The Opiate, Fall Vol. 19
Polarization Peter F. Crowley
T
he storm ended our timeout. It was a divergence of wills, where we collected sand sculptures and sent them on a huge barge down the Mississippi, slicing the country in half. The sand sculptures depicted our mirrored faces in a frozen state of yelling. During recess, our kickball games were vicious, mocking the other team with unmitigated belligerence. When someone kicked a home run, in which the ball invariably rolled down the incline of the hot top jungle, and through a tenuous wooded path to a busy street below, an outfielder or two would chase after it. Upon reaching the street, where the red kickball meandered among swerving cars, it was not uncommon to hear shouts from drivers like, “Get back to where you belong!” In lesser instances, children were driven over “for the good of the country,” as drivers would later tell police. Back in class, we had an assignment to write about the seemingly ever-present barge with sand sculp-
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tures riding down the Mississippi and why things got like this. One student, Billy, I think his name was, read his answer aloud, “The drip force of the empty refrigerator’s precarity and the paycheck’s febrile skeleton invariably got people raising their voices. Instead of shouting at the Pantagruelian foot that walks over them, they chastise each other. Politicians mimic this for theater.” Because Billy spoke in “tongues,” as the teacher informed us, he was kept after class and harassed by other students. The next day, he would be placed in the outfield, whereupon, after chasing a home run in the nearby street, he was run over. Later on, the teacher said that it was nice that he was taught a lesson.
