Catch Jim’s Red Clay Diary here: https://youtu.be/XDpWcZBHXd8

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Life, actually…

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Talk about hot and sweaty and sluggish. That’s what I am right now…in the 1950s un-air conditioned Down South high school library.

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I am way back in time, a mere student hunched over a book, trying to wise up.

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Well, I am actually attempting to gain some wisdom, wisdom that might transport me to cooler and safer climes.

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The high school library is one escape hatch away from the thrills and terrors of teenage-ism.

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While I extract would-be ideas from the likes of Socrates and Huxley and Bradbury, my tormentors sit two tables away, snorting and sharing smirky observations about everybody except themselves.

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These bully-boys see the library as just another playground for their gags and taunts. I am one of their potential victims.

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But never mind bullies and small-time despots. I know how to outsmart them. After all, I have my imaginary bookhouse, invisible to outsiders. I have my wise-guy smart-aleck remarks, designed to distract the simple-minded and make them roll on the floor laughing—forgetting their goal of stalking guys like me.

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While the 50-minute-allotted period times out, I get in a few tidbits of solace from the volumes before me.

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A startling thought appears in the middle of one page:

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When escape time arrives, I play one more trick on the dynamic duo. I stare past them at the half-open windows behind. I frown and fake fear. I cringe a bit.

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Bullies one and two, themselves filled with nervous energy, turn to see what I am staring at, search the outdoor parking lot and greens for aliens or tornadoes or both.

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While thus distracted, they fail to notice that I have evaporated into the milling hallways at just the right class-bell-ringing moment.

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It will take them a couple of days to find me again. But by then I will have hatched yet another escape plan, with the help of Heraclitus.

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I’ll be prepared, just one step ahead of certain doom

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© Jim Reed 2023 A.D.

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