A FAREWELL TO ROLLER SKATES

A FAREWELL TO ROLLER SKATES - Kory Wood

"I want to be alone." Greta Garbo

"Ugh...Is she still there?"
Will and I hunkered close to the wooden pylons at the top of the jungle gym, avoiding scratchy splinters and swatting away wasps. Will sat slightly elevated, his hand perched above his brow in a keen look-out.
"Oh man, there she is! Erin! Disgusting." Will signaled for me to duck down even farther. His wiry frame and light lock of brown hair snapped in the wind. "How far away do you think she is, General Mike?" he yelled down from our roost.
"Estimating one hundred feet away, General Will and General Kory. She's looking around and crying. What a dork." Mike cupped his hands around his eyes, focusing his imaginary binoculars. He stood crouched at the base of our fortress, deftly hidden behind a large tire. There wasn't much of Mike to hide, though his vibrantly pale skin stuck out next to the solid black of the tire like a white flag.
I pressed down close to the platform, squinting away sweat and praying that Erin Brown wouldn't find me again. Please, for all that was holy, let me enjoy one recess to myself. No more pandering to some needy, silly little girl.
Living through the fourth grade at Horace Mann Elementary School was already perilous without introducing females into the equation. I had moved back for this school year, and had enjoyed a higher popularity than I was used to, but with that "new kid" novelty came the unwanted attention of the grosser sex, particularly Erin. I could barely turn around these days without bumping into her. Heavens, but she needed attention.
Erin followed me everywhere, lavishing me with compliments, giving me small gifts, and generally just staring. When we played tag, she always seemed to slow down when I was it. Thank heavens I was at the dentist the day one of the fifth graders suggested we play kissing tag. I might never have recovered after direct lip contact from one of her species. Thankfully, the game was swiftly outlawed upon its discovery by our playground Gestapo, the militaristic and frighteningly androgynous Mrs. Franklin.
Oh, Erin was cute enough, I guess. If you liked that kind of thing. Girls, I mean. But she was starting to get a little creepy. That morning, she unsportingly approached me while I was caught up in a rousing game of pogs.
"Hi, Kory."
Blast! The dozing sentries Mike and Will looked at me guiltily. They would be dealt with later.
"Oh, uh, hey Erin. Did you want to play pogs? Because I was just leaving for...the other side of the playground. You can take my spot."
"Oh....no. I don't know how to play pogs. How does it work? You just hit the....What do you do?"
"Well, you use this big one to......um, you hit the....you know, I'm not entirely sure myself." I was a slave to trends.
"That's fine, I don't really want to learn, anyway. I just wanted to show you this." She pulled from the top of her Sesame Street T-Shirt a small, bronze locket. "Look what's inside." She opened it and handed the small necklace to my quivering fingers. Inside the locket was a picture of me.
After I am dead, I am going to take a visit to the great video archive in the sky, loan out a projector, and watch several moments from my life. This would be one of them. I'm sure that a study of the combination of emotions on my face will provide hours of after-life entertainment for me.
I stood, both beet-faced and drained of color, flabbergasted and focused in rage, panicky and serene. I didn't know in what way to react. Should I show thanks or throttle her? No idea. What scared me most, though, was that beneath this jambalaya of emotions, in a cool cave, there waited an unwearied feeling, a little man with a reaction I'd ne'er felt before, a kind of grinding, churning, biting feeling only brought on by Erin. Was I....flattered? Joyful, even?
No, never. What would the guys think? My fingers relaxed and the locket swung back towards her chest. "That's....wow, Erin....Where did you get a picture of me?"
"I brought my dad's camera to school yesterday. It was while you were swinging. You love swinging."
"That's....great...." I looked at Mike and Will, and not-so-subtly mouthed, Help!
Well, the best solution either of them came up with was for Mike to suddenly stand up and push Erin down. We bolted like bank robbers and reconvened inside the large, cement tube on the other side of the playground. We laughed at the sounds of Erin's friends cursing us and all our descendants, and our victorious joy was capped by Erin's tearful wail lilting alluringly across the lawn.
Lilting alluringly? No, I'm sorry.
The next few weeks traveled the same route. Erin somehow stayed enamored with me, and we did our best to dodge her pursuance. Every time we would sneak out of an Erin trap, we would meet up and slap each other on the backs and guffaw and laud the redeeming qualities of man and discuss Erin's many character flaws and funny nose and general girlish defects.
Somewhere down in the cool cave, a man hopped up and down, gallantly defending her through the fog of insults and cursing my friends and me for not reveling in her attentions. I snuffed him out and sat brooding, fearful of my hidden feelings and not knowing exactly what they were.

