2 Minutes. Go!

Write whatever you want in the 'comments' section on this blog post. Play as many times as you like. #breaktheblog! You have two minutes (give or take a few seconds ... no pressure!). Have fun. The more people who play, the more fun it is. So, tell a friend. Then send 'em here to read your 'two' and encourage them to play.

She doesn’t know how to tie them without making the bunny ears, but she drives a BMW. Botox leaking out the corners of her face. She can’t do lots of things, but it don’t matter, Ace. You see that face? Looks like the elephant man to me, but I know you’re just looking for a Kardashian clone and you found one.

Rock on.

My girls tie their own shoes. No rabbit ears. Sixteen years and zero Botox or BMWs between the two of them. They’re out in the backyard getting dirty and yelling at each other. That’s the way it’s done.

I don’t care what my girls want to do with their lives because I know I started them off in the right shoes. They’ll box before they Botox. And they aren’t going to be anybody’s decoration. They will be fierce, screaming truth into the face of the omnipresent sheep.

It’s not what’s in your shoes. It’s what’s in your soul. 

Now, ain’t that deep?

#2minutesgo Tweet it! Share it! Shout it from the top of the shack you live in! I will be out most of the day, but I'll be back...#2minutesgo Tweet it! Share it! Shout it from the top of the shack you live in! I will be out most of the day, but I'll be back...

2 Minutes. Go!

Write whatever you want in the 'comments' section on this blog post. Play as many times as you like. #breaktheblog! You have two minutes (give or take a few seconds ... no pressure!). Have fun. The more people who play, the more fun it is. So, tell a friend. Then send 'em here to read your 'two' and encourage them to play.

What do you want to be when you grow up? Happy? I want to work too hard for too little money and spend my free time in an ongoing panic attack. I want to have kids I can’t afford to take to Disneyland. I hate Disneyland, but it would mean so much to them. I want to see the disappointment in their tiny faces when I explain that just because "every other kid" gets to go to Disneyland, that doesn’t mean that WE can afford it.

I want to spend hours explaining to my kids why we don’t have a house. Why we live in an apartment. And I want to try and do it without giving them the impression we’re poor. I want to watch them smile and say, “I understand, Dadda.” I know they don’t understand. They don’t want me to feel bad. I should appreciate that more. I don’t want to, though.

I want to grow up and become a teacher. I want to get laid off with absolutely no warning after my first daughter is born. I want it to be from a job I poured my heart and soul into - I want to spiral into a depression where all I can do is write, drink, and OD enough to keep things interesting. I want to be broken when my youngest is small so it fucks her brain up real good. I want to hit rock bottom so many times that it doesn’t even hurt anymore.

I want people I love to die from bullshit diseases and overdoses. I want a sociopathic, narcissistic asshole to be president. I want people starving in “the greatest county on earth!” while politicians take private jets to get in a round of golf. I want to watch others worse off than myself. And I want to try and reconcile the fact that some people have more money than small countries and some people starve, stretching out their food stamps.

Before I get laid off from that teaching job I mentioned, I want to work with kids from the hood. I want to have to explain to them that, though it makes no fucking sense, they cannot talk to the police the same way I do. I want my white privilege to become a burden. I want to see their beautiful lives destroyed by bullets and bad decisions. Most made out alright. I want to be proud of that. I want them to be taken from me without warning. I want to try to pretend my heart isn't broken.

I want to drive a fifteen year old car with a broken seat. I want to be the dad some parents are wary of because I have tattoos and a motorcycle and I dress weird and don't care about wine or baseball. I want to be JUDGED. Constantly. I want to feel judged and I want to be judged. Dismissed. Written off.

I want to spend my whole life trying to perfect a craft that sixteen people give a shit about. I want to dedicate years of my life to creative endeavors that COST me money. I want to give people my songs and stories because I hate the idea of selling them. I want to be the worst capitalist ever.

