Rough Draft

How I Learned I Couldn't Skip College

By Josh Foster

The sudden impact to the back of my head was hard and unsuspected. It immediately took me off of my feet and I crashed down onto my knees. Eyes already filling with water, my hand went to the spot I was struck and there it met with a warm stickiness that was matting down my hair. Knowing full well what was now running down my fingertips I still felt compelled to look at my hand, to see if just maybe I was wrong. Through the dizzying blur that my vision had become I could see bright crimson red smears covering the hand, blood, and my blood. My vision dimed and tunneled, the house began to spin around me, and I went from my knees down to all fours as my head throbbed uncontrollably. Tiny red droplets began to slip past my ears and tumble towards the ground below.  I watched them break as they splashed down in front of me, wondering to myself what just happened. The answer, I later realized, was I got hit in the head with a hammer. The part I don’t like to admit is, at the time I was working construction and the hammer that tried to cave in my skull was my own. And even more embarrassing is the fact that this was not the moment that taught me I needed to go back to school. Hell, worse yet, this wasn’t even the moment that taught me to get out of construction. Sometimes I’m a slow learner I guess, or maybe it was the whack to the brain that set me back? Ether way, to understand how I learned I couldn’t skip college we will need to back this story up a little.

The Year is 2005 and I am the king poo of turd mountain. Why am I so damn awesome you ask? Well for no other reason then the simple fact that I am a graduating high school senior. And as any graduating senior knows, no creature on earth is cooler or smarter then you. At this point I had it all figured out I was going to be writer and based on the wealth I had pictured making with this dream job, I was going to be a damn good one. So screw college right? I mean you don’t have to have a degree to publish awesome literature and all of my favorite script writes didn’t go to college either. Besides I was taught all through school that I could be anything I wanted to be. So I proudly wore my big goofy cap and gown with an even bigger and goofier smile and was handed my high school diploma. Ah the relief the hard part was over, time to just sit back and become the super famous and insanely rich author I was meant to be.

As it turned out my parents weren’t so fond of this sit back and wait idea I had developed and less then a year after graduation I found myself pounding nails at my fathers construction company for ten bucks an hour. The work was hard and painful. Blisters and splinters so big they would run the entire length of your thumb were a daily occurrence, smashed fingers and small cuts an hourly. But I persevered, I mean why not, I was just making some money while I waited for that super famous and insanely rich author thing to happen. Months began to fall off of the calendar, I somehow managed to hit myself in the head with a hammer, and a few more months drifted away. I had been at this making some money while I waited thing for almost a year now and we were now building this odd little house in Indianola.  We were rounding the last week on the house and all we had left to do was put up the roof. This roof however consisted of a series of twenty-five foot beams, each weighing approximately five hundred pounds. No problems right all a partner and myself had to do was carry each beam up a sixteen-foot ladder, him with his end, me on the other side of the house with my end. Once we reached the top it was my job to hoist the beam onto my shoulder, hold it steady with one hand, and nail the beam in place with the other. His job was to keep the beam level and take the brunt of the weight while I did this. This had been working nicely, we were a little over halfway done and no injuries. I was exhausted, sweating bullets, and I could feel a bruise forming on my shoulder in the spot I would rest the beam as I nailed. Still you can’t complain on day with no drawn blood. Then the inevitable finally happened, he dropped his end. I didn’t even see it coming; I was in the middle of positioning the beam on my shoulder with my back turned toward him and suddenly everything was out of control. There was immense pressure followed by a loud pop, a lot a banging and crashing, and finally a tremendous amount of pain in my wrist.  My hand had somehow caught under the beam as it fell and was forced strait backwards to a degree I hope it will never bend again for the remainder of my days. The popping I heard, as the doctor later informed me, was the sound of nearly every single ligament in my wrist snapping.  I was put in a wrist brace for a month and was told it would a month and a half before I could go back to work. During that time my brain must have finely recovered from the wallop I gave it because I never went back and I’ve never regretted it.

Instead of going back I used my recovery time to land myself a job at the local video store. I quickly took advantage of some newly acquired job perks and gorged myself on countless free movies.  I vigorously explored every genre new and old, I revisited old favorites and devoured new treasures.  After at least a year of spending significant amounts of my life watching both the amazing and the awful I came to realize all of my favorites had one thing in common. They weren’t all explosions and quick cuts; they were all built around great and creative writing.  After this realization I found myself getting increasingly more and more envious of the writers. What greater feeling could a writer have then to see their words come to life on screen? My envy grew into a spark that got me writing again. Just small things at first, a short story, a poem, but it slowly built. Then it happened one of my shorts sparked a screenplay Idea and I ran with it! I don’t think I slept for a month as I did my best to teach myself proper formatting, and poured my words out onto the screen. Ninety-eight pages later I had a screenplay of my very own! Now what? Set it on a shelf to gather dust while you work a dead end job a few more years? I don’t think that’s the right answer so I’m really unsure of why that’s what I chose to do.  I do, however, know that choice led to a total drop in my self-confidence and some battles with depression. Until finally my girlfriend gave me a big push in the right direction and I realized I needed college so I could have the confidence, skills, and connections I need to pursue my dreams. So with a little paper work and a lot more pushing from my girlfriend I got myself into college. Now I’m working toward a goal and even if it doesn’t work at least I tried something this time and who knows maybe ill end up that super famous and incredibly rich author I mentioned earlier, although I would be just as happy to make any living doing something I love, writing.