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The Hero Experience - Chapter 3

 
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 19, 2015 12:49 pm    Post subject: The Hero Experience - Chapter 3 Reply with quote



____________________________________________


Chapter 3


Awareness grew like a fanned coal in the remnants of a dying fire.

(Hey, that's good. I oughta’ be a writer.)

I awoke from sleep just enough to know I was awakening from sleep — then I went back to sleep. A dream formed out of bits and pieces of old memories and useless information. The result was profound nonsense. Superman owed me money. My mother scolded me for painting the front lawn the wrong color. One of the neighbors discovered that asphalt was edible, so everybody started eating the road.

Finally reality made another bid for my attention and won. I became aware of a very interesting fact. It was a Saturday morning at the beginning of summer vacation. I opened my eyes and saw sunlight that looked the way sunlight must have looked on the first day God invented it, back when it was still brand new. The sky was a perfect shade of sky blue. Life was fine.

Too much beauty can fry the eyeballs, so I closed mine to prevent permanent damage. I cranked up my imagination, which seemed to be running nice and smooth this morning. I became Barry Allen, alias The Flash, the Fastest Man Alive. What a lovely day for a nice supersonic stroll around the world. Decked out in my skintight red costume, I rocketed across the countryside, carefully dodging the trees, lest I put my nose through an oak and anger the forest rangers. Over hill and dale I streaked, a crimson blur, humming a tune by Duane Eddy





* Click to hear Kommotion, the tune Brad was thinking of. Very Happy


When I reached the coast of California I just headed straight out over the Pacific without slowing a bit. The trick is to keep your feet moving really fast and skip across the water like a flat pebble. Splosh, splosh, splosh. Next stop, the Hawaiian Islands.

“Brad, are you up yet?”

It was my mother’s voice, chasing me across the blue waters of the Pacific and somehow defying the speed of sound. Please, no distractions while I’m sea-hopping. Splosh, splosh, splosh.

“Brad, breakfast is almost ready,”

Don’t listen. Concentrate. Hold that mental image. It’s all about momentum and inertia and several other scientific concepts too technical to explain this early in the morning. Splosh, splosh, splosh . . .

“Brad! Get up now or I’ll call your father!”

That did it. Flash might be faster than the speed of sound, but he couldn’t outrun my father. I opened my eyes and Flash sank beneath the waves, fish food in a scarlet leotard, a superhero out of his element and in over his head. The world would mourn his demise.

“Getting up now, Mom.”

I was lying, of course. I just changed superheroes (in midstream, you might say). I became Bolt — as in “of lightning” — a superhero of my own invention. Bolt’s personal spaceship was parked in high orbit around the Earth, and his faithful robot, Atron, cleaned his uniforms, cooked his meals, and kept an eye on the “Crime Scope” in case trouble broke out on Earth and Bolt had to zoom down and save the day.





Bolt was not a workaholic like most of his super-peers. He enjoyed a few creature comforts on his days off. Today’s creature comfort was a rather stunning blond who was sharing Bolt’s heated swimming pool. Things were starting to get pretty frothy in the pool when a disquieting voice shattered the moment.

“Get up, Brad! I’ve got work to do!”

I opened my eyes and the spaceship dissolved around me. I was just Brad Jones again, average citizen, whose house rested firmly on planet Earth and whose faithful humanoid mother cleaned his t-shirts and cooked his meals.

Breakfast had better be worth the demotion.



“Dad, can I have the car today?”

I was sitting at the breakfast bar in the kitchen, glancing nervously at my mother while waiting for an answer to a question it took me ten minutes to get up the nerve to ask. Meanwhile, I was dispatching scrambled eggs to that place inside me which stubbornly refused to turn them into muscles. Dad sat at the end of the breakfast bar, focusing his full attention on the plate of food in front of him.

I had to admit, Mom’s scrambled eggs were pretty good. Atron, Bolt’s faithful robot, tended to overcook them. Tough luck, Bolt. I eat better than you.

