Humor | Satire

The Shawshank Middle School Redemption

“Get busy gaming or get busy dying.”

Photo by kyo azuma on Unsplash

Red: There must be a kid like me in every middle school in America. I’m the guy who can get it for you — gum, a bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, if that’s your thing, a bottle of candy-flavored sparkling water to celebrate your big brother’s high school graduation, damn near anything within reason. Yes sir, I’m a regular Amazon Prime.

Red: The first day’s the toughest, no doubt about it. They march you in, clueless as the day you were born, mind spinning and half blind from all that information they throw at you, and when they put you in that homeroom, when those doors slam home, that’s when you know it’s for real. A whole childhood blown away in the blink of an eye. Nothing left but all the homework in the world to think about.

Red: I have no idea to this day what those K-pop ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don’t wanna know. Some things are best left unsaid. I’d like to think they were singing about something so cool, it can’t be expressed in emojis, and it makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared, higher and farther than anybody in a cringe place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful Breath of the Wild fairy flapped into our cheugy little cage and made these classroom walls…