The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian

But no matter how weird he looks, the absolutely weirdest thing about Mr. P is that sometimes he forgets to come to school.

Well, Rowdy would miss me, but he’d never admit that he’d miss me.

I’m ambidextrous.

I mean, they’ve always known that I’m weird and ambitious, so maybe they expect me to do the weirdest things possible.

They studied each other’s eyes, you know, like they had antennas and were sending radio signals to each other.

There is nothing better than a chicken leg when you haven’t eaten for (approximately) eighteen-and-a-half hours.

I don’t hear it very often, but it’s always sort of this avalanche of ha-ha and ho-ho and hee-hee.

This was the 127th annual one, and there would be singing, war dancing, gambling, storytelling, laughter, fry bread, hamburgers, hot dogs, arts and crafts, and plenty of alcoholic brawling.

I was actually born with too much cerebral spinal fluid inside my skull.

Charming, huh?

Yep, we have to send a kid down to the teachers’ housing compound behind the school to wake Mr. P, who is always conking out in front of his TV.

He was more dependable than my parents, grandmother, aunts, uncles, cousins, and big sister.

And my skull was enormous.

Shoot, I figure that my fellow tribal members are going to torture me.

He knows that my brain is fragile.

I think my mother sometimes wants to haul off and give me a slap, but my father won’t let it happen.

And he had to deliver only fifty papers, so his job was more like a hobby.

I mean, it was a crazy-hot July day (102 degrees with 90 percent humidity), and plenty of people were falling over from heat exhaustion, so why not a little dog wearing a fur coat?

Being an imaginary best friend means becoming a sounding board for thousands of teenagers.

You wouldn’t think there is anything life threatening about speech impediments, but let me tell you, there is nothing more dangerous than being a kid with a stutter and a lisp.

Rowdy and I are inseparable.

It was like some kind of prison-work farm for our liberal, white, vegetarian do-gooders and conservative, white missionary saviors.

My brain damage left me nearsighted in one eye and farsighted in the other, so my ugly glasses were all lopsided because my eyes were so lopsided.

Some of our teachers make us eat birdseed so we’ll feel closer to the earth, and other teachers hate birds because they are supposedly minions of the Devil.

And yeah, I know it’s weird, but the tribe actually houses all of the teachers in one-bedroom cottages and musty, old trailer houses behind the school.

My head was so big that little Indian skulls orbited around it.

Poverty doesn’t give you strength or teach you lessons about perseverance.

Rowdy isn’t a fast reader, but he’s persistent.

Oh, maybe you’ve done the math in your head and you figure: Poverty = empty refrigerator + empty stomach And sure, sometimes, my family misses a meal, and sleep is the only thing we have for dinner, but I know that, sooner or later, my parents will come bursting through the door with a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

And even if I somehow survived the mini-Hoover, I was supposed to suffer serious brain damage during the procedure and live the rest of my life as a vegetable.

She can recite whole pages by memory.

So I draw because I feel like it might be my only real chance to escape the reservation.

But revenge also feels pretty good.

I was too young to deal blackjack at the casino, there were only about fifteen green grass lawns on the reservation (and none of their owners outsourced the mowing jobs), and the only paper route was owned by a tribal elder named Wally.

I draw cartoons of my mother and father; my sister and grandmother; my best friend, Rowdy; and everybody else on the rez.

It was like some kind of prison-work farm for our liberal, white, vegetarian do-gooders and conservative, white missionary saviors.

But the thing is, I was having those seizures because I already had brain damage, so I was reopening wounds each time I seized.

Okay, so maybe that’s not a very serious way to say it, either.

This morning, he limped into our house, slumped in a chair, threw his sprained knee up on the table, and smirked.

This morning, he limped into our house, slumped in a chair, threw his sprained knee up on the table, and smirked.

I was sitting in a freshman classroom at Wellpinit High School when Mr. P strolled in with a box full of geometry textbooks.

He laughed, tripped over a tent pole, and stumbled into a minivan.

Or maybe I should say I had a st-st-st-st-stutter and a lissssssssththththp.

I haven’t had a seizure in seven years, but the doctors tell me that I am “susceptible to seizure activity.”

But some folks are absolutely convinced he is, like, this Sicilian accountant who testified against the Mafia, and had to be hidden by that secret Witness Relocation Program.

“I want to transfer schools,” I said.

You’ll turn into some kind of troll or something.”

I was scared of Rowdy and I was scared of getting thrown in jail for vandalism, so I ran.

Rowdy is probably going to start varsity as a freshman, but I figure the bigger and better kids will crush me.

I went to Indian Health Service to get some teeth pulled so I could eat normally, not like some slobbering vulture.

He whimpered in pain.

The Spokane Powwow is wicked hot during the day and freezing cold at night.

When I touched him, he yelped like crazy.

Coney Island was a magnificent carnival in the early 20th century, stuffed full of games, roller coasters, and freak shows. Slate (Apr 5, 2013)