Love and Food Stamps

By Arlen Lawson

Who once loved YOUR food stamps (319)339-0530

It was half a skateboard, half a surfboard. So we decided to call it a surf-BOARD! It was made out of a skateboard broke in half, mine, so we tied it to a surfboard, Robin’s! With some rope, mine! It was my idea, mine. You can ride it to the beach. Then you take off the wheels and surf, easy as that! We were gonna sell that idea to a skateboard company. Or a surfboard company. Whichever made us the better offer.

One of the problems of the surfboard is that, with no beach around, it is absolutely worthless. Also, as a skateboard, it is very impractical. That’s a design flaw, I guess. It’s just too big, unless you’ve got a hill. The problem with Harrows Field is that there is only one hill in the whole entire town, and that’s on a busy street.

The solution? Go out at night! No cars! New problem? You are not allowed out of the house after 8pm. New solution? Don’t get caught!

The staff don’t go to sleep ‘til way late, so we don’t get to go out until way late. If they were going to ask me why we were out so late, I was gonna say, "Well, you should have gone to bed sooner!" It’s true. I was.

Now, it’s a surprise to Robin that we’re going out tonight, so I’ve got to wake him up, which I do by poking a candle into his eye. He wakes up with a this look on his face.

(Business of waking up with a confused, surprised, and generally stupid look on face)

But it’s like he already knows what we’re doing or something, because his only question is, "What do you need a candle for?" The answer is it’s nighttime.

I grab his radio for some music, but the question, here, is "Where are you gonna plug it in, Jackass?" The answer, here, is, "I swear to God, Robin, I will fucking punch you in your face!"

So we’re out of the house, and well into downtown, no radio, because, yeah, there’s nowhere downtown to plug it in, and Fuck you, Robin, I knew that.

"You know, Rob," I say, "This is probably the first time you ever snuck out, huh? And that’s OK, because I’m older than you. I got all these things I can show you for the first time. I can show you there’s other ways to live, huh?"

And Robin’s all, "Yeah." I love the kid. He’s a year younger than me, but he’s just as cool as if he were my age.

"Like a for instance you don’t know, Rob, is that the reason the town is named such as it is because of it used to be none but fields all around. Like where that stoplight is, and the bank, and that electronics shop."

A piece of advice to you: If you ever own an electronics shop, and that shop has a display window, and you think it would be fun to put a battery powered radio in it right next to some batteries in a way that is just so perfect, because there is a battery powered radio, and there are some batteries, I would reconsider. Because that is just too much of a temptation for a man with a surfboard.

A piece of advice to you: If you ever need to open a display window, and you have a surfboard with a broken skateboard tied to it, try to hit it with the trucks. That window will shatter like glass.

So we’re sitting on top of the only hill in Harrows Field listening to Easy E’s "Boys in the Hood," with the swears beeped out, both secretly wondering what Easy means by "jocking the bitches." One thing I forgot is that there are streetlights on the hill, so I didn’t really need the candle, but I can’t let Robin know I’m a total fucking idiot, so I light it anyway and poke him with the fire, like it was my intention all along just to make him say, "Cut it out, fucker!" And this is fun until he knocks the candle out of my hand.

But this is fun, too, because it lands in the grass by the sidewalk, still burning, and when I make haste to pick it up, I discover an old-fashioned wine bottle, half stuck out of the dirt like pirate treasure. But there’s no wine in that bottle. Just dirt.

But the dirt tastes a bit like wine. And I sail down the hill on the surfboard, holding tight like the bottom of the hill is a wave catching up to me and I’m getting ready to surf it, sucking hard on wine-flavored dirt. At the bottom, I hop off alive and this surprises even me.

Robin won’t go. He’s all scared. He doesn’t say he’s scared, just that he changed his mind, but I can totally tell he’s scared and I’m all, what the fuck, I just went. I can’t believe you. What is a life for, Rob? What is a life for? And, no, I’m not going to hold your radio. That is your radio. That was a present to you. Besides, I got my hands full holding this candle and this dirt. Now, quit bitching and surf down this hill!

The wheels come off about halfway down. The board is torn like a bad idea into three incompatible pieces. Robin tumbles to the bottom like I fucked up bad. I am Jill’s agile cousin, run after him, trying a million ways in my head to tell God I’m sorry if he’s dead.

He’s all scraped up and hating it, but at least not dead. There’s nothing broken except the radio, but his tumble signals the end of the night. We head home a bit less talkative, leaving the radio behind. But that is not the last we see of it.

It’s on the way back home that two representatives of the Harrows Field Police Department pull up behind us. They have contempt on their faces. "You boys been drinking?" One of them has the radio.

Back at the home, I am a bad influence on Robin and on all the other boys at the home. I am going to be moved to a house where they can deal with boys like me, and all the while I am waiting for the part in the conversation where I can slip in, "Well you should have gone to bed sooner." Why all this? Why me? Because of who’s idea was the surfboard? Well, that was my idea. Ask Robin. That boy does know how to answer a question. It’s like, Dude, Rob, what is a life for?

"Love and Food Stamps" debuted November 2, 2001, performed by Arlen Lawson.

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