* * *

"God created man and, finding him not sufficiently alone, gave him a companion to make him feel his solitude more keenly." Paul Valery


I remember it was during one of Mrs. Barlow's art lessons that my fears came to a boil. We were drawing pumpkins and then cutting them up into small strips, after which we would assemble and paste the strips into the correct order again on a separate sheet of paper. The after-effect was a pumpkin that didn't look as good as it did before we cut it, plus it was covered in paste. I don't know why we did this, but Mrs. Barlow insisted it made us more artistic.
As she walked around the room, admiring our disfigured gluey gourds, smiling and nodding, she stopped suddenly and smacked herself in the forehead. "Good heavens, I'd almost forgotten. The roller skating activity!"
For some unknown reason, my heart simultaneously stopped beating and still felt as if it would burst clean out of my chest.
"Class, we are going to the 9th Street Roller Rink a week from today. Make sure and take these permission slips home to..." I was already day-dreaming. Roller-skating. Fantastic. Another way to embarrass myself. My family was not gifted athletically, and when things like balance were thrown in, well...I was sure I would spend most of the time licking the floor and nursing wounded elbows and knees.
"...and at the end, we'll have time for partners' skating, so start looking for that Special Sweetie now, gentleman." Mrs. Barlow chuckled in a high titter, and went back to perusing our pumpkins.
A quiet roar swept across the classroom. Girls exchanged knowing glances and feminine gasps, while boys sunk lower into their seats or feigned vomiting. But from across the classroom, through the back-left of my skull, I could feel the burning glare of two eyes. I blushed like a fire hydrant, never turning around. An excited terror melted all the bones in my body, and I sank down in my desk till my eyes were level with my Jurassic Park pencil case.

* * *

"Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it's awfully hard to get it back in." H.R. Haldeman


Gliding along to the music of Billy Joel and Whitney Houston, my classmates chortled and whooped on the floor of the roller skating rink. I had been tying my laces for the last half hour, the psychedelic lights bouncing around the room. Previous to tying my laces, I had managed to waste an hour switching out pairs of roller skates that were too small, too long, too tight, etc. The last pair I had given back on the grounds that they were “too girly.” Their appearance differed in no way from the other pairs, but I did my best in insisting that their cut was markedly ladylike.
I was at my stalling edge, though. My friends stopped by on every rotation and stared at me incredulously, beckoning with widened eyes and waves of their heads. I really, really, REALLY did not want to skate. I had tried skating on the carpet just from the bench to the bathroom, and that had ended in a close study of the ceiling as I lay on my back, my wheels spinning madly. Genetically speaking, I had a high center of gravity. Roller skating for me was like placing a filing cabinet on a skateboard. Physics were my enemy.
Mostly, though, I was using any opportunity to avoid being in the rink at the same time as Erin. I did not want to skate next to her. I would rather have all my toenails ripped off. There were just too many risks involved. First of all, there was no telling what types of diseases could be contracted simply from close proximity to a girl. Second, if anyone saw us skating together, it would be my downfall. I was already a lousy athlete, and didn’t need further barbs directed at my manliness.
“Hi, Kory.” I spun to my right and beheld Erin, resting on the edge of the bench about three inches from my person, but sitting in the opposite direction. My jaw dropped at her sneakiness. I was repulsed by the sight of her nauseating, cute little button nose, and was hypnotically mesmerized as her revolting silhouette was framed by the flashing, colored lights behind her. My eyes met hers, and the little man in the cool cave shot off a Roman candle.
“Oh. Erin. Hi.”
“Why aren’t you skating yet?” She stared at me so intently, the urge to vomit seemed nearly unavoidable, though it seemed to be a good vomiting. That didn’t make sense to me at all. Snappiness and short answers seemed the way to go.
“Couldn’t find skates that fit. Is that ok with you?” I accompanied this last sentence with what I thought to be a cool eyebrow lift.
She seemed a bit hurt, but clutched her hand to her chest and came even closer to my face, sadness and stars glinting in her eyes. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to tease you. If you don’t like skating, that’s totally cool. I don’t really like it that much.” Her face moved a few inches away from mine again, which was great, because I didn’t want to toss my nervous cookies directly onto her nose. “I don’t like skating that much…by myself, I mean.”
The air hung still momentarily, the lights stopped flashing, and Billy Joel rested mid-verse. “Oh,” I loquaciously spouted. “Well, I, eh….Skating is dumb, anyway.” I hadn’t taken a breath since I had noticed her sitting next to me, and decided now would be an optimum time.
“Yeah, for sure. Skating is dumb…..by yourself…”
I stared longingly and blankly. “No, it’s just always dumb.”
“Kory, do you want to skate around the rink with me?”
Panic. “No. I can’t. I…don’t want….Skating…..It isn’t….” I leaped from my bench and rolled to the men’s bathroom (I use the term “rolled” not in the sense of traveling by roller skates, but more in the sense that, because I was wearing roller skates, I was rolled end-over-end, snowball-like, towards the men’s room). Once inside, my breaths caught up with me, and sweat poured off my brow like a flattened sponge. I swayed and bobbled over to the first stall, quickly entered, and sat on the toilet, staring at the tan wall of the stall door in front of me.

