Kasher in the Rye: The True Tale of a White Boy from Oakland Who Became a Drug Addict, Criminal, Mental Patient, and Then Turned 16

by Moshe Kasher

Finally the principal of the school approached me and asked if I’d like to use my sign language skills in the afternoons by helping the autistic preschoolers. I agreed to do it. I still wonder why, in the midst of all that assholery, I would have cared a bit about helping some autistic kids. I must’ve had something in me that still wanted to be good, to be okay. Also I was fascinated by them. I’d walk downstairs and work with these kids, checked out from reality, and look at them with a kind of envy. There was agony in their existence, no doubt. They would cry and scream in glass-breaking shrieks if even the slightest anomaly blipped outside of their absurdly chosen comfort zones; if snack time didn’t have animal crackers, if there was purple Play-Doh and not yellow, it became a fucking crisis. But something about the lack of concern with the real world surrounding them made me jealous. If only I could check out like that. I felt useful down there, the severity of disability at Children’s Learning Center ironically providing me an opportunity to actually feel engaged in a school setting. I felt like I was doing something good. The problem seemed to always be that I could never do good for too long. One day, in the middle of class, I simply got up and walked out. I’d had enough. All this goody two-shoes stuff wasn’t for me. I needed to get the fuck out. Thus marked my re-entry into the high school dropout community. I was now three high schools down and no grades successful...