“It’s fine with me if your father says so,” Mom said casually. Curses on the male-dominated household. Everything had to go through the chain of command, which prevented a mother’s favorite son from charming her into things her better judgment would otherwise preclude.

“When are you going to cut the grass?” said my dad without looking up from his plate. Some fast talking was required here or I’d spend most of the day savagely attacking innocent vegetation with a machine designed to separate happy blades of grass from their devoted roots.

“Right after the movie, Pop.”

“What movie?” His eyes were still on his breakfast, but I wasn’t fooled. His brain was on high alert, ready to counter any argument I had against spending the day slaying grass.

“Saturday matinee. One o’clock. Cheap rates. A penny saved is a penny — ”

“You’ve got time before you go,” he announced. His breakfast continued to disappear, and my plans to watch a movie were doing likewise.

“Well, yeah, sure,” I said, trying to be casual, failing miserably. “But I gotta pick up Stan and Doug.” This was the crucial moment.

“Don’t those friends of yours ever drive? Are you their chauffer?”

“Stan’s mother only has one car. His father got custody of the other one in the divorce. Doug’s folks won’t let him drive the family car because they say they can’t afford the insurance. And he lives on the other side of town.”

Dad smiled down at his plate of vanishing food, then he looked me in the eye for the first time. His steady gaze and confident smile gave me the impression I'd made a tactical error. “That must be rough on poor Doug. All alone on the other side of town. You’ve got some underprivileged friends.”

Nervously, I tried to smile. Being no actor, the effort probably looked more like what the dentist gets when he asks to see my front teeth. I gave a poor imitation of a chuckle and said, “Well . . . count your blessings, Dad.”

“I can’t. You keep driving off with it.” He didn't take his eyes off me as he continued to smile while he took a bite of his bacon. His clever remark was a good sign, so I laughed on purpose — which, being no actor, probably sounded like me trying to con my father into letting me have the family car when the grass was out there just begging to be massacred. I decided this was the time to play my trump card.

“I think we need gas for the lawn mower. I could get it while I’m out.”

There was a long pause, followed by a weary sigh, after which there was the statement I have given up hope of hearing. “Okay. Hurry back.” He sighed and got up to put his plate in the sink, but I could see that he was still smiling.

I was on the road by eleven. There was so little traffic that I wondered if the state patrol had cleared the roads when they heard I was coming, hoping to minimize property damage and save a few lives. Stan’s house was less than three miles from mine, and so shortly I was sitting in his kitchen, watching him do horrible things to a bowl of cornflakes. It was not a sight for the faint hearted.

“You don’t look so good this morning, sport,” I told him. His eyelids looked distinctly fat, and the bags under his eyes had been recently unpacked but not yet put away.

“I’m hung over,” he said, chewing his cornflakes unmercifully.

“From three beers?” I was astounded.

“I’m not a morning person,” he said, sounding a trifle defensive.

“You barely look like a living person.”

He ignored me and continued to eat the papery-looking cornflakes with infinite patience, staring off into space while he chewed each bite until its atomic structure collapsed. Some of the soggy flakes stuck to the side of the bowl, and I knew they would rapidly harden into concrete and remain there forever.

“Where’s your mother?” I asked.

“Shopping.” Nothing moved but his mouth, like a cow chewing cud. If this was the high point of my day, I was pretty mad at my mother for interrupting Bolt and the blond in the pool.

“What are we doing today?” Stan asked.

“Movie. With Doug. Remember?”

“It’s coming to me.” He closed his eyes and concentrated. “Oh, yeah. Battle in Outer Space. A Japanese flick. For a buck.” He paused, which should have warned me. Then he said, “Loan me a buck.”

“What?” My mouth flew open and my jaw thudded onto the table top, rattling his bowl.

“I think somebody robbed me last night while I was drunk.”

“I was the only one near you last night.”

“Then give back my dollar, you thief.”

It was useless to fight it, so I loaned him a dollar, remembering my father’s remark about underprivileged friends. Actually, I owed Stan five dollars, but in his present condition, he’d never remember it. He finished his flaked concrete and stumbled off toward the bathroom.

