Lorenzo

The mind is a muscle, they said, and it needs to be exercised like one. So Lorenzo dutifully went to school every day, where they handed him a packet the moment he walked in the door. He would sit with his back against the wall, pull out his pencil, and do the Sudokus first, because they were his favorite. Then he did the logic puzzles about baseball players and rows of brightly painted houses, but if he got bored doing that he would take a rest and read a couple of the articles that were in the back. You had to read them all and answer the important questions afterward, like “Who was the man who figured out how to fix the computer?” and “Write down the names of all the breeds of trees mentioned above.” When he was through with the packet, he could give it back and go home. If he fell asleep, that just meant he was there for longer, so he always did his best to stay awake, even though it was hard sometimes.

At some point, Lorenzo got bored of the packets. He wanted to read big people things, like the magazines his uncle was always reading. They could probably tell he was bored, because the next week, he was told to go to a different room, where they would have a different packet for him. The new packet had some Sudokus in the front still, probably because they knew he liked them, but also some how-to articles, about fixing cars and putting TVs together. He had to raise his hand to ask for some help understanding some of it, because he had never seen the inside of a TV before, and they stood talking in the corner about it for a minute. During that minute, Lorenzo examined the new room. The walls were all white, with one blue wall that had a clock on it. And there were bean bags with kids sitting in them and a couple red and brown rugs on the floor. It was the first time he couldn’t remember what the first room looked like. He’d never really looked at it. And that was weird. Really weird.

They were taking a long time talking. He looked at the boy on the bean bag nearby and tried to see what he was reading, but the angle wasn’t good. So he stood up and walked behind him to look, but even then he couldn’t read it because the spelling was all messed up.

“What’re you reading?” he asked, still trying to find a word, even just one, that he could read.

The boy looked back at him and said something that he didn’t understand, and he wondered if the boy was one of those people who didn’t exercise their mind enough and so they were having to start over or something. He walked away from the boy.

They were done talking in the corner and were looking at him, so he walked over to where they stood and asked, “Is that boy on the bean bag chair someone who is stupid?”

They shushed him and glanced at the boy in the corner, then put an arm around his shoulder and took him out of that room, even though his pencil was still in there and it was his only pencil. They gave him a screwdriver instead. He knew what they looked like because his uncle had one.

“We’re going to show you the inside of a TV so you can understand what you are reading,” they said.

“Will it take a long time?”

“You can go home once you finish that part of the packet,” they said. “It shouldn’t take too long.”

“Okay.”

That was the day Lorenzo found out the insides of TVs look weird.





Is there a point to this particular longer-than-a-paragraph fiction? Does there need to be a point? I felt like I had a point at the beginning: I was playing around with an educational system and society that does not prize critical thinking -- or knowledge, even. But as it went on, it turned out that Lorenzo was not as interested as I was in making a point. He resisted fighting the system. So I didn't force him to, because it felt wrong.

It is a story. And no, it doesn't really have a point. A lot of people think that stories should have a point. Even more people think that poetry should have a point. I'd like to ask why. Can't it just be a story? Can't I write a poem that is just about how much I love vanilla ice cream, without any sort of agenda? And once it is written, does its value lie in its ability to make a point, its ability to sound profound? I reserve the right to write without trying to inject it with an agenda of any sort. The point is to enjoy it. Find a lesson if you want, but I'm not going to try to teach one.