The Exception

“Maybe it’s not that life isn’t meaningful, maybe it’s just that your life isn’t meaningful”-Donald Miller

Wow, you actually want to listen to the story of a cynical asshole… shouldn’t have said that.

Speaking of cynicism, I grew up in probably the most cynical, better yet depressing, of locations. Turns out a city once known for its bursting economy and wealth, but now known for its notorious crime rates and economic crisis isn’t the friendliest place. Oh yeah, by notorious crime rates, I mean fricken gang supremacy, and by an economic crisis, I mean immense poverty. And they told me I grew up in a first world country.

Thankfully simple tasks like getting around weren’t too bad. Traversing the city was really just a matter of being careful. Don’t make eye contact with the pot smoking gang who probably all had guns in their pants. From what I hear, the specific gang I pass every day after school has the best weed in the city, not that I would know.

Sneaking past the raspy paint-mouthed huffers was also a thing. God, I hate those kids.

Occasionally I considered stopping by Dan, a homeless guy who’d always tell you these depressing stories about his wife, child, and life before the war. And damn are those stories depressing. I think one of them was about how he had to watch one of his squadmates get stabbed to death repeatedly by some deranged soldier, and if he was really feeling it he might even get into some gruesome detail. At that point, I usually would look for the next opportunity to just end the conversation and get the hell out of there as soon as possible. Nobody wants to hear about that crap.

Oh yeah, and ignore everyone who decides to confusingly glance at me, usually in a mixture of shock, fear, and whatever. Unfortunately, that is a thing for me and has fricken screwed me over countless times before. Those are usually only the people who haven’t actually seen me yet, ‘cause apparently everyone has to get used to my existence for like at least a week, which is why I really like routines.

It’s funny how much people fear you when you’re different. I’m not really intimidating at all, although I can’t tell you how much I would like to be, but everyone tends to keep their distance. It’s like I’m not even a person to most people. I guess that’s what you get for being completely “inhuman” by their standards. It’s probably the truth anyway.

Thankfully the trek home was uneventful most days.

After a particularly shitty day I was walking home until my eyes met a house quite old in stature, yet showing no signs of chipping paint, cracked wood, or general wear for that matter. Although it wasn’t massive, it certainly dwarfed the neighboring homes around it. It was actually one the few points of pride I had back then.

I sighed and walked towards the house. Despite its age, the house did manage to give off a warm, inviting glow, however deceitful.

Reaching the door, I just stood there

How about you stop being a sissy and take it like a man!

I tried moving my leg but it wouldn’t respond.

Come on! Why won’t you work.

Mustering everything I had, I inched my leg to the door even as my body screamed at me.

Once I could feel the metal I slowly turned the handle and let the door creep open.

I lowered my head and kept it down. It was just one of those days where everything went wrong and social interaction was the last thing on my mind.

Initially, I had to restrain myself from bolting for the stairway and my room, but as I crept through the door the day finally granted me relief. Everything was normal and in place. The twins were fighting over video game time, Andy focussed on a separate tv watching whatever he could find or bare, and Eric seemed preoccupied with Jane’s math homework (she was really bad at math.) I was pretty late that day due to the uselessness of after school detention and I really didn’t want Eric to notice me and guilt me to death.

I continued on to the stairs glancing back every so often to make sure I went unnoticed. I never glanced for too long, just enough to know exactly what was happening in the room. Unfortunately right when I could just barely touch the first step Eric shot out to me.

“Hey, John?”

Oh god no.

“Yes?” I replied. Dammit, dammit, dammit… I really wanted to just ditch him and make a break for my room.

“How was school today?” His voice was always so inviting, even when you knew things were going to go bad.

“F-f-fine...”

Nononononono…  I don’t want to deal with this. Just, no. Please no!

My head slowly turned to look at Eric. His smile faded. I looked away as my body shivered and sweat. I couldn’t deal with this again. He was that one person for me that would mental rape you if you disappointed them.

Everyone around me tuned in now too. I hate making scenes. It felt like a huge crowd fell silent just to hear my address to Gettysburg or something.

“H-h-horrible…” my speech was stuttering. I sweated profusely.

My day has been shitty enough as it is. Just leave me alone and let me get on with my life!

He looked at me as a parent would laying the law down on a child, like the one look that makes you feel like you just murder a kitten or something. A tear fell upon my cheek.

Why does this only happen to me? None of the other kids have to deal with this shit. Only me. Only me ever!

