Something Else Entirely

28 - Life is much simpler when you have people writing everyone a happy ending.

"Hey, little dude. How was school?"

I'd been picking Madden up from school most days since just after they moved in with Dad and I. It was kind of a pain in the ass sometimes considering I had to practically pass our house on the way to get him, then double back to bring him home; but it was a real help to Dad and Sadie not having to pay to put him in after-school care until they finished work, so I was happy to do it. Besides, it also gave me some quality time with just him.

"Boring."

That was his usual response every day. He was significantly brighter than a lot of his friends and peers, and the school didn't seem to give him any work that actually challenged him. Sadie and Dad have been harassing them all year to give him extension work, but this late in the year, I think they've given up and are just waiting until he starts high school next year, hoping that he'll find the work there a lot more enjoyable. In the meantime, we all keep him on his toes with work outside of school, including me.

"In six years from now, you'll be wishing for boring. Trust me," I said, imagining this kid, grown and in his last year of mandatory schooling like I am now. He doesn't need to know that my own school work was embarrassingly easy and boring as shit, too.

"It makes me so utterly depressed that you're going to be finished school in a few weeks and I'm stuck in this hell for another six years. That's over half a decade of my life. Can't I just leave school too, and start working with you and Dad?"

I laughed in response, imagining the look on our parents' faces if he ever suggested that to them as a possibility, as well as the look on his useless teacher's face if Madden were to vocalise the phrasing 'so utterly depressed' to decribe the impact of his teaching practices on my brother's mental health and wellbeing in front of him. Maybe then he might actually start setting some extension work for him.

"You know that's illegal, right? Our government makes it compulsory for kids to be in school until they're at least seventeen," I said.

"Why are you still in school then? You're almost eighteen and already have a job to go work at instead," Madden asked.

I've actually been asking myself the same question a lot over the past year, but each time my answer is always the same. "If I stick it out these next few weeks, I'll be the first person in my family—the biological one, at least—to even finish high school."

Even if I dropped out now, I still would have superseded their highest educational attainment level by at least two years.

It's kind of pathetic that in this day and age, there are still generations of kids who have to even think about this kind of thing.

Education is important, and something to be proud of, as Dad and Tanner have come to make me realise over the years whenever I've spoken to them about wanting to drop out and just work instead. It's never been that I'm dumb, or don't understand the work. I think I could go to university and pass easily enough at just about any degree I attempted if I really put my mind to it. Except maybe medicine or law, because simply thinking about the length of those degrees is enough to make me 'so utterly depressed.'

I just love building houses that resemble nothing of the one I grew up in, which are fresh and inviting and untainted by junkie parents and their bored and neglected offspring. And even more than that, I just love learning from my dad, and being able to spend time with the man I admire most in the whole world in the hopes of absorbing more of his awesome into myself.

"I guess that makes sense," said Madden, pulling me out of my mental wandering. "But six years is such a long time; and I really don't care to be bored for the next six years of my life, especially when I could be actually learning from you guys every day at work instead."