Out on the playground, an outsized, troubled kid kept pushing another, smaller little kid to the ground, fairly shrieking with each shove, "Don't get up, you're dead!" in a very retarded-kid voice. And the little kid would climb up, hating this, only to get walloped again. This thing went on and on, you would not believe how many times. Both kids were completely bawling their eyes out, the one shoving and shrieking, other other now very bloody and trying with a feral desperation to escape. "Don't get up, you're dead!" It was now a guttural cry. The retarded kid really did want this other kid to just lay still upon the ground and act dead. A bunch of the other kids and I, their teacher, stood enthralled with this outlandish grotesquerie. Unable to move, we watched for a very long time. At some point the retarded kid kind of pinwheeled and whistled and then clutched the empty air in front of him and he sucked in a feeble breath before pitching insanely onto the ground, where he rattled a few moments, tryingtryingtrying, shushing himself, and then he came to rest, and he laid there with his friend and they stared toward the sky, and it was in this moment I realized, that is going to be the title of my one-man show: Don't Get Up, You're Dead!