Eli Castor

Humans have never made sense to me. Humans to me are like a six-headed snake, a man with eyes within his ears, or even someone who doesn’t like social media, just an oddity. People always want you to be different yet when you are then you get an endless wave of ridicule. Seen as a freak. Treated as an outcast. If you don’t match the normal form of different then you’re not accepted within society and are excommunicated as punishment. I knew this rule much earlier than most people did. By about 6 years old I realized that I was an oddity and never would be accepted. Before then I would try to talk to the other kids about what I thought about. No one understood. They saw me as a freak and had begun to treat me like an outcast. So I learned to play the game. Think what I want but to the open world I listen and go along with every boring and dumb thing society wanted me to agree with. I knew I couldn’t be myself with anyone and had accepted that fact, but then I met you. You ruined it all. The wall that society made me work years to enclose the oceans of my thoughts was cracked and leaking because of your introduction into my life. You were like me. Too old in the mind and knew that we can’t be ourselves with just anyone. My wall, all enclosing and almighty grew to heights unseen by anyone but was so well camouflaged that it went by unnoticed. A beautifully grotesque obelisk. A great testament to a disgusting social construct. You invaded the bricks on the wall and stealthily and systematically altered every brick to allow me to express myself to the world who shunned me as a child. I didn’t even realize what was happening until I loved you. Like a cancer you spread throughout me until there was more you than there was me. It took me to rip my own heart away and burn it just so I could grow back into myself. I grew back but the wall never re-emerged. Without the wall nothing held back the waves of my mind so I was left drowning in a corner within the cosmos of my mind. You are a cancer to me. A destructive force who has done so much harm to me that I should be scared. But I’m not. If anything I can’t see myself without you. You’ve worked your way so deep into my soul’s structure that I cant see myself without you. I exist without you but you’re never far. You’re always a part of me. 70% myself but that other 30% is all you. I love it. I need it.Its a cancer sure but what would I be without it?

I’m the person who always has the best of intentions yet always seems to be stalked by trouble and sometimes that trouble puts me in awkward situations with law enforcement. Now I’m nowhere near being a hardened criminal or international threat; however, I was almost arrested for domestic terrorism over a trashcan.

In my high school, lunch was forty-five minutes long. Luxurious right? Wrong. You know the scene from the Lion King where the wildebeest stampede and kill Mufasa? Yeah, that was basically an under exaggerated version of my school during lunch. Over three thousand students all trying to get lunch together at the same time sounds, and was, a recipe for disaster.

Like most schools, certain cliques all sat together. Jocks, B-Boys, wannabe B-Boys, Anime kids, kids who think they’re in an Anime, Spanish kids, Asian kids, you name it and my school had it. My lunch area was divided into two sides. One side for the chorus kids and one side for us band kids. Both sides had one trashcan but on this particular day the trashcan for the chorus kids was missing. Now, you would assume the chorus kids would just be mature about it and deal with not having a trashcan for a day, right? Wrong. They stole our trashcan. Now you expect us band kids to be mature about it and just deal with not having a trashcan right? Wrong. They sent me in to go get it because I’m “fearless”. I stole, and by stole I mean awkwardly walk over and take it, the trashcan back just to have the trashcan stolen back by them and this went on for a good ten minutes. Fed up with the anarchy of the trashcan system that had been in place between the band and chorus kids, I was also nominated, by everyone that was not me, to go talk to the chorus kids and get the trashcan back. Our conversation went as followed, “Hey, that’s our trashcan and we’d like it back,” I said trying to sound polite.

“No, it’s ours now,” aggressively barked back the chorus kid I confronted.

“No it is not yours, it is ours and we want it back.”

“It’s ours now so fuck off,” rudely yelled the chorus kid. He looked at his chorus kids friends and they all started laughing and celebrating as if they just won a Grammy.

See, this is when I got upset.

In a very angry fashion, I rebutted with, “Look kid, I don’t need to hear anything you have to say unless you’re saying U.S.A!”

Now, I have no idea what came over me but I felt the need to begin chanting U.S.A at the top of my lungs at these kids. For small background on myself, I am Hispanic and a first generation American from my Dad’s side and a second generation from my Mom’s side. So imagine a small Hispanic boy chanting U.S.A at the top of his lungs into an even smaller boy’s face. I imagined it looked like a Chihuahua screaming at a teacup dog.

I’m yelling U.S.A and would you believe that this is causing a small scene. Shocking to me how this happens but for some odd reason, the band kids behind me also start chanting U.S.A at the top of their lungs as well. The chanting spreads like malaria. Eventually it reaches all corners of the school with everyone screaming U.S.A, some at each other and some towards the chorus kids. Now my school was, if you can believe it, ninety-eight percent Hispanic and sixty percent bilingual with Spanish being their first language. So just imagine the wildebeest stampede in Lion King but all the wildebeest are screaming U.S.A with thick Hispanic accents.

