A Different Drummer


“Can I please be excused?” I asked while I balled up my napkin and put it on my dinner plate. Mom looked at me and raised an eye brow.
“Did you eat all of those green beans?” she said. I was like “I took three bites, that’s all you said I needed to eat to be excused.” Then she purses her lips and looks down her nose at me and goes “Why don’t you take three more, sweet heart.” She said I only needed three! “But you said I only needed three!”
“Three more and you can be excused.” She says sternly and shoots dad a glance. He doesn’t even notice because he’s so busy scarfing down the gross tuna thing mom made. I scraped my top lip with my bottom teeth and dug my nails into my leg. I was starting to get a permanent scratch there, but who cares.
“Fine.” I took my stupid pink napkin off the plate and picked up the smallest green bean. It felt like a slug on my fingers. I put it on my tongue and felt all the juices in my stomach bubble and move around. I somehow managed to chew and swallow it, even though it felt like a bug. “Can that be it?” She shook her head and her stupid curls bounced around her fat face. Maybe she should eat three more bites of nothing so shes less fat. I grabbed one more slimy green bean, closed my eyes, shoved it in my mouth and then did it again. I threw my napkin back on my plate and shot them an evil glare. I stood up making as much noise as possible and ran upstairs. “You’re excused!” mom shouted as I was climbing the stairs.
I got into my room and I was like fuck them. I thought “I’m 12 and half. She can’t fucking tell me what to do anymore. What the hell does she know about me anyway?” I laid down on my bed and looked at the ceiling. I wanted freedom. Ultimate freedom. There was only one way to get it. Well there were two ways. I could run away, live on the road drop out of school and make money off of something. I had plenty of skills. I was pretty good at basketball. And I played the saxophone pretty good. I could definitely make my way out there somehow. Or, option number two, I could kill mom and dad. I mean what did they ever do for me, right? And then I could use their credit cards and shit to pay for everything and just live in the house. I could make up some excuse about how they are on vacation and keep it going until there’s some big plane crash and then say that they were on the plane. Some plane crashes every few weeks. Who would ask questions anyway? NO one.
So I stood up, grabbed my Rasta hat from six flags and put it on so I could think. I saw down with a pencil and a pad of paper that I stole from a bank. I crossed out the First National Bank heading and wrote “WAYS TO KILL WENDY AND JOHN” in big dark letters. Then I listed everything that came to mind, because you aren’t suppose to filter yourself when you brainstorm. You go back through and filter later. The first few were things anyone who wanted to kill their parents would think of: Shooting them, setting the house on fire, gas stove, etc. But that would mean sacrificing the house and where would I live then and where would I get a gun, anyway. I kept writing though. I also came up with: Suffocate in sleep, poison, cut brakes on car, release rapid dogs, fill their pockets with stones and send them into the ocean, hit them with the car, make them kill themselves, and kill one of them and have the other framed for their murder. Nothing on the list jumped out at me as a real possibility. I would want something that was quick and easy and all of these seemed involved and like too much work. I looked at the clock on my desk and it was 7:34. I remembered I was supposed to meet Rick online at 8 to talk on AIM but I hadn’t done my English homework yet.
I was supposed to write a one-page essay about “Marching to the beat of a different drummer” and how that applied to me. I looked into my backpack and realized I forgot my binder with all the lose leaf in it at school. “Shit!” I thought. Well I wasn’t about to leave my room and go downstairs to get some where I knew I would run into mom and dad so I tore off the “WAYS TO KILL WENDY AND JOHN” list and placed it next to the lamp. I crossed out the First National Bank heading again on the next sheet of paper and wrote in big dark letters “A DIFFERENT DRUMMER” at the top. I made up some bullshit about how it is good to be an individual but mostly I tended to like the same things as all of my friends and if I didn’t like the same things then we wouldn’t be friends, so why would I try to be different? I gave the example of how Rick and Sam always wanted to make gross concoctions at lunch and I never did. But the one time I said I didn’t want to they wouldn’t let me sit with them. So it’s like sit by yourself or make a gross concoction that tastes like baby farts once in a while, I think I would always choose the baby farts. In conclusion I said that I don’t even really like music with drums, just acoustic guitar and rap. I even wrote two pages, not just one. But the bank pad was thinner then regular paper, so it probably equaled a page anyway.
