"A Hole in My Jacket", from A Rush of Blood to the Head
There is a hole in my jacket.
Funny thing, holes. If you stop to think about it, you realize that you’ve got no clue where half the holes you get in your clothes come from. You look at it kinda strange, seeing the floor through a skylight in your favorite shirt or your best jacket, and you say to yourself, “Where the heck did this stupid thing come from?” It’s a little detail that’s on you, in plain sight, but people don’t see it when they take their first look-see at you. And you’re afraid to point out the hole because you feel like people will look at it and go, “What is wrong with you?”
Ward must notice that I’m not paying attention to him again, because he breaks in the middle of his Anglo-Saxons to say, “Sanders! Pull out a paper and at least act like you are taking notes.”
I look up to meet Ward’s face. The room lights are glaring off of his glasses. I swear he got those glasses cut out straight from a thick, dusty window. His look is so hard that he could be right in front of my desk, pushing me further and further back into my chair with his own withered and pruned-up hands. Ward is completely covered in wrinkles. He doesn’t act as old as he looks. I don’t think that he’s a day over fifty, but he looks old enough to have taught budding amoebas in the primordial pool how to be dinosaurs just like him. I don’t think that there is a surgical miracle in existence that can take out his wrinkles. Maybe someone should try to iron him.
I only nod to him as I open up my yellow notebook and take a pen out of my pocket. Ward then continues on with his lecture to the class—“class” meaning anyone who hasn’t been numbed out of their darn minds. Much as a vulture looks over an African savannah, he looks over the class with his neck slowly stretching out like he’s a turtle.
I make sure that my entranced gaze is towards him, but my mind goes down different roads than the blue and black lines on the map Ward is frantically tracing on the board. My thumb and index finger find the hole in my jacket. I stick my finger through the hole, then pull it back out. In, then out. In, then out. I trace around the hole.
Why does there have to be a hole in my jacket? It seems terribly unfair. I didn’t ask for a hole. In all my sixteen years of living I have never cared for holes. And I am pretty sure that they don’t care much for me, because I don’t think I remember ever having one.
I hear Shawn talking again behind me. He always talks to Mike. They don’t get caught very often in this class, but they do in all the others that they have together. So they talk in first period, world history, with Mr. Ward. They are always laughing at each other. Always laughing at something the other said. It drives me up a wall every time. It makes me want to turn around and demand to know just what on earth could possibly be so funny about world history.
Everybody else has a friend that they are always with. Someone they are always together with. It’s like they are twins that were separated at birth and they want to spend the rest of high school catching up on each other’s lives.
I wish I had someone like that for me. But I don’t. I’ve decided that some people are just born with friends and some people aren’t. I’m one of those people who aren’t. Sometimes I don’t mind that I sit outside on the lawn at lunch with my brown paper bag all by myself, and it feels like I’m miles away from civilization. But sometimes I get up and leave in the middle of class and go to the bathroom and try to choke myself with my belt because I’m so sick of being all by myself with my brown bag at lunch. Sometimes I wish so hard that I had friends up the wah-freakin’-zoo because nobody gives a fudge about Kevin Sanders.
But it’s just another thing I go without. Heck knows I don’t deserve friends anyway. They are just another thing that I am missing. Something else that’s wrong with me. A little detail that people don’t notice when they first take a look-see at me. Just like the hole in my jacket.
My whole life is a lot like that, actually.
Funny thing, holes. If you stop to think about it, you realize that you’ve got no clue where half the holes you get in your clothes come from. You look at it kinda strange, seeing the floor through a skylight in your favorite shirt or your best jacket, and you say to yourself, “Where the heck did this stupid thing come from?” It’s a little detail that’s on you, in plain sight, but people don’t see it when they take their first look-see at you. And you’re afraid to point out the hole because you feel like people will look at it and go, “What is wrong with you?”
Ward must notice that I’m not paying attention to him again, because he breaks in the middle of his Anglo-Saxons to say, “Sanders! Pull out a paper and at least act like you are taking notes.”
I look up to meet Ward’s face. The room lights are glaring off of his glasses. I swear he got those glasses cut out straight from a thick, dusty window. His look is so hard that he could be right in front of my desk, pushing me further and further back into my chair with his own withered and pruned-up hands. Ward is completely covered in wrinkles. He doesn’t act as old as he looks. I don’t think that he’s a day over fifty, but he looks old enough to have taught budding amoebas in the primordial pool how to be dinosaurs just like him. I don’t think that there is a surgical miracle in existence that can take out his wrinkles. Maybe someone should try to iron him.
I only nod to him as I open up my yellow notebook and take a pen out of my pocket. Ward then continues on with his lecture to the class—“class” meaning anyone who hasn’t been numbed out of their darn minds. Much as a vulture looks over an African savannah, he looks over the class with his neck slowly stretching out like he’s a turtle.
I make sure that my entranced gaze is towards him, but my mind goes down different roads than the blue and black lines on the map Ward is frantically tracing on the board. My thumb and index finger find the hole in my jacket. I stick my finger through the hole, then pull it back out. In, then out. In, then out. I trace around the hole.
Why does there have to be a hole in my jacket? It seems terribly unfair. I didn’t ask for a hole. In all my sixteen years of living I have never cared for holes. And I am pretty sure that they don’t care much for me, because I don’t think I remember ever having one.
I hear Shawn talking again behind me. He always talks to Mike. They don’t get caught very often in this class, but they do in all the others that they have together. So they talk in first period, world history, with Mr. Ward. They are always laughing at each other. Always laughing at something the other said. It drives me up a wall every time. It makes me want to turn around and demand to know just what on earth could possibly be so funny about world history.
Everybody else has a friend that they are always with. Someone they are always together with. It’s like they are twins that were separated at birth and they want to spend the rest of high school catching up on each other’s lives.
I wish I had someone like that for me. But I don’t. I’ve decided that some people are just born with friends and some people aren’t. I’m one of those people who aren’t. Sometimes I don’t mind that I sit outside on the lawn at lunch with my brown paper bag all by myself, and it feels like I’m miles away from civilization. But sometimes I get up and leave in the middle of class and go to the bathroom and try to choke myself with my belt because I’m so sick of being all by myself with my brown bag at lunch. Sometimes I wish so hard that I had friends up the wah-freakin’-zoo because nobody gives a fudge about Kevin Sanders.
But it’s just another thing I go without. Heck knows I don’t deserve friends anyway. They are just another thing that I am missing. Something else that’s wrong with me. A little detail that people don’t notice when they first take a look-see at me. Just like the hole in my jacket.
My whole life is a lot like that, actually.
posted by Alexander at 6:55 PM
3 Comments:
i like it a lot. there are a few errors that i noticed, but overall it is excellent. the character is very real and you get into his head. the weird thing is that, while i can think of myself having thoughts somewhat like kevin's, i also think that i would be scared of him if i knew him.
i feel like a crappy writer around y'all sometimes, you know that?
That was excellent characterization. He seemed very real and I could relate to him. I liked the detail about the hole. There's one major thing that's bothering me, though: He says that he can't remember ever having a hole, but in the beginning he says something about not knowing where half the holes one gets come from. How would he be able to relate that if he hasn't experienced it or doesn't have any friends to talk about it or something? It's possible, but not probable.
Other than that and a few very minor details (I think you're missing a word here: "His look is so hard that he might as well me right in front of my desk"), it's excellent. I definitely think that you should keep going with this!
It's very good. Cliche and all that, I know, but I really admire when people have realistic, true to life characters. It's awesome.
Terri, I forbid you to feel crappy.
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