Ten and a Half

Originally posted April 8, 2009.

The more you study, the more you know. The more you know, the more can forget. The more you can forget, the more you do forget. The more you forget, the less you know. So why study?

This was Patrick�s mantra, his thesis, his banner flying high atop the siege tower of his life. Sure, he was only ten and a half years old but already the combined hatred of school work and overwhelming love of using logic to disprove reason had taken him. For the most part, Patrick was a pretty good kid. He brushed his teeth regularly and only threw rocks through the neighbors� windows irregularly. Occasionally Pat would play practical jokes on the Statham�s by taking one of their bunny rabbits out of its cage and burying it alive, but these instances were few and far between. After being punished and asked why he had done such a thing, Patrick replied by saying, �The rabbit was already dead; I just told you I buried it alive because it sounded more dramatic.� This worked the first time, but Patrick�s parents began to suspect when the dog dug up a fourth bunny skeleton and Pat answered with the same explanation as the first three. Either there was a bunny rabbit death epidemic at the Statham�s and Pat just happened to be the first one to notice each time, or Patrick was a liar.

One day Patrick and his brother Simon climbed into a storm drain man hole. When cars would pass, Patrick would stick his arm through the gutter inlet and grasp for the pavement of the road as someone who was trying to escape certain doom. Almost always, the car would slow down and as soon as it did, Simon would reach out with a gloved hand and pull Patrick�s arm back into the drain. Occasionally Simon would add a pounding to his �victim�s� hand before dragging it into the darkness to add to the drama. Sometimes people would get out of their cars and call down into the drain; the boys would just move down deeper into the blackness and try to keep from laughing out loud.

This kind of behavior went on through most of Patrick�s adolescent life. Eventually Pat stopped brushing his teeth altogether and in doing so, lost all recognizable signs of morality. Patrick was labeled as one who is made of pure unadulterated evil and his actions would soon catch up with him. On March 29, 2001, Patrick was imprisoned on false charges of assault and gross negligence. His accuser was listed on the police report as a Mr. Benji Statham.