When you live at a residential treatment facility for boys, a trip in the van is an “activity.” Activities are an all important cog in the overall harmony of such living environments, as they save one from the monotony of staring at the same walls, surrounded by the same chaos, the same peers, and the same potentially violent squabbles over whose turn it is to use the phone or whether the house should watch Scary Movie Part 2 for the seventh time in four days or BET’s Rap City for an eighteenth consecutive hour. So, when I announced I was going to the pharmacy to pick up a week’s supply of Depakote, Risperdal, and whatever other psychotropic drugs the residents’ caseworkers and psychiatrists had deemed important to their overall “treatment plan,” there were more than a few takers. There is a protocol to this. Ten people scream their insistence that they have shotgun almost simultaneously.
Tom: “I’ve got shotgun!”
Me: “Brandon just called it two seconds ago.”
Billy: “I’m comin’. I’m comin’. I got shotgun. I got shotgun.”
Me: “Well hope you’re cool with sitting on Tom and Brandon’s lap then.”
Billy: “I don’t care, I’ll beat their ass.”
Me: “Good point, Bill.”
Derek: “Can I go?...Shotgun!...Where are we going?”
Shotgun yields two fundamental rights to the guy lucky enough to secure it.
- Control over the radio. This includes switching between the five devastatingly shitty pop stations, (that all share the exact same play list anyway), and getting to adjust the volume in completely random and unwarranted intervals, ranging from so loud that your bowels begin to loose their grippins to a faint whisper, (the latter of which is usually accompanied by the shotgunee making a random observation or directing an insult towards another passenger, only to turn the volume immediately back up before anyone can reply). I only have one rule regarding such control of the radio. If two stations are playing the same song at the same time that’s where the radio stays. When payola speaks we all should listen.
- The ability to make an utter jackass of yourself by yelling out the window at female passerby’s. Due to the setup of the 15 passenger institutional van, only the front two windows are untinted and roll down and thus only the guy riding shotgun gets the chance to show everyone how cool he is by bouncing around to the overly loud radio and by shouting completely ridiculous and offensive propositions toward any female within earshot. In most situations such behavior brings on a kind of pleasing life lesson as either one of the more socially adept passengers gets embarrassed and peer pressures the shotgun rider into realizing how inappropriate he’s being through a series of insults and threats, or the female subject actually responds to these catcalls causing her harasser to turn away in juvenile shyness, fail miserably in some pathetic attempt to “work their game,” or be on the receiving end of a far more clever response than they could have ever anticipated in a million years. “Fuck yourself puberty boy,” is my personal favorite of this ilk.
Columbia is a university town, which, aside from boasting an institution of higher learning that produces a bunch of upwardly mobile minions every year, is an incredibly financially reasonable place to live. This lack of fiscal demand, perhaps even more than the endless crop of impressionable minds that roll in each semester from the outlying pissant Missouri towns like Moberly, Versailles, and Joplin is what so lends itself to the pseudo idealists and career minded peacekeepers that call it home. These are the types of folks who, undaunted by their advancing age, continue to wear their thinning, graying hair long, smell like a combination of patchouli, Preparation H, and cat food, and still hold out hope that being superficially kind and non-threatening toward others will somehow bring about some cannabis filled utopian dreamland. Having so enveloped themselves in the maintenance of this dream revolution that they’ve managed to make it into a capitalistic enterprise of sorts, they make their living teaching belly dancing, selling blown glass hash pipes, or manning a vendor’s tent on Earth Day. For the most ambitious, those who run the typical “non-establishment” establishments with names like the Peace Nook, Peace Parade, or the Peacenik Paradise where along with the usual collection of Che Guvera t-shirts, social commentary bumper stickers, (like the amazing profound “The best things in life aren’t things at all,” which will cost you roughly the one day earnings of a Maqildore laborer), homemade soap sold on consignment, and the job/parole saving masking agents and system cleansing liquids and pills, these “freedom fighters” do about as much to instigate peace as NBC’s primetime line-up. Of course, they enjoy the allure of new sexual pursuits as much as anyone else and there’s seemingly few better ways to maintain their reputation while trying to entangle curious coeds into their web than by setting up a peace stand at a busy intersection. Thus, each spring when the sun finally escapes the heavy Midwestern winter’s cloud cover and the temperature begins to rise they can be found on the corner of Broadway and Providence holding up cleverly written peace signs while checking out the scenery.
