Here's to You, Mrs. Robiczyk

If I had a lever and the right place to put it, I could move the world.

Somebody said that once...I think they even told it to me, but I forgot it for a long time. I tried using short sticks – just little broken-off pieces of longer sticks, such as you find when you've been following that one kid home from school past the corner sausage-shop. That one little kid from the immigrant family up the street (and don't forget that you are only a generation behind him – you just don't have to deal with hand-made sweaters, the way he does). That kid would walk home and grab fallen branches, break them up into smaller pieces and leave a trail of little sticks on the sidewalk.

“Stop makin' a mess!” I wanted to shout at him. I never did, because I knew I would be making the same mess if I were alone. We all make messes of one sort or another, and it would have seemed a little hypocritical to shout that at him, knowing full well my own desire to break branches apart. I didn't know the definition of hypocrisy back then. Did you? Who did at that age? Who knew what an immigrant was? That little kid had hand-made sweaters and a mom and dad who shouted at him in a different language. It was the language my grandparents spoke – not my parents, though. I had sweaters that were purchased at a store.

He broke sticks apart, and he broke things apart when he got older. Broke people apart when he got older. No one wants to break things like that, but some just do it, and he was one of them. He didn't speak the same language as his parents anymore. He didn't speak my language, he didn't speak anyone's language. He spoke his own language and broke things. And his parents weren't buried in Polish soil, but soil is almost the same anywhere you go, isn't it? And if you imagine hard enough you can see it's all connected and maybe leaving a path of little broken sticks can help anyone find his way home, as long as the soil is all the same.

But it isn't.

The story? The plot? Kid grows up. Kid trips out on chemicals that he injects into his tongue to make his language better. He takes a long syringe and injects industrial chemicals into his tongue – right underneath, where the veins are blue and slippery. You know where I mean.

Kid gets the chemicals into his brain and they make his eyes get all loooooopy-wild. Kid clocks his mom and dad on the head (both of their heads) with a pipe or a steel rod – no one was sure what it was. Kid lights the house on fire. Kid sits in the front yard and injects industrial chemicals underneath his tongue while he waits for the fire department to show up. Kid's heart explodes from overdose of industrial chemicals. Kid is buried in soil (please see reference to his parents, above).

And we all lived happily ever after.

If I had a lever and the right place to put it, I could move the world.  I just know I could.