“John?”

Tears flooded my eyes.

“John!”

His voice darkened and his gaze became stern. My heart sank as if it was being pulled down to the bottom of the ocean. That gaze had put me through mental hell so many times. Something about the absolute authority he possessed with that look made me want to cower in a corner.

I bolted out of the room and stumbled up the stairs struggling to maintain speed. I needed to escape the sea of eyes. I cut a corner, leaped for my room, and hurled myself into my bed where I dug as deep into my covers as I could. There I shoved my face into my covers and let them soak from my eyes.

My bed was the place where I let everything unload time after time. Every fear, hatred, and disappointment came out here and this time was no exception.

So you had to fuck up today didn’t you?

I didn’t mean to. How else am I supposed to react to being provoked like that?

I don’t know? Maybe listen to all of that crap Eric tells you to do.

I did listen.

Then how about you actually try not to fail.

I do try!

Then why did you fail?

I don’t know! I’m doing everything I can and somehow that’s still not enough.

You should have done more. You know like actually prepare for once.

How am I supposed to know that? And by the way, I did prepare.

And it still wasn’t good enough for the paper, which gave the 'him' the idea for his notes and now you’re here. Do you want to succeed for once in your lifetime?

Yes.

Then work for it.

I did, and it wasn’t enough.

Why can’t I be good at anything? I suck at everything I try and everyone just fucks around with me every time I fail.

If I can’t even write a stupid paper how am I supposed to be anything at all??

I can’t do it.

I just can’t.

I hate this.

I hate everything.

“John?”

I didn’t even need to look out of my covers to know that Eric was by the door. I shifted under the covers away from him as far as I could, which wasn’t far at all being on a twin bed. Yet despite that, I felt some security with him being there, no matter how much I claimed the opposite.

The bed across from mine creaked. I knew where Eric was. I couldn’t tell if my body tensed up with regret or relaxed with relief.

“You had that look on your face when you came in.”

I remained silent.

“Are you ok?”

No response.

No, I’m not ok if you haven’t noticed!

I heard some shuffling from the other bed. Eric was probably scratching his head trying to figure out something to say.

I heard a long sigh.

“You remember why this place was founded?” His voice was soft.

You don’t have to tell me again.

“Well you know Mr. Preston, he was trying to figure out a way how he could actually do something with his fortune he amassed. Knowing him, he’s not the kind of person to be real… well… nice about it.”

Actually, Mr. Preston literally embodies the “evil business owner who only cares about his profits.” Hell, I think he even had a hunchback or something like it. Eric and some of the other adults try to keep telling us that he’s actually a good guy who cares about us, although I swear he counts his money in his free time. He does visit us kinda often, although he mostly talks to the adults about funding and stuff. He's so awkward around anyone like under sixteen years old.

“But he had an idea to change kids lives like yours. So he went out and purchased a few houses and diligently sought out good people to volunteer to run these houses… he wanted to give kids like you something like he had.”

Yea, yea, I knew that story too. Apparently orphanages are horrible places for children along with homeless shelters and other not normal housing. It has something to do with the lack of attention… I really don’t know. From what I heard, they were trying to create a more “family” like environment which I guess worked. I always felt alone still.

“You have more than you think you have, even more than some kids out there.”

I had it with story time. “Really? Like what? Those kids lunge’s are probably covered in paint with how much the fricken huff! They at least get to escape this hell by being high all the time!” Yea, there are a lot of huffers in the streets, like a ton. Part of the reason there were so few of these housing… things is that most kids in the street just get high as much as they can all day. And if it’s not paint then it’s pot, or maybe even some hard drug. I once heard a story from some kid at school about how some kid died in a gang war or something and in his autopsy his lungs were completely coated in paint. I didn’t really believe him, but nobody else believes him or any of his other stories either.

I found myself out of my den and staring right into Eric’s eyes. I caught him off guard for a sec. He had a weak smile but his eyes were fixed at the ground. In a way, I felt a little better, but I immediately flung my head the side and into my covers. “I can’t even do all of that easy crap that you guys, oh wait, everyone, take for granted.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, anything that requires fingers.”

“Come on, you can write and draw and do those sorts of things.”

“I more like barely manage.” When I was learning to write having a lack of hands put my teachers through absolute hell. They tried thing after thing trying to find a functional way for me to just hold a pencil in the first place, like tape, glue, string, and probably some other crap I don’t remember. One day as my teachers were complaining to Mr. Preston about how I was completely unteachable and doomed to fail, I tried biting down on the pencil and managed the worst “A” you’d ever see. After that, I was stuck with “mouth writing” if you can even call it that. Yea, I have the worst penmanship ever, computers are a blessing, except for keyboards, I hate keyboards.

