I love Thanksgiving. The smell of the cold air coming through the garage as my dad carries folding chairs into the house. The tacky din of the Macy’s parade marching from the television to nobody’s direct interest. The promise of football, belt loosening, tryptophan, and a general artery-hardening good time.
But it’s different when you have to work. By the fourth Thursday of November 2004, I had been doing the job full-time for a little more than a year, and I was already starting to experience the burnout that would become an annual event.
At this time, my commitments were particularly fleeting. I had a girlfriend, but we weren’t great together. Besides, my computer and I both suffered frequent separation anxiety. For me it was that sense that, as a self-employed man, I never punched out, that without me out there working, I was making nothing, that there was no limit to how far I could fall.
And yet here I was, a crutch for the unrepentantly lazy. In my self-righteous exhaustion, I hated them, I judged them, I considered their money put to better use in my pockets.
Each of my clients seemed to be a case in underdeveloped ambition and parentally sponsored postadolescent assisted living. I resented them all.
I had a great-grandfather who passed away when I was eight. He left a trust fund for me and one for my older sister. Great-Grandpa Lou lived to be ninety-eight and maintained the clarity and control to sketch eerily accurate penciled likenesses of his attending nurses until just days before his death of natural causes. Even so, he didn’t seem to realize that my younger sister existed, so the poor girl was summarily screwed out of any portion of her would-be inheritance. Mine covered a year and a half of tuition and housing. It’s a shame to think that the legacy of a man’s long and remarkable life could be funneled into eighteen months of low-grade, high-fiber dining hall food and Yankee Stadium–size lecture halls.
When Great-Grandpa Lou’s money ran out, it was on to loans. When my Sallie Mae loans topped out, my parents cosigned on a private NJCLASS loan. I was now on the hook for a huge sum of money and the health of my parents’ credit rating. I don’t wish that kind of pressure on any other stupid kid.
Still, I learned in college what I would need to know as a self-employed writer. There are no handouts for a guy like me. It was probably the greatest gift my parents ever gave to me. My independence was a function of my desperate determination.
I can’t say my parents were particularly proud of what I had become. I assume that when people asked my dad what I did for a living, he would brag that I was tops in my prison license-plate-making class. But they were not the types to interfere. I had been raised on the premise that you are free to make your own mess so long as you’re willing to clean it up. I had become quite the chambermaid: always tidying up, sweeping dirt under, pushing back this bill, ripping up that one, and hoping the gesture was sufficient to make the debt disappear.
I may not have seemed tough to the World War II vets in my family tree, but neither had I been raised to be fragile. Not compared to my customers, anyway: They were an experiment in twenty-first-century child rearing, more often than not the product of attachment parenting ideology, shortsighted good intentions, and life cycle micromanagement. My parents had many years prior washed their hands of my poor decision making.
Speaking of poor decision making, at the time I was dating Hope, a sweet girl whom I had no business being with. I was doing Thanksgiving dinner with her family this year.
Our relationship was frivolous, temporary, and occasionally miserable. We had been together long enough that her parents already didn’t like me. At first, all they really knew was that I was a writer and that I needed a haircut. That was bad enough. As they got to know me better, they just found me confusing.
Her father was a teacher in an affluent suburban elementary school. He was a Republican, an occasional hunter, a frequent fisher, and a man of strong faith. I was none of those things. He looked at me like I was a space alien.
As we pulled up to the house for dinner, I was finishing a paper on the Great Depression. My work, it seemed, always faintly echoed my life.
I folded my laptop into my backpack as Hope parked the car. Dad was standing on the porch with his hands on his hips, wearing a festive holiday scowl.
“Thanks for having me tonight, Mr. Klein.” I extended my hand. He shook it.
“That’s fine,” he said. I could see he was thrilled to have me.
“Hi, Daddy,” Hope said.
“Hi, baby. Happy Thanksgiving.”
The Klein family never wasted time with predinner chitchat. Nobody was ever there to prolong the event. Getting it over with was an annual family tradition. We sat down right away. Hope’s cousin Kevin got there late and found that we were all sitting at the table already, peering impatiently at the door.
They were the kind of family where you could hear forks clinking on plates, people sliding platters over, scooping with slotted spoons, and clearing their throats. Every once in a while, somebody would raise an eyebrow from their plate and look around at everybody else in quiet contempt for conspiring in this awkward showing of thanks. This kind of quiet always made me nervous that I might accidentally cut a fart. So I clenched my butt cheeks, looked down at my plate, and concentrated on my stuffing.