Anytime I see them it invariably reminds me of the day when one of my favorite scenes ever witnessed in Columbia played out. At a particularly charged moment, when America’s hostilities towards some foreign country were at a high, a lone middle-aged women stood on Providence some fifty yards from the peace demonstrators, sensibly bundled up in a heavy coat, gloves, and a scarf, holding a sign that read “Am I the only one sick of the unpatriotic people of this country?” I wondered what had led her to this. Maybe she had a spouse, son, or daughter currently in the armed services, or had lost a loved one who was attempting to defend the country. Perhaps, mesmerized by Tom Brokow’s daily reading of the American oligarchies agenda, her bible study group, or fantasies of the president’s stiff shlong she felt compelled to do her part. Possibly her husband, so tired of having to listen to her constant complaints, as he pushed his peas and mashed potatoes around the dinner plate in irritable discomfort and annoyance, implored her to go tell someone, anyone other than him, about it.
Her location was just about symbolically perfect. In sharp contrast to the peace demonstrator’s perch on Broadway, which leads to the hipster district with the bulk of Columbia’s college bars, music venues, trendy shops, and restaurants, Providence is the blood and guts thoroughfare. To the South resides most of the town’s upper crust in prefabricated subdivisions, where multiple hundreds of thousands of dollar houses are nestled between country clubs and championship golf courses. To the north are the projects, with Section 8 housing and the violence, broken homes, and rampant drug abuse that often accompany such poverty. In between exists the commerce hub, housing the hospitals, business parks, and university installations, such as the football stadium and sorority row. Although it seems unlikely that she thought this all out, it was as if she was trying to appeal to those who were on their way to or from work, those who were already in it, while the peacers stood as dreamers trying to influence the future tax payers and parents, who as of yet had not experienced the harsh lessons adult life has in store. To further illustrate this dichotomy of reality versus idealistic fantasy, despite her suggestion that these people who want peace are somehow unpatriotic, (although as sad and misguided as this stance may be, it’s probably true), the peace folks seemed to be ignorant to the reality that by turning to their left and walking four blocks to the north they could do more to instigate peace by defending their own country’s citizens from the poverty and stratifying conditions that exist in their own town than they could with a thousand demonstrations professing their support for the children of the Middle East. Regardless of her reasoning, the woman seemed so much more sincere and out of her element that I couldn’t help but feel both respect and pity for her all at the same time.
As we reached this intersection Billy was thoughtful enough to remind me that we had forgotten Ryan back at the comic book shop. What came next was pure magic. In an ill-advised attempt to get over and turn around, I managed to get halfway across both westbound lanes of Broadway before being stopped from any further movement by the limitations of the 20 foot long van’s turning radius. Sitting on an angle, stopped by a red light, and now blocking all rush hour traffic behind us, we stared down upon the group of peace demonstrators, who stood on the island between the two directions of traffic, holding a sign that read, “Honk for Peace.”
Tom: “Hey, let’s honk.”
Me: “Let’s not.”
Billy: “Yeah c’mon, honk, Mr. Chris.”
Me: “There’s no need to encourage them, Billy.”
As more random encouragement to honk came from all corners, Derek took it upon himself to impose the will of the van’s passengers, reaching forward from the seat behind me and pushing down on the horn. Wanting to take back control in hopes of stemming a mutiny, I slammed down of Derek’s hand, pinning it between the horn and my own hand. At first it was all a very gay affair, the kids squealing with glee and the peace poster holding guy waving us the traditional two fingered peace sign with his free hand, as the powerful horn bellowed loudly like some retarded beacon of unity.
As five extended to ten and then on past fifteen seconds of uninterrupted honking the mood began to change. Derek was the first to grow uncomfortable, wriggling his hand free and throwing it up in the air as if to suggest that he was no longer responsible. As the drone of the horn continued on, distorting as it filled the air, the demonstrator himself began to become uncomfortable, dropping his sign down to his side and looking back at the other members of his demonstration party in a feeble attempt not to appear embarrassed. By the time the light turned green just about everyone associated with the scene seemed to regret being there. Standing pat, steadfastly holding down the horn, the line of rush hour traffic stuck behind me began to grow increasingly annoyed.
Beginning to honk themselves, as if I had yet to realize that the light had turned, a smattering of beeps and toots came from behind, encouraging me to move on. As the seconds of precious green light evaporated, the suggestive honks turned into an enraged crescendo of angry air, the kids now begging me to drive, while the demonstrator, having folded his sign in half, waved me on excitedly, like a traffic cop hopped up higher than Hitler on amphetamines. Struggling to filter out the frenzy of noise and talk above it, I turned to calmly address my passengers. “Alright everyone, shut the fuck up. We’re going to get peace, even if I have to sit here honking all god damn night.”
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