Twenty minutes and one quick shower later, Stan looked good enough to go out in public without scaring old people with pacemakers or small children afraid of zombies. I no longer felt compelled to cross his arms over his chest and close his eyes. We were rolling along toward Doug Green’s house by noon.

Good old Doug.

If ever a friend needed a friend, it was him. Doug was about my height, but a lot more muscular. And oh boy, he worked at those muscles. I had seen the weights in his room. Someday I was going to do that and stop envying Doug. I also envied him for having straight black hair and a boldly cut jaw.

I consoled myself by remembering what I did have and what Doug didn’t. For example, I had a family car my parents let me drive. I also had the gift of optimism. Bold jaws, big muscles, and black hair may come and go — especially hair after a man reaches advanced ages like thirty. But if a guy’s got optimism, the world is his oyster. Doug was definitely a few oysters shy of a full bed when it came to his outlook on life. For him the glass was always half empty and definitely not fit to drink because, hey, you didn't know where that water had been.

It wasn’t that Doug constantly moped around with a long face. His pessimism was subtle and tricky. Periodically, like clockwork, Doug would make some somber, practical observation about life that seemed to rob it of its magical potential to be friendly and generous. Doug was of the opinion that, just possibly, nice guys finished last. To Doug, the happy ending was the rare exception, not the rule.

That was Doug.

It took about twenty-five minutes to get to Doug’s house because he lived on the other side of Atlanta. We had met him four years earlier in 1963 when Carl, Stan, and I had taken a bus across town to see Jason and the Argonauts for about the eighth time in three weeks. We started up a conversation with him outside the theater. When we realized he shared a wealth of common interests with us, we started making frequent efforts to include him in our group.

During the drive to Doug's house the conversation between Stan and me covered a wide range of topics. All references to women were purely hypothetical, since neither of us was working too hard at having a love life. Our mutual and earthy friend, Carl Ladinsky, was the Romeo of this quartet, and we tried not to hate him for it. We knew Doug was working at romance whenever he could, but so far the job hadn’t paid much. Times were hard.

When we got to Doug’s house he was eating lunch. First I had endured Stan’s cornflakes, and now this. All I needed to round out my day was to watch somebody eat dinner. Doug’s shy mother let us in and then went to the back of the house so as not to be underfoot. She was a quiet little woman with a defeated look in her eyes that always made me want to ask her along for the ride, just to cheer her up. She looked like she needed somebody to goose her in the ribs and tell her she was pretty. I doubted Doug’s father ever did either of those things. Doug’s stern and stocky dad was shorter than his son, wider than both Stan and me standing side by side, and apparently carved out of some petrified material that closely resembled human flesh. He gave the impression that he’d been Attila the Hun in a former life, but he was making an effort to improve his social skills this time around.

Once the three of us were on the road and away from all family ties, we were free agents. All troubles were quickly forgotten as we drank the heady wine of our conditional independence. We all knew the movie would be a wild and wooly cinematic experience, complete with tiny Japanese spaceships on strings that were supposed to look like large Japanese spaceships in space. Just to get us in the mood, I announced that I was Major Ichiro Katsumiya, an ace pilot and a hero of the Japanese Space Corps. My companions replied that I couldn’t be an ace pilot in Japan until I was at least an average driver in America. I called Stan a white-skinned capitalistic warmonger. He vowed to wipe out my beloved Japan by sending Godzilla to stroll across it and leave large footprints where all the major cities had been.

That was hard to top, so the conversation suffered a few minutes of silence, punctuated by giggles while we pictured Godzilla swatting at model airplanes and squashing teeny tiny tanks. Finally, Stan filled the gap by relating the adventures he and I had experienced the night before, giving his rendition lots of humor, which was easy.

