The Ballad of Brendan O'Hoolahan

Shabeg Singh Sekhon
The Ballad of Brendan O’Hoolahan
Even though his efforts were genuine and his smile bright and kind; Brendan O’Hoolahan never could do anything right. He woke up that morning twenty minutes after his alarm clock went off and struggled to get to school on time. When he showed up for his class half an hour late his teacher, Sergeant Williamson, abruptly interrupted his own lecture just to watch Brendan rustle into his seat.
“HOOLAHAN! Do you want to explain to me and everyone in this classroom why you made me stop my lesson when your pudgy face walked in through that door?” Brendan smiled a little bit,
“Well, I’m really sorry sir but my alarm clock wasn’t loud enough to wake me up this morning and I had to make sure my da-“
“I HAVE TO START THE LESSON OVER YOU PUDGY FACED APPLEJOHN, BECAUSE TODAY WE ARE LEARNING HOW TO PROPERLY ASSEMBLE AND DISSASEMBLE A KITCHEN STOVE! AND IF IT WERE NOT FOR YOUR BUMBLING AND STUMBLING, WE WOULD BE ASSEMBLING AND DISSASSEMBLING! BUT NOW I HAVE TO STOP AND TEACH YOU HOW TO DO IT!” He paused for a second to catch his breath and started the class on their assignment while he motioned for Brendan to come to the front of the classroom. He showed Brendan the lesson one time and one time only and proceeded to watch him make mistakes. Whenever Brendan mishandled an item or when he didn’t do a motion correctly, Sergeant Williamson would yell in his ear in front of everybody else until Brendan finished the task with haste and fear.
After Home Economics, Brendan hurried to his English class that was in a classroom directly on the other side of campus. Everyday people saw him run with his backpack opened half way with papers and books shoved inside it hanging on one side of his back while his school blazer was hanging like a cape on the other half because he didn’t put it over his body completely. When he reached the classroom he was always the last one to enter and always had the worst seat, which was directly in front of Ms. Wallace. He sat down quickly and tried to regain his composure while Ms. Wallace stared at the beads of sweat going down his face. He looked straight ahead and tried not to make eye-contact with her, yet she continued to stare at him as she opened her large brown book and finally began her lecture. Every now and then she would ask questions directly to Brendan and he would try to answer them, but her questions were almost always questions that not even English professors knew the answers to. He tried to answer them though, often with a smile on his face he would earnestly attempt to answer her questions and she hated him for it.
This was pretty much routine for Brendan. After English he went to struggle more in history with Dr. Richards and even more in Latin with Mrs. Batarseh, they all disliked him and never once gave him a break. He never realized their ill-treatment for him though, he guessed it was because they wanted more out of him but he never really thought about it. After being figuratively shit on by his teachers at school, Brendan walked through the hallways alone and back home. He got home that day and made sure his father was taken care of; he changed his sheets, fluffed his pillows and bathed him before he went to do his homework, which no matter how hard he tried never got better than a “C” in any of his classes. As he was tucking his father in that night his father raised his head to look at his son. With all of the strength in his body he put his hand on his son’s cheek and smiled. Brendan smiled back as he put another blanket over him. When Brendan got into his own bed that night he set his alarm clock to 6:30 am and pulled the sheets over his body as he hoped for a good day. And before he knew it he was asleep, waiting for another beautiful day. But, as was his eternal bad luck, he forgot once again to turn up the volume on his clock.