Getting Older

Why do we even bring children into this world? Is it because we're lonely? Because we want our lives to mean something? Seems pretty selfish to me. The world is not a very kind place to live.

I'm not talking about me. I'm not talking about me. Usually, I'm talking about me. Most of the things I like to talk about are about me, but today, I'm not talking about me. I'm talking about Jonathan.

I don't even know his last name. It's either Medina or Martinez, something like that. I run the after school program that is trying to teach him how to read. It isn't going very well. He's going to get older, weather he learns to read or not. 

Two months.

I have two months to get him reading at a level that is on par with his age group. He was a year behind at the beginning of the school year. If I bring him up one year, he'll still be a year behind. It'll just be a different year. 

It's not good enough. I keep telling myself to try harder to get through to him, but I just don't know how to do it. I think that me and his tutor are the only ones in his life that want him to go anywhere. My conversations with him go something like this:

"Why do I have to go to tutoring?"

"So you can learn how to read."

"Why do I have to know how to read?"

"So you can graduate."

"I don't wanna graduate."

"I'll bet your Mom and Dad want you to graduate."

"My Dad only went to first grade. Then he got a job."

"If you graduate, you can get a better job. You won't have to work at Taco Bell like I did in high school."

"You worked at Taco Bell? Cool! I want to work at Taco Bell."

It's just not good enough. I just can't be good enough to make them want anything. They're like jello. They'll become whatever is being put into them. They're going to work at Taco Bell. For all my efforts, they're not going to learn anything. I really wanted to be an agent for change with my life. But some days, we lose. We show up every day. We put everything me have into the game

-but we lose. I'm not writing this because I'm feeling sorry for myself, and my inefficient teaching methods. Some of us lose more than others. The world isn't very kind to little Mexican kids who can't read. That's something else that may never change.

Poem I Wrote While I Was Sick.

The 101 to the 46 to the 5, then the 210 until it hits the 57.

 

I’ve made friends with the signposts

I let the tell me what to do

All the colors of the rainbow

Pulling off like rest stops

Without gas stations

And where can I be filled again?

Another chance to watch faces floating by

In parade fashion,

Forgetting I was the one on display

Watch their lips turn colors of recognition

Speaking slowly as I crumble by

“What a nice young man”

I hope my daughters turn out to be just the way he is.”

Pausing before engaging in relationships

And not having sex with pretty girls.

And my friends have told me that I am not far from home

But I feel inclined once more

To lay down flat on this open road

Like all the other dogs that move too slow.

Who has sat in my passenger seat

To follow me home?

Though

I swear some day

I’ll find a set of watchful eyes

Disinclined

To fall asleep 

In my passenger seat

On the long winding road

That somehow

Someday

Brings me home.

Orange Chicken and Thom Yorke

I'm sick.

I'm trying with great difficulty to keep awake during open mic night at It's a Grind in La Mirada. Nobody wants to perform. What I really need right now is to eat some cheap Chinese food and listen to Radiohead.

I think I enjoy being sick. It makes me less accountable for my actions. Like I was some sort of social-awkardness super hero. I'm my own alter ego. 

Hyounjun says that I have multiple personalities that hate each other. Maybe that's it. I could see that. I often hide my keys from myself, or sabotage my own efforts to be a successful writer. Once, I even set my water glass on top of the refrigerator so that I could reach inside the refrigerator to get some ice, thus forcing myself to spill water on my own head.

Hmmm.

I don't have to think about this right now. 

I'm sick.