AN OPEN LETTER TO VANDALS

By

Jimmy Joe Meeker

Originally published in The Wilson County Advocate, Vol. 1, No. 10, ©September 17, 1991 Donald W. Gillette

Mailboxes, street signs, liquor store windows, and now schools. What's the matter kids, you run out of Nintendo cartridges?

Well, gather 'round, li'l chilluns. Uncle Jimmy's got a story to tell you.

Those mailboxes are federal property, you can pay a fine for messing with one of them. Street signs are city property--you spray paint them and you can get cracked in the skull. You can hang for busting a liquor store window--especially if I catch you. But schools? They're there to teach you something. They exist so that at the ripe old age of 30, you don't have to say, "Do you want fries with that? to earn a living. They exist to give you some kind of grasp about what the real world is about, to teach you how to act in a semi-civilized society, to make you understand that there are other things in life besides Air Jordan's, to give you some sort of education, even in this insane, twisted little county.

But all you can think about is MTV and pizza.

But I understand you. Remember, I'm not like the rest.

You're too stupid to realize it now, but when you're 30 years old, driving around in that hunk of shit car all of you love so much and inevitably wind up in, drinking cheap beer, and you see some guy drive by in a new car with a classy chick in the passenger seat, you're going to hate him automatically. Because he's not a bum.

You're going to hate his guts.

And the only person you can blame is yourself. After this guy and his date breeze by you like you're sitting still, you're going to look over at the right hand side of your 1970 Chevy with bald tires and no muffler at your drooling blimp of a wife with her rotting teeth and her stinking, stringy, bleach-blond hair and you're going to hear the tortured, snot-sniffling sounds of those dirty curtain-jerkers wearing mud-stained T-shirts in the back seat pulling the stuffing out of the upholstery and you're going to think back on the fun you had smashing the living hell out of windows and mailboxes and schools. When this happens, try and remember the feeling of exhilaration you got destroying all these things.

And listen closely. Listen with every ounce of concentration you can muster from your feeble, little brain. Absorb the sounds of your nights of revelry filtering in from the past and let the images of breaking glass flow over you like warm sea water.

But keep this in mind: Those glittering shards of glass crashing to the ground in the moonlight are not only the sounds of your past. They're also the sounds of your future.

No one here gets out alive.

XXX