It took two bottles of wine for things to open up, for aunts and uncles to start complaining about their jobs, complimenting the food, and updating one another on friends who were now sick or dead. I kept mostly to myself and, as was often the case, planned out the next day of work in my head.
When the conversation finally fell on me, I longed for those precious minutes of awkward silence now passed.
Hope’s dad was a griller. He was a math teacher. He liked to call on you when your hand wasn’t raised, when your face was twisted with a perplexed expression, when he could tell you hadn’t been paying attention, when he was sure to catch you with your pants down and make you look like a huge asshole.
This guy. I’ve had lifelong friction with guys like him.
“So, I saw you working on that computer of yours. What’s that you’re working on right now?” he asked me with an unspoken air of “Something stupid, no doubt.”
“Well, I just finished an essay on the Great Depression.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah, very troubling stuff.”
“How so?”
“Well, more than anything, just the thought that it could all come crashing down around us and that we’d be powerless to stop it.”
“Right … so you’re back in school, then? Good for you. That should help you find some direction.”
“Dad!” Hope said.
“No,” I said. “No. I’m not in school. And I’m not really looking for direction right now. I’m hoping to get by on charm.”
“What’s the depression got to do with it?”
“Well, I’m writing a study guide for a student to use when writing his paper about the depression.”
“And somebody is paying you to write about the depression?”
“Yes. Well, not just the depression. About lots of things. I write papers for students.”
“Meaning?”
“Well, I write these ‘study guides’ for students so that they can hand them in at school. I work for a company. I’m an independent contractor, and I get work through this company. They pay me at the end of each month.”
“So wait …,” said Cousin Kevin, with a sly sort of grin that I’ve seen a lot during this type of conversation. “So people hire you to do their homework?”
“Mmhmm,” I replied through a mouthful of mashed potatoes.
“So what do you write about, then?”
“Anything, really. Almost anything. I don’t do, like, computer programming papers or hard math or anything like that. Though other people do that kind of work.”
“Other people?” Mr. Klein asked.
“Yeah. I work for a company. That’s how I find the work, or how the work finds me or whatever.”
“And you make a living doing this?” Kevin asked.
“Well, I don’t have prime rib for dinner every night, but y’know … I pay the bills … mostly.”
“Hah! That is awesome!”
Mr. Klein glared at him.
“What?!” said Kevin. “I wish I knew how to do that. Shit. I wish I’d known you when I was in school. That would have saved me some time.”
“Kevin!” his mother said.
“So you help people hand in work that they didn’t do? You help them cheat?” Mr. Klein asked, his voice rising in anger.
“Well, I don’t know what they do with my ‘study guides’ after I submit them. That’s on them, not me.”
“Don’t give me air quotes. Study guides, my ass. That’s just disgraceful.”
“Well, sir, please excuse me if I differ. I happen to think American schools are disgraceful.”
“Well, you’re just a cheater.”
“Not me. I don’t cheat. I genuinely do all the work.”
“Don’t be a smart-ass. You know what you’re doing. How do you get away with that?”
“Get away with it? This is wide out in the open. I pay taxes. I could give you the company’s website. You can read our disclaimers. We just sell study guides. I can’t be held responsible if a few bad apples are going to use our research for impure purposes.”
“You think it’s funny now. But one day your doctor will be some moron who cheated his way through school. So when he botches your operation, you’ll have yourself to thank.”
“With all due respect, sir, if some incompetent schmuck who doesn’t have the qualifications manages to coast his way through life and in spite of all his obvious deficiencies somehow gets to perform surgery on people because he got good grades, there’s something terribly wrong with your system, and it’s much bigger than cheating.”
It was getting heated, which got Hope pretty excited. She was having a great time with it.
“Hope,” Mr. Klein said, looking at his daughter like I had just left the room. “Where do you find these assholes?”
“Rick!” Mrs. Klein shouted.
“I should go.” I started to get up.
“Sit down,” he said calmly. “Everybody eat your turkey.”
“It’s really delicious, Mrs. Klein. So juicy.”
“Thank you, David.”
This type of hostility was nothing new to me. I have made no secret of my job, and I’ve received my fair share of harsh judgments. I’ve been called evil by complete strangers. I rarely get defensive. I tend to respectfully disagree, and more often I try to avoid being drawn into such confrontations if at all possible.
