Blog 6 - Memoir

One more page and I would be free to go outside and do as I pleased. One more page about pigs and socialism and the world outside my door would soon become my playground. Just one more page until I was finished with chapter five of Animal Farm and the remainder of my day would be liberated from academic responsibility. I hurried through the last three words of the chapter, tossed the book in my backpack and zippered it up to a close. I would revisit that last sentence sometime later in the evening (hopefully). I ran to my window and peered out of it in awe to make sure nothing had changed; the weather was perfect. I rushed to my closet, grabbed my jacket and ran out the door and into a watery wonderland. Yes, that’s right: it was pouring outside.
I don’t know how long I have been underwater for, but I do know one thing---I cannot swim. Its not that I cannot swim, it’s just that I cannot do it for fun. This is my excuse as to why I am sinking twelve feet below the water. I can swim however when it involves saving a life or something of the sort (hopefully). I leapt into the pool with no intention of saving anyone from anything. This is why I’ve become a fish out of water. The birthday music starts to fade from my ears and the kids running around soaking each other with water guns start to become a blur. I can feel the bottom of the pool approaching my back as I descend into darkness. They say your life flashes before your eyes before you die. That’s true. As my vitals began to fade from a lack of oxygen, my life began flashing before my eyes. A movie began playing in my head and it was nothing but a black screen. It didn’t take me long to figure out why the life flashing before my eyes was emptiness…simply put, I was too young to die.
Every year I do this. I go outside exactly a year later and a year ago from this specific date and take a walk in the rain. It always rains on this day. A massive amount of tears descend from the heavens and all that other good stuff and I decide to go out and absorb what I can of it. I love the rain. I scoff at the people I pass with their umbrellas and robust craving to find shelter from the drops of water falling upon their head and shoulders. I want to stop them in their tracks and ask them why they’re so scared of a little water. They would probably look at me as though I am crazy however, so I keep my comments and questions to myself. For a moment, I consider jogging though this waterlogged city I call home and put that consideration to the side almost immediately. When you walk, you observe more than when sprinting. You can’t catch the little details when you’re driving in a car or running.
I sat in my mom’s lap drenched in pool water and covered in a towel. The pool party was still underway but I could feel everyone’s eyes on me. The lifeguard must have doubled as a birthday clown because he kept making jokes. His main intention was probably just to cheer me up. However, I was not amused. He obtained a measuring cup from God knows where and repeatedly kept dipping it in the pool and pouring the water on the ground around me. He did this while laughing and trying to console me. I was not amused. I looked over at the birthday girl and back at the pool and then back at my mom. I don’t know what she was thinking about but she probably wanted me to give the pool thing another go. I didn’t and stayed with her until the next phase of the pool party. All I thought about was how I hated water.
The rain seemed to calm down a little and became a drizzle. I was a little disappointed but it was better than nothing. I was done with walking through the quiet little neighborhoods of Linden and was now on the main street that ran through the whole entire town. The streets were dead and yet alive at the same time. 7-Eleven had two or three cars in the parking lot while Dunkin Donuts had around one. I made my way down the street just looking for details and thinking. I loved to think. Especially about random stuff. Every time I went on one of these walks, I thought about my life and watched it flash before my eyes on a watery movie screen. Most of the moments were of me escaping death in a very narrow fashion. I stopped at a light that was in my favor and watched as a car ran it. If I had went I would have became one with the pavement. That didn’t seem like a decent birthday present. Not a decent one at all.
Ever since we left Jersey City, I think I made it a ritual to camp out in my mom’s room and watch everything TGIF had to offer. After school I would say to myself, “Thank God its Friday” and imagine what hilarious anecdotes Steven Q. Urkel and Corey Matthews would get themselves into this time. Eight in the evening came and my mom, for the hundredth time, told me not to fall asleep on the floor and go to bed when TGIF show line-up was over. Two hours later the end credits rolled for the final show and I collected my pillows, sheets and bedspread and waddled to my bedroom. I stood in the doorway staring at my bed in the corner for about a minute and went back to my mothers’ bedroom floor. I figured if I woke up before she did, I could sneak back into my bed and she would have never known a thing.
I stared at the brake lights of the car that had run the red light. I guess he was the title-holder of “Slowest Reaction Time Ever” or something. Years later, I would get a job at CVS and realize that Linden was filled with every kind of person you could imagine. A yawn escaped my lips and danced around the cool brisk air. I hadn’t slept in ages after declaring it a waste of time. This hypothesis was conjured up after late nights of doing things I would not have to bother with during the day and constant meditation that did what sleeping did for people in a quarter of the time. My bed was now home to folded clothes and piled of books. I hadn’t used my bed or any bed for that matter in a while.
I awoke the next day at about seven in the morning and checked on my mom. She was fast asleep. I gathered up my things and waltzed tiredly to my bedroom with the bedspread over my head. When I had a feeling I was in front of my room I took the cover off of my head and my mouth dropped. And apparently so had the roof. A part of the ceiling was now in my bed and some of it was still crumbling down upon it. I sighed and walked back to my moms room, placed the sheets and pillows on her bedroom floor and went back to sleep with thoughts of Family Matters and Boy Meets World running through my head. For about a week, I would need to find somewhere else to sleep while men with hammers and saws put my roof back together again. I knew just the place.
An hour had gone by and I was nearing my block. I thought about next year and the year after that. I thought about rain and the summer. I thought about Animal Farm and communism. I thought random stuff. Really, random stuff. I got to my porch and fumbled with my house keys in an involuntary attempt to prolong my stay outside in the rain.