Words I Know After 30

Tommy Minker was a bull-headed little brat full of freckles and spite. He had red hair that was constantly kept in a buzz cut and stood 6 inches taller than every other boy at the Harold Meeps primary school. H.M.P.S. went all the way to the 8th grade and Tommy was only in the 6th grade and still outclassed all the older boys. He liked to kick frogs and throw bricks through windows. He would have been the type to burn ants with a magnifying glass but he didn't have the patience for such things. He was violent in an abrupt way, grabbing other kids on the sidewalk to whoop them and take their money or bash their heads into their lockers in the hallway and take their money or hit them with a bat and take their money. He had even put a good whooping on the principal of dear old H.M.P.S. one time when he had been called to the office for a taste of the cane for one of his earlier acts of violence. He was in the 3rd grade at that point. No one talked about it openly but it had quickly be...

The driver had been precocious as a child. A lot of auspicious characters start out as such, but he had also been very talkative. His hair had flown off his head in unintentional dusty blonde wisps back then. His eyes were not as keen as they would become but the beginnings were certainly apparent. He looked for detail in everything, wanted to know how everything worked. And that was just the thing, the how of it. He was probably the only child who has ever existed who never asked "why?" of anything he encountered. "Why" never even crossed his mind, as though he had been born into an innate understanding of the great mystery. Or perhaps motive was simply less interesting to him than the action and mechanics of things. He was smaller than other children his age and he was bullied, as were all of the smart ones. He never once wondered why the other boys treated him in such a way. He merely observed how they did it and adjusted. The Tommy Minker incident was the pinn...