Tuesday, April 15, 2008 | by nathan

Vignettes #2: Things That Happened To Me In 1990 and 1991

I get to take the day off of school because mom has to drive to Ft. Worth, to take her car back to the dealership to have some work done, and she doesn’t want to go alone. After waiting for hours in the show room we go to the mall, where I buy a cassette single of Janet Jackson’s song "Escapade" with the $5 she has given me to spend. We listen to that song almost the entire 3-hour drive back to Oklahoma, rewinding the tape over and over again and laughing at ourselves for having so much silly fun. She is my mother, and I am her child; everything is going to be okay.

In the week we’ve been in northern California visiting my uncle Bill, who manages this campground in the mountains, I’ve crossed the creek a hundred times via a fallen tree. I don’t expect this time to be any different; the process has become almost second-nature to me now, and the log is really wide enough for two of me to cross side-by-side, and anyway, I’m always climbing trees and walking along fences at home. My brother stays on the bank of the creek, ready to cross after I’m done. Halfway across, I’m not sure what happens; I feel the air go out of the world and the forest spinning around me before my body hits water. It’s freezing, but before I even have a conscious thought I’m swimming, struggling for the shore, trying to get my breath. I emerge from the water shaking and cold, but safe. When I turn to look behind me at the creek from which I’d just emerged I don’t see the tranquil mountain stream I had only moments before. Now it’s a river, and I see rocks, and currents, and, downstream, a waterfall. Suddenly the world is much more full of danger, but I am stronger than I knew.

I’ve forgotten my lunch ticket again, and, exasperated with me, the teacher on duty in the middle-school cafeteria won’t let me eat. "This is the fourth day in a row you’ve forgotten it," she barks at me, so all the kids can hear. Laughter follows me out the door, where I sit with my sketch pad and colored pencils and try to come up with something to draw. Uninspired, I flip through the drawings I’ve already done; in an instant the pad is wrenched from my hands and three boys stand around me. When I try to stand up to take my pad back, one of them pushes me back down. They start looking at what I’ve drawn, laughing themselves silly and refusing to let me stand up. I can’t help myself; I start crying and, embarassed, wedge myself into a tiny space between the outer wall of the cafeteria and a portable building. There are, as it turns out, advantages to being the smallest kid in school; the other boys can’t follow me in. After a few moments they toss the sketch pad into the gap with me and trot off to more worthwhile pursuits, and I stay there, wedged in the dark, the bricks cold on my back, until the lunch bell rings and I have to go to English class.

 

Once again I invite participation; what happened to you in 1990 & 1991?