Safety First

You can't make sense of it all.  Most times, it is best not to think too much, but to keep doing what you know how to do best and reflect later.  Tell the kids.  Tell them that sometimes it's OK to throw out the baby with the bath water, too.  And like Miss Jean Brodie, tell them to take down the "Safety First" sign from the classroom walls.  Safety is important, but it certainly should not come first.  

* * * * 

There was a beauty in it, and a safety, too.  The bad characters were gone, or most of them.  I was disappointed when I saw one of them there.  David.  He was one of the old bad boys I'd kind of known growing up, a scary character older than I.  He and Frank used to fight one another with their fists for fun just to make themselves tough.  And they had become that, and twisted as well.  It wasn't drugs that did it to them, though you could throw that in the mix.  It was all the usual things--environment, genetics--from which they would not escape. 

I saw David at the student center one day and we spoke.  He had not changed.  He had gotten his GED and was giving this a try.  I hated seeing him there, hated that he would sully another party.  He would, too, I thought, with his shit talk and his brutal ways.  He was one of the un-stoppables,  a juggernaut of ruthlessness and evil.  It took all the air out of me.  If he could go to college, everything was a lie.  

But after that day, I never saw him again.  At least not at school.  It had been too much for him after all, too catholic and corporate to be bum rushed by him.  

It was not only him, but many others that I knew, too.  As the semester went by, many I knew simply disappeared, and with each passing, I felt better, cleaner, more complete.  

Sitting in the library, upstairs, surrounded by rows and rows of books.  What wealth, I thought.  What wonder.  From here, I imagined, I would watch the days pass by.