At the age of 16 I broke into a discarded and abandoned window factory with the intent to revive it with a skateboard. It was not my idea, but one I latched onto with experience as the motivator. I wanted to feel the pressure of being somewhere I wasn’t meant to, supposed to, or perhaps even wanted to be. Not in an attempt to destroy my 16 year old self– I don’t think so. I don’t think I was self-aware enough. I didn’t possess the ingenuity to want to do something wrong at 16. I simply wanted to be impure at that moment.
We skated for about a half hour before a kid from another time and place took the opportunity to kick through a clamped slab of glass in an attempt to grandstand for the only girl involved in the day. I saw his leg taken by it. The glass, and the girl. It was bloody, but not gory. I didn’t care about the kid, so I didn’t hesitate to flee when someone called for an ambulance.
I spent the remainder of the day in my neighbor’s pool wondering if she’d narc us out; not whether the boy was alright. I never cared for an instance, because I was not a part of that moment with him. I was bystander to his faulting. I was desperately indifferent about that kid losing his leg. And he totally lost it. I saw him lose his leg. Not a weird metaphor or some shit. They totally amputated his leg.
This song reminds me of swimming in that pool that day.Atari Teenage Riot Kids Are United!
