Freedom Fighter

I was talking to someone today who gave me a Cliffnotes version of her life story and it answered pretty much all the questions I had about her. To call her outspoken would be one hell of an understatement. She's one of those people, whose outfit just seems incomplete without a machete or a rapier sword or at least a Captain Caveman club that could be used to aid in her quest to change the world. I'm a studier of people. I like to know what makes them tick, which is probably why I prefer biographies over fiction. I find her very intriguing and it made think about myself.

For the longest time I thought that I would become some kind of freedom fighter. Most people have a circuit breaker inside that prevents them from jumping up and saying whatever comes to mind when they get mad. Until maybe five years ago, I didn't have that. Then one day me and three of my friends eased on down the road and The Wiz hooked me up with a filter, a circuit breaker and a calm button. But, I wonder why I changed. Better yet, how did I even get to the "revolutionary" phase in the first place?

I think it started with my third grade teacher. Prior to joining her class I was fairly quiet and timid. I talked about as much as any other little kid, but authority figures scared me. Then I got in her class and things changed. It would take a full orchestra with a spotlight on the string section (mainly the violins) to tell that story in detail. I've tried to write it in the past and it always comes out to about 2000 words. I won't do that to you today. Instead, I'll just summarize.

She was the first teacher to ever tell me I wasn't going to grow up to be shit. She was the first person, period, to break down the math: My mother's age - my age = You were a teenage pregnancy and a mistake. She flat out told me that in front of the whole class, all because she caught me talking while she was teaching. Every other day she'd find a few of us to single out and tell us that we would probably be dead before eighteen. And I was an A student, so go figure.

By the middle of the year I'd developed chronic depression. I started having to see the new in-school counselor twice a week around the time that I tried to stab myself in the chest with a butter knife (I was eight. Leave me alone!). I actually would've repeated her class were it not for some quick thinking on my part. She started giving me F's and D's on everything, but not letting me take the papers home. She said it was my word against her's. So one day I just stole them and bolted out of the class to the office and asked the principal to look at them. I didn't fail a damned thing. When confronted, she told him and my grandmother that she did it to teach me humility. From that point people started to pay attention to my "crazy exaggerations" about the things she was doing.

By that point, I'd lost faith in all adults. They either thought I was making shit up or they told me that because she was tenured they couldn't just fire her. "Just hang in there" was what I kept hearing. Apparently she had agreed to retire once she hit her 30 year mark and locked in her pension. Riiiight. From that day forward, whenever she opened her mouth to say something out of line to me, I cursed her ass out. At first I was still timid and scared inside, so it came out a little shaky. After a while, it became second nature.

"No, I'm not stupid. I'm very smart. You're stupid for thinking that I'm stupid." (Not my best line, but, again, I was eight.) She seemed to enjoy it. "If you can take it, I can dish it!" she said. "Well dish on!" We went at it everyday from that point and I'd like to say that I was better for it, but I wasn't. All those spats did was build up a barrier or a defense mechanism that I'd use for the next 10-15 years of my life. Everytime I felt like someone was about to take advantage of me, put me down or abuse their power...Out sprung Angry Ordale: Freedom fighter to the stars!

Unlike the friend I mentioned earlier, I don't think I had a valid cause to fight. I was just fighting on behalf of the little boy I used to be. When you get knocked down a lot growing up, you learn to lash out (even irrationally) at the slightest thing. You basically start killing mosquitoes with cannon balls. I'm over it now. I moved on, I'm calm and I pretty much seem like a total stranger to the folks who knew me back in the day. But I wonder...with so much experience fighting for one cause or another (made up or real), should I just let it all die? Can I apply it to something? I have sharp tongue, a rapier wit and I'm very empathetic and affable despite my gruff demeanor.

What's the going rate for a retired political mercenary?