When the tale was told and Stan finally opened up the floor for questions and comments, Doug was fighting back a smile as he tried to look serious, peering at us both with a look of disapproval. “So, I’m riding around with drunks. Well, that’s just wonderful.” He studied Stan and me the way Ward Cleaver looked at his son on Leave it to Beaver when dear little Theodore got caught following the advice of Eddie Haskell. “Actually, I forgive Stan for drinking,” Doug said, still losing his battle with a smile. “Brad’s driving would drive a preacher to drink.”

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” I retorted, “or they might become walkers.”

I looked at Doug in the rearview mirror as he sat in the backseat. Suddenly there wasn’t a smile within miles of my face, though I didn’t think it was because of my threat, since he knew I’d be asking him for gas money later. I’d simply reminded him that he was a teen without a car — which was like being an eagle without wings. That's what dodo birds were for — and that’s what Doug suddenly felt like.

“Are you guys free for the day?” Doug asked. It was an effective way to change the subject, even though I hated the subject he was changing it to.

“Nope. I gotta cut the grass.”

“What about tonight? Any plans?”

“Tonight?” said Stan, jumping into the discussion with both feet. “Hmmm. Tonight. This is Saturday, right?”

“Right.”

“What month?” said Stan. I smiled at Doug in the rearview mirror, and his smile reflected right back. We waited for Stan to go into his act.

“It’s June,” Doug volunteered. Somebody had to be the straight man, and Doug took the job.

“June? Did you say June? The month that rhymes with moon?” Stan was doing a masterful job of looking serious while he spouted nonsense. I was jealous of him, because too often I giggled while trying to be humorous — which always killed the humor, naturally.

“A Saturday in June,” said Stan. “You’re asking if I’ve got plans, right? That’s the question? I hate it when I get the question wrong. Or the date.”

“Yes,” Doug said casually. “It’s Saturday. And Sunday is rapidly approaching.”

“So is July,” I added.

Finally, Stan said, “Okay, yes — I’m free tonight. In fact, I’m free in July, too.”

We were just three ships without rudders, somebody please notify the Coast Guard. If we’d passed a Foreign Legion recruiting office right then, there would have been three guys late for dinner.

When we got to the theater we discovered we were the tallest people in the whole crowd. Of all the movie patrons waiting to buy tickets, the average age was about ten and the average height was about four feet. We towered over their heads, hoping that none of our classmates would drive by the theater. Saturday matinees were the province of the pre-teens, and we were the shamefaced trespassers.





However, once we were inside and seated, the difference in stature was noticeable only to the poor unfortunates who were seated behind us. Those kids would always wonder what that movie was about, since they undoubtedly saw very little of it because our heads blocked their view.

And yet I had to admit they were a great audience. Very responsive. My friends and I felt perfectly free to cheer our hearts out when the heroes beat the bad guys, since the rest of the audience went wild at every opportunity. The kids behind us avenged themselves by seeing to it that we couldn’t hear more than a third of the movie. Luckily, we had seen it before. Take that, runts.

When we left the theater, it was with a feeling of planet-bound claustrophobia. We yearned for high adventure, open spaces, and taller crowds. Mostly for adventure. It was Saturday. I’ve always suspected that Columbus set sail for America on a Saturday. Saturdays can give a man the wanderlust.

“You guys want to have lunch now?” I suggested.

“I just had lunch,” said Doug.

“I just had breakfast,” said Stan.

“Yes or no. Are you guys hungry?”

“Yes,” they both said in perfect synchronization. It was weird, but not unexpected. Youth and hunger are wasted on the young and hungry.

We retired to a McDonald’s, America’s cornucopia, the nation’s inexhaustible Horn of Plenty. We ordered quaint American dishes served by teenaged kids who obviously had more ambition than us. Or stricter parents.




The place was doing a fair business, and as I ate my Mc-Something-or-Other, I entertained myself by observing the cross section of society provided by the constant flow of customers. I guessed at professions and made up personalities for the people around us. Waxing philosophical, I posed a question.

“Do you guys ever wonder about people?”

Doug didn’t answer because his mouth was full, but Stan quickly said, “Nope. Never.”

