Graduation Plan

I’ve often thought that if I tried hard enough, I could do it.

All the kids have been doing it for years at this point. One moment of struggle, a little jolt of pain, and then you’re out of the system forever. If you ask me, it’s the ultimate goal. A few years of school, read a couple books and write a few reports, play pretend at jobs you’ll know you’ll never hold, and then take the final step that makes it all pointless.

After all, what’s childhood for, if not fun?

We all know that once the halcyon years of youth come to an end, it’s time to knuckle down, get a mortgage, and begin struggling every day of your life. Look at your parents: no doubt there are regular arguments about how they’re going to pay for this or pay for that, about the endless obligations they have to handle, the weddings and funerals they have to attend, or the birthday party for the friend of a friend for which they can’t bring themselves to decline the invite.

No, the kids have the right idea.

I couldn’t tell you when it all started. You’d hear the little rumours here and there, on the school playground or passed around in notes behind the backs of teachers when they weren’t looking. There’d be secret guides found on the Internet, the links passed from person to person. They say these guides teach you how to tense up your muscles just right, how to stretch at the perfect angle to do it the most painless way possible.

And just think, it’d be one moment of pain and then a life of freedom. A life outside the rat race, away from the worries that plague everyone too chicken to take the Big Step.

I sat on the edge of my bed one day and tried it, just to see how far I could get. For hours, I tensed up the muscles running along my spine, feeling the ripple of tension spread across my back and into my arms. I could feel the strain, but I’m not there yet.

Some kids, they walk into traffic. To me, that’s dumb. You can’t control the intensity of the impact that way. How many deaths are put down to a teen suicide, the tragic product of a disturbed child who wanted to end their life? Too many. All of us, we know the truth. No, for me, walking into traffic is out of the question.

And then you have those who try – what’s been dubbed – the freefall method. Some say that thirty feet is the optimum distance. Stand on the roof of a building and just step right off. Just like that: one quick step and your future is out of your hands; no more worries or responsibilities. In the blink of an eye, you go from a young adult with their whole life in front of them, to someone who never has to make another decision for as long as they live. The thing is – and I’ve done a lot of reading on this – that there are far too many variables involved in the freefall. What if, by some sheer quirk of fate, I impact with the hard concrete and only break a leg? Shatter a knee? Some people will say that you should fall headfirst but, if you ask me, that’s even riskier.

Ecstasy, some kids say, is the way to go. A big hit of X, you have the party of a lifetime, something like a final blow-out before the curtain closes, and then you let the insidious parts of the drug get to work. If you read those weird message boards, you’ll find people who claim that a big enough hit of E will drain your spinal fluid. You dry up like a diesel engine running on fumes. I don’t know if I believe that. There’s this kid, Billy, who claims he’s been enjoying the wonders of X for years and says he’s still as limber as a gymnast.

No, for me, the self-controlled route is the way to go. Tense the muscles, quick burst of pain, and then you’re free. Free of a job, of money worries, of everything adults stress over. Of course, there’s no walking, no travelling, probably no more sex, but all those are just small prices to pay.

It’s funny, so many kids make this choice right before they graduate. If you flick through the yearbook from the previous graduating classes, you can gauge the percentage of how many kids go through with it. You see these smiling faces looking happy and healthy in their school pictures year after year, but then when you get to Year Twelve – right as the kids are about to leave – things change.

The smiling faces are replaced by the sunken chins, the sallow skin, and the computer monitors of those high-tech chairs bought by parents at exorbitant prices. More and more kids each year take the easy way out. And I don’t blame them.

I’m seventeen years old now. Next year I graduate high school, and I have a decision to make. Not about if I’m going to do it, but how I will.

I think if I practice the tension thing, training my back muscles every day, I can crack my spine quite easily. And then it’s a life in the chair. No bills, no responsibilities.

I’ll join the rising demographic of the young, free, and paraplegic.