Its A Hard Life.
The story begins as we look onto a small house which is overlooking the sea, the waves slowly crash against the shoreline very quietly in a tranquil rhythm, it’s just so relaxing to hear the sea talking to the world, we then travel up a driveway and enter through the doorway of the house, its nothing special inside, it’s filled with simple ordinary furniture, a few pictures on the walls, the odd ornament here and there, you can quite easily see that it isn’t a house full of expensive possessions, we then travel up the stairs and we float along the landing until it stops outside of a door at the end of a hallway, it has a paper picture pinned onto it, it’s been hand made, an simple imprint of a child’s hand which had been placed into some paint and then pressed onto the paper to make a stop sign with the words written in a child’s hand writing underneath, “ Billy’s Room, Keep Out.”
We travel through the door into the room, then we move around the room slowly and you can clearly see toys are scattered around the room everywhere, a small railway set is covering the floor and a train is slowly going around the track all by itself, there is nobody awake in the room to play with it so it happily goes round and round by itself just waiting for someone to awaken and join in, across the room there is a small wardrobe filled with a young boys clothes, some are scattered onto the floor awaiting been picked up, its a very untidy room indeed but it’s very cozy, clearly its occupant is very happy with the way it is, it's his own private little space, his own little piece of the entire world for which he can do just about whatever he wants and he’s very happy there. On a small set of draws there are a few pictures of him with his mother and father along with a laptop and a funny alarm clock with a picture of a clown on it which he was given by his father a few years before, as the view changes it goes up to the bed and focuses in on the child fast asleep in it, he is stretched out across the bed, he couldn’t cover another inch of it if he even tried, but all the same he was comfortable beyond belief and that’s all that counts, he was in a fun happy place dreaming about his favorite characters from cartoons that he watched on TV so he was very quietly laughing in his sleep and clearly enjoying every single second of it, so we shall just leave him to his fun and come back in the morning when he awakes, “ Sleep well, Billy.”
The sun has awoken the world to yet another beautiful morning, the sky is blue and the birds are singing then all of a sudden there is a clanging of a alarm, its bells are banging out as the small hammers slam off the brass bells and slowly Billy opens his eyes to a new morning, he sits up and yawns stretching out his arms towards the sky then he looks down and sees that his train was about to come over towards his bed, he rushes to the edge of the bed and hangs his head over the edge so he can follow its journey, as it gets closer to him he watches and says, “ Morning captain, how’s your trip going this morning, I hope your having a good morning down there,” he lies there watching as the train goes around in circles round his bed and then under the set of draws and back out the other side to rejoin the track at the other side so it can continue with its journey, as he lays there watching he hears his mother shouting up the stairs, “ Billy come on sweetheart, time for breakfast then school honey,” he calls out, “ See you later captain, have a good trip its school time,” with that he leaps out of bed and grabs some clothes from off of the floor, he gets dressed and goes off to brush his teeth then washes and runs down stairs and sits at the breakfast table.
“ Hi, Ma, what’s for breakfast I am starving, I have been up delivering goods with the captain all night, we have been busy all night.”
His mother replies, “ Now honey come on I have told you about that, no deliveries all night or the captain might just lose his job do you hear,” she looks over to him with a large smile on her face and they both start to laugh, “ Its scrambled eggs for breakfast today honey, now you make sure you eat them all because you have a busy day ahead of you OK.”
Billy smiles back to his mother and picks up his knife and folk and clears the plate, “ Thanks Ma, I got to go I am meeting with my friends this morning before school so got to be early.”
“ OK sweetheart, now you make sure your good today and do all of your work because its very important school, it shows the world just what sort of a man you want to be when you grow up, OK honey,”
Billy replies, “ Ma, I am 13 years old, I ain’t leaving school for some time yet, don’t worry about me and I will see you later, Love you Ma,” and with that, he picks up his lunch box and kisses his mother on the cheek and runs out the door as happy as he can be and he waits at the top of the road for the school bus to arrive.