I ignored his answer. “Yeah, me too.” I looked around the restaurant. “For instance,” I pointed at an old man in overalls waiting in line at the counter, “that guy beats his wife.”

It caught Stan by surprise — not an easy thing to do. He had raised his cup to take a big gulp, and he suddenly snorted explosively into his Coke, almost drowning amidst a combination of coughs and soggy giggles. Doug controlled his own reaction better and just grinned. Then he covered it with a forced expression of thoughtful concern. He was quick to adopt a really bad impression of an English accent when he replied, tilting his head back so that his nose was elevated.

“By Jove, Holmes! How could you possibly know that?”

This was an old game for us, and I was off the bench and onto the gridiron before the coach even told me to put on my helmet.

“Elementary, Watson,” I replied, doing a worse job at an English accent than Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins. “Note the abraded knuckles, the low forehead, and the cruel expression. I’ll wager that the screams of his poor wife fall on deaf ears because his neighbors are too frightened of the brute to call Scotland Yard.”

I was on a roll. Basil Rathbone had nothing on me.

“Wait just a moment, Sherlock,” Doug said, struggling to keep a straight face. “You’re mistaken, sir. That man is just an ordinary carpenter. See the hammer loop in his overalls? Good lord, you can’t possibly think that he’s the murderer we’ve been seeking!”

Stan was making no attempt to either play this game or control his vast amusement at the lunatics who surrounded him. He nibbled at his food and swung his gaze back and forth between Doug and me like a spectator at a tennis match. He was having a ball — no pun intended.

Meanwhile, I reached up and held the corners of my mouth down with a thumb and index finger, trying not to spoil things by grinning like an idiot. Doug was a few thousand times better at this game than I was, and once he got going I’d be lucky to keep up.

“Again you’ve missed the obvious, Watson,” I said with British indignation. “He carries a cat-o’-nine-tails in that loop. The man’s a fiend, pure and simple! He might even be the murderer of the Hildebrand widow! The modus operandi fits perfectly!”

Now it was Doug’s turn to fight with the corners of his mouth. I reveled in the fact that he was keeping a straight face only by a Herculean effort.

“Except for one thing, Holmes,” said Doug, his English accent beginning to sound more like a man from Boston with peanut butter stuck to the roof of his mouth. “The Hildebrand widow was killed by a left-handed man with a wooden leg. You said so yourself.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but I had no idea what to say. I completely blanked. I glanced over at the old guy in the overalls, and I stared at his hammer loop for a moment. I was desperate, so I blurted out the first ridiculous thing that came to mind.

“So, you were fooled by the right-handed hammer loop, eh Watson? But you failed to notice that he just ordered . . . a left-handed cheese burger!” It was lame, sure, but I gave it my best Shakespearian delivery.

Doug struggled visibly with his reply for a moment, then said, “But Holmes . . . how the devil did you deduce that the man has a wooden leg?”

I had him cold, by Jove, and he knew it! I grinned triumphantly. “Now really, Watson. Surely that’s obvious, even to you. Who would be capable of making a more lifelike wooden leg than a carpenter? Our adversary is clever!”

Doug showed the white flag by smiling as he leaned back in the booth and erupted with laughter, a gracious loser in this battle of wits. Stan was cackling so hard that Coke was coming out his nostrils. Not an appealing sight, but as a comment on the effectiveness of my humor, it was better than a positive review in the New York Times. If Stan choked to death, then I had committed the perfect crime. They could name the infamous method after me: the Jones Joke Choke. Professor Moriarty would be green with envy.

I glanced toward the front door of the restaurant and noticed two lovely girls as they entered. They were both wearing tight shorts and t-shirts with cute sayings on the front, but when I tried to read the messages, my eyes kept focusing on things other than the words. One of the girls was blond and tall, and the other one was redheaded and plump in interesting places.

Still enveloped in the British aura of my recent victory, I said, “Ah! A pair of comely wenches, eh?” I looked over at Stan and Doug and added, “Whatever the heck that means."