“Well… you do...”

Eric’s eyes scanned the room. He was struggling to answer me. We both knew I was right.

“What do you think you are to me?” He tried pulling some trick out of his sleeve that I wouldn’t let him pull.

“I don’t know, what do I look like to you?”

“I don’t think you understand what I’m trying to…”

“I know what I’m worth.”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

“I know exactly what you’re saying!”

“If you just let me finish…”

“I know what I am! I’m nothing!”

Eric stood his ground, but he couldn’t make eye contact with me.

Yea, I know your tricks. You know you can’t help me, you know I’m alone.

His eyes searched the room. I could see sweat droplets on him.

Then he reached out his hand grasped my baseball from my nightstand and proceed to toss it in the air the way a cocky pitcher would at the mound ready to strike out. Eric had me at checkmate, somehow...

“How has the new semester been working out?” Now you have to bring that up too do you? What just happened to checkmate?

“Shi… sucky.” Sucky was an understatement. I was notorious for having bad grades and plenty of referrals from angry teachers. I thought they were all just bad teachers considering how little they cared about me compared and picked favorites with everyone else. When it came to turning in homework or stuff I’d usually just write them off and refuse. Hell, I rarely ever did my homework. If school wouldn’t care about me I wouldn’t care about school.

“Do you know when your next test is?”

“I think there’s some math placement test tomorrow.” Like I’m going to do well on that.

“It doesn’t count as a grade does it?”

“I hope no...”

“I got a deal for you.” Eric initiated negotiation mode. Somehow he was able to talk kids into deals that would apparently benefit himself and the kids. “I challenge you to try your hardest on this next test as practice, and if you’re able to bring all of your grades to at least a “B” by the end of the year, then I might take you to a Tiger’s game in the summer.”

Fuck.

I stared at him with my mouth watering. I love the Tigers. I mean, like, I really love the Tigers. I like the Lions too but hell, they ain’t going to the super bowl anytime soon. I really like sports, I just really wish I could play them.

“You… you mean it?” Wait… how… why?

“Do I have a deal?” This time, Eric put an eyebrow into it. He knew he made a deal I couldn’t refuse.

“Fine.” Dammit, you know how to push all of my buttons.

Eric tossed the ball to me. I attempted to catch it but it kinda just fell onto my lap. He knew what the ball meant to me. The ball was given to me from that one kid with the lung story. He said the ball scored a game-winning home run for the Tigers. I really don’t trust him on this one either but I still kept the ball close. All I cared is that the ball even could’ve had such a story.

Eric’s body relaxed basking in his triumph, or he was just glad I kinda committed to something. Eh, one of those two. Anyway, he began to take his victory with him out the door until something stopped him dead in his tracks.

“By the way, what happened today at school?” Dammit, why did I think I would actually get away with this for once?

“We got back our papers back in class today. ‘The kid’ kept passing me these stupid notes during class and… he just kept provoking me and I couldn’t—” I reorientated myself on the bed, “—he’s such an ass...” Eric raised an eyebrow. Can I just say what I want for christ’s sake? “Jerk and wrote the worst… he called me a fricken… can I say it?”

“Just this once.”

“A fricken son of a horse fucker.” Yea, that wasn’t even the worst thing he said.

That one completely hit Eric from the left field. He had to like recover from that one. “Wow, you middle schoolers are mean.” Tell me about it. “I’ll… deal with that tomorrow. I’m guessing he got a mouthful from the principle. Did you do what we…”

“No, I punched him right in the gut. He fell down against the wall and I tried to hit him again, but the teacher got to me first.”

“You know you got to stop doing these…”

“What else am I supposed to do when he says that in the middle of class? It’s not like he shouldn’t have seen it coming.”

“You know you can’t… never mind. I’ll deal with it later.”

We stared at each other for a sec. I broke the silence.

“Is the deal still on?”

Please don’t take this away from me.

“Yea, just add not getting into significant trouble to the mix.”

Can you stop making this harder than it already is? I wanted to be able to pull that one out later.

With his head, Eric motioned for the door. “Bible story hour is calling my name now.”

“I thought that was late at like eight or something?” The clock on my nightstand read about four.

