The Kid

Some homeless guy first found the kid. Nearly flipped his lid. Ran up to me and said
“Listen to the crazy shit this kid is spewing” which coming from a homeless guy, reeking of cigarettes and stale booze, is a pretty bold statement. So I humoured him and said ok, then turned to the kid. What he said next nearly destroyed the world.

“What if we were all just nice to each other?”

It may seem like a pretty common idea now but back then, you got to remember, we were killing each other ‘n warring ‘n raping the earth, not all peaceful like it is now. So I ask him to repeat himself and he says

“I said, what if we were all just nice to each other?”

So I phone the Chief of police and get him out here to listen to this kid’s crazy political theory, some kind of socialisitimarxisidemocracticthingamaboo that just don’t seem to make sense even though it does.

Chief comes down with a couple of SWAT teams to see what’s going on. By now, there’s a bit of a crowd around the kid, and he’s a dirty little bastard in some torn jeans and what used to be a white t-shirt with some fucked up sneakers and a runny nose and the crowd's doing that “raarraarrarararr” low mosquito noise. The chief yells “What the hell’s going on here?”
“This kid’s lost his mind Chief” says some cop who got their first.
“You called me out here for a kid? Throw him in the back of a van and get him to a home or something I aint got time for shit like this.”
“No Chief, listen to what the kid’s got to say”
“This better be fucking amazing son or you’re going to be working security at a fucking lemonade stand once I’m done with you.”
“It is Chief, listen to him.”

Chief turns to the kid and says “Ok kid, let’s have it. What you got to say?”
“I said” and he clears his throat “What if we were all just nice to each other?”

And at that moment a bead of sweat was born on the Chief’s forehead and I swear I saw it happen. I could see the cogs in his head working and the little puffs of steam coming out his ears.

Ten minutes later there’s a black helicopter touching down in the middle of the street and guys in black suits and black sunglasses hop out and grab the kid, all civilised like because obviously we’re all watching to see what’s going to happen, which is nothing because once he’s in the copter, they take off again. And that’s the last we ever saw of that kid.

I heard that they took him to see the president. And then they took him to this tiny little cement room down in the bottom of the building, and shot him in the back of the head.

It was a while before we managed to get the word out about what the kid said, but we did, the world changed and you’d best be grateful for what that kid did, saying what everyone was thinking before they were even thinking it.