* * *

“I wanna hold your hand,
I wanna hold your hand.
I wanna hold your hand.”
-The Beatles

“But dude, you HAVE to, man!”
“But I really, really don’t want to.”
“Dude, she asked you to roll around the rink with her. You have to do it.” Will stared at me through the crack in the door to my Fortress of Solitude.
I sat on the pot, hugging my knees up to my chin, my discarded roller skates on the ground in front of me. “No, I don’t have to do it. I don’t have to do anything. What happens if I don’t? Nothing. Maybe if I don’t, she’ll even think I’m a jerk and start ignoring me. Which would be fabulous.” The little man in the cool cave took off his shoe and threw it at my stomach wall.
“Man, I’ve already done it. It’s not that bad.”
“You’ve what?! Erin asked you to roll around with her? That’s…that’s gross! Did she hold your hand? What was it like? Does she…does she even want to do it with me anymore?”
Will grunted in exasperation. “No, nerd, not Erin. Ashley Benson asked me. And yes, I did hold her hand.”
I gasped and choked back a gag reflex. “Could you feel the germs?”
“No,” said Will, glancing around secretively. “Can I tell you something? You can’t tell anyone.”
“Sure! I promise, cross my heart, I won’t say anything.”
I saw Will’s eyebrow and the corner of his mouth both lift into mischievous grins. “I think I liked it.”
As my world shattered and tumbled around me, the little man in the cool cave smirked up at me knowingly. “I’ve been trying to tell you,” he said.

