The Long Walk Home

Home-time. Horray! Freedom. I headed towards the music block to collect my guitar. I went to open the door when Niki opened it from the other side and proceeded to walk into me.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!" I screamed.

"BLEEEEEEEEEEEAAH!" she screamed back.

I was now sufficiently satisfied to let her pass. She took her french horn along with her. I went into the room where a rather scared looking teacher watched me as I walked towards my guitar, picked it up and left.

Walk, walk, walk.

I couldn't be bothered waiting for my friend so I left by myself. Not that I would've cared, except half a mile up the road she was there with three other random people talking, laughing and generally being happy. This made me the opposite.

I walked towards the school gate and turned left - the way I normally go. I had my PE kit in my bag and a rather heavy guitar so this was not the perfect time to trudge through a crowd, but I did so anyway. I made it out alive - again.

Walk, walk, walk.

I walked past a bus stop where yet another crowd of people were, waiting for a bus. All school kids mind you, but all of them were the type you find on street corners being pimps and such like. One particular person had an ice cream in one hand and a fag in the other. I chuckled and walked on, amazingly without being spotted, and eaten..... erm, I mean beaten.

Walk, walk, walk.

Yey, suicidal lollipop man! I walked towards the kerb. He gurned at me in his usual manner. I glanced back and tried to ignore him - again. He raised his lollipop, knocking me over the head whilst doing so, and stood in front of a moving car and raised his hands to stop. The car stopped abruptly and we crossed. Swearing, shouting and fire didn't really come to the lollypop man's attention.

When I grow up, I want to be a lollypop man..... I mean, woman. Because you get half the day off, a good insurance policy and you only start work when you're 65.

Anyway,

Walk, walk, walk.

I passed my old primary school where some of my former friends where playing in the playground. There were big fences around them but they still managed to see me.

"LAURAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" they cried as they ran over to me, "Have you got any food?"

"Errrr, no," I said.

"Why?" they asked.

"Coz I don't," I said.

They gripped my hands through the bars - reaching out to the outside world.

"Why do you have ink on your face?" they asked.

"Well," I said, "Long story."

"Tell us!" they said.

I stared at their expectant faces. Oh how I despised their guts right now. I smiled and decided to go for a really, really, really long story unrelated completely.

"Well," I said, "It all started at the beginning of time, or at least the beginning of the earth. Anyway, back then, there were a lot of trees and they had a habit of dying. The animals did a lot of that too and their remains always miraculously ended up at the bottom of the sea. Lots of pressure built up over time and the remains were crushed and smushed and turned into lots of really stinky stuff including coal, oil and gas. Now, those clever people at Berol decided to collect certain things from this mushy smushy stuff; things like acrylic. Now, people at Berol decided to mould this acrylic into a long, thin pencil type shape. Back then, pencils already existed but to make one out of acrylic was unheard of. Anyway, they decided not to make a pencil with this special acrylic pencil shape and try something new. So they decided to put a steel tube in the centre of the acrylic pencil to see what uses it would have. Now steel is found in mines underground which are big man made holes where strange people go in and dig to find different metals in the ground. The acrylic pencil shape and the steel tube didn't do very much so they had a think about how it could be used. Because pencils did not make a permanent mark on the page, they had an idea about if this new thing they had invented would make a permanent mark on the page. They needed ink though. Now ink, that comes from an octopus, or octopi for plural. Anyway, what you have to do is cut them up in a certain way and you can collect all the blue ink out of them."

They kids looked shocked.

"What about black ink?" said one of the smart alec kids.

"Well you mix a bit of paint in there," I replied smugly.

"That still doesn't explain why you have ink on your face," said the other kid.

"Well," I said, "I was in school with a pen, which you now know of, and I was writing on a piece of paper. Now school and paper you have yet to learn about. So here goes. School. A long time ago, the ancient Greeks were contemplating how clever they were. They were so unbelievably clever that their kids would never be able to live up to them. They took pity on their children and decided to teach them. Word got about that these kids were getting all the fame and glory because of the teaching, so pretty soon every kid in Greece wanted to be taught. So those clever Greeks decided to build a building to house all these snot-nosed dim-witted kids and teach them all. At the time, Greece was very popular with tourists and very soon, the word about schools was spreading across the world. And they are still used to this day. Now paper, well now. Because there are a lot of sheep and cows about lately, the clever people at PC World decided to shear the white fur and mush it down to a pulp, flatten it, wait for it do dry and repeat the process until you get paper."

The kids looked blankly at me.

"So there you have it!" I said.

"But that still doesn't explain how you got pen on your face," said one of the kids.

I couldn't think of what to say.

"Err....we mistreated the policy," I said and I walked off before they could question it.

Walk, walk, walk.

Home. Sore feet. I walked up my driveway and got out my keys. I put the guitar on the floor and placed the key in the lock. At that precise moment, my dad walked up the driveway and said "Sorry I'm late."

"Don't matter," I lied and I went in and died.