JOCKEYING FOR POSITION

This is what I find most encouraging about the writing trades: They’re all mediocre people who are patient and industrious to revise their stupidity to edit themselves into something like intelligence. They also allow lunatics to seem saner than sane.
—Kurt Vonnegut

I have this new student, call him white-boy if you will, kind of looks like a red-faced Chris Daughtry. Anyway, he’s one mad-at-the-world motherfucker.

“How am I gonna get my GED when you’re never here?” he asks me, or should I say BLAMES ME.

I know what I’d like to say, I’d like to ask him “Why’s it so important now you ASSHOLE? It wasn’t important when you were in the public school system.” Instead, I keep my mouth shut.

He continues his rant, about how the tutors aren’t helping him, how the other students are too loud, how he can’t concentrate. He pulls ear plugs out of his waxy orifices for emphasis.

“Look,” I say, “if you really want to learn, you can block out all kinds of noise.” I start fiddling with my wedding ring for—oh, I don’t know—emphasis.

He storms out of the classroom.

An older black prisoner approaches my desk. “You know,” he says, “that guy got his ass tore up by a bunch of young black guys last week.”

“Oh yeah,” I say.

“Yeah, for using the N-word in the dayroom.”

“Really?” I say, displaying my fake-ass disbelief. “He called them a bunch of Nigerians?”

We both start laughing. I tell him about the time I saw a “white lawn jockey” in someone’s front yard. The laughter continues.

"Had to be Detroit," he says.