My two friends turned to look — and they both petrified like zillion-year old trees. I swung my gaze back to the ladies and joined my friends in their petrification. We were very inconspicuous: three snakes with eyes that never blinked. We made mental records of their bone structure and musculature so thorough we could have recognized those girls by their shadows on a cloudy day.

The two young ladies got their food and turned toward us — which was probably one of the more serious mistakes of their young lives, even though they wouldn’t be able to appreciate this for fifty or sixty years.

“Uh-oh. They’re comin’ our way!” I said, sounding panicky. “Uh . . . hey, Doug. Talk to ‘em, okay?”

“Me?” Doug’s eyebrows climbed up his forehead and tried to hide in his hair. “You’re the talker, Jones. You do it.”

“You’ve got black hair. They’ll think you’re Italian.”

“I’m Jewish, you nitwit!”

“Even better.” I was ranting, but I couldn’t stop. I felt like a claustrophobic mutt in the back of the Dog Catcher's truck. “Go ahead, Doug. Charm ‘em.”

The girls sat down near us, which was surprising in view our sex fiend expressions. The blond glanced briefly in our direction, and Doug gave her a thin-lipped smile that screamed insecurity. Stan became fascinated with his French fries all of a sudden. I just sat there looking like a kid who would have dipped their pigtails in my inkwell if I had been sitting behind her in a one-room schoolhouse in 1930.

Suddenly I heard a voice. “Hey. How are you today?”

Oh my God — it was me! I was as surprised by the sound as Doug and Stan, who both stared at me as if a team of famous doctors had just certified me crazy.

“Fine,” said the blond, without looking up. I wasn't even sure she was talking to me.

After an awkward pause, I heard Doug charge in to my rescue. He said just three words.

“You look fine.” He spoke in his deep, melodic voice, and somehow he managed to look like he was posing for a Hollywood 8X10 glossy. His teeth looked nice and white and his eyes actually twinkled. God forgive the poor boy, he meant well . . . but it came out so very wrong. He was trying to sound suave, but it just sounded oily. His eyebrows were still up too high. His thin-lipped smile made him looked like he was hiding two missing front teeth.

I, on the other hand, was all nerves and no coordination. When I tried to take a sip of my drink, the straw missed my mouth and went up my nose.

Meanwhile, Stan was playing Harpo Marx — mute and maniacal. He looked like he didn’t know any of us and wished we would all go away. The girls ignored us elaborately, making graceful feminine gestures while they nibbled their food and sipped their drinks, never once missing their lovely mouths with their straws. Somehow the fact that they didn’t seem to see us helped my nervousness. Invisibility would have been even better. Following that line of thought, deportation to a foreign country would have been best of all. I had to resist the urge to sit on my hands and rock like a seven-year-old. I wanted to say something clever and cool — but what? Nice weather?

“What school do you go to?”

That was Doug again, refusing to show the white flag despite insurmountable odds. Not a bad remark, either. Much better than my weather question.

“Lakeshore,” said the blond, still not looking at us. She made me feel like a secret agent exchanging covert information.

Doug was suddenly at a loss for words, so I leapt into the fray.

“We go to Union Point High.” My throat sounded dry, but I didn’t want to give that straw a second chance to collide with my schnoz. The blond looked directly at me for the first time and blew our secret agent cover. “Do you know Bobby Sloan? He goes to Union Point.”

Somehow I managed to say, “Sure, I know him.“ I was mostly lying, because I didn’t think he actually knew me.

“My sister went steady with him until last week.“ She smiled sadly. I wondered if I should say something nasty about Bobby Sloan, just to show her that I was on her sister’s side. I ignored the fact that I could see Stan out of the corner of my eye becoming amused at my expense.

“Oh, really?“ My mind groped for a reply. Out of nowhere came this. “I haven’t spoken to Bobby in a while. Tell your sister I’m sorry.” I was getting dizzy, probably from hyperventilation. My oxygen-deprived mouth kept right on ranting. “What’s your sister’s name?”

“Barbara.” The girl looked back down at her French fries.

