I’m not a big fan of poetry. If we could study real poets like Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant, then I might actually pay attention to my English teacher, Mrs. Kirby. But to her, poetry’s about boring dead white guys yearning for urns and roads not taken, instead of stairways to heaven.
We once had a writer visit our class—some guy who thought he was a lot funnier than he really was—and he said one thing that really stuck with me. Most writing, he told us, was about asking two questions: How come? or What if? Robert Frost was caught up in the “what if,” but then, like now, I stirred the ashes and traced the path of “how come.”
Not that I didn’t ask “what if” a lot. I spent a good part of my day having “what if” conversations, thinking of things I wanted to say or should have said. And then there was my favorite “what if,” just looking around the room at every girl and wondering: what if? There’s Terri, Nicole’s best friend. She’s not gorgeous, but still too pretty for me. Terri, Shelby—there’s no girl in that English class I wouldn’t want to be with, at least once. It’s part of me that I can’t explain, this big hulking physical part of me that overwhelms everything else that I can’t find words for. I wondered how I managed to get through the day without saying anything to these girls. I wondered where my self-control came from, since ex-Dad had none, and I’d shown with Roxanne how easy it was to lose it. You could believe one thing and in a second, under the wrong circumstances and right temptations, act differently.
I was lost in my imaginary words when very real ones came from the front of the room. “Mr. Salisbury, please entertain us with your thoughts about the poem,” Mrs. Kirby bellowed. We’d handed in our papers at the start of class, so I was trying to remember what I wrote.
“What I thought?” I mumbled, stalling for time, and kicking myself under the desk. I’d forgotten this was one way Mrs. Kirby tried to catch people who didn’t read the books, stories, or poems. She would make them talk out loud, then compare what they said to what they wrote. I hoped against hope that Brody at least read what I wrote, but the look in her eyes made me think he hadn’t. Her expression told me she thought I’d done something wrong. No doubt she’d glanced at the paper Brody handed in last period and figured out he didn’t write it, which made me her number one suspect.
“We’re waiting,” Mrs. Kirby said.
“Um, it was okay, I guess,” I said, to much laughter.
“Yes, continue,” Mrs. Kirby replied, sounding bored.
“To be honest, I thought it was stupid,” I said as hands shot up amid much laughter.
She ignored the hands and instead asked me, “And what is stupid about it?”
I paused and looked around the room until I spotted Terri. Her eyes darted away like a deer hearing a gun shot, but I knew this was an open door. “Well, the guy’s saying something about making choices,” I mumbled, unsure of myself at first.
“Oh, you mean he’s not talking about roads,” Mrs. Kirby added, sounding amused. I was distracted by hands going up all around the room, but I was the one drowning, not them.
“Right, he’s talking about choices,” I said, this time a little louder. I’m smart, but I know I don’t have that “look,” the one that would make teachers think I was a good student. I often wondered if that was really what made all the difference. Not who you are, but what you look like. If I was as good looking or preppy as Kyle, no way would Nicole have dumped me. Just thinking about Kyle was like gasoline poured on a fire. I know I cheated on Nicole, but the world cheated me first, so I said, “It’s about a guy who gets cheated and feels bad.”
“Cheated?” The tone in Mrs. Kirby’s voice was one of disbelief. “Explain, please.”
“Frost seems to be saying that in life you come to forks in the road and make decisions about what to do.” I could barely get the words from my throat. “I don’t think it works that way.”
“What way?” Mrs. Kirby asked like she was actually interested.
“Well, you know, I think the majority of your decisions are mostly made for you,” I said, my confidence growing. “It’s not what choice you make, it’s who you are.”
“But doesn’t everyone have choices?” she asked. Hands shot up again, but I wouldn’t surrender.
“We don’t know anything about this guy in the poem. I don’t think everybody gets to make the same choices.” My mind flashed back to ex-Dad in his new SUV; the Scarecrow in his straw hat. “Before you make a choice, all this stuff happens, and Frost doesn’t talk about it.”
“You said ‘cheated’—you still have to tell us what you mean,” Mrs. Kirby said.
“That’s what I’m saying.” I paused but wanted to scream in frustration because I couldn’t make people understand me. “You hear how everybody is equal, but that’s a lie. If somebody’s rich, then somebody else is poor. And if you don’t have stuff …” I paused again. I couldn’t bring myself to list the things I didn’t have that the Kyle and the Whitney World have; I couldn’t bring myself to tell everyone how inadequate I felt even in an unfair world.
“And?”
“And if you don’t have stuff, it’s like somebody cheated you out of it,” I said.
“Stuff?” She tried not to laugh at my use of such an un-poetic word while discussing poetry.
“But it’s more than that,” I said and I wondered if people actually saw the lightbulb go on over my head like in some cartoon. “Who you are determines which choices you get to make. So, while everybody has choices, the less stuff you have, the fewer choices you get. That’s what I mean by cheated.”
“Very interesting,” Mrs. Kirby said. I believe she smiled at me for the first time ever.
“Um, one more thing,” I said. Mrs. Kirby looked amused again, no doubt wondering who had taken over my body.
“Continue, please,” she said, then motioned for others to put down their raised hands.
“I think the poem’s also about regret,” I said, then turned away from the teacher to look right at Terri, so she could tell Nicole. “I think the poem is about when you make the wrong choices, feel bad, and wish you could just undo it. Wish you could make things right.”
“Very interesting, Mick, I look forward to reading your paper,” Mrs. Kirby said. I stood there for a moment before sitting down, wondering if Terri would deliver the message to Nicole. But she just looked bored and her eyes were like a vacuum pulling every single soul out of the room. Only I was left, feeling totally alone in the world. Mrs. Kirby saw me maybe for the first time as a bright and engaged student, but as I caught a glimpse of myself in Terri’s soul-sucking stare, I saw something different. I wasn’t Mick Salisbury, I wasn’t even Pool Boy or 151. In her eyes and those of Nicole, I was a pathetic, lonely, and hopeless figure; I was a scarecrow.
I guess you could say that Mick is a nickname, but that’s not what I mean. I’m talking about nicknames like 151 or Pool Boy, tags Brody stuck on me. I don’t mind 151, although I don’t really like that other people in school know about it. It’s funny, in junior high, you wanted everyone to think you were cool enough and old enough to get drunk, but now, it’s not something you share, it’s something you do. Pool Boy I don’t like because it is kind of a put-down name, but Brody’s the only one who uses it, so I guess that’s okay. Worst nickname I ever heard was one this kid back in seventh grade, Robert Smith, had. I didn’t really know him well, most people didn’t. He was one of those kids who just shows up at school every day, nothing special about him. One day in history class, we’re taking a test about Indian tribes. It’s really quiet in the room, and he farts really loud. Everybody heard it. Somebody asked, “Who did that?” Brody, who was sitting right next to him, points at Robert Smith and says, “It was Chief Brown Cloud.” Everybody laughed, maybe even the teacher. Smith looked like he wanted to die right then, and for the rest of the school year everybody called him Chief Brown Cloud, even me. I knew it was mean, but he just seemed so hopeless that it was easy to do because he couldn’t do anything about it. He transferred schools at the end of the year. Thinking about him now, what strikes me is this: in one second, his life changed forever. It wasn’t something he did on purpose, just an accident. But from that moment, his life spun in a different direction. Every day you live through exactly 86,400 seconds, but a stupid mistake or accident or bad judgment in just one of those seconds can change every other second of every minute of every day for the rest of your life. And it can happen to anyone: it doesn’t matter if you’re the president of the United States, Chief Brown Cloud, Mick Salisbury, Brody Warren, Aaron Bishop, or the Scarecrow.