* * *

"Hell, madam, is to love no more." -Georges Bernanos

The moment I exited the door of the restroom, I was hit by a wave of righteous female indignation.
“Ooo-ooo-ooh, Kory, you bozo, I can’t believe you told Erin no! What a jerk.”
Thanks, Shelley, good to see you, too.
“If you don’t go over RIGHT NOW and ask her to skate with you,” said a girl with massive, brown curly hair, “I will kick you in the knee every recess for the rest of the school year.”
Geez. “Alright, alright, good honk, where is she?” My eyes darted around nervously. “She’s not still crying, is she? It’s not like I punched her in nose or anything.”
“Oooooh, boys!” Shelley clenched her face and stamped her foot. “You just don’t get it at all.”
We approached the bench where Erin sat, though trying to see her through the throng of comforting females was tricky. They patted her back and cooed and shot flaming, hot looks of molten death at me.
“What?! Alright, alright, I’ll talk to her! Just…everyone clear out, ok?”
Will and Mike snapped to. “Yeah, yeah, everybody, move away! Step away, step away, move along….”
The mob grumbled back onto the skating rink, disappointed in missing their spectacle but quickly swept up in the flashing lights and pop music.
Erin’s head was still down, her small body hopping up and down every few seconds from the tears. I sat down next to her hesitantly. My hand hovered momentarily over her shoulders, then dropped back down to my side, lost and confused. She shuddered silently. Something in me wanted to hold her and stroke her hair, but a stronger part of me wanted to push her off the bench and run screaming from the building.
“So…” I said. “Are you….doing fine?”
She stopped shaking momentarily and turned her face up to stare at me through her fingers. Her blotchiness was evident even in the poor lighting.
“Really, Kory?”
My head dropped and I sighed in exasperation. “Look, Erin, I didn’t know that you wanted to….well, I mean, I…..I’m gonna be honest with you, I don’t know what I should do now. I can’t really….I mean, not that I don’t want to, I just….Skating is hard… for me….and you are….How is….eh….”
“OH, HONESTLY!” gasped Erin. “Just go skate with me, you stupid jerk.”
“Ok, thank you.”
She stood up, sniffed impressively and skated gracefully out to the edge of the rink. She turned around and stared at me, waiting.
Like a wounded buffalo, I trundled my way over and followed her onto the floor. She skated next to me as I hugged the wall, relying mostly on an unseen wind behind me to propel my rigid form forward.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see her rolling along, smiling at me, her hands clasping and unclasping. From across the rink, I watched as Mike and Will poked their heads above the skate racks. They held their hands above their heads and laced the fingers, grinning maliciously.
“Maybe we should hold hands,” said Erin.
“No, I don’t think we should do that.”
“Ok.”
We continued our hampered stroll ‘round the rink. I felt the eyes of my class boring holes through my body.
“Should we hold hands now?”
“Please, Erin, I’m rolling in a circle with you. Can that not be enough?”
More wheeling, more silence. The D.J. came over the speakers.
HISSSS POP “Hey, guys! That’s all for today. Thanks for coming out to 9th Street Roller Rink. Drive safely!”
I summoned all my powers of balance and started working my way back towards the exit, but fell almost immediately. Grunting with irritation, I rapidly unlaced my roller skates and threw them across the rink, bolting through the exit. I was relieved and disappointed, free and frustrated. The little man pushed against my stomach lining, trying mightily to drag me back to Erin’s side.

* * *

“Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love.” – Song of Solomon 2:5

“General Will! General Kory! Avast! She approaches at 2 o’clock!” Mike gesticulated wildly to his front. “She’s closing in!”
Will and I conferred. “General Mike, General Will and I think it’s closer to 11:00. Where is she?”
Mike shook his head and grunted, then pointed.
Oh, no. There she was. Erin, again. I Superman-ed into the tunnel slide and hid. Ever since that day at the roller rink, she and I had managed to avoid each other. In fact, I hadn’t even caught her looking at me once in class, and when we played tag, she didn’t even hover back to let me catch her.
“Here she comes! Hide! Deeper in the slide!” Will waved me down. I cowered against the static friction of the slide wall and waited fearfully.
Mike’s salutation drifted up to our platform. “Hey, Erin, what do you want? Don’t come too close, we don’t know for sure what diseases girls have.” I burrowed in my trepidation, expecting her unwanted attention.
“Will, do you want to come down and play tag with me and my friends?”
My mind blanked.
“I...eh….” Will looked at me and shrugged perplexedly. “We…well, I guess I could come play.” I shot him as infuriated a look as I could muster, but he hopped out onto the fireman’s pole and dropped out of sight.
Extracting myself from the slide, I stood on the platform and dazedly watched as Will walked away with Erin. The little man in the cool cave sat down in his lawn chair and opened the book of crossword puzzles, resting for a few more months. Will kept a safe distance from Erin as she stared him down. She chattered at him sweetly.
“Would you like to see what’s in my locket, Will?”

WAY OUT WHERE THE DAN-DEE-LINES GROW

WAY OUT WHERE THE DAN-DEE-LINES GROW



"I play right field.
It's important, y'know!
Ya gotta know how to catch.
Ya gotta know how to throw.
That's why I'm playin' right field,
Way out where the dan-dee-lines grow."
-Classic Pizza Hut commercial jingle. You remember it.


