We’re playing Wiffle Ball in your backyard, the one where I once got my finger stuck in the garage door and cried until you showed up to open it. You’re the Mets, as always, and I’m the Yankees, and you’ve got the bases loaded and you’re Dave Kingman and I’m Ron Guidry and it’s a full count and I’m going to throw a slider and nothing could be better on an April day, not even for you, to be here right now, sweating in the New York suburbs with the winter maybe over and the summer maybe coming sooner than we thought and six months of baseball in front of us and so much to talk about, so much to do.
We’re riding our Puch dirt bikes, the ones we picked out together, and it’s a late October evening and the woodsmoke is wafting from the Tudor houses and it smells like winter and I wish I had mittens. You’re helping me finish my paper route so we can head back to my house for dinner, and I’m singing the guitar riff to “Jack and Diane” and not looking where I’m going and I ride right into a parked car and land flat on its hood and I’m not hurt, just a little stunned, and you’re laughing like I’ve never seen you laugh before, especially now, when I didn’t think it was possible for you to laugh this hard, and I know that if I was hurt you wouldn’t be laughing, and that’s why I’m laughing, too.
We’re having a sleepover in your basement, and it’s a New Year, and after we watched the ball drop we stayed up until four watching “Stripes” and rewound the scene where we saw bush a few times, and this is the coolest place on earth, with a foosball table and a VCR and MTV, and we’re done with heaping bowls of ice cream with hot fudge and I’m trying to pretend that the mattress I’m sleeping on is a spaceship and I’m going to rocket off to the planet of sleep, and I look over at you and I wonder what’s going to happen to you, if you’re going to die tonight or tomorrow and if you’re thinking about it all the time or convincing yourself not to, and I know you’d never tell me so I know that I’ll never ask.
We’re in social studies and it’s March and I’m looking at the piles of snow outside and wondering if my mom will make me shovel the driveway when I get home and we’re supposed to be learning about Julius Caesar but you’re falling asleep in your chair and Mr. Freeman’s about to notice so I kick you under the table and you get mad for a second and I think that’s pretty weird because you never get mad at me or anyone else, even though you have about a hundred reasons to be mad, but you laugh it off like you always do and I know everything’s alright and you bull your way through the rest of the class.
We’re playing miniature golf at Nunley’s and the stars are lighting up the warm September weekend night, and you’re wearing the L.A. Rams jersey my dad bought for you when he was on that business trip in California and the baseball cap you’ve worn every day since your hair started falling out, and I’ve just gotten rejected for the second time on the fourteenth hole, the one with the windmill rotating in front of the little opening that you have to putt the ball through, and you’re already tired and you think we should call your mom and I tell you we should get some French fries first and you don’t even want that.
We’re sitting in homeroom on a cold morning in early December, me and the rest of the class, and I didn’t feel like eating breakfast after I woke up, and I was late anyway and missed the bus and ran the half-mile to school, my legs burning the whole way, and my stomach is already growling and the principal comes over the loudspeaker and tells us about you and there’s silence and I run out into the empty hallway and I don’t care if anyone tries to stop me and I don’t know if anybody does and I keep running and running, whizzing past lockers, heading down stairs, and then I’m outside and I want to cry but I can’t because I don’t know how and don’t know if I ever will.
***
Help Tom wish for one more day here:
Past work on FlipCollective.com.
To follow him on Twitter.
To befriend him on Facebook.
Related Posts
Dear Mr. Beckett, I am 8 years old and you are my favorite baseball player. I love the way you look all serious all the time and throw the ball really hard to get the guys on the other teams out. The beard on your chin is really cool, too. I hope someday I can grow one just like you. If I can’t, I’ll probably just cut a piece off my blac...
Sometimes all it takes is a tactless, overweight, blotchy IT guy to provide a blunt, indelible reintroduction to the power of words. There I was, walking into the gray-carpeted, barebones office of a software consulting firm with satellite offices in Mumbai and Hyderabad, clutching the Dell XPS 17 laptop whose screen had been cracked when topple...
On Saturday, May 5, I will buckle my 4-year-old son into his car seat and drive a half-hour south to a second-rate thoroughbred racetrack called Emerald Downs in a second-rate Washington town called Auburn. I will let him enjoy the bounce-houses and pony rides … for a little while. He won’t know it, but the real reason for our presence there wi...
In-N-Out Burger, The NBA, Death Cab For Cutie, LaMontagne, Ray. The TV show “Louie,” And “Mad Men,” too, Adele, Kristen Bell, Troy Polamalu. “The Descendants,” “Moneyball,” Clooney and Pitt, Cock, balls, pussy, Ass, grundle, clit. These are things people overrate. ...
Let’s get right to it, shall we? Fine, but let’s not bite and taste the strange brownish-greenish middle part of the egg, dog! ** Brownish, chocolatish, Germanish? Goodish? Not so surish. ** “It’s crispy, right? And it’s chunky!” “No, Rolf, it’s not quite enough of either adjective, but it’s kind of...
Comments