My Dad is old for how young I am. I am in my Dad's second batch of kids. He got married had two kids raised them divorced his wife and then did it all over again. This, I think, has on the whole been a very beneficial thing for myself and my sister. Or to put it another way, I think us second batchers had better instructors than the first batchers. This makes sense, you do it once the second time around you know what you're doing. This is not the way I mean we had better instructors, I mean somehow more and bigger mistakes were made that allowed me to see more truth to the world, where previously it was better concealed.
For about the past five years my Dad has gotten a story confused. Everyone knows the story because everyone was kid and everyone still dreams. Baseball as a kid was more of a chore than something resembling anything I would choose to do. The pants for one are unflattering and very uncomfortable as well.
So the story goes. This is the last game of the regular season and the team hangs on the brink of going out for one last ice cream or continuing the itchy pants saga to another game, a tournament game, a more important game. Small little plastic men painted to look like gold and little metal plaques that no one ever bothers to get engraved were on the line. The game, as you know, was fierce going back and fourth; drama at every out. I played my part, holding my own and not doing anything so terrible that people were to remember the next day, just your average strike out and getting to the ball late. The battle raged and before not too long we all found ourselves taking the field for what could be the last time. It was the top of the last inning and the game was tied. We all played with tensed muscles and hearts so full with the taste of victory a loss would be the cruelest imaginable. Then it happened, a hit, then another and before we could reach our big league chew we were down by three runs. A pop fly to left, caught! To the benches knowing this was our last chance. Home video cameras were rolling and the coach delivered a speech only a slightly pathetic, middle aged, balding, mustache touting old man could have delivered. Touching on faint notions of stretching and Jesus to ice cream and returning equipment with hints of a banana split if we pulled it off. So, as you know, it comes down to me to bat. The whole time I'm waiting I just keep hoping there aren't two outs when I get up to bat or that we've no need for more runs when it gets to me, or that we haven't scored any runs so it won't look so bad when I strike out. So it happens: we're down by two, bottom of the last inning and it's my up at bat. There is one guy on base. Swing and a miss. One strike. This next pitch I decide I aint swinging. He can't throw two strikes in a ro- strike two! Fuck! I take a time out, pretend I have a clue and step up to bat. Damn my Dad's video camera just ran out of battery. The pitcher twitches. It's on me to keep the team together for another game. I remember all the ice cream and that on root beer float I spilled. He winds up, it's all on me. The pitch comes fast down the middle. I swing. Bam! Goes soaring way up way back, it keeps going and going. Home run! We win the game because of me and I have glory forever.
This is about the sentiment my dad started to convey about five years ago. He would tell this story to any girls I brought over. He would remind me of it when we were together and baseball somehow came into our world. Each time he tells the story I puff out my chest out and nod my head over and over, acknowledging my great feat but not wanting to press the issue. Trying to stay modest. The truth is the story never happened. Well at least to me. My guess is that maybe this happened to my half-brother and my Dad is just confused. I remember hearing the story for the first time and being confused but he looked so proud I couldn't tell him that he was simply losing him memory. It's been long enough of him telling the story and me not denying it that he must be convinced it happened.
The funny thing is that I was in that situation. Basically everything was the same except it was the last year before high school and once I was in high school I would have to try-out for the team which I knew I wouldn't do. So when I went up to bat in that final inning I knew it may be the last time I ever played baseball. Like real baseball, itchy pants and everything. I remember my Mom taking me to that game and I am pretty sure my Dad wasn't there otherwise I think he would remember the what happened.
It was the last inning, two outs, two strikes down by two, runner on first and two strikes. The pitch comes I swing, crack! I nail that goddamn ball. It soars way back, I'm sure it was a home run and I am almost home when I see the other team celebrating out of the corner of my eye. I'm note sure how long I was running but I am sure that I was the last person to know that game was over. It is with this in mind that I modestly nod at my accolades.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Lasers From the Eyes
Quite often I find myself recalling a very particular moment from my youth. It is how most of the past is remembered, in fragments. There is a feeling to the memory, that of the past. A time gone, a place changed and only the future remains. I often come back to this memory because even while I experienced it, I must have know it would not remain. Or perhaps I remember it because it was the last time I really believed.
It was in the backyard of my best friends house growing up as a kid. I say kid as in younger than ten because most of the memories I have from around the time before I was ten years old more or less converge upon each other as if they're on a sinking ship, an old ship with sails and the sails are on fire and the ship is sinking and the boat is surrounded by all sorts of ends and they all fight and push and climb over each other to get to the masts and the ones that get there are pushing and shoving and climbing. They climb not to live but stave off death a little longer. There is no chance of escape but they fight to be the last to surrender, the last to float lifelessly downward. So my memories all struggle against each other and time and the rocking boat beneath them to just live and not drown. Now what I mean by best friends during this time is not really a best friend because who has that, but more properly the child of the mother that my mom happened to make friends with. Most best friends meet when they're very young and stay so until they realize that whole life they found created around them was created by other people. The friendship lingers due to those familial ties and simply the duration of the friendship. I imagine it's a lot like a marriage, where the two people together are kinda happy for a few years and then they kinda just go through the motions for a few years and when someone finally gets around to looking at their life they're too tired to admit they had fallen asleep, so instead of waking up they simply go back to sleep.
