Memoirs

Do you ever remember random events from your past with such great clarity that suddenly you are in a way reliving the experience emotionally, even though you have not thought of the event for years? Well, I do! Sometimes, of course, its a memory with especially intense emotional baggage checked and stored in overhead compartments, but often, in my experience anyway, it is something rather mundane and simple. And when this memory is from one's childhood (and, as young as I am, what other memories do I have, really?), I not only relive the experience but view it as an outside observer who can more fully understand what’s really going on in the situation than the child version of myself in the past can. You didn't realize, at the time, how annoying or rude or naive you were, but from your current vantage point it is all too painfully obvious. This leads to a strange sort of double consciousness - in your memories, you don't know something and act accordingly, but in your present thoughts outside the memory you know it but can't change how you acted.

I was a strange child. Some of the vivid memories that have returned to me of late have been of elementary school when I lived in Swink, Colorado (I bet you can’t find it on a map). We lived there for my two or three years, which meant I was there roughly from the 4^th to early parts of the 7^th grades. My memories have been drawn most to those periods of liberty and chaos to which each child longs - recess. Options for activities during recess for a boy my age were quite limited at this small school. One could play soccer/football/basketball (whichever was in fashion at the time) or one could refrain from the former and be branded a loser. Obviously, I chose the loser option without ever really recognizing, at the time, how that affected the way I was treated. But its not as though I didn't try to interact with the boys playing sports. Indeed, I have very vivid memories of pretending to be a sports reporter and attempting to interview the boys playing basketball. I would approach one after a particularly successful shot and ask, "Marcus, how do you feel about that last play?" and shove my imaginary microphone in his direction, at which point Marcus would either push me out of the way or look at me as if I was infected with rabies or perhaps a more potent form of the plague.

Most of the time, I played with another outcast kid in my grade whose name, I seem to recall, was Josh. We shunned the sporty boys, and were the stars in our own episodic adventure fantasy. I was some kind of brave warrior, like Link from Zelda, and he was a wise and powerful wizard and we'd fight new enemies and brave new worlds every day during our 35 minute recess. Each "episode" would raise new plot twists and dangers, which were ultimately resolved by the end of the week at the latest. I can't remember many of the details, but I think Wizard Josh had a very small glowing bug for a pet that spoke only in musical tones and was named, appropriately, Tone. Our adventures carried us all over the playground, from the swings (where we began each episode, the swings signifying as they did the magical pegasi that would whisk us away to wherever we were needed to fight evil) to the monkey bars to the little fake log cabin house (which was inevitably some kind of castle in which one of us was held captive). This was our most common game, though sometimes we switched it up and were superheroes based upon atomic particles instead (I was Proton, he was Electron). People who know me now as one of the coolest people on the planet (according to a recent poll) would be surprised to learn that I was once a big nerd. But what can you do.

One of my favorite TV shows as a young boy was a kid's show called "Today's Special," which took place in a department store at night, when customers weren't around. You'd think that would be a pretty boring setting for a kids show, but there is twist! A lady who works there somehow gets a magical hat that, when placed upon one of the mannequins in the men's department, brings it to life (a la Frosty). Jeff, for that is the mannequins name, is quite naive about the world which prompts his lady friend (who seems awfully lonely and desparate to bring a plastic man to life for company) to teach him (and us at home) simple things. The problem is that if Jeff’s magical hat ever falls off his head, he instantly turns back into a mannequin. The lady is then required to put the hat back on his head and say the magic words (“Hocus Pocus Alamagocus”) in order to revive him. This, I thought, was a very neat idea.

I loved Jeff. I loved pretending to be Jeff. I loved pretending to be Jeff at the grocery store with my mother. While she was perusing the produce section, I’d “accidentally” knock my imaginary magical hat off, and freeze in place. “Come on, Matt,” my mother would say, in a tone that promised dire punishments if she were not obeyed (moms are really good at that tone!), but I would only reply, “My name’s not Matt, its Jeff!” My mother would often reflect that, during these struggles, other people in the store surely suspected that she had kidnapped me and tried to change my name and I was bravely resisting. Eventually, in order to get me to cooperate, she would have to pretend to put on the hat and mutter the magical words, and then I would suddenly come to life and all would be well.

I look back on some of these events, and many others I can’t think of at the moment but will surely return suddenly to memory with sudden force at sometime in the future, and I am often absolutely mortified at the child I see before my eyes. When I see his total lack of social skills, or awareness of the world, his blind eye to his own bizarreness and power to utterly irritate other people, I want to hide my face. True, I still posses all of those qualities but the key is that now I know it. Back then I had no clue. I didn’t notice the frustration on my mother’s face as she tried to buy enough food for us to eat while having to put up with my dramatics. I never recognized the look on my classmate’s faces as I ran around the playground wielding my sword of air as one of disgust and embarrassment. But when I look at my memories, I see now what I could not before, and often it is so overwhelmingly distressful that I have to smack my head a few times until the memory is utterly repressed.

And yet, I had a happy childhood. I may have had my issues, but, being unaware of them, I had no reason to be unhappy except that still didn’t have a Nintendo. My parents were always loving, as parents are even to their most difficult of children. Sometimes I wish I could still enter a state where I never looked at myself self-consciously, like when I was child, when I did as I pleased and never considered that others might be judging and disapproving. The only time that I feel I get close to that again is when I am on stage, performing, and entering the zone where there is just me and my fellow actors, and the audience is just a comforting glow around the outside of my thoughts. Only then, perhaps, could I find that confidence that once came so naturally; to take up my sword in despite of all the world and become, just for a moment, the hero I know I could be.