mallorys_camera | Robin's Story: Pitch

Kid's a great writer. I entered this in a local short story contest without telling him. Point of reference though: I don't know any Hebrew nor has his father ever raised a hand to him

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So before I go on, I guess I should probably talk about myself a little bit. Well, I’m a teenager if you haven’t noticed, filled with all of the hormones and lonely nights that come with the title. I’m from California, so I’m probably going to hell. My parents have probably had fifty jobs all together in my childhood alone, and one of those lasted five years. But the good news is that I’m a sixteenth Tunisian, so at least I can qualify for Caucasian Muslim, and that’s always a hoot at parties.

I know some people consider having brothers and sisters a great thing, and that it gives you people to bond and look up to, and guide you in life. But then you have the only child group, the spoiled kids who don’t care about bonding, because they get a car in high school. See I was kind of in the middle. I had an older brother, but the thing was, the bonding didn’t start much until I was older, and most of it was based on doing, or talking about things that my parents wouldn’t appreciate. But if he was a total fuck up, you know, I think I would have enjoyed it better. Because he’s the kid that aced through high school and can get away with giving mom a “Stanford Mom” bumper sticker for her birthday, and I’m the kid that flunked every grade that had the requirement of “Effort.”

I grew up as a Sicilian Jew. Which isn’t actually as bad as it sounds. Of course, though, I went to Catholic School for awhile in Elementary School. So I’d come home and my mom would smile, and pat me on the back, and then have me take a shower while chanting in Hebrew to cleanse me of the Christian devil worshippers. Then I’d walk into my room, and my dad would come in, ask me if I had any homework, and then take the belt out, screaming that I killed Jesus. So I guess I had the best of both worlds.

After I left Catholic School behind, and getting a year in public school as a healthy rehabilitation program after that scarring two years of my life, I went into a charter school program. It was described to me as a “fun and interactive school.” Okay, so fourth grade goes by O.K, but in fifth grade I realize that all of that was a lie. Charter schooling is another word for concentration camp, equipped with uniforms and everything. The big difference between charter and private is that with charter, the punishment and nightmares to follow is free.

So like, my freshman year in high school I liked to think of myself as a stoner. At my school the stoners were part of the popular group too, so I could get laid, and get high. The only problem is I’d find myself downtown walking with a group of kids, about to go light up, and one kid would go “Man, we’re going to get so fucking high” and another would be like “Yeah, then we can go get some beer and find some bitches” and I’d go “Yeah, and we can make sure we’re done before ten so we don’t get grounded!”

I don’t know about being a full on stoner though. I mean, I fit the criteria in terms of smoking, and I was pretty lazy. But all the guys around me would get this violent passion when they were baked, and they’d all want to body box, which is just like fighting, except the face shots don’t happen until thirty seconds into the fight. So I’d be standing there, and my friends would be pumping me on, but when they tried to punch me, I’d move my hands up to cover my face and scream “Don’t hurt me!” Needless to say, all that did was fuel them even more.

Eventually I ended up on travelling on a circus with my parents, two dogs and a cat, bunched together in a nice twenty foot RV, accompanied with three fans, a closet sized bathroom, and a mini fridge. My dad had some sort of “deal-with-officials” type of job, and I wasn’t talented enough to do anything in the circus yet, so basically I wandered around towns with a skateboard, occasionally went to a library, and slept. I really liked the idea of sleeping fourteen hours a day, its probably what appealed to me the most about the whole thing. Except the problem is, you wake up disoriented, fall off your military cot sized futon, and fall into the kitchen, landing on the dogs dishes on floor. Not to mention that your parents are sleeping three feet away from you, so any jerk and tug sessions are only possible in the portapotties or the front seat, if you’re the kinky type.

I tried this whole Houdini thing for a short time, basically, I’d get handcuffed, put into this bag, which would be covered with a tarp and padlocked. The key would be up my sleeve, so I’d get into the bag, uncuff myself while they were still putting the tarp over, and undo the trick padlock by twisting it, and stepping out. The one time I get to perform this great magic act is when we’re running low on performers, and they needed me to fill in. It goes okay the first time around, but the second time I call a member of the audience to inspect the handcuffs, and the kid goes ahead and cuffs himself. I sit there for a second, wondering how the hell you handcuff yourself on accident, and pull the key out of my sleeve, uncuff him, and take a bow. There you go folks, I uncuffed a retard. Next, I’ll pull some shit out of a bag. Its not magic, its just grade A talent!