It was not possible with Hope’s father. He always got under my skin, and I let it get the better of me. I enjoyed pissing him off. And I understand where he was coming from, obviously. He was just defending his profession. In the end, the fact that my job even existed was an indictment of what he did and how he did it. Certainly, he could sit in judgment. But he didn’t know what I knew. I dealt with a far greater diversity of students than your average educator.
He had no idea. He didn’t know the extent of it. He couldn’t know how it permeates our schools. He didn’t understand why students would take this way out, or why somebody like me would do a job like this. To him, this was a subterranean racket.
It isn’t. It’s mainstream. It’s popular culture. It’s taxable income. It’s googleable.
Hope’s dad was a department head, a sponsor of extracurricular activities, and a joyless prick. In this world, we were cast as ideological and strategic enemies.
“Sorry about my dad,” Hope said on the ride home.
“Nah. Don’t worry about it. I’m used to that shit. Besides, it’s not like he doesn’t have a point.”
“Fuck him.”
“Well, I agree with that, too. But seriously, what can I possibly say to defend myself?”
“You don’t have to defend yourself. A lot of people would love to be able to do what you can do.”
“Yeah … great … I’ve squandered more ability than most people ever get. I should feel really good about that. I’m a real fucking revolutionary.”
“Don’t let him make you feel that way. You know it’s all bullshit. You think he’s changing lives? His students hate him.”
“It’s not him. It has nothing to do with him. It’s not even that I feel bad about what I’m doing. I don’t. I’ve had much worse jobs. It’s just, I can’t take pride in this. I’m doing nothing of value with my life. Even if school is bullshit and what I’m doing isn’t wrong, I contribute nothing. Even if I can rationalize what I’m doing, I can’t take any pride in it. Your parents are right. My parents are right. I’m trash.”
I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself. I was just thinking, maybe I really was trash. But I was marketable trash, the kind of trash that sells like crazy as first-semester finals approach.
Let me explain finals.
By the end of Thanksgiving, cheating in school is as pervasive as Charlie Brown specials, Salvation Army bells, and songs about finding love on Christmas Eve. The students come to us in droves with their end-of-semester work, willing to pay a premium for a holiday season uninterrupted by school-related tedium. Holidays are for family-related tedium.
Every year, I have to find a way to fit in both. This is when I turn it on full blast. I am a robot. I am a machine. I am the evil T-1000, Johnny 5, and Max Headroom. I am a cybernetic organism sent from the future to help John Conner ace his Environmental Design elective.
I churn out pages upon pages of academic material for days on end. Twenty-hour days; two-hundred-page weeks; six dozen courses; fifteen majors; ten minutes of stretching here; forty minutes of sleep there, however my face lands on the keyboard. Sometimes I’ll stop in between assignments, crack my back, hop around the room, and listen to James Brown. Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine.
Sometimes I don’t have the time for funk. I’ll just send off one assignment and open the next without pause. It takes me five seconds to breathe out my ten-page reconciliation on the simultaneous existence of God and evil before I start to breathe in a six-page consumer report on the best hybrid cars on the market.
This is finals. These are my darkest moments. When you study and write and defy personal reflection for enough hours over the course of enough days and without rest through the duration of a month … well, it can be an almost disembodying sensation. My fingers seem to melt into the keyboard; my eyes have stretched across the void between the monitor and my face; I feel nothing below my shoulders. I am a floating head; a living, breathing Wikipedia; a composite of facts, errors, opinions, and lies, available to the public for use at its own risk. I’m open all night.
But finals pay for my holiday shopping. I rock it out during finals. I admit, it’s not exactly working on an offshore oil rig, but sometimes I actually feel like kind of a hard-ass.
Yeah, I’ve got a thirty-page paper to write tomorrow. No, I don’t know what it’s about yet. Yawn. Shot of tequila. Bong hit. Late night. Late start. Long day.
Some papers are harder than others. Sometimes I’m in the mood to really give it the old college try. Sometimes I’m in the mood to try less hard. The guy who contacts me two days before the deadline and asks, “Wheres my paper at!”—you’d better believe I’m trying less hard for him. I don’t need the aggravation. I can write a five-page paper in thirty minutes if I don’t mind producing a piece of donkey excrement.
And I admit, sometimes the sleep deprivation makes me a little moody. My life during finals is a prison sentence: solitary confinement, sensory deprivation, and yard detail. But I do it to myself. I choose my own deadlines.
