Game Changer

by Neal Shusterman

There are people who are so threatened by things they don’t understand that they feel a need to stomp them out. They have to crush them so that each thing killed is one less thing to tax their brain. It’s the force behind war, behind genocide, behind the worst things that human beings are capable of. It’s also the cause of the small injustices we come across every single day.

ignorance is a cockroach you can’t kill no matter how hard you try. It hides in dark, fetid places, then darts out into the open.

“Disappointment isn’t about the things a person is,” my mom said. “It’s about the things they do.”

if I had a knife would I have stabbed them each through the heart? If I had a gun would I have shot all three of them dead? What actions are justified in self-defense? Is erasing them from all versions of existence fair punishment for being sleazy rat bastards? They were human beings with mothers who loved them. But now, since their mothers never had them, they didn’t even have that. I felt those useless emotions again. Guilt and shame. Like somehow I had pissed in God’s teacup, and not even he knew.

You know who Layton was? He was that little boy who held his Christmas kitten extra tight to show he loved it. And when it squirmed, he held it tighter to keep it from running into the street. And when it scratched, he grabbed its paws, and when it tried to bite, he squeezed its jaw, and when it hissed, he clamped its neck, and when it died in his hands, it wasn’t his fault, because he was only trying to teach it right from wrong, but it just couldn’t learn. Why couldn’t it learn, Daddy, why? Damn shame—but that’s okay, son, we’ll get you another kitty.

I got to hear Neal Shusterman read this section in a Zoom meet and greet. It was my favorite section before I even read the book.

We vilify the difference in others; we glorify the differences in ourselves. We put “them” in a box, then create our own boxes. To define ourselves so we don’t get defined. To find our tribe and defend it from the others. But that basic human need for identity is, and has always been, a double-edged sword. Because the closer to our feet we draw that line in the sand, the more we see everyone else as the enemy.