In my off days I can sometimes find the hellish torment of my minute to minute existence eased ever so slightly by the recollection of an era where the woes of the world were nowhere near my mind. I speak specifically of the earliest memories I have of my childhood, pre curse of the living dead.
As I gaze out the smoke tarnished haze of our living room window, I watch with a tremendous weight of sadness as the neighborhood children frolic in the empty lot across the street. They have converted a rotting log into a space craft or horse of some kind. I can’t really tell since I chose to sit two inches from the television for many years before having my self inflicted blindness set in stone for all eternity. Either way, they have embraced the gift of obliviousness as the hours slip past forever with no hope of returning. There’s a word for this: life. The simple life. The actions reflecting the very meaning of the word that can never be applied to me. They know not of the cruelty of nature and that monsters really do exist. They have this moment to play and enjoy until the time comes to feast upon delicious children foods and then slip happily away into a dream land beyond the reach of reality’s badness.
I remember once when I was about 10. My parents decided a summer to themselves would be far more enjoyable than enriching the mind and soul of their child, so they sent me to this daily sports program. I imagine that such a program could actually be fun for the right kind of kid. Not so much for the short, fat, dumpy, slow, easily picked on kid that has never demonstrated even the most remote of interests in sports. Since I was, and still am, a child of absolute weakness, I gave in and went every day to be tortured by the big kids and laughed at when I could never hit or kick a ball. It’s not like I didn’t try. It’s that I was just not coordinated enough to hone those skills. Even to this day I don’t think I could hit a baseball no matter how many tries I had. Had it been a video game camp I would have been the undefeated champion.
The general routine was to arrive at this sports program around 7 in the morning, secure a single serving cup of cereal and hide in the bushes until the buses relocated the pack of abandoned children to the local college gymnasium where all the sports fields are. Most days I was not able to escape the eye of the program guards and was then thrust into the pantheon of ridicule where boys and girls alike delight in my resounding failure to perform in any positive way. If you need a picture painted – imagine a portly little guy who has a roll of fat jetting out of his stomach. This roll of fat is not unlike a half filled water balloon slung over your wrist, dangling helplessly and wide open to your merciless jollies as you bounce it around, slap it back and forth, or spin it in circles. It has no bones. It has no muscles. It just has to take it however it is dished out. If you run, it will bounce about uncontrollably. If you jump, it will rise and then fall back like a dead, rubberized weight. This is what every part of my body looks like. So when I was forced into a game of volleyball, every jump or dive was a huge bag of half filled water balloons swinging around, bouncing, rolling and revolting every single eye that had the misfortune of falling upon it as gravity and velocity harmonized grotesquely in the form of an obese child’s failure to succeed in even the most basic of movement.
I can remember seeing girls laugh immediately after I jumped to hit the ball. I should say try to hit the ball since I almost never did. I couldn’t hear them but since they whispered to each other and giggled immediately after my demonstration of lifelong failure, I had surmised the worst and convinced myself that every display of jiggling fat was a guaranteed way to get all the girls to laugh at me. Guys too. Laughter is laughter to the ears of an awkward adolescent. My soul never recovered from those days.
I think back upon the sadness, ridicule, and depression then and realize how much of an idiot I was. If I had only known of what would become of me I would never have complained. I would have turned those horrible volleyball games into a space ship or horse of some kind. I would have played. I would have just enjoyed my simple life.
Suppose that there was some kind of afterlife. A heaven and hell. If hell is replaying every moment you regret, even once, then I am doomed to live my life all over again.