The orange-brick houses and drying lawns flashed by the truck window as my father drove me to the park. My new uniform hugged my skinny fifth-grade body like cellophane. My pants, stopping just below the knees, were pristine and white, glowing contrastingly below the cheap, black Florida Marlins Imitation T-shirt we had all been assigned. My socks came halfway up my thighs, turquoise and stretchy. My new baseball cleats squeaked like rocking chairs as I flexed them back and forth on the floor of the truck.
My left hand ached happily inside my new mitt. It felt like I had jammed my hand clean through a rock. I'd been wearing the thing for the past three hours in anticipation of the first day of practice on my first little league baseball team ever. I barely had a working knowledge of how the sport worked, but something about playing baseball felt like the natural thing for an American boy to do, like watching Saturday morning cartoons or shooting back pixie sticks. It was so...Rockwellian.
Admittedly, I was terrified. Genetically, I was already a bit doomed to failure. If the world were the Major Leagues, the Wood family would be the Washington Nationals. Our walls are adorned with "Best Sportsmanship" awards, the literal translation of which we all know is "Most Accepting of Non-Active Role on This Team." I remember once, when playing in a basketball game, where I successfully ran the entire 45 minutes without touching the ball. This was really quite the feat, since there were only five kids on our team.
My Dad had done a good job of teaching me to at least catch and throw the ball. I was no Willy Mays in my overall skill level, but, having no other players with which to compare myself but my brothers, I felt a fair comparison could be made between myself and, say, Jose Canseco. I felt fairly confident that I could at worst avoid grossly embarrassing myself.
We pulled up through the parking lot and I hopped out, my cleats clacking out a hollow cadence across the summer night of the asphalt. I walked up apprehensively behind my father, who was easily twice my size. As we crossed the lot, a big, white truck swung in around us and halted snugly inside of two parking spaces. Blaring red in the back window was a sticker of a fastball, aflame, highlighting the words "LIFE'S A PITCH."
The door swung open, and out stepped a Rottweiler of a man in a baggy white Baseball Camp T-Shirt. He wore a pair of light blue, tight-fitting jeans, and a green cap with its half-circle brim pulled down to the tops of his sunglasses. These sunglasses, I would soon learn, never left his face, and covered any trace of eyeballs. His lower jaw jutted out just a hair past his upper one, further marked by the continuous mass destruction of sunflower seeds. His name was Coach Jensen, and he was a man of few words. Most of the ones he did use were motivational references to parts of our anatomies.
His son hopped out after him, a year older than me and already at least eight feet tall. Jeff looked like he was born with his cleats on, casually laying a clutch of bats over his left shoulder while a bucket of balls dangled from his right hand.
Coach and my Dad talked a bit on the way to the mound, and I followed quietly, my stomach starting to boil a bit more fervently. What was I getting myself into? The Coach looked like the son of a Gorilla and Mickey Mantle, and his son was probably already shaving. Jeff asked me a few baseball-related questions, like, "Have you had a lot of infielder's experience?" and "What do you usually squat?" I told him that I didn't think this was something normal people typically measured, and he looked at me like I had a cucumber in my nose.
Halfway through the parking lot, Coach Jensen met up with his assistant, Coach Chavez, and his son, Anthony. They were duplicates, different only in size, both smiling at all times, with long hair down to their shoulders and thin moustaches.
We met up with the other players under the shade of the oak trees behind the dugout. There were five or six kids already there, throwing back and forth with what looked to me like rocket-propelled balls of white, synthetic leather. The burner underneath my stomach raised another fifty degrees. Oh, man, another opportunity to showcase my athletic prowess. I might as well just lean my back up against an oak and pull out a book for the rest of practice.
My Dad watched me retreat into the comfortable cave of myself, and exhorted me loudly and patiently to have fun and start throwing with someone, pointing emphatically back towards the kids. Reluctantly, I walked over and asked a pair of boys already throwing, in a murmured voice audible only to canines, "Hey, uh, I....baseball.... IsitokayifIthrowwithyouguyscoolthanks." My Dad walked off, one eyebrow raised, and told me he'd be back in a couple hours.
I looked back at the two boys welcoming me. One was Darren, our shortstop, who was perfect at everything he did. I knew him vaguely from school, and all I knew about him was that he was a completely likeable guy who we all, for some strange reason, hated. Success trailed in his wake like algae churned up by a sleek yacht. His short, curly hair blossomed out beneath his hat, and he smiled affably at everyone. He was the first one to run up to me and say hi, and willingly accepted me into his throwing duet, and lo, how I hated him. I would learn later on in life that pride-looking-up would be quite the common emotion for me, much worsened when girls entered the picture.