I ripped off the piece of paper and put it by the lamp. 7:58. Great. I took off my Rasta hat and threw it on the bed. I opened my bedroom door trying to make as little noise as possible. I was technically grounded from the computer because I didn’t come home for dinner two nights ago. But I could hear mom and dad laughing at 3rd Rock From the Sun downstairs. The weird brother who wears vests guy said something funny about living on earth and Wendy and John flipped their shit. As long as they were distracted I could totally sneak down the hall way into the computer room and get away with this.
I slid though a small opening in the door and got down on my hands and knees and crawled on the thick white carpet down the hall. I passed mom and dad’s room with their gi-nourmous bed. It had to be so big because they were so fat. And stupid. I was passing the bathroom when I heard dad cough. I fell flat on my stomach and didn’t move in case he looked up through the banister. I know this wouldn’t really help if he looked at me but it was the only thing I could think of to do. If I get caught sneaking on the computer I would probably get grounded from TV. They’ll never catch me. And even if they do and I do get grounded that will be an even better excuse to definitely go through with the whole killing thing.
So I managed to get to the computer room and jumped off the floor into the spinney cushiony chair. The computer was on, thank god, so I didn’t have to think of a way to muffle the start up sound. I signed online and everyone was there. As I was reaching for the speakers to make sure they were off a stupid box opens on the screen along with the loudest attention noise thing I have ever heard. “Shit!” I thought. I turned down the speaker and crouched real low and help my breath. “STEVE,” a questioning voice called from downstairs. I didn’t answer. “Steve! Are you on the computer!?” I freaked out. I clicked off the monitor and quietly walked into the hall to the top of the stairs. “Steve!”
“Ya, Mom?” I said from the top stair.
“Are you on the computer?” she shouted from her reclined chair in the living room.
“No way mom, I’m grounded from the computer, remember?”
“Oh I remember, but I’m pretty sure I just heard one of those chatting sounds.”
“No, I was doing my homework, in my room.” I heard the chair squeak as she got up. My heart was racing. Fuck. She appeared at the bottom of the stairs. She put one foot on the last stair, one hand on the banister, and the other hand on her fat hip.
“Can I please see what you were working on then?”
“Sure I just finished it.” I ran into my room, my hands were shaking a little because I wasn’t sure that I was going to get out of this without getting in more trouble. I grabbed the paper by the lamp and went downstairs as quickly as possible. I handed her the papers trying to hide my nervousness as best I could. The second those narrow sheets of bank paper left my hand I knew I had messed up big time. I had just handed my mom the list! The list with ways to kill her!!! Without thinking I screamed and threw myself over the bottom two stairs onto the carpeted ground. She looked up from the paper and her questioning eyes shot through me. “I think I got a splinter from the banister,” I yelled. She narrowed her eyes and, I swear to God, in slow motion she turned her head from me to the sheets in her hand and saw the list. Her face went from being slightly agitated to being filled with surprise, horror, and anger. Her cheeks turned red and her eyebrows raised up into her hairline. Her nostrils flared like a fish opening its mouth. She pursed her lips and sucked a thick stream of air through her fish mouth nostrils. I swear to God again it came out as steam. “Steve. What in the Lord’s name is this?”
“My homework?”
“Your homework was a list of ways to kill your parents? John get in here!”
“It was just a joke, mom! I wasn’t really going to do anything I just wanted to see how many ways I could think of .” She didn’t buy it. Dad came waddling in from the living room with some crumbs on his shirt. She thrusted the list as his fat chest.
“Look what your son has been up in his room doing all night?” He took the paper in his hand and his eyes got real big as he read through my brainstorm of ways to kill him.
“You shouldn’t be stealing paper from the Bank, son.”
“John! That is not important right now! Do you see this! He wants to kill us. To MURDER his own parents.” Dad realized he was supposed to be as mad if not madder then mom so he took in a deep breath and started to yell at me.
