There are times I look back on my childhood and wonder if I’m retarded.
It’s possible. I mean, I could be just a highly capable retard. I make enough boneheaded mistakes now that I might just qualify. But for real evidence, you need to look back, back to 1975.
We lived in Whispering Pines1 subdivision, which was still mostly under construction. Every street had two or three homes filled with a family but the rest were open shells and in many cases, like next door to my house, there was just an overgrown lot.
These lots were the best. You could do anything you wanted to them. The dill weed grew well over our heads and deep in the green guts of it, we’d find corn snakes, old bottles, discarded tools, and god knows what else.
For reasons which even deep hypnosis will not reveal, my buddy Tim and I decided we were going to bury a time capsule. Much like the NASA versions, ours was a Folgers can filled with some army men, our names, a couple of hot wheels cars, and loose change. We gleefully imagined the glory and TV time we’d get 50 years in the future when NASA dug it up and tracked us down and made us heroes.
We start digging. Now, the way we see it, a simple hole is just not enough. It’s not dramatic. So we dig like champions, like miners, like only insane 10-year-old boys with visions of grandeur can dig. We shoot for China.
Near the end of the day, we had a beautiful hole with perfectly straight sides and a flat bottom and we were proud, man, we were proud.
Only we couldn’t find our can.
Obviously we’d covered it in dirt but we panicked, ran back into the house, turned everything over, forgot what we were doing, and ended up watching cartoons. Mom came in and saw the dirt all over our clothes and kicked us out. We saw the shovel in the middle of the driveway, remembered our mission, ran out into the field and beheld our magnificent hole.
It was awesome. Tim said “Jeez, you could lay down in it!”
And he did. Dropped right down into it, comfortable as a warm tub. And without thinking about it, Tim yells, “Hey, man, BURY ME!”
So. I. Did.
I dove into it with all the gusto of our previous mission. I pummeled Tim’s frail 10-year-old body with heavy dirt and pretty soon I had him covered.
You have to understand what kind of person Tim was. Tim was a highly intelligent manic genius. We’d already made an electric powered lawn mower car, built an outdoor kitchen in the woods, a treehouse with support poles that sprouted leaves, a hot air balloon toy, and wind powered go karts. Of course, he was the evil genius (I’m the nice one) and many of our parts were, er, procured through unofficial channels.
We did set a lot of stuff on fire.
Through it all, Tim never stopped talking. Not only talking, but shouting and singing and planning and explaining. He was an incessant chattering drone and my childhood was underscored by his ceaseless speech.
In the hole, however, as the dirt piled up, Tim’s demeanor changed. He got quiet. Studious. His permanent grin faded into a bemused half-smile. In the ensuing quiet I suddenly became conscious of my environment, of birdsong, of the wind through the trees, of . . . a kind of . . . quiet . . . gasping. I looked down and Tim was turning pale. He was having trouble breathing.
“Hey, man, this is NOT fun. Maybe you should . . . dig . . . me . . . out.”
I suddenly realized that I’d actually buried Tim alive. He was buried right up to his neck in this hole and he was having trouble. Tim started to turn a little blue and hyperventilate. I freaked. I ceased to think in a straight line. I sought the counsel of my STUPID mind.
I often played in the yard with the hose. My parents called this watering the plants. I called it hydro-elliptical-maximum-distribution-studies-period. During my studies, I had learned that the jet of water flowing from our hose easily penetrated the soft Floridian loam. Our water pressure was so high you could peel paint with it. I knew that I could turn it on high and easily ram it into the ground. I looked at Tim. I ran for the hose.
I turned it on full and drove it into the dirt over Tim’s chest.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!” He gasped.
“I’M SAVING YOUR LIFE!”
By now Tim’s entire body had gone to sleep. As the hose dug itself through to Tim’s skin–now incredibly sensitive–he screamed.
“YOU’RE CUTTING ME IN HALF!”
I screamed “OH MY GOD I’M CUTTING YOU IN HALF!”
Tim was breathing shallow, losing color. Even his freckles were disappearing. And I was making mud. Not just mud: when exposed to the implacable sun for months on end, Florida’s soil turns into a dessicated, thirsty powder. If you add water, you don’ get mud.
You get cement.
Suddenly, my dad pulls up in his truck. He gets out and walks over grinning like always. His grin disappears when he sees what I’m doing, sees the panic in my eyes, sees the ring of blue around Tim’s lips. He grabs the shovel and frantically, starts digging. I scream:
“YOU’LL CUT HIM IN HALF!”
Tim screams “DON’T CUT ME IN HALF!”
My dad is yelling things I can’t print here.
He dug Tim out, brushed him off and sat in him the cab of his truck. Tim was slack and listless. I thought I’d killed him. Tim coughs hard for several seconds.
He looks at me and, with the kind of unhinged breathless enthusiasm only Tim could muster, says “That was COOL!”
1Yes, we did call it Whispering Penis.
Originally posted 2007-02-05 14:00:00. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