And I can’t get enough. Anything that looks interesting, that looks easy, that pays a good rate, that I’ve already written about … anything. It hardly matters. I just fill my calendar up and deal with it when the day arrives. I have deadlines every minute of every day. Deadlines own me. I write on car rides. I write on airplanes. I write in hotel rooms. I write in restaurants and bars. I write anywhere with an outlet, I write until my battery dies, and I write on other people’s computers when I have to. My friends understand. They’ve seen me during finals before. I work until my neurons are fried.
And I am hopelessly, incurably optimistic. I think I can fit in everything. I never say no to work. A lot of work is scary, but no work is downright terrifying.
So I was buried in work when Hope’s mother called me, not more than a week after Thanksgiving dinner.
This was strange. She had never called me. Not once. Panicked thoughts raced through my head. What had I done? Why could she be calling me? Oh god. Hope was pregnant, and her father was coming to kill me with his shotgun.
“Mrs. Klein? What’s wrong? Is everything OK?”
“David? Nothing’s wrong. Everything is fine. I just … I have a funny question for you.” She sounded uncomfortable. Nothing new there. She always sounded a little uncomfortable.
“Oh. OK?”
“Umm. Hmm. OK, are you still writing the papers? Do you still do that?”
“Uhhh, yeah. Of course.”
“OK. My friend’s daughter … I’m not sure how to put this … but her daughter is a little silly. And she likes to put things off until the last minute. Anyway, now she’s overwhelmed with exams and papers, and she’s just basically trying to get into colleges now, and that’s taking up a ton of her time. So I was telling … well, her mother heard about what you do and wanted to know if you could help …”
Heard about what I did? Right.
I’m sitting here thinking, You’re out there telling your friends about me, I’m sure in the nicest possible terms, and where the hell were you when your husband was ripping me a new one? That’s cool, though. It was all just business. Because I cut out the middle man when working directly with the customer, I could charge double my normal rate. I normally earned between fifteen and twenty dollars per page during finals, but without company policy holding me back, I could charge thirty-six dollars a page.
“Sure,” I told her. “I can help. Have her e-mail the assignment to me.”
The girl’s mother—the one who would be paying for the assignment—she meant well. You will rush to judge her. And I don’t blame you. My parents wouldn’t have tolerated that crap. The way I was raised, you did your own dirty work.
This mom, she just wanted what was best for her kid. But her kid was so far behind. This mom was watching other parents in her affluent suburban development send their kids off to college, and she wanted that so badly for her kid. She was a good kid, she tried hard, and she had genuine learning deficiencies. And the lure of the university was too strong, its sociological importance too pronounced. This mom would do anything to walk her kid right up to the doorstep of the university, maybe even come in with her, hold her hand, and whisper encouraging things to her while she adjusted for the first four years or so.
This kid would soon be eligible to vote, smoke, and be tried as an adult, but the odds that she would be able to live on her own in the years immediately after college were slim.
And she was not alone. Not even a little.
In 2005, the New York Times reported that as of 2003, sixteen million American families were living with an individual over the age of eighteen. This was up seven million families from 1995, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Housing Survey, meaning that the number had nearly doubled in less than a decade.1
According to the Christian Science Monitor, a 2010 Pew Research Center poll revealed that one in seven households had experienced the return to home of a grown child in the previous year. The CSM also reports that according to the AFL-CIO, one in three young workers lives with his or her parents. This does not, of course, account for those from the current generation of recent graduates who are not employed. According to the CSM, this is a fairly significant population. The paper reports that “a smaller share of 16-to 24-year-olds are currently employed—46.1 percent—than at any time since the government began collecting data in 1948.”2
Of course, there are a lot of reasons for this. The economy, the high cost of education, and shifting cultural tendencies all factor in. But it would be remiss of us to overlook the impact made by Mom’s crushing embrace.
My customers—years in this business reveal—have been made half brain-dead by the suffocating proximity of their mothers.
Credit cards are the new umbilical cord, and they allow childhood dependencies to stretch grotesquely into college and beyond. It makes for a client base frequently prone to emotional instability. So say the frantic e-mails that have often greeted me after a nice evening out with the boys or an afternoon in the park.
I’ll finish a paper, submit it to the customer, and go on with my day, only to learn that something has gone wrong, horribly horribly, wrong.
The citations aren’t correct! The pages haven’t been numbered!! You failed to hyphenate words that should have been hyphenated!!!