“This is not okay, Steve. We work very hard to give you a nice life and you want to kill us? Not every 12 year old boy out there has an IPod and three delicious meals a day, you know.”
“ Steve, I know that things are rough at school sometimes, but if something is bothering you we should all sit down and talk about it. I don’t want you to let everything build up inside and end up as one of those crazies who shoots all their friends in the cafeteria.”
“God, you guys, it was just a joke. I’m not some psycho whatever. I just thought it would be funny to think about,” I yelled. At this point I wasn’t sure if I was telling the truth or not. I had wanted to kill them earlier that night but I don’t think it is something I would have really done. Why did I have to go and write it down? Now I was going to hear about this for, like, the rest of my life. Mom was really flustered and Dad was just wanting to go back into the living room and watch 3rd Rock from the Sun. She put her hand in her curls and started to bite her lower lip. I could see the tears start to build up in her eyes. “Honey, is something wrong? This is really scaring me. What’s bothering you?” Dad walked over to her and patted her back as he looked over his shoulder towards the TV.
“You are mom. You always treat me like a baby and you guys are always trying to control everything I do. I just want to be on my own.”
I grabbed the list out of her hand and tore up the steps. I slammed my door. Then I decided to slam it again. And again. And one more time. Why not? Man I hate them. Mom is always crying. I heard the steps creak as she walked up them and towards the door. She didn’t even knock. She just came in. I was sitting in my desk chair facing the window and she sat down behind me on my bed. I could hear her playing with the sheets between her sausage fingers. “Are you doing drugs?”
“Are you doing drugs, Mom?”
“Steve, answer me.”
“No mom, I’m not doing drugs. I’m 12, not 15. And even if I was I wouldn’t tell you if you asked me.” She was so stupid. I almost told her I was doing drugs, because she probably would have died right then.
“Steve, this really worries me. If you don’t talk to me I am going to have to call the counselors at school and have one of them come take you out of class to talk to you. And I know how embarrassing that can be, so maybe you should tell me whats going on.”
I knew there was no easy way out of this. Talking to a counselor would be worse then talking to mom so I decided to take the path of making something up so mom would get off my case. “Mom, look. I don’t really want to kill you guys. It was a joke. Rick was talking about it at school earlier and how easy it would be to kill someone, so I just thought I would brainstorm some ideas. And I chose to put your guys’ names on the top of the list because you are the LAST people I would want to kill. But I’m not crazy. I’m not going to kill anyone. I swear.”
“ I don’t know if I like the influence these friends of yours have on you. First I find that dead bird in the dryer, then you don’t come home until late the other night, and now this. I am going to be keeping an extra eye on you, sweetie, and you may hate me even more for being extra protective, but in the long run you will thank me. You’ll thank me when all your friends have wives and babies and low paying jobs when they are 18 and you are on your way to Princeton. My little Princeton boy, just you wait.” Somehow I forced some sort of smile. She got up and rustled my hair and kissed my head.
“I’m going to go back downstairs. Finish up your homework and you can go on the computer for a little bit before bed.”
“But I thought I was grounded from it?”
“Well you were, but I know how much you like you chatting.”
As she left I was wondering if she was scared of me now. I wondered if she thought I might really do it. And now she was letting me do what I wanted. Maybe things had worked out to my advantage.
I walked back into the computer room and turned on the monitor. I had about eight instant message boxes with line after line wondering where I was. I couldn’t wait to tell Rick and Sam about this. They were going to think I was so cool, me who can rule over their parents and get whatever I want. Me who won’t have to do anymore chores or eat his green beans. They were totally impressed with the whole story, but told me I should leave evidence around the house that I might actually do it to scare them even more. I didn’t know if I wanted to go that far, but Rick and Sam usually have pretty good ideas. But then I realized I had come up with this plan to kill my parents all by myself, and maybe I did have some pretty good ideas on my own. Maybe I could march to the beat of my own drum and still have my friends think I was cool. Maybe if I actually killed my parents, everyone would think I was cool.