A few minutes go by and the school bus pulls around the corner then he smiles nut not for long, his smile slowly disappears as the bus gets closer and closer, the doors open and the driver calls out to him, “ Good morning Billy, how are you this morning, are you OK.”
Billy replies smiling, “ Hi Mr. Johns, I am fine another lovely day for school.”
The driver replies, “ It sure is Billy, it sure is, now you go take a seat,” as he walks up the bus to find a seat he looks at all the other kids smiling but he gets no interest from them at all, he just never knew why but nobody seemed to like him here, he slowly walks up to the back of the bus and sat on the back seat all by himself yet again, so he sat there all quiet staring out of the window as he did every other single morning.
The bus stopped Three more times for pickups but it was the next one that he dreaded, it was about to pickup Jenson, he was the school bully and low and behold he never liked him neither, sometimes he just went out of his way to make his day miserable so all he could do was hope he wouldn't notice him this morning and he could just get to school without any problems, The bus stops and the doors open, this time the driver says nothing but, “ Find a seat Jenson and hurry up about it,” the driver knew just what sort of a kid he was and he showed him that to try and show him that all bullying got you were people who simply didn’t like you, it didn’t work of course, his father was a bully and all he was doing was copying from his father, he was pretty sure he was the sort of man to be proud of him for being that way, as he walked up the bus Billy could see him staring straight at him with a smile on his face so he knew he was going to have yet another very unpleasant journey to say the least.
He walked all the way to the back of the bus and stopped in front of Billy saying, “ Your in my seat again, get out or I am going to have to hit you, again,” and then simply smiled back at him.
Billy was just a quiet lad who never wanted to harm a single hair on anyone, he just couldn’t understand why people wanted to hurt one another, it just wasn’t in his nature to hurt someone or indeed anything but some people would hold that against you in this world as he had found out the hard way so many times, as hard as he had tried to change into that sort of person but he just couldn’t, so he did what he always did and stood up and just gave him his seat, he stood up looking at the floor knowing that the whole bus of kids would be now laughing at him yet again, he was scared to lift his head, he just couldn’t bear to see the looks on the other kids faces as they sneered at him as he walked passed.
As he walked up to the front of the bus the other kids started calling him names and Mr. Johns pulled the bus over to the side of the road and stormed down the bus, “ Are you OK Billy,” he lifts his face up and he sees a tear falling down his face, poor Billy was so embarrassed and now the driver was enraged with the other kids, he stands up and says to them all, “ Just what are you all doing, do you really think it's funny to treat someone like this,” as he looked around at them all the kids stopped calling him names and they all started to look down onto the floor themselves.
As they looked down he calls out to them again, “ Why are you all looking at the floor, have I embarrassed you all, well I hope I have you should all be ashamed of yourselves to treat someone in this way, I will be reporting you all to the head when I get into the school so all of your parents are going to hear about this terrible behavior believe me.”
He takes Billy’s hand and walks him back to his seat, “ Jensen get out of that seat now it isn’t yours, now boy, and you can tell your father to come and see me if you like because he doesn’t frighten me one little bit,” he gets out of the seat and as he walks past Billy he says to him “ Wait till I see you after school.”
Billy looks into his eyes and he wasn’t scared of him but he still had no idea why nobody liked him, so at that moment he made a decision to never go back to school again, he would make sure this would never ever happen again, he sat down in his seat and he could feel Jenson staring at him for the rest of the journey so he simply looked out the window for the rest of the trip to school making his plans, once the bus came to a stop he steps off and he ran as fast as he could back home, but the closer he got he started to think about how he was going to tell his Ma about what had happened and he simply didn't knew how he was going to explain what he had done so he decided not to go home, he was to run away, if nobody liked him nobody would miss him and he wouldn’t have to disappoint his mother as well, he knew he had let her down so much that he felt ashamed to go back and face her so he started to run towards the mountains behind his house, it seemed a good idea so off he went not looking back wiping the tears from his eyes.