“I have a late meeting today for the city's reconstruction plans. They want a representative from engineering and the kids here really like my story time.”

“Wow…” Eric was very popular especially among the younger kids in the house for his story hour. One month when funding was really being stretched Eric told us some story of some widow who God never let her oil and flour run out for like a year after feeding some random dude. It gave us some hope as we made it through that month, although I knew Mr. Preston only had to just pull out a few more dollars from his profits than usual. Afterward, he insisted that Eric would read weekly. I had my own opinions of “phony hour.”

“Hey, if you’re ever interested.”

“‘Ever…’” That was an understatement.

“Suit yourself.” With that, Eric went down the stairs and was greeted by a swarm of children's voices. They were just getting home from elementary school and let me tell you, it sounded like one of those bad children’s choirs, like the really bad ones. Us middle schoolers and beyond really enjoyed our hour of freedom day after day before they came home. I couldn’t hear them easily, but I could make out for the most part what they were saying.

“...what story is for toda…”

“...is that a new bibl…”

“...hy do you have to leave so soo…”

“Shhh… you want me to have time for the story don’t you?” Eric exercised his control over his subjects.

All of the kids’ voices shut up.

“Ok then, what do I have for today? Oh! Do you know the story of Ezra?”

One kid responded, “who’s Ezra?”

“I’ll get there just give me a…” I heard pages shuffle from what I thought was Eric’s children’s bible, or it was the fat one, who cares.

The confines of my room were starting to wear on me plus I was always somewhat intrigued by the stories, so I dragged myself out of bed and crept towards the stairs. There I positioned myself out of sight but still close enough to listen in. I adjusted my ears till I could hear everything clearly, it’s surprising how handy adjustable ears are.

“Ah! In Ezra’s day, the Israelites had only just returned to their land and were still confused as to how to worship God. Plus, the temple had been toppled along with the walls of Jerusalem, although Nehemiah would be responsible for repairing those.”

Lame.

“You see, Ezra was well educated and very knowledgeable and after being in exile for so many years, Israel was pretty lost. Through his hard work, he was able to restore the practices of his people. Because of him, Israel was able to survive and the rest of the bible was able to be written and handed down.”

You know what, he should’ve failed so I wouldn’t have to listen to this crap week after week after fricken week.

“Nehemiah did cool things too, but his involved the rebuilding of the walls and…”

At that point, I lost interest ‘cause who really wanted to hear stories about some guy that did stupid things thousands of years ago? I didn’t want to go back to my room ‘cause it just felt suffocating, so I decided to get some fresh air and headed for the door.

Upon seeing me trot through the main room, Eric’s face shined with a glimmer of hope, for a sec, until I continued on for the door and crushed it. Grabbing my horribly oversized coat, I braced myself and stepped outside.

Stepping outside was like stepping into a wall of pure briskness. I mean, it hit you like a brick to the face. Still, It was nice to finally take a deep breath of fresh air and relax from the day. Noticing how my body was screaming from exhaustion, I collapsed on the stairs of the porch and let my worries fade. I could feel the wind blowing through my hair extracting every ounce of dread and taking it away like leaves in the fall. Things were finally starting to feel ok.

Across the street from me was a father and his son. They were sitting on a park bench singing some minimalistic rendition of Joy to the World while the father played guitar, which was pretty funny ‘cause Christmas was a few weeks ago. With the weather being completely white, they were troopers for even trying to perform in the middle of snowy winter hell. Still, they shared something, some sort of joy thingy that didn’t really make sense to me but was radiating from their words every time they sang.

I let the words slip from my mouth and joined in on the singing even though I hadn’t fully memorized the lyrics, and at that point, I felt something. It felt like their music invited me in to be a part of something, a family. The feeling of being loved and cherished, of being bonded by blood, of being connected so deeply that you would even give up your life for the other. For a moment, I felt as if they were my family too, and that I was loved.

The father then glanced at me and paused from playing for a moment. His face flushed with confusion for a sec and quite frankly, I wasn’t one to react after the day I had. Yet somehow the joy never left, nor did he ever seem afraid of me.

He continued playing on and I realized who I was. Hell, what I was. I didn’t ask to be born with hooves in a world designed by hands, for hands. To be forced to go life without the boundless love of a parent, or a sibling, or any intimate friend for that matter. I didn’t ask to be different, alone, and forgotten.

I just wanting something to hold on to. Anything. All I had was this song, and I held it on to it with every bit of being I had.