Joey

This is what I wrote last night. After attending my classes and getting home at 10:15 pm I felt a little sluggish. But I am finding that once you start writing about things that interest you, and begin asking questions that intrigue you - somehow more energy comes!

Joey had never been to been to Mexico. He wrote a letter once that went there - I think he was about five or maybe six. I can’t remember how old he was, the story changes all the time but that is what makes it interesting. All I know for sure is that at no point did his body ever cross that border. Joey is funny like that though, whenever a kid makes some joke about brown men, cheap labor, or anything like that he smiles. I remember the one about Jose can you see? Maybe you haven’t heard it. Something about some Mexican kid who was at a baseball game and didn’t have a seat but thought everyone cared about him cause they were singing the national anthem. Yeah, sorta funny I guess. Maybe that is not how it goes.

I call him Joey, but his folks call him Jose, which is more accurate probably. They aren’t from Mexico is the thing though. Sometimes I wonder if he wonders why everyone starts cracking Mexican jokes when he is American – and even his parents aren’t Mexican, they are from Peru or something. You know, one of those other countries down there. In Oklahoma you don’t see much, but the first time I saw Joey I knew I had seen enough. It was all I could do to not run off with him but of course that would cause a scandal at church and Dora would be furious. If there are two things in this world I can’t afford to do is to make wrong by way of those two. The church was a place for the perfect I guess. That never made sense to me – why when anyone had a “problem” it became the subject of everyone’s salad conversations and foyer snickerings. But Dora said the Lord would set um right and I suppose he will, in due time. I reckon the would get talking fast if I ran off with Joey, I mean there is only fifteen or so of us at bible study, and they all think he is a Mexican anyway.