You’d be amazed at how often customers ask for revisions rather than insert the page numbers or hyphens themselves. I understand. My customers are just used to having things done for them. Hope’s mother surprised me with her call, but I was hardly shocked by the request. This was something I had seen many times, actually.
I remember the first time I came into contact with a “cockpit mom.” A 2011 article on the Huffington Post describes the phenomenon of cockpit mothering as the logical parenting model for one who views the “helicopter mom” approach as slightly negligent. The article explains:
Cockpit parents did more than hover. They sat right in the pilot’s seat of their child’s life, charting the course and navigating all of the twists and turns. And they often remain there well into their child’s adulthood. The result is a trend of 20-somethings who are having trouble thriving as independent adults.
Cockpit parenting does come from a place of love. However, this intrusive and often controlling way of child rearing has caused many 20-somethings to be unequipped for life outside of the nest (which is why so many never leave or move back home after college). It is the children of cockpit parents who most often fit the stereotypes of Gen Y: sense of entitlement, consistent need for validation, non-self-starters, mediocre work ethic and a general lack of soft skills.3
A customer of mine whom we will refer to as Jub-Jub exhibited exactly that set of symptoms. Jub-Jub ordered a thirteen-page paper on human resource management on a Monday afternoon in late June. Again, contrary to the Thanksgiving rush, work is scarce in the summer, so I take on as much as I can even when the pay is not so great and the deadline is short. Jub-Jub needed his paper the next morning by nine a.m. I was down the shore, staying at a friend’s house, but I needed the money, so I took it on. I figured I’d ask for an extension, get up early, and work on it into the afternoon. At thirteen pages for $150, Jub-Jub was getting a good deal; the least he could do was give me a twenty-four-hour lead time.
I grabbed up the assignment and immediately sent an e-mail to the customer requesting an extension to two the next afternoon.
I heard nothing from Jub-Jub. I have a smartphone that I keep on me at all times. I brought it to the beach and awaited the verdict. If Jub-Jub couldn’t give me the extension, I could just e-mail the customer service supervisor and ask him to repost the order on the board.
The evening came. We watched the Phillies game. I took Hope out to the casinos. We ate, drank, gambled, and did inappropriate things in public. I didn’t make much loot in the summers, but I had my freedom. No word from Jub-Jub. If it was urgent, I figured, I’d have heard from him.
I set my alarm for six-thirty a.m., was up by seven, was showered, caffeinated, and writing by eight. I wrote at a shore-town pace. A little sleepy. A little hungover. Under a summer gauze of laziness. I like writing this way. I heard nothing from the customer, and I felt no pressure to speed through the assignment. I took my time. I read sources. I thought out my sentences. I wrote a halfway-decent paper.
I submitted it at two p.m. I heard from the customer less than an hour later.
I just read over the essay … I think the writer is not answering the topic at all… my god… i have been waiting for this essay for so long, I was expecting an essay at least match the topic. I know there is a rewrite service… but how long does it takes? Moreover, I requested Harvard Referencing System, but the writer did not follow this. I’m looking forward your reply. I need this within 24-hours
I responded immediately, “I will review the essay and do my best to address those concerns by this evening.”
I had lunch and a Frisbee toss on the beach. Two hours had passed when I received the following message:
Dear Writer
May I know how is the essay goes?
May I know when it can be done.(it is already 2 hours after the due time)
Thank you very much!
Yours Sincerely.
I responded immediately, telling Jub-Jub, “As promised, I will have your revisions completed by this evening. Your patience is very much appreciated.”
Jub-Jub responded immediately.
Thank you very much for your reply.
I really appreciate your help on my essay.
I’m looking forward to hearing the good news about completion from you.
Thank You!
Regard!
Moments later, I received the following e-mail:
Dear Tomar
After I read all the pages, I found the whole essay is not answering the topic which I required.
The essay is discussing about “Strategic Human Resource Management Theory and Practice” from the introduction to the content then conclusion… the topic which i gave is “Examine the extent to which Strategic Human Resource Management Theory and Practice is differently applied during period of significant economic recession from times of rapid growth”
i can not find anything to talk about “during period of significant economic recession from times of rapid growth”.
moreover, I required “Introduction: not required” but the essay still have the introduction…
besides, i required fully Harvard Referencing System. I think the referencing is not according to this.
to conclude, there three major area for re-write
1. please emphasis “during period of significant economic recession from times of rapid growth”, which the main discussion should be this, but not “Strategic Human Resource Management Theory and Practice”
2. please use Harvard Referencing style
3. please do not write introduction
I would hope, before re-write the essay, please take read the topic completely, and also take a look at the requirement which i wrote.
