the pi-rets

the pi-rets
1 the battle
my name is Sper. my parents always told me that pirates were bad, bkuz they steal and take the things being sent by ship and worse- kill the defenders. however i wanted the excitement and i always hoped that one day i would be the one leading a group of brave men and women to take the riches from the rich. it would be exciting and the rich do not really need it anyway.
So here i was on the tenth of september, on a ship with sails raised and passing the great port of gibraltor at a great distance. We were sailing towards the rising sun and we could barely see the rocky coast. i thought it was to our starboard side [which hand is right? that port was north, so whatever... it seemed stupid calling it starboard it should be called port bkuz the port is to the north] I had been outvoted by my partners who wanted to chase the spanish warship and we were nearing it, with cannons ready for battle. i recalled that all the stories which i heard had a pirate captain and then the crew must do all the things that the captain said. sometimes the crew did a "mutiny" and removed the captain so i had a solution based on the name "pi-rates" which sounds like the letter "pi" in greek there would be 3 leaders so the crew would trust us. yes i found 2 more partners who agreed that we would vote to make decisions and under us would be the crew of 14 crew for the jobs of the ship and to attack ships. like 3-point-14 "pi".
now my idea was in my detriment as they had voted to attack a warship with trained gunners and which was not carrying cargo. sometimes the majority is wrong. dangerously wrong. as we neared its aft i was scared that they saw us. but kept silent. suddenly the spanish warship seemed fatter and wider- it was turning... instead of the narrow aft which we were following i could see it was turning and appeared wider so i knew they certainly saw us and our black pi-rit flag.  my partners named "Boor and Quin" were busy preparing for the attack. they felt that in the long term if we destroyed worships oops warships then it would be easier to take the rich ones. boor [his first name and not burr] was inspecting the crew preparing the cannons while quin was calculating the distance and guiding my precise steering. at the right moment quin called me to turn port- so i turned toward the port which as above was to our north. and spun the wheel so that we turned towards the port. i knew this action would pull ropes which would turn the rudder. soon our side cannons faced the long side of the warship with its many cannons in two rows. one row in the sides and another row on the deck's edge.our ship shook and rocked dangerously backward as all the cannons on one side of our deck fired. i cringed expecting the warship to shoot but they did not. we continued sailing parallel for a few seconds towards north toward the port. something unexpected then happened. i saw an almost perfect row of splashes indicating the cannon balls had landed in the water  we had been too far away and the warship soldiers had known the range and that is why they did not shoot yet a few seconds later orange flames burst from the side of the warship... wow! the cannonballs had hit below the water line not only ripping a hole in the wooden side but exploding inside the fire spread upward and almost the entire side was burning. yes my partners were surprisingly accurate in the amount of powder and range.
i relaxed and thought back to my youth. then i had prepared a list of names to choose for myself when i would become a pirate. in the end i changed my name from the gross name which my parents chose, to the name "Sper", as my pi-rit name. some of our crew also changed their names and the ones they chose were: rasin, trur, hossir ajin, ressir. the other 9 kept their birth names. in the coure of battles two more of the crew had died and thir rplacements chose from my list the last 2: senob, repob [a b at the end] i remembered and hated that my parents were poor.
ma always complained that she wanted new clothes but the money which pa brought from his job at the clothing factory was for paying the needs such as the home and food and similar urgent things.
i would complain that we should just take stuff but pa said that was evil. well being good we only suffered.
i mean what did he think? if he obeyed the law the police would reward him?? certainly not. that was not the way i wanted to be. pa would go to the factory early in the morning and ma would give me soup for breakfast. mostly water and then walk me to the small school. it was the anglican christian school in my small town in west britain. they forced us to learn many languages like welsh and english. we had to read the holy book.
we also needed to learn writing and that was very hard for me- hard to hold the long wooden marker and shape the letters. i was mildly annoyed that i needed to write i mean consider i only need to write because the school made me learn it and then the teachers would read the things i wrote but after completing school nobody would ever read anything i would write anyway! so i did not want to bother but one kid who said "no" to a teacher got punished when a teacher beat him... that was the same as a pi-rit so why do they "pretend" they are "good" and against pirates when they are the same violent and forcing us to do everything the way the wanted and decided.
