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COACH (COUNTING AS ELIAS DOES PUSH UPS): 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32. Keep it going.

ELIAS: I don’t like Sheridan

COACH: 33. 34.

ELIAS: I describe everybody who doesn’t go to South as just entitled rich kids. It’s because we live on the kind of poor side of town here.

COACH: Yeah, all the way up. Oh yeah. Thousand

R.O.T.C. KIDS: One.

COACH: Thousand

R.O.T.C. KIDS: Two.

ELIAS: I’ve lived here in Cheyenne my whole life. Politically I’m more conservative, because that’s what my parents, my grandparents think.

After I graduate, I plan on joining the Air Force. I’m really adamant about it because I’m not going to be able to pay for college otherwise.

I love talking to people. People are awesome. I love humanity and how we can accomplish amazing things when we put our minds together, but we can’t really  do that anymore because everyone just wants to fight with each other.

People nowadays don’t sit down and talk. We don’t actually listen to each other. Instead we just say no, no, no, you’re wrong. We don’t say – Here’s why. Because that’s the best question we can ask, ever, is why not? I feel that if we communicate, life would be a whole lot better for everyone.

ELIAS (TO HIS FATHER): Hi.

MATTHEW WALLACE: I’m checking the pie right now. Oh yeah, done pie.

ELIAS: You’re doing Thanksgiving early.

MATTHEW WALLACE (PLAYING CHESS): Yep. Cheaters never prosper.

ELIAS: No they don’t.

MATTHEW WALLACE: How’s R.O.T.C. going for you?

ELIAS: It’s going amazing. I’m, I’m really liking it.

ELIAS: My father is the hardest working individual that I know. He works on HVAC systems. He’s been doing it for years. He’s actually got his master’s card a little bit ago, so you, you know he’s good at his job.

MATTHEW WALLACE: Oh, shoot, my rice is gonna burn.

ELIAS: My parents got divorced. My mom and dad, years, years ago, and my dad’s pretty much been my primary caregiver.

MATTHEW WALLACE: I’ve been a single dad since Elias was like 5. I’m a construction worker guy that, that divorced, friggin’ single divorced construction work guy, two kids, I am still paying on my truck. It doesn’t mean that I’m not happy with where I’m at. I mean, not everybody can be on top.

MATTHEW WALLACE: What else you’ve been doing in school?

ELIAS: So in We the People, first question – we have sets of questions that we do, my question set is the first question that we were doing – was on gun laws. The part I was on because we do it as a group of people. It’s on, uh, gun laws.

MATTHEW WALLACE: One of the biggest values of this class is the amount of information that they’re giving him about our rights. It’s things that open my eyes. It’s like, dude, I didn’t really realize that’s how that that’s really working. And then he has me like – I’m on the internet. Was he right? Dude!

ELIAS: Try and distract me.

MATTHEW WALLACE: Do you know what party or if, like, independent, or do you think you’re Republican?

ELIAS: Libertarian.

MATTHEW WALLACE: Libertarian? You ain’t trying to live in the woods. Check.

ELIAS: I ain’t trying to live in the woods, but I feel like a lot of the things that they say is like, government get off my back. But on certain things that I feel like I have changed my mind on a lot more liberally than, say, conservative.

MATTHEW WALLACE: I don’t know what I am now. All I know is that in four years I’m movin’ out to the woods and I’m gonna live in a log cabin and all of society can just leave me alone because I’m so fed up.

ELIAS: You want to go back to caveman times?

MATTHEW WALLACE: Yep.

ELIAS: I think that you form your views from the upbringing where you are. It’s kind of like a nature versus nurture thing.

ELIAS (WALKING WITH HIS FAMILY AND THEIR DOG):Hey.

MATTHEW WALLACE: Slow down.

ELIAS’S SISTER: Bully, no.

ELIAS’S SISTER: Bully! I didn’t know, dude, like, you felt you’re a libertarian.

ELIAS: Is that what you think?

ELIAS’S SISTER: I think that, friggin’, the government can leave me alone so I can go out into the woods and be a bear.

ELIAS: I want to be left alone, but, um, I just want them to pay for my college.

MATTHEW WALLACE: I’ll tell you this much, you don’t get anything you don’t earn.

(END)