FireVaney

Operation Dessert Storm is a week old. [ Sic .] I gave Kev a lift home. He lives on the Fort. Driving into and through the Fort is normally a piece of cake. But this time, at the gate, a guard with an M16 around his shoulder pointed to the parking lot ten feet away. That was as far as I could go. Kev told me about a Chevy that went further. It was a small Chevy and it blew past the gate. Three guards opened fire until it stopped. Somehow, the driver was not injured, but the Chevy was riddled. Does Allstate cover a military assault? I couldn’t solve the last four problems of my algebra final, so I looked up from my desk and gazed over the gym—the structure of it, the rows of desks, the risers, the scoreboard, the banners, the painted sports figures on the wall, the large chart of record breaking track and field athletes. A voice in my head kept saying, “This is your school. Make of it what you want.” But I feel like I’ve failed my school—and myself. Anyway, I’ve never felt the ...

Once we were all seated around our regular table at Great Godfrey Daniels, Malka launched into the latest news of Russ, her grade school crush.  “He’s got a girlfriend!” she cried.  “Hm,” I said.  “Play Hard-to-Get.”   “What do you mean?” she asked.  Good question. But instead of being honest, I evaded and said, “Nothing’s serious until high school.”  But what  had  I meant? Set aside, for a moment, that this is about the unrequited puppy love of a tweenager. How do you play Hard-to-Get with somebody who isn’t interested in you?  Well, if you treat someone like merde , then you will be on their radar.  For starters, then, every time Malka crosses paths with Russ, she could stick her tongue out (at him). This should be a stick in his craw, so to speak. Yes, it should nag him—that is, unless he’s too self-absorbed or too iron-willed to focus and pay heed to a girl’s stuck out tongue. To that point, his f...