I was losing my audience. Desperate actions were needed. I tried to say something witty. “And what’s her sister’s name?”

She looked up from the fries, a puzzled look on her pretty face. “What?”

“Her sister’s name. You know . . . your name.” I tried to smile, but all I did was show her more gums than a person eating lunch needs to see. Stan’s persistent chuckles were making it hard for me to concentrate, but I resisted the urge to look over at him and threaten to kill him.

“Oh. My name?” She bit her lip and hesitated, then said, “Marie.” Obviously she had not been impressed by either my wit or my gums. I had simply made her look dumb. Great strategy, Brad.

Stan, on the other hand, was giggling like an escaped lunatic. I finally looked over at him, wondering if he was laughing at my own sticky predicament or the two girls’ reaction to the way Doug had started pretending he didn’t know anybody within twenty feet of him.

Bravely I pressed on. My next line was easy. I could trap her with social protocol. “Hi, Marie. My name is Brad. These are my friends, Stan and Doug.”

Stan continued to giggle and cause all the folks around him to doubt his mental stability. Doug looked up from his food and smiled nervously while his circulatory system overloaded his face and made it resemble an Oklahoma sunset.

In spite of being surrounded by maniacs, Marie smiled and nodded. It was a very nice smile, and it made the three of us inch just a bit closer to nervous breakdowns.

“This is Karen,” she gestured at her friend, who obviously wanted to eat her main course even though she couldn’t quite get up the nerve to bite into a large cheese burger while a group of drooling boys were staring at her. Karen’s smile was timid, shy, and absolutely gorgeous in its own wonderful way. Her red hair made her look a bit like the sister Stan never had. I was gaining confidence from Karen’s lack of it. (See, Brad? Girls are people, too!) I wondered if I could shift the conversation over to my area of expertise.

“We just saw a Japanese movie called Battle in Outer Space. Have either of you seen it?”

Marie looked over at me briefly and then turned her attention back to her food. “I don’t like space movies.”

“I saw it,” said Karen.

Wow, this was great! My heart leaped with joy. I’d finally found a kindred spirit! But then she added a casual remark that shot down my hopes.

“My boyfriend loves space movies.”

Okay, this was not great. Involuntarily I glanced at the door. I just knew her boyfriend was abnormally large and entering the restaurant right now, seconds away from discovering that I was poaching in this territory.

Valiantly I tried to carry on the conversation for no apparent reason. “Okay. Ummm . . . did you like it?”

“No, not really. Japanese movies always look silly because the actors’ mouths don’t match the words.”

Being both desperate and gutless, I immediately started agreeing with her. “Oh, yeah, that always makes me laugh, too. Heh, heh.” Then I tried a new tact. “So, have you seen any movies lately that you did like?”

She pondered the question a moment. “The last James Bond movie was good. Thundercloud.”

Doug looked up from his food for the first time in several hours, and he joined the conversation for all the wrong reasons. “It’s Thunderball,” he corrected Karen curtly.

“Oh, right.” Karen flashed a girlish smile. “I think Sean Conway is real cute.”

“Sean Connery,” Doug corrected her . . . again. I saw a pattern here, and little alarm bells went off in my head.

“Yeah, okay, Connery,” Karen said defensively, no longer smiling. She shot a look at Doug, and I knew he was lucky she wasn't a British agent with a license to kill. Doug, however, was gaining confidence from the knowledge that he knew more than somebody else. It was clouding his judgment. He looked over at Marie just as she was finally unwrapping her large cheese burger and getting a good grip on it with both hands.

Doug: ”How about you, Marie? Did you like Thunderball?

Marie: ”Sure. Spy movies are fun, even though the stories are confusing.” She giggled and bit into her cheese burger, setting an example that Karen was quick to follow.

Doug again: ”Yeah, they’re real popular. But the characters are just so ridiculous — they're like cardboard cutouts. And the plots are pretty simple. I can’t imagine anybody being confused by them.”

My brain screamed a silent plea. No, Doug, please stop! Quick, grab your mouth and hold it closed!

