Okay, I’ve been inundated—inundated!—with requests for more creative posts on this site, and fewer posts about boring old random life stuff that happens to everyone (yawn).
Fair enough. I mean my life may be boring to you, but it’s not (always) boring to me.
So maybe I’ll post an essay or two from a reading I’ve done in the past since it may or may not ever get used again.
Here’s the first. It’s from an event I did in the spring of this year called Toys of Our Youth. I may have made some edits after I wrote this draft (which I can’t find), but it basically captures what I was going for. Imagine someone (me!) onstage, addressing a rambunctious, crazed audience of strangers hurling underwear…
*****LIGHTS UP*****
When I started to think about which toy of my youth to focus on for this event, nothing really jumped to the surface as something I could turn into a good story. I had cap guns and Rubik’s cubes and race car sets. I had an Atari 2600, an Atari 400, an Atari 800—and I have fond memories of all of these things, but not a whole lot more.
Then I got on the phone with my dad one afternoon and told him I was struggling to remember anything significant. As I was talking to him, a rush of scenes from my childhood flooded in. And I realized that there were a few toys which ended up teaching me some kind of life lesson about growing up which have helped me become the person I am today.
When I was three years old, my family stopped in to a toy store called Mr. Mopps in Berkeley after eating breakfast across the street. I imagine the stop was supposed to be a brief thing, that my father had warned us in advance that we were absolutely not going to buy anything at all. As a parent myself now, I know I’ve said those words a number of times to my children.
There was this little rubber superman in a medium-sized basket inside the store. He was about the size my hand and he was attached to a long elastic loop so that when you held the elastic, superman kind of bobbed up and down a little bit. It was cheap and useless but I remember I really, really wanted it. I was crazy about superman at that age. So I started crying as we left the store and then I cried even harder when we were out on the sidewalk. And once we were inside our car and my dad began to drive down the block I started to wail with a desperation so intense that it probably drowned out any and all police, ambulance or fire sirens across the city. I remember my dad furiously banging his fist against the steering wheel at some point, turning the car around and saying something like “Bloody hell, just get the kid the fucking toy already.”
The lesson I learned that day was that negotiations can be effective even when things seem hopeless. Just because someone says no once or twice or even three times does not mean he won’t change his mind later if you start crying hard enough. My youngest son has inherited this lesson in his DNA.
Things got a bit more sophisticated as I grew older.
When I was eight I decided I really wanted a toy batmobile that fired little rubber missiles from its fenders. It cost $5 and instead of crying to get it I was encouraged to save my own money which I earned from doing chores and selling lemonade and chocolate chip cookies in front of our house. Once I’d saved up enough change I went to the store with my big bag of nickels and dimes and made the purchase.
The lesson I learned that day is that if you have financial targets and save responsibly, you can eventually get what you want.
When I was ten I decided I wanted something more flexible than a batmobile. I wanted a remote-controlled truck. So I saved up the money and I bought one at Radio Shack. I loved it. I set up obstacles made from blocks and dominos and drove that truck over and around them to see how high it could climb and what it could knock over.
But the truck stopped working two days later. It just wouldn’t do a thing, even after I changed the batteries.
My parents encouraged me to take it back to Radio Shack to ask for a new one. My mom sat in the car while I walked inside. When I showed the workers the truck, they were skeptical. “We’re going to need to run some tests on this thing to make sure you didn’t do anything on your end to break it,” they told me.
I thought about how I’d driven it over blocks and dominoes in my living room and I worried that maybe I’d overworked the engine somehow “Come back on Thursday,” they told me.
So I went home and wondered what they’d find with their investigations.
When I came back in a couple of days later with butterflies in my stomach they told me they’d checked it out and that there was no water damage or anything else that would have shown neglect. And they gave me a brand new truck as a replacement.
The lesson I learned that day was to stay strong, believe in yourself and exercise patience to get what you rightly believe is yours.
Finally, when I was eleven I started playing basketball regularly at school and decided that I wanted to spend my money on a brand new ball. I went to a local sporting goods store and found this really cool black one that was signed by somebody. Probably Larry Bird or Magic Johnson or Moses Malone. Unfortunately it’s not what I remember most about that ball.
What I remember is that it came in a box and when I pulled it out it was flat and didn’t bounce very well. So I got out my pump and put some more air into it until I could dribble it the way I wanted.
I played with the ball at the schoolyard for a day or two until I noticed that it had become warped. It was lopsided so that when you dribbled it, it bounced a little to one side.
Since I’d learned a lesson about returning defective items with my remote-controlled truck, I took it back to the sporting goods store, they looked at it, nodded that it didn’t seem right and gave me a brand new one. Just like that.
But then that one ended up being flat out of the box too. So I pumped it up, played with it, and then it became lopsided as well.
I took that one back to the store, they checked it out, nodded and gave me another one.
I pumped it up, played with it and then it got lopsided too.
This time, when I took it back to the store, the manager looked angry. “What are you doing to these balls?” he asked me.
“Nothing,” I told him
“Nothing?” he said.
“Just playing with them,” I said. “Dribbling them, shooting them.” I tried to imagine if there could possibly be anything extraordinary about my basketball skills that would screw up the ball. But I was not extraordinary in any way.
“So you’re taking it out of the box, playing with it and then it gets warped?” the manager said. “That’s it?”
“Sure,” I said. “I mean it comes out of the box a little flat, so I pump it up first.”
And that did it. The guy shook his head. He was steaming. He came over to me, this middle-aged dude with a giant mustache and plaid shirt. He looked like the Brawny Paper Towel man. “It’s not the ball,” he said to me. “It’s you. You’re doing this when you pump it up. You’re not supposed to pump up this ball.”
“But it’s flat,” I told him.
“No it isn’t,” he said. “It’s the way it’s supposed to be. The problem is you. You did this. So take this last ball here and I never want to see you back in this store again. Hear me?”
I walked out of there and I never set foot in that store again.
The lesson I learned that day is that everything is always my fault. Always. Everything. It’s me. Just me.
It’s a lesson I still cling to today.
So if anyone isn’t enjoying their drink tonight, it’s my fault. Or if you’re having trouble with a toilet in the restroom, it’s me. You couldn’t find a parking spot? Hey, I’m so sorry.
Bloody hell.
Have a good night.
