So, the boys actually went out and petitioned the school to make the Rainbow Club an official club. And they got it, too. They didn't really know what they wanted, or what the club was supposed to be about in the first place, but the school even funded the club.
I think, in retrospect, that the school's administration was so terrified of being labeled opposed to diversity that they just quietly decided to officially sanction the club and hope that everyone just forgot about it and didn't ask any questions, either. Hmmm... kind of sounds like don't ask, don't tell.
Yeah... like I said, the powers that run the school really have a hard time expressing their true feelings about me. It's okay... I'm all for them preserving their bloated self-esteem, too, even if it comes at the expense of the truth.
But I realized something... that school officials are as terrified of rainbows as vampires are of cross-shaped garlic.
And here, I thought I swore I would never EVER use the "v" word in anything I ever wrote.
Crap.
So... on to today's topic: the room that kills people. Every school, every university, has one. It's the room where, for whatever reasons, several teachers have died. There are other rooms where people have come and gone; spent their entire careers, but didn't die. And then, there's always that one that just seems to kill people.
That's the room they put me in after the Rainbow Club incident. The "dead guy's" room.
Nice.
Thanks.
I'll sidetrack here for just a moment... I admit that I am not very much like any of the characters in any of my books. But, of all the characters in Ghost Medicine, one of the things I can most identify with is Troy's superstitious nature. Yeah, it's weak, I know, but I'm a pretty superstitious guy.
So... now you have a superstitious guy who's relocated into the room that kills people, and you pretty much have a recipe for psychological breakdown. What can I do? I talked to the kids on the team about it and we decided that the only course of action would be to establish some kind of protective shrine. That's where the Jesus Action Figure, the bendable Elvis, the Ninja statue, Chairman Mao's Little Red Book, the Heart-Shaped Rock, Garden Gnome, and dozens of other offerings came from.
The boys brought them in so I wouldn't die.
So far, it's worked out okay, I guess.
But you see, boys are pretty superstitious by nature, I believe, and, like Troy, they often come up with the constructs of hidden explanations, meanings, and purpose in the spooky things about life that seem to lack a clear cause. To males, even if the explanation is completely screwy (I don't know... kind of like weapons of mass destruction... or stuff like that), just the mere fact that there is an explanation is comforting. At least to boys.
Not that the explanation of the room that kills people is screwy.
It's real.
But we're kicking its ass.
BoNoBloMo
