The Science of Bullshit Based on a True Story

The science of writing is beyond me. The art of forming and constructing a sentence is beyond me. I’m not a writer of any kind. I have, on the other hand, been talking for a while, not my entire life but most of it, and therefore in theory it’s possible that I could tell a story. I can vocalize some, not necessarily in any coherent order, words layered and randomly lying in the air not in any particular fashion or in any specific order. But I’m going to try to use the written word to tell a story so you may have to pay attention, listen closely if you care to understand. I’ve had people walk away from me while in mid sentence, they didn’t seem to care about the story, the tale, the myth, sometimes even legend and or what it meant. Some stories actually mean something; some are just entertainment. Some try to be both.

By putting words on paper I’m merely trying to tell a coherent story that, with your help and imagination we might be able to craft a story together into something that can be understood. The facts of the story took place in 1980, the rest I’m making up as I go. It was forty-two years ago and that in itself invites some intriguing questions. Like, what do seventeen year-old boys and twenty year-old girls talk about? What does a seventeen year-old say to his sister’s 25-year old boyfriend, who seemed really old? What does a seventeen year-old say to a historic Hall Of Fame baseball player? What does one say to the starting shortstop from the previous World Series while you ride in a van together never having met before? These are just a few questions of introduction, the rest take on a deeper if not darker form. They should not be asked in the light of day, when it’s bright and fuzzy and warm and the sky is baby blue and the possibilities are endless, they should be asked late at night in the darkness, in the cold, a type of cold in which you want to pull a blanket around your shoulders, for comfort and protection. All the events are true, well sort-of, all the events are based on truths. The scenes, in my mind, tick by like silent film, no dialogue, only the accompanying music, most likely the common desire of any storyteller since film has been projected onto a screen. I’m no different. At times the scenes took on a three dimensional, sculptural dream feel of walking in and about and around a scene, others yet of pure color and cartoon. In the end the story and characters make simple statements, like any story and simply question the need for positive change and growth in our societies and more specifically the individual, considering today’s state of affairs here and elsewhere, if for nothing else but to live at peace with oneself.

This account of the series of events that will be told took place in Miami in the spring of 1980. The story at first may appear to be an account of a road trip, however that was not and is not the intent. It’s a story set in a Miami spring about a young man of seventeen, and his friends of eighteen, beginning to understand a world they had not known to pr