Thank you very much!
Yours Sincerely
Ummm. OK. I had thought we had already settled the matter. Whatever. I sent a message back immediately, indicating that “upon reviewing the essay, it does seem apparent that I have addressed matters relating to economic recession and rapid growth. I think upon a closer review of the essay, you will find that though this exact phrase was not used, the topic was discussed extensively. As agreed upon earlier, I am still more than happy to revise the citations. As I proceed, I will also try to clarify the language where appropriate. Thanks so much.”
Without a hint of protest, Jub-Jub responded.
sorry, just now forgot to mention, as i said in the requirement/ Instructions before,
“please use: theory + example + further discussion + elaborate in detail.”
I responded, “I will take that under advisement.” Whatever it meant. I’m no good at math.
Jub-Jub responded, “Thank you Tomar!”
A mere fifteen minutes later, another unprompted message:
Could you do me a faver to meet my essay’s topic and finish it before 7pm to night.
It is the deadline for me!!!!!!!!!!!
Please understand me!!!!!!!!!! I am so, so anxiously waiting for it right now!!
Thanks very much
Jub-Jub
What the hell? Was I being punk’d? What the hell was Jub-Jub’s problem? All right, I told myself. Stay calm. Be polite.
Jub-Jub,
As I indicated to you in our earlier series of conversations, I will have the assignment revised by this evening. Though we typically avail a 24 hour revision policy, I am making all arrangements to have this work submitted to you by 7PM EST. Your continued patience and understanding are very much appreciated and I am confident you will be pleased with the final product.
Moments later:
Hello Tomar
I have to tell you that I am Jub-Jub’s mother, some replies were not from Jub-Jub, but from me, I am sorry that I wrote something looks “funny”.
Anyway, I hope you will finish the ordered essay in a good quality and hope Jub-Jub will get it from you as soon.
thanks very much
Mrs Jones
What a relief. I had thought I was writing for somebody with multiple personality disorder. Turned out I was just writing for a kid who would live in his mother’s basement until he was forty.
This paper was for a senior in college. So presumably, this was a 22-year-old student. Do you know that the average life expectancy in Swaziland is 39.6 years? This guy would have been a tribal elder there. He would already have been more than half dead. Something told me this guy wasn’t ready to lead the tribe.
I felt bad for this kid. I really did. He’d never had a chance. What a life it must be, to have your mother helping you cheat. How long did she plan on holding his hand? How long would she shield him from the wisdom to be imparted by failure? How long would she embrace his baffling impotence?
I didn’t know him personally, but I imagined Jub-Jub as a harness kid. His mother had leashed him in public and given him a helmet and a three-foot playing radius. Jub-Jub hadn’t been potty trained because his mother had a deathly fear of swimming. She couldn’t have Jub-Jub drowning in his own house. Jub-Jub had had a colostomy. It made for less time that he had to be separated from Mom. It just made sense. They had gotten a two-for-one surgery deal by having a LoJack installed as well.
Jub-Jub had always performed well in school. His mother’s lawyer was number two on the speed dial, behind the doctor who got Jub-Jub his learning pills. Anytime Jub-Jub got a C, the lawyer got a call. This was usually enough to get Jub-Jub a B or better.
Jub-Jub’s mother had raised a sponge. She had raised a loofah. She had raised one of those revolting coconut-marshmallow Peeps. Jub-Jub was soft, squooshy, and destined to be eaten alive.
It’s possible I’ve taken some liberties with Jub-Jub’s story. All I really know about him is that he was most likely of a legal age to have died fighting for his country four years earlier, and his mother was still helping him just to correspond with the guy he’d hired to help him cheat through school.
Jub-Jub’s mother meant well. She just wanted what was best for Junior. And she would bite the head off a live chicken to make it happen.
Jub-Jub was not a bum for no reason. It had been enabled. It had been encouraged. And it was the only thing he knew.
I remember thinking earnestly about it when pressed by Hope’s dad that Thanksgiving Day. Was I to blame for America’s future of incompetence? There was no denying it. I was part of a broken system, and one that I despised. But I was just the obvious part, the trash pile in the dumpster out back. Until you’ve been inside the system the way I have, you don’t know that the halls and the classrooms and the administrative offices stink of industrial waste.