The second boy was named Jimmy, and the sight of him buoyed up my spirits like a warm, gooey chocolate cake. I glanced around quickly, counting the boys on my team. One, two, three.....ten. Ten total. I knew enough about baseball to know that nine boys played on the field at one time, and there was absolutely NO way in heck that Jimmy was going to beat me out for a spot in right field.
He was three-foot-nothing, 60 lbs. at most, and wearing light-up Beauty and the Beast sneakers. His curly blond hair cascaded down the back of his neck, though the hair was buzzed short at the sides of his head. His inch-thick glasses were at least as large as our coach's, and were connected in back by a long, fluorscent purple string that might not even have been short enough to save his glasses from shattering in the event that they did spill off of his nearly nonexistent nose.
As I tossed him the ball, I chuckled silently in evil hilarity as he simultaneously brought up his mitt (which was the size of his torso) and turned his head backwards, his eyes closed shut, while his throwing arm shielded his face and his left leg left the ground, scrunching his body into a standing, half-fetal position resembling a flamingo with a disease of the nervous system.
I felt a little bit wrong for exploiting his athletic ineptitudes, but not as bad as I would feel from sitting around behind a chain-link fence for an entire season. I was going to stand out in right field, the lowest-risk position in modern sports, and be the best inconsequential outfielder there ever was, gosh-dang-it.
Our coach worked us through the first day of practice, and we soon became aware of the abilities of those around us. Jeff and Anthony were pitcher and catcher, respectively, and none of us could even touch the cheese Jeff was slinging. Many a kid on many a team has complained about the coach's son gettting the most playing time, but the reality of the situation is that, usually, the coach's son is the best kid on the team. Indira Ghandi didn't grow up to be a ballerina. Anyhow, during our batting practice, these two boys traded off knocking inside-the-park-home runs past those of us unfortunate enough to be manning the outfield.
I learned then that, while I was functional at catching a ball, I could not for the life of me manage to accurately get that ball from me to anywhere else. I would rear back and throw towards second base with all of my might, and would watch as the ball soared majestically skyward, then plummet down, blisteringly, to land a full 15 paces from where I stood. Darren, the cut-off man looked at me with an understanding smile, and said, "Great try, Kory!" Then, he sprinted up, grabbed the ball, and rocketed it off to home to stop Anthony from scoring again. I seethed with rage at myself and at his dumb curly hair and perfect stupid bionic arm.
Hitting was even worse. While I was on deck, awaiting my chance to effectively humiliate myself, Jimmy was up to bat, and on the very first pitch, the ball dinged off the handle of the bat, ricocheting straight down onto Jimmy's toes, dropping Jimmy instantly into a rolling, swearing ball of pain.
Thus terrified, I approached the batter's box in wretched anticipation of my first batting opportunity. Standing on the mound and grinning, Coach Chavez bellowed heartily, "Ok, joo don't worry, man, I just going to throw one across the plate reeeeel slow and easy for joo." I nodded, trembling, the gargantuan bat getting heavier and heavier on my nearly-absent shoulder. Coach pulled back and threw one across the plate.
Suddenly, I was in war-torn Eastern Europe, and a surface-to-air missile was streaking directly towards my person, shrieking like a banshee, hell-bent on my annihilation. In perhaps the greatest athletic moment of my life up to that point, I leaped backwards a full ninety feet, sweat cascading from me like a popped water balloon. I landed just in time to see the ball drift lazily across the plate.
The catcher snickered under his breath. Darren smiled lovingly. Jimmy whimpered in pain from where he lay, stretched out on the bench. I gripped the handle, rotating my hands against the harsh friction of the rubber, vowing never to look the blatant sissy again.
Back up to the plate I came, still trembling, but with the glint of recklessness in my eye. Coach Jensen yelled through his sunflower seeds, "Alright, Wood, no matter what it looks like, I want you to just swing and tear the hide off the ball, you got me?" Coach Chavez, holding back some wicked chuckles, said, "Ok, joo don't need to worry, really, this one will be slower, ok, chief? Just keep jore eye on de ball. Pretend it's the face of jore little brother, or somethin'." He pulled back and lobbed it, free-throw like, down towards home plate.
I watched as the face of my little brother floated merrily towards me, mocking. Suddenly, the ball changed to Jimmy's face, his eyes bulging in terror behind the translucent glasses. Than, it was Darren, nodding encouragingly. Then, it was just a ball weaing coach's sunglasses, zig-zagging back and forth, chanting, "Back-up right field......back-up right field......back-up right field......"
Blinking back tears of anger, I swung as hard as my twiggy arms could turn.
PHOOMP, into the catcher's mitt.
"Eh heh heh heh heh...Try opening jore eyes when joo swing, bud!" said Coach Chavez. The catcher grunted in malicious glee, and Darren yelled something about a good hustle.
The rest of practice progressed in a similar manner. I rode home, and entered my room in a youthful depression. Dropped flies and whiffing bats filled my dreams.