I want to treat my body badly, so it turns on me when I’m older. So I can’t shoot hoops with my girls without being in pain. I want to play high school football and have the coach grab my facemask and scream into my face. I want him to tell me to plant my head in the runner’s gut. I want a broken back and chronic neck pain.

I want to be the kind of person who writes pathetic, emo bullshit and tries to pass it off as flash fiction. I want to fail, to have the things I’m most proud of ignored. I want to lose the respect of my peers because my brain can’t stop being sixteen, and I haven’t figured out the adult rules yet.

Above all, I want to live.

#2minutesgo Tweet it! Share it! Shout it from the top of the shack you live in! I will be out most of the day, but I'll be back...#2minutesgo Tweet it! Share it! Shout it from the top of the shack you live in! I will be out most of the day, but I'll be back...

2 Minutes. Go!

Write whatever you want in the 'comments' section on this blog post. Play as many times as you like. #breaktheblog! You have two minutes (give or take a few seconds ... no pressure!). Have fun. The more people who play, the more fun it is. So, tell a friend. Then send 'em here to read your 'two' and encourage them to play.

The boy stood in the middle of the field, dizzy, still spinning. He liked the feeling of reckless chaos – he often fell, but rarely hurt himself. He was a boy who was used to feeling small pains. His life had been full of them, but he spun his worries away in fields of wildflowers, red, yellow, and white.

He was a simple boy. Not stupid – his life was uncomplicated. He was good at living outside the moment. His world was one created of stories and made up monsters and scenarios where he could be heroic.

John wanted to be heroic because, in reality, he felt scared all the time. He did not like feeling scared. He would do anything not to feel scared. Even if that meant spinning in a field until he was too dizzy to stand. 

#2minutesgo Tweet it! Share it! Shout it from the top of the shack you live in! I will be out most of the day, but I'll be back...#2minutesgo Tweet it! Share it! Shout it from the top of the shack you live in! I will be out most of the day, but I'll be back...

2 Minutes. Go!

Write whatever you want in the 'comments' section on this blog post. Play as many times as you like. #breaktheblog! You have two minutes (give or take a few seconds ... no pressure!). Have fun. The more people who play, the more fun it is. So, tell a friend. Then send 'em here to read your 'two' and encourage them to play.

The fountain is old, rusted. Water no longer flows. The whole thing is overgrown with rich, green ivy, but Alma does not care. It has been in decline since her Abuelo’s death, and she can not separate his legacy from the grandeur of the fountain which, objectively, is beautiful. No question.

Alma just likes it better covered in ivy. It stops her from remembering the old man. How she’d be punished if she went too close to the fountain. She shook her head. How could a man hit a little girl so hard? What kind of man does that? Just because her father had died.

She thought: Your precious fountain isn’t looking so hot now, asshole.

It had always bothered her. The fountain, the house, the perfect family. The looks on the faces of her peers. But what was she supposed to say? Yes, I live in a nice house, but the backs of my legs are covered in scars. And sometimes…

Sometimes worse things happen.

She couldn’t keep up the façade and withdrew from social activities. She let herself become overgrown with ivy and neglected. She did not allow anyone to see beneath, where she was already rusting even if the fountain was not.

Alma picked up the bottle of warm vodka beside her and took a long, slow drink. So this is my life, she thought. Gloating over a dead man’s treasure and drinking. It could be worse.

The drinking was like the ivy and the rust. But Alma was searching for destruction she could trust.

They buried Alma and sold the house and tore down the fountain, and none of it mattered anymore. Just one more tragic story thrown at the pages of time. Which is the lesson Alma finally taught herself before she grabbed the razor.

Nothing matters if you give it enough time.

Nothing.

#2minutesgo Tweet it! Share it! Shout it from the top of the shack you live in! I will be out most of the day, but I'll be back...#2minutesgo Tweet it! Share it! Shout it from the top of the shack you live in! I will be out most of the day, but I'll be back...