124. Boredom

If there is anything worse than a bored teenager, it must be bored alien. What could be even worse? Try a bored alien who has taken the form of a bored teenager. I was trying to grade papers from a class I am teaching when who should show up but Tymber Elysibuth, the 16 year old high school student. She plopped on the couch and began tapping her feet to music that only existed in her head.

“I’m bored,” she said, as if I would have not guessed in a thousand years.

“C.W., I’m sort of busy right now.”

“Do you think Tymber is a sexy name?”

“I think you should go out for some exercise.”

“Haylee Addison’s dad says the government is taking away all of our guns.”

“That’s nice. Now why don’t you go walking?”

“Oh, puleeez. Can’t you hear? There is a hunter every ten feet out there. Duh. I would get to the edge of the woods before one shot me. Gross.”

“Maybe you could read a book.”

“Londin Colclasure studied in school that the world is only 6,000 years old.”

“Great,” I said. “Have you visited home lately?”

“Get real. It takes a hundred light years to get there.”

“So where did London ..”

“Londin! Gee, are you dumb, or what?”

“Where did Londin get her news?”

“Her teacher learned if from a man running for president.”

“Running for president? We just had an election.”

“He’s getting an early start, I suppose.”

Returning to my papers, I tried to ignore her.

“The world’s coming to an end,” she said.

“Great,” I said. “Hope it happens before I get these papers graded.”

“The U.N. has taken over our economy and is killing our economic system.”

“That’s nice,” I said. “Now who told you that?”

“Glen Beck.”

“And he is an economist?”

“No.”

“Historian?”

“Not really.”

“A political scientist?”

“No, A talk radio host.”

“Talk radio?”

“You know, the guys who are trying to protect our freedoms and restore our economy.”

“Some call it ‘hate’ radio” I said.

“Whatever.”

“So why don’t you go shopping?”

“What! And fight those crowds?”

“Never mind anyway,” I said. “The last five times I sent you for toilet paper, you picked the wrong brand.”

“Soffeeah Gabrielah says her daddy is going to take her out of school.”

“Can’t blame him,” I said, trying to make sense of a student’s effort to describe the pros and cons of public sector collective bargaining. “Any particular reason?”

“They won’t let us pray.”

“Oh? Do you want to pray?”

“Not really, but that’s not the point. “They are taking away our religious freedoms.”

“About time,” I said reading the explanation again a striving for some sign of coherence. “What freedoms?”

It would be so neat if I could just
text my thoughts without actually
having to think them. - C.W.

“Did you know that God hates fags?”

“C.W.! We don’t talk that way in this house.”

“See, you want to take away my freedom in my own home.”

“It’s not your home. And besides, you are an alien.”

“Did you know that the government is going to put all of our citizens in concentration camps and put the aliens in charge?”

43. Artifacts

C.W. was driving my wife, Brenda, crazy. And me too, truth be known. We were snowbound with him at her ancestral farm, deep in the middle of nowhere. He had decided, for reasons known only to himself, to retain the persona of a 11 year-old boy. Just imagine it, if you will.

The first thing I caught him doing was messing with one of my guitars—a Martin D-28 named "Baby" that I keep carefully stored away in its case to prevent undue exposure to the elements and the bad karma emitted by network TV. She is a sensitive thing and easily thrown into an unbalanced state. So you can imagine how I felt when I heard him banging away on it and attempting to yodel.

“Put that away immediately,” I heard Brenda yell.

“Aw gee.” It was only going to get worse.

He put it away reluctantly and then settled into a chair and pretended to read until we were out of the room.

I dozed for a short spell and awoke to a loud, “How dare you?”

I ran into a bedroom and there he was with one of her precious collections of Native American artifacts spread all over the bed.

“I was just looking,” he said as she began to gather arrowheads and stone tools to return them to their box.

He grabbed one. “Is this a Clovis Point?” he said.

“Are we in Clovis?” she tried to take it from him but he jerked it away.

“I’m confused about something,” he said.

“You’re going to be more than confused,” she said, staring at him with a homicidal look on her face. I must add that she has always assigned C.W. as my problem and my problem only, meaning she tolerates but doesn’t participate.

“Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson says the ancestors of the people who made this crossed the Bering Strait about 16,000 years ago.”

“I think that’s about right,” I tried to interject myself between them and assume a pedantic demeanor, which I pride myself at being good at. “They taught us about 10,000 to 13,000 years ago, but that was when I was in school.”

“That’s the problem,” he said.

“What?”

“Teacher says the earth is only 6,000 years old but says don’t tell anybody she told us the truth because the School Board doesn’t love Jesus.”

We were stunned.

“You’re teacher taught you that?” We sometimes forget to whom we are talking.

“Yes. And I thought your species valued education.”

“Did you bother to tell her what the prominent PhD and astrophysicist Dr.Tyson said?”

“Yes.”

“What did she say then?”

“That he wasn’t ‘saved,’ whatever that means, so he had no business teaching science.”

A tight place to be locked up with an alien.

He paused and studied an arrowhead. “Know what I think?”

“I’m all ears,” Brenda said.

“I think that in many ways your species is about as dumb as this rock.”