ISIS, The Day Jake Hollow Walked By

I used to know a kid named Bobby, Bobby Movar. Bobby Movar was a little asshole. But he was second only to Jake Hollow in terms of bullying.

That's not fair. Jake was a decent kid, so long as you didn't look at him. Or speak to him. Or step on his shoe. Look, as long as there was nothing left open for interpretation, Jake couldn't take it wrong, right? That was the word in the hall, anyway.

Bobby was a spoiled rich kid with a loud mother and an absent father. He'd sit in the back of the class and throw pencils at people. He'd flick rubber bands. He'd tie people's shoe laces to their desks. All the regular assholish behaviors that you spent the sixth, seventh, and eighth grade hoping you'd manage to dodge.

Bobby used to brag about his mom, and how when teachers would call home, she would yell at them. They were discriminating, she'd say. Bobby had ADD, she'd tell them. She'd sue, you the teacher right out of her job, nay, right out of her whole damned house. For discrimination, you know?

Bobby was in my math class one year. American children aren't good at math anyway, right? And when you spend an entire period nervous about the acid content of Bobby's spitwads (known to burn a hole straight through the lacquer on the desks) well, you pay a little less attention to the great gift of algebra.

When Bobby failed, there was no real hubbub. When maybe Bobby and a couple other kids starting failing, well, it was math after all. When the class as a whole became devoid of passing grades, something had to be done. The teacher called home.

No result.

Bobby, newly empowered by his status as completely impervious to repercussion strutted in the hall during our introduction to roots and radicals, and started throwing the contents of his locker all willy-nilly over his shoulder. History had told him that there was basically nothing to fear.

Bobby nailed Jake Hollow in the temple with his Ethics book.

There probably wasn't a teacher in that building that could have pulled big Jake off of Bobby. Still, none of them even tried. Eventually, by the time the halls were lined with students and teachers and other faculty, Jake got tired and walked straight into the In-School-Suspension room and took the same chair he normally sat in. Maybe it was because of the dislocated shoulder, but I never saw Bobby throw another pencil. Or Ethics book.

What I'm saying is that ISIS is Bobby Movar. And Jordan's King Abdullah II might just be Jake Hollow. Abdullah, a 35 year military vet, was beyond shocked when ISIS released a video of themselves caging a Jordanian airman and then setting him on fire.

Abdullah has sworn vengeful retribution against ISIS until his forces run "out of fuel and bullets."

I'm not normally the type to cheer on an asswhooping in the hallway, but the way my neck still burned from Bobby's venom-spitwad, I might have silently hoped Jake got a couple good ones in for me too.

(More Religious Satire from this blog Here)


ADRIAN FORT is a writer, blogger, and essayist from Kansas City, Missouri. Follow him on twitter @adriananyway. His work has appeared in Existere, decomP magazinE, The Bluest Aye, Bareback Magazine, Gadfly Online, Chrome Baby, The Eunoia Review, Linguistic Erosion, and Smashed Cat Magazine. His Master's Degree is from Lindenwood University.