Stupid Fast - By Geoff Herbach Page 0,11
then I’ll drive back to town to go to Kwik Trip to see if anyone’s there (probably not) and then to McDonald’s to see if anyone’s there (probably not) and then around and around the college to see if anyone’s there (drunk nineteen-year-olds! Heyo!), then I’ll fight the honkies in fast-food bathrooms and race the poop-stinkers in their pickups. Oh, glorious driver’s license.
Get a license. Drive around. That’s what I thought.
Or be another geek in the basement watching movies and playing video games.
Or be another geek in the living room playing chamber music.
Or sit around listening to my body grow hair.
***
We didn’t have a lot of food I could instantly jam into my mouth without preparation, so I shut the refrigerator door.
In the living room, five dorks began to play stringed instruments while Andrew tap-tapped on the piano what I think was some kind of Johann Sebastian Bach bullcrap. Andrew loves Bach. I, like my father, love the Beatles (me and Andrew do have his music). I leaned my head into the living room and listened. A couple of dorks looked at me. I shouted “Hi!” and waved at them. Then I went back into the kitchen, where I stuffed a banana in my mouth, then two more pieces of bread, then I ate half a brick of Jerri’s favorite musty goat cheese, then I drank a half gallon of milk, then I ate an English muffin while listening to the dorks play their music.
Here’s this: The dorks aren’t retarded. They’re good. Andrew is good.
I stopped chewing so I could hear them play better. Andrew is really, really good. Then I went downstairs to try to get some rest. It was so humid though.
CHAPTER 8: I HAVE NO TALENT FOR DRUMMING—ANDREW DOES (I CARRIED AROUND A BAG OF ROCKS)
Andrew started playing piano when he was seven because Jerri’s drumming teacher, Tito, said he had musical talent.
It was August, and I’d just turned nine. Jerri had invited all these musty, woodchip-smelling people out to our house to drum in this big circle around our fire pit. At one point, the sun going down, the sky orange, Tito put a drum in front of me and said I should drum along, “Let it all out, little man,” but I’d had heart attacks at school all spring, and all those people drumming around the circle caused a vibration in my chest that scared the holy crap out of me, so I wouldn’t touch the drum. So Tito moved the drum in front of Andrew, and Andrew just started bobbing his little mop head and pounding along and all the woodchip-smelling people oooohed and ahhhhed, and Jerri clapped her hands over her mouth, she was so happy. The next week, he was in piano lessons.
That night, Tito gave me a leather pouch full of polished rocks and crystals. He told me the rocks had special powers and I should hold them in my hands if I got scared, so I carried the leather pouch around and took the rocks out a couple of times at school that fall, but everybody made crap out of me for carrying around a “jewelry collection,” so the rocks didn’t work right.
It wasn’t very long before Andrew’s piano teacher said that Andrew was his best student ever.
Even though I couldn’t pull the rocks out at school, I carried them around in my pocket. I actually carried them with me almost every day through the last school year. After my Regionals disqualification, I held a crystal in my left hand for two days.
Believing rocks have power is a lot like thinking your dad’s ghost is watching out for you.
I carried them for years!
Not anymore. They’re gone.
Andrew got piano, and I got a bag of rocks? That didn’t work out.
I don’t know. What do I know? Maybe Dad is watching?
Yikes. That actually just scared me.
***
Holy crap. It’s 1:51 a.m.
Go!
CHAPTER 9: THINGS BEGAN TO SERIOUSLY CHANGE AT THE POOL
After an hour of sweating in the dark basement, I figured I’d better really do something with my day or else the summer would begin to seriously kill me. We don’t have air conditioning. Have I mentioned that it was really humid? Hot and moist like a good cake (but bad weather). My curly hair was getting really curly from the humidity, which I don’t like. I have what Jerri calls a “Jew-fro.” This, like my Schwinn Varsity and love for the Beatles, is a gift from my father (one Jerri obviously couldn’t burn