The next morning, I took my brother, Casey, outside with me and made him sit there while I threw baseballs at him. This went on for a couple of hours, progressing to the point of actually throwing some within his reach, though he frequently would dive crazily to the side, screaming, in order to avoid those balls thrown with extra velocity. (In one instance, a ball hurtled past a dodging Casey and crashed through a basement window, causing a tumultuous session of hurled blame, which was followed by a vigorous seeking of refuge from our parents, and ended with a brain-storming session to think of ways to blame Nick, the next brother, for the broken window, but this is all irrelevant).
Feeling satisfactorily prepared, I arrived at my first game, trotting jauntily out to right field, taking my spot amidst the bald spots of dirt and the discarded tootsie roll wrappers and the dandelions.
PHEW-EET!, whistled Coach Jensen. "Hey, Wood! You're on the bench for the first inning, bud. Jimmy, get your tail out there."
I stared, open-mouthed, then looked to center field to see if maybe my neighboring outfielder shared a common surname. Alas, he was of Tongan descent. No luck there.
My shoulders slackened and I sulked back to the bench, the weight of my mitt dragging me down as it bounced again and again off my knee.
I was worse than Jimmy.
I felt my innards go stiff as Jimmy walked dazedly past me, out to his starting spot in right field, his mother yelling from the stands, "Don't git caught pickin' yer nose out there, baby!" Darren met me at the opening to the dugout, a hand warmly extended in the ultimate put-down, the high five. "Alright, man! See you out there in a couple of innings!"
I summoned all the strenght left in my 5th-grade frame, raising up my arm to limply press my palm against his, and as he yelled, "Alright! Go, Marlins!" and ran past, my arm dropped back down to its original position like a wet rope. I assumed my familiar position on the bench and watched, dejectedly, as Jeff smoked fastballs past the unbelieving Dodgers.
A few innings passed with similar results. Our team was up 13-0, and I had not been up to bat yet. My mood was improved by our success, though, and I stood, leaning against the fence, enjoying my time learning bilingual baseball chatter with Coach Chavez.
In the fifth inning, Coach Jensen called me over and said I would be going in for Jimmy, who, by this time, looked like the tragic victim of a vampire attack. I sprinted out to right field and stoically took my crucial back-up place in defense of our narrow 18-1 lead. Nothing would get past me today. Nothing!
I only dropped two fly balls, and only missed the cut-off man twice. Ok, so, they only hit the ball to right field twice, and that was after a mortified Jimmy subbed in at pitcher for Jeff, who was reclining on the bench with his 18-yr. old girlfriend. I messed up enough times, though, that if dandelions could talk, the right field dandelions would have a fairly wide vocabulary of fifth-grade profanities.
Hitting in the games went along the same lines. I was largely unsuccesful in my role as back-up back-up back-up back-up back-up clean-up hitter. I did, however, make it to first base quite often. I found suprisingly great success that season by being completely paralyzed at the plate. I would only be struck out half the time if I never swung and shrank my strike zone down to near-nothingness by scrunching up my body in anticipation.
The rest of the season progressed in a similar manner. Our team (Mighty Jeff and the Marlins) destroyed everyone by at least 10 runs, and we won the championship easily, mainly from my important combined contributions of not messing up the plays I wasn't involved in, and sitting on the bench and developing an intense rating scale for the different Airhead flavors sold at the concessions' stand.
In one of the most exciting nights of my life, I got to play third base once when the third baseman's uncle died, and even got to second base in a rare instance of my bat actually making contact with the ball. It was not even my fault if I benefited from the distraction caused by Jimmy being knocked out by the third baseman on that play.
The highlight of my statistical season was one at-bat where I decided I was going to swing at every single pitch, thus resulting in a hitting streak of eight (yes, eight, count 'em, eight) foul balls hit in a row. My team cheered wildly at my newfound courage, and was especially entertained when one of those foul balls careened helter-skelter into the opposing team's dug-out and stuck fast into the chain-link fence right above their pitcher's head. My team rejoiced racously at this attempted assassination, and I enjoyed a secret happiness every time I came back up to hit after that, watching the opposing team duck down and hold the tops of their heads in fright.
As I drove back home after our last game of the season, my "Best Sportsmanship" award cradled between my knees, I realized that, all-in-all, baseball was more fun than not. I wish I had played more, but then, I might have actually impacted the games, which could have been a terrible thing. I did learn quite a bit from the experience, anyway.
I learned that sometimes, it is completely acceptable to not only ride the success of those surrounding you to victory, but to enjoy that success.
I learned that, sometimes, Jimmy gets the start.
I learned that perfectly nice guys like Darren with straight teeth would plague me for the rest of my life.
I learned the exact length to which an Airhead can be stretched before snapping.
I learned that dandelions don't like cussing.
I learned how to effectively communicate the term "belly-itcher" in Spanish.
I learned that the sun can be blamed for nearly any error.
And I learned that, truly, life can be a pitch.

