DA GOAT

I always tell people my favorite book is Animal Farm. When I’m asked to clean or do any manual labor I tell people I’m like the pigs of Animal Farm. I do the brain work. The book was expertly written, so hilarious and so rich in meaning that it easily became my favorite when I read it in ninth grade. It has had a lot of excellent challengers to the title of fav book. But it has held firm as numero uno.

However, it wasn’t the book that got me into writing. I had been writing long before I ever read Animal Farm. I had been writing stories since I learned to write. If you’ve got the gift of literacy, you might as well use it productively. That’s my motto. But, of course, I’ve always liked the idea of the pigs and their repeated mantra of brain work. No one seems to allow me to do my brain work peacefully. They seem to think I’m one of the working animals like them. Hmph!

But what was the first book that showed how much reading meant to me? Like Animal Farm this is an easy question who’s answer is The Goat Parade. What a book! If I’m going to burn in hell let me burn to hold The Goat Parade close to my heart.

You see in The Goat Parade, a huge parade of goats follows Sammy to school. Sounds like a horror movie, right? Sammi is trying to mac on Keisha, put down that pimp game he learned from Alpha Male Strategies on Youtube. And here come goats cockblocking like the bitches they are!

Actually, it’s a children’s book. It is the first book I remember my parents reading to me. Unfortunately for them reading it became something out of a horror movie. I would force my poor parents, cursed with a tormentor for a child to read the book every night. A good friend of mine says she has a terror for a child. She just can’t imagine the curse my parents toiled under once I was born.

Worse yet, I would physically abuse the book in my exuberance. I would beat the ever-loving shit out of that book because I liked it so much. To quote Mike Tyson “I’m gonna fuck you until you love me.” I believe I also used to beat my parents with the book until they would read to me. Karma has visited me as my dog swats me in the nose until I rub her stomach.

I have no idea why I liked the concept of goats following a kid to school. I didn’t even go to school at the time! But I loved the process of reading. I think I loved getting to see a new world even if it was an obviously simple one. I must have enjoyed reading about whole new life and entire new lifeforms. It was fun to sit down and immerse myself in Sammy’s predicament.

That’s what I try to do when I write. I try to get you immersed in someone’s predicament.