in school. Sometimes I think he would have rather it been him rotting away in the ground, so at least that way people would remembered his name. Sometimes I think that maybe I would be better off buried next to Robby than having to go through all the shit his death caused. Most of the time, you really gotta wonder if we are really worth it, or whether we’re just running through the motions. I think I’ve had enough of this subject, because it just makes me depressed and I don’t think the reader really finds it all that interesting.


3

When I woke up this morning, after I had written that stuff last night, I felt really relieved. I thought that all that writing I was doing was just going to make me very sad, but it didn’t. It was like therapy. So I decided that I wasn’t going to just write a stupid stinkin eight page composition, but that I would write a really long story, instead. If you’re reading this now, you don’t have to continue. I just feel like I should do this for myself, because I actually think I’m starting to really like writing. Hopefully Ms. Mencia won’t decide to not send this in just because it’s too long. Hopefully she won’t give me a bad grade, either, but I think she’ll understand that it really means a lot to me and that eight pages wasn’t enough to fully commit to a memoir. If anything, I’ll do it for Robby and dedicate it to him. He’s probably never gotten anything dedicated to him.
The truth is though, that my life isn’t as bad as it may be sounding to someone who is reading this. It’s actually been great to me. I got a wonderful little house only about two miles from the beach. It hardly ever snows or gets cold, and my neighbors are real nice people. There’s a couple right across the street from me that helped me meet kids to play with when I just moved in. They are quite old, but the husband sure knows a lot about baseball. His whole wall is covered with autographed photos and balls. He said he used to be friends with Babe Ruth himself. But I think he just made that up and I didn’t have the heart to call him out on it. He used to invite me over there all the time and we’d watch ‘Sandlot,’ which happened to be my favorite movie, or look at his baseball card collection. Man, did he have some great ones, too, like Mickey Mantle rookie cards that must be worth a fortune. He even let me have one of the rookie cards, for me to sell if I ever needed some extra money for college. He and his wife say that it’s real important that I go to a good college and learn how to become an adult. Neither of them went to college. I think that’s why they encourage me so much. Probably so I can live a dream for them, the way they would’ve liked to. They are sure good people, though, and I can only hope to be as nice and caring as them some day.
I had other great neighbors just up the street that also did a lot for me. They were a young couple who had just had a baby. They used to let me baby sit the kid for a few extra bucks, and even gave me bonuses to also help with college tuition. I think everyone has high hopes for me to get into a good college, maybe because my brother had been robbed of his opportunity. The young couple moved away though. I think it was because they were planning on having more children and the house wasn’t big enough to fit them all. That’s usually the case.
Life where I live really isn’t too bad, and I almost feel selfish when I get depressed, because I really got it good.