Situation isn’t too bad yet, but as humans we must ruin every good thing.

One of my band friends, let’s name him Alberto, decided to stop chanting U.S.A and begin chanting a very hated word by most officials, anarchy. Alberto isn’t like me in physique at all. He’s tall and big so screaming anarchy drew some attention to him. He drew even more attention to himself when he picked up a trashcan and decided to throw it across the courtyard.

You would think people would see that animalistic behavior and just walk past it or even shame him for being so barbaric. You would be wrong. People went ballistic. Alberto throwing the trashcan was more revolutionary than the invention of the wheel. Now that everyone knew they didn’t need to be oppressed by having trashcans that stayed in one spot, all the different cliques began throwing their trashcans at each other as they yelled anarchy.

Some yelled anarchy while others stayed to the old trend of U.S.A, and somewhere amidst all the chaos was me, a lone Simba sinking deeper into the sea of wildebeest.

Have you ever seen a kid get hit in the head by a can, to see another kid pick-up said can, and then watch that can expel gases that make both kid’s faces red and rain down tears while they cough aggressively? Well I have. The police on campus had started to throw tear gas and tase the savage wildebeests that were destroying everything with their trashcans and screams of government and no government with thick Spanish accents.

Out of fear I just spin in circles watching the mayhem unfold all around me. Kids drop like poached animals as some get tased and others fall due to coughing fits and burning eyes from the tear gas. I myself am surprisingly and aggressively tackled down to the ground with my friend Alberto next to me. We are handcuffed and brought towards the administration building. I am silent due to the shock of all that just happened but not good ol’ Alberto. He’s being dragged to administration while he yells, “Viva la revolución! Viva la revolución!”

They throw us into the principal’s office alone and we just sit there handcuffed.

“Alberto,” I tried to not sound angry but I just ended up sounding passive aggressive. “What the hell was that back there?!” I tried to punch him but since I was seated and handcuffed I just ended up thrashing stupidly in my chair like a fish out of water.

“Sorry bro,” Alberto whispered apologetically. “I just got a little excited.”

“A little?! That was your ‘a little’,” I screamed at him.

The principal walks in and doesn’t say a word. Just slithers to his seat and starts clicking and typing on his computer. He turns his monitor so we can also see what he was seeing. It was security camera footage of lunch today.

We watch the events unfold but from the perspective of a fly on the wall. We witness me, in all my “fearless” glory walk up to the chorus kids, begin the U.S.A chanting, and then we watch as Alberto gets “a little” excited and start throwing trashcans as he yells anarchy. The principal cuts off the video right before the tear gas started raining down like meteors.

“I could have you arrested on grounds of domestic terrorism, disturbing the peace, and vandalism,” the principal’s voice boomed.

That’s when Alberto, good ol’ Alberto, blurted out, “I know my rights, and we don’t have to say shit to you!”

“We aren’t arrested yet,” I sigh with annoyance. If I wasn’t handcuffed I would’ve face palmed but I settled for just hanging my head.

“I said I could and should have you arrested,” continued our principal. “However the state has already cut our funding tremendously and this is bad press that we don’t need so I’m going to suspend you both for ten days and we just act like this never happened.”

I can’t help it. I cackle like a mad hyena. I can’t even imagine him being serious. Suspension for me is worse than jail. I’ll have to go home and tell my Hispanic mother. A Hispanic mother who never spares the rod.

“No suspension,” Alberto says sternly. “We just clean up the mess and call it even.”

He can’t be serious either. That is the worst negotiation plan ever. He’d have to be crazy to agree to these terms.

“Deal,” quickly agreed the principal. “The school is shit anyway.”

The world has gone crazy.

Principal calls in the police and they take the handcuffs off us and send us out into the school to pick up the mess. Takes us the rest of the school day to finish and the school really didn’t look that much better.

After school I walked to the band room. I was met with cheers and applause and hoisted up on people’s shoulders. They paraded me around the hall like I was some American hero. They all talked about how what I did was so cool and crazy and how they were behind me one hundred percent. They gave me a new nickname. I was no longer seen as fearless. I was now called Band God.

After hearing the new name I sat there, dumbfounded. I silently got up and walked out. I sat outside and waited for my mother to come and could only muster up the brain power to say one phrase, “Holy shit the world has lost its mind.” lion-king-disneyscreencaps_com-3923

Eli Castor

Cancer

I Just Can’t Anymore

I Want to Help People

Shattered

I’m Sick- A Haiku

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Heartbeat

The Day the World Went Crazy

Pain Haiku