Back to my best friends back yard on an absolutely gorgeous summer day. A donkey from a past birthday keeps clawing his way up the mast and eventually slips beneath the waves. This backyard was the backyard of my friends first house. Such places hold odd feelings for such voyages. My ship is filled with colorful and vibrant images from my friend's second and current house. I have memories with patches of carpet and with furniture that is still there. This old house still stands but not like it was. There is a change that happened that cannot be returned. The place sits as if destroyed, irretrievable in the past yet there is a new place that serves the function of the old place. There is reverence in my mind for a place where I grew, where I became.
This particularly beautiful day found my young friend and I in the backyard playing a game we surely played countless times and for hours on end yet I can only really recall this one time. There were these little figurines of super heroes my friend and I had. They were more like statues, molded from some soft plastic into little five inch men. They had no parts, no extending arms or cape, no gear just a sold piece of colored plastic with arms at the side, or maybe crossed. There was nothing to them. We were running around chasing each other and the bad guys, of course. I do not recall the game we played or what exactly we did, there was a swing set that played a role somewhere but my memory always comes back to the lasers I imagined shot from the eye of my figure. I recall seeing them so vividly. These red jets of lights pouring destruction from the eyes of my super hero. The super hero I had didn't even do that in his fictional portrayals. It wasn't that guy from the x-men. I remember looking up and shooting at the sky and seeing this light just pour forth.
Perhaps I am remembering a time when I remembered that, because this time I recall was special. This time from the past has those lasers from the eyes but something more, no more lasers. I saw the lasers for the last time that day. I saw my imagination for the first time, I discovered the world in my head, i grew up a little bit. I still search for that toy when I go to my Mom's. It would be a relic of my past but also my mind. I would hold him in my hand as I used to; hand clutched around his torso, folded arms near my trigger finger as I would command destructive blasts from his eyes and see them with mine.
I think of those times at one of the Cathedrals of my youth and mourn a time when such joy could come from such inanimate plastic. I am happy I had such an axle-less childhood to make memories with. I think of how many parts are needed for objects to fill me with anything that resembles what was in my mind on those summer afternoons at my best friends first house with the birthday party and the donkey and the glass door I went through but don't remember.
It was in the backyard of my best friends house growing up as a kid. I say kid as in younger than ten because most of the memories I have from around the time before I was ten years old more or less converge upon each other as if they're on a sinking ship, an old ship with sails and the sails are on fire and the ship is sinking and the boat is surrounded by all sorts of ends and they all fight and push and climb over each other to get to the masts and the ones that get there are pushing and shoving and climbing. They climb not to live but stave off death a little longer. There is no chance of escape but they fight to be the last to surrender, the last to float lifelessly downward. So my memories all struggle against each other and time and the rocking boat beneath them to just live and not drown. Now what I mean by best friends during this time is not really a best friend because who has that, but more properly the child of the mother that my mom happened to make friends with. Most best friends meet when they're very young and stay so until they realize that whole life they found created around them was created by other people. The friendship lingers due to those familial ties and simply the duration of the friendship. I imagine it's a lot like a marriage, where the two people together are kinda happy for a few years and then they kinda just go through the motions for a few years and when someone finally gets around to looking at their life they're too tired to admit they had fallen asleep, so instead of waking up they simply go back to sleep.
Back to my best friends back yard on an absolutely gorgeous summer day. A donkey from a past birthday keeps clawing his way up the mast and eventually slips beneath the waves. This backyard was the backyard of my friends first house. Such places hold odd feelings for such voyages. My ship is filled with colorful and vibrant images from my friend's second and current house. I have memories with patches of carpet and with furniture that is still there. This old house still stands but not like it was. There is a change that happened that cannot be returned. The place sits as if destroyed, irretrievable in the past yet there is a new place that serves the function of the old place. There is reverence in my mind for a place where I grew, where I became.
This particularly beautiful day found my young friend and I in the backyard playing a game we surely played countless times and for hours on end yet I can only really recall this one time. There were these little figurines of super heroes my friend and I had. They were more like statues, molded from some soft plastic into little five inch men. They had no parts, no extending arms or cape, no gear just a sold piece of colored plastic with arms at the side, or maybe crossed. There was nothing to them. We were running around chasing each other and the bad guys, of course. I do not recall the game we played or what exactly we did, there was a swing set that played a role somewhere but my memory always comes back to the lasers I imagined shot from the eye of my figure. I recall seeing them so vividly. These red jets of lights pouring destruction from the eyes of my super hero. The super hero I had didn't even do that in his fictional portrayals. It wasn't that guy from the x-men. I remember looking up and shooting at the sky and seeing this light just pour forth.
Perhaps I am remembering a time when I remembered that, because this time I recall was special. This time from the past has those lasers from the eyes but something more, no more lasers. I saw the lasers for the last time that day. I saw my imagination for the first time, I discovered the world in my head, i grew up a little bit. I still search for that toy when I go to my Mom's. It would be a relic of my past but also my mind. I would hold him in my hand as I used to; hand clutched around his torso, folded arms near my trigger finger as I would command destructive blasts from his eyes and see them with mine.
I think of those times at one of the Cathedrals of my youth and mourn a time when such joy could come from such inanimate plastic. I am happy I had such an axle-less childhood to make memories with. I think of how many parts are needed for objects to fill me with anything that resembles what was in my mind on those summer afternoons at my best friends first house with the birthday party and the donkey and the glass door I went through but don't remember.
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