Spanking Shakespeare by Jake Wizner Read Free Book Online

I’ll just stay home and torture you instead.”
    “The hell you will.” My father walks into the kitchen and pours himself a glass of scotch.
    My mother frowns. “Are you drinking already? It’s only five o’clock.”
    “Are you nagging already?” my father calls back. “It’s only my first drink.”
    I walk to my room as they start their pre-dinner ritual.
    My report card is not such a big deal. I mean I don’t expect to get into an Ivy League school, and I know I’ll get in somewhere. My parents are making me apply to a ridiculous number of colleges, twenty-three at last count, and I figure I have a realistic shot at about half of them.
    They’re crazy, my parents, and it’s gotten worse with this whole college thing. We’ve been to visit almost every school in the Northeast, and my mom is constantly nagging me to start on my applications, which aren’t due until the end of December.
    I’ve actually finished a draft of an essay, though I’d never send it to a college admissions committee. Mr. Parke asked us to write something that would stand out from the thousands of essays the admissions people would be reading. He told us we were not allowed to write about any of our academic successes, describe any of our extracurricular accomplishments, discuss any of the people who have inspired us, or tell any stories about responsibility, independence, friendship, or discovering our true selves. So I wrote about my family.
    I know that what I have written pushes boundaries and will make my parents hysterical if I show it to them. I know that my parents are already tense about my college prospects and that reading my essay will send them completely off their rockers. I know that the best course of action is to keep what I have written hidden in my folder until I turn it in to Mr. Parke tomorrow. But I just can’t resist.
    I stand in the doorway to the living room and watch my father trying to read the newspaper. He is pretending not to notice that my mother is very deliberately vacuuming the floor around his chair.
    “I wrote a first draft of my college essay,” I say.
    My mother snaps off the vacuum and looks up. “Really? That’s wonderful.” She puts her hand on my father’s shoulder. “Did you hear that, David?”
    My father puts down the paper. “Atta boy.”
    “May I read it?” Mom asks.
    I shrug. “It’s still kind of rough.”
    “That’s okay,” Mom says. “Now we have plenty of time to work on it.”
    My parents are both ruthless when it comes to editing written work, which is why I stopped showing them my writing when I was in eighth grade.
    “You promise to be nice?”
    “No,” my father says.
    “David, stop that.” My mother smiles at me. “Of course we’ll be nice, sweetie.”
    I pretend to reread my essay. “I don’t know,” I say. “There’s some stuff in here you might not like.”
    “It’s a first draft,” my mother says encouragingly. “It’s not supposed to be perfect.”
    I hesitate a bit longer for dramatic effect, then, with a great show of reluctance, hand my paper to my mother, who grabs it and scurries off to her reading chair like a squirrel with a scrap of bread.
    It takes a lot of self-restraint not to laugh as I watch my mother read, especially when she looks up at me with a horrified expression on her face.
    “You can’t write this,” she says when she has finished.
    I try to look insulted. “What do you mean?”
    She thrusts the paper at my father. “Read this, David.”
    My father begins to read, smiles, then laughs out loud.
    “It’s not funny,” my mother says angrily.
    “It’s hysterical,” my father says.
    “I didn’t want to write an essay that would be like everyone else’s,” I say.
    “Well, you certainly can’t send this,” my mother says.
    “It’s just a first draft.”
    My father looks up. “Oh, come on. You don’t seriously think you can get away with this, do you?”
    “You said it was hysterical.”
    “It is, but