The Geeks Re-made

"Eureka!" I cried.
All the years I had labored and tried
Had at last peaked in glorious fruition!
A flash, a bang, a sudden premonition:
No more glasses to wear,
No more wedgies to bear,
Soon Gunther and Sven would dominate the dating scene!

I had done what so many goofballs could not:
I, and I alone, isolated the dork gene.

Chess players the world 'round
Would rejoice, when they discovered I found
The source of their zits
The cure for sweaty pits
Deep voices in store,
Superfluous athletic ability and what's more
They would no longer think Leia was the bee's knees.

I took my new message of hope
To those who rarely use soap
And awaited their eager expectation
Of the gene's removal and their subsequent social mutation.

"Dungeons and Dragons no more!
"Magic: the Gathering's a bore!
"Your computer will soon gather dust!"
"Come throw the football a bit
"And with the cheerleaders sit
"The old world order's now bust!"

I am slightly ashamed,
That none of them came.

Then I took a closer look
At these creatures often mistook
For social misfits, desperate in their plight.
I was surprised by the sight
That so many were pleased with who they are,
Watching the jocks from afar.

And so I now hold my tongue.
Why disturb those content?
Why change those whom God sent
To balance out the rugged and mean?

No, I thought, much better instead,
To leave those with o'er-inflated heads
And let them be proud of their Star Trek action figure collection.
Others will score touchdowns, and they will proudly continue
To program, duel and execute organized grasshopper dissection.

JUST HELP ME OUT!

JUST HELP ME OUT - Kory Wood

In the gender race, men are behind.
So, our Senate should swiftly combine,
To write up a bill
That effectively will
Force all women to carry large signs.

These signs, flashing, neon, and bright,
Would assist male-kind's woebegone plight,
For each sign would display
What each girl WANTS to say,
And thus, bring each man to the light.

"I'd rather not date you, pin-head."
"That shirt makes you look over-fed."
"I want flowers at work."
"Your best friend's a huge jerk."
"Were you listening to what I just said?"

"Call again, and there'll be a law-suit."
"Your gym bag smells like a Malamute."
"I am NOT in the mood."
"No, Steve, belching is rude."
"I'm just laughing so you'll think I'm cute."

And thus, men would know how to please,
And stop sweating, with shakes in their knees.
Boys would woo, girls would grin.
Men would finally win,
And would skip through their love-lives with ease.