2 my first good idea which was adopted
as a compromise i said to the teacher when we write for tests we should just mark beside the correct answer in choices instead of writing the answer. the teacher agreed for many of the subjects since he said that would save time if the choices of answers were already on the coarse paper. so only the specific subject of writing we needed to write but bible and math and other subjects we would simply circle around the number with the answer from the available answers- if the student knew then he would mark the correct one and if he did not listen, like myself, at least one of them would certainly be correct and i could choose one that felt better than the others.
my pa worked many hours at the factory. one summer day when i did not need to listen at skool i went with him to the hot factory. the windows were near the tall ceiling and open. my father stood in section "b". after the first team wove the cloth somehow, he would receive the cloth with it rows of threads. team b then cut the woven cloth into shapes . i complained because i felt most of the cloth was being wasted, but pa warned that he would slap me if i would not be silent and that reminded me of the one time he had slapped me in my shoulder. it stung so bad since then i always did what he said at least until i was bigger then i would defend myself from that "good holy" cruel man and he would feel pain. he would regret hitting a future pi-rit.
next a tall man with dark skin carried the shapes of cloth to the third team who slowly stitched the shapes together into the clothes. i never wanted to return to that hot smelly factory again. even after just one hour i felt i could not continue this suffering. at the time i thought that this explained why pa was so very grouchy every day after suffering in the factory for ten hours. that is why I MUST be a pi-rit! just take stuff- this factory situation is not an option!
ma would always walk me to school and then stay to teach the bible class. my teacher was so bad he made each student read and when we made a mistake reading he hollered at us. but ma taught her students by her telling the summary of the story in her own words. the school headmaster liked her way best but my teacher was so stubborn.
3 my second recognized suggestion
finally i reached age ten and every morning i joined my father in the factory.
i would gather the cloth after my pa's crew cut the shapes and carry the remains to the giant door. there the remains were sold to the poor tailors, i complained to my foreman that some pieces were large enuf to cut some of the shapes from them. he liked my idea and together we drew pictures of how to plan the different shapes to use almost all of the woven cloth.
we brought the drawings to the factory manager. at first the manager did not want to change anything but when i said the idea of "less time weaving" per day because more of each piece would be used, then the manager accepted our idea.
from the next day my  foreman instructed my father and his crew the new manner of cutting the shapes from the same woven cloth. the instruction took time and the pile of woven cloth began to grow to a high pile. the manager told that team of the loom device to stop just for one hour. as the same number of shapes were cut from fewer woven cloths, the pile of woven sheets was not shrinking as fast. the manager looked very -very -happy that our idea was even better than he had expected and he gave my foreman and myself a rare sweet as a reward like sweet sugary bread. then the manager instructed the loom crew to work for only one more hour and then go home.
after that one unique special event all the other days were repetitive and boring. the main difference for me was from then we carried lighter piles of woven cloth to carry top the giant doors after my pa's team cut the shapes for sewing and stitching. also i was now walking much fewer times from the cut section to the door. each hour instead of clearing a pile of remains fifty times, now the pile only grew around ten times per hour. my foremen was promoted to a different job.
the days passed with a boredom i would call "tedious." which means boring but sounds more boring than boring. each day was the same and i dreamt ahead for the day iu would simply take what i needed.
the exception was in the winter when the walk to the factory was very cold and the heat inside was lovely because they closed almost all the windows and magically the heat from the bodies was enough. so the years passed. i was mildly annoyed that the money i earned bought ma's clothing she always wanted more so greedy while pa almost never bought new clothes only new shoes each winter. pa's pay paid for the home.
4 my first act of evil piracy
 every year the owner wanted more money for the home. he would come in a fancy "carriage" each month to collect the rent money fee and each autumn would warn that the following months wemust pay more an increased amount. when i was age 15 i argued that the building was OLD and now one year older than the previous year so the price should be worth less! not increasing the rent money but decreasing because the building was a year older. the owner was furious and said you must pay more or leave! pa agreed to the new price but i felt that now was the best time to be a pi-rit.
 i followed the owner called a landlord out and jumped onto his wagon's back. i rode along to his home. the wagon entered a large gate and rode around a curved stone path for almost quarter hour from the gate to the huge building of the house. it was like a mansion building. this guy did not need the extra money which he demanded from my poor family he was being terribly greedy and would be the best victim of piracy.
as he climbed down from the wagon to the path i jumped from the back of the wagon and began pounding the rich guy with my fists. he was screaming in pain and his shouting scared the horses who pulled the wagon and its driver away.
guards by the door of the mansion hurried down the steps but i shouted "stand back or i will  strangle your boss." the guards stopped and stood. i snapped the mean landlords neck and pretended to strangle him. i yelled "lay down your swords and go inside and lock the door." they obeyed me and i took a sword and cut the head from the dead corpse. then i opened the guys bag to put the head in but saw many coins in the bag. also paper money. 
well i did not want that to get dirty so i threw the head into the bushes and dragged the body into the bushes near the mansion. just in time as the wagon returned to the door of the mansion. i paid the driver a coin to take me near the factory. there i buried most of the coins. i hid the paper money in my clothes and walked home. i hid the paper money in my straw mattress.
+++to be continued