A World Without Golda Meir

This is a story start I wrote some time ago. Since I[m not using this blog currently for anything else, thought I'd put this out to the void. Trigger warning for violence.

Three cameras saw them rape her. Two on each side of the North Square, and one on top of the store building. Three cameras saw her little pink hat bobbing on the way back from class, and saw two guys rip off the cute matching windbreaker ($10.99 set from the store she was raped in front of). And the cops responded, 30 minutes later, when the two guys ran into the store to steal from the cash register.

The outcry was deafening. The somnabulant public would accept a lot from the government, but a failure to protect a sweet-looking white girl from a nice family who was just coming back from her class, well that was too much. And didn't we give up privacy, all those cameras in public, for safety? Blood must be had, Something Must Be Done.

In order to appease a restless public, the government's response was swift: two men (whom looked nothing like the lily-white boys in their frat jackets on the video) plead guilty to the rape and were executed. Also, there would be a 10 o'clock curfew for every woman on the streets. Your wives and daughters were now safe. John Q. Public was hushed, and calmed. The pitiful squeak the few women (and even less men) made about it "not being a criminal activity to be female" and "those women with jobs" were ignored or quelled immediately.

I was one of those small voices. Of course, who would care what I thought of the plan; no one asked me when they decided to play the three cameras endlessly looped on network television either, my face and nipples fuzzed out as to not upset anyone's delicate sensibilities. I was the rape-girl; I had to be victimized over and over again, reliving the experience until it just became a fuzzy, white-and-gray mushy image on a screen.

And, then to be told it was my fault- if I would have been at home it wouldn't have happened. Those who didn't say it tacitly agreed with it when they didn't oppose the law. Rape just happens; all we can do is get our women out of the way. And if they have to be restrained...well, it's like seat belt laws. You have to be restrained for your own safety.

But the classes weren't moved; the night shifts stayed the same. You want to get ahead in the world? You have to go to school, you have to have a job.

So here I am; hair cut pixie short, and under a ball cap, dressed in a bulky leather jacket, shapeless pants, walking with the swagger of one who knows he owns the world. I am a criminal violating the law, after some criminals violated me.

It Feels Weird

School is starting up again, I'm told, but not for me. This will be the first year since I was 5 that the end of August does not mean the beginning of another school year. The ebb and flow of school- break- school- summer has been broken for me; more so than taking a summer class or two ever did to break it. And I don't really know how to feel about that.

Currently, I feel adrift in the world. I don't have a career, I don't have any plans for one in the making, and now I don't even have the rituals I've had for my entire life to cling too. In a lot of ways, it feels like losing religion- what am I supposed to do on Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights now? Except, I hated church, and for most of the time, I really loved school.

It makes me a bit curious: if you follow the average college-track, you are in school for 16 years of your life. I wonder if most people, upon receiving their degree, feel odd about joining "the real world". Do they feel jarred when August rolls around, and they're just doing their job instead of gearing up to go to classes? Do they miss searching for books online to get that really great deal? The ritual of looking where your classes are going to be? I wonder.