I watched Marie as she lowered her cheese burger, dropped her grin, and gave Doug a frosty look. I feared the worst. Doug was obviously missing all the signs that his attempt to impress the ladies with his intellect was having the same reaction as a hard sneeze in the middle of a goodnight kiss.

“Well, I think they are confusing,” Marie proclaimed firmly, and then she started showing more and more interest in her cheeseburger and less and less interest in us. I smiled at Karen, hoping to give her the impression that we just ignored poor Doug when he ranted this way. She smiled back, but I knew it wasn’t the smile she reserved for her boyfriend, Man Mountain Dean, the legendary wrestler.

“Can we buy you girls some desert?” I said, anxiously trying to shift the conversation away from my area of expertise, which had something to do with science fiction movies, but the whole subject gave me queasy feelings at the moment.

“I don’t think so,” said Marie.

“Give you a lift home?” said Doug. It was a wildly optimistic remark. The true nature of the situation had finally dawned on him.

“Thanks anyway,” said Marie.

And then Stan chimed in from way out in left field.

“Want to fool around?”

He was grinning as if the dentist had left him on the laughing gas too long. Everybody froze. Five heads turned slowly in his direction.

“I was just curious,” Stan said casually. He was smiling with lazy-eyed indifference at the mere humans who surrounded him. It was the same expression Zeus gave the woman he knocked up to produce Hercules, just for the fun of it.

Neither of the girls bothered to answer, but the looks they shot at each other spoke volumes about their low opinion of men folk who were still in the boy folk stage of life.

Doug was as stone-faced as his father, Attila, as he gathered up his trash, silently got up, and headed for the exit. I dutifully followed. I could hear Stan behind me as he rounded up his trash too, but I didn’t turn around because I didn’t want him to see how red my face was. Doug was keeping it strictly eyes-front as well. He fumed visibly, and I fully expected him to walk right though the glass door and run up a bill at the restaurant we'd have to work all summer to pay off. When we reached the car, he climbed into the front seat without any conversation, boldly taking shotgun and relegating Stan to the rear — a statement all by itself.

As I pulled away from the McDonald’s, Doug turned to Stan and let his wrath explode all over the backseat.

“Dammit, Jenner, that was crude and embarrassing! What was the point?”

I could see Stan in the rearview mirror, and he shook his head calmly while he gave Doug a look of pity. “Well, you guys were bombing out, so I figured . . . what the hell?”

Doug just stared at Stan for a long indignant moment, and then he said, “When in doubt, make a complete ass of yourself? Is that it?”

Stan held his bland smile in place and let the insult wash past, immune to the venom. He gazed at his friend with Christian tolerance and said, “Ah, come on, Doug. You have to admit, at least those girls will remember us.” He started giggling as he replayed the incident in his head. In spite of myself, I started giggling too. In retrospect, it did seem better than being instantly dismissed as a bunch of shy goofballs who babbled boring nonsense.

Doug, however, didn’t share our view of the situation. He looked at both of us with pure contempt and then turned to stare straight ahead at the crass and uncaring world through the windshield.

Stan leaned forward and laid a gentle hand on Doug’s shoulder, his face a portrait of kindly concern. Softly he said, “Doug, don’t be mad. Those girls weren’t good enough for a guy like you. In fact, they were just a couple of . . . cardboard cutouts.”

Ouch. Doug stiffened when he realized Stan was sticking it to him yet again. I stiffened too, because if a fight broke out in the car, I’d have a hard time keeping it on the road while Doug and Stan reenacted King Kong vs. Godzilla right there in the back seat. But Doug just kept staring straight ahead, and I knew one of his black moods was approaching. Under the circumstances I was actually glad I had to go home soon and cut the grass. Not exactly overjoyed. Just glad.

Stan sat back and ceased his torment of poor Doug. Into the awkward silence I said, “Well, I’ve got to get home and attend to domestic chores. But I’m free tonight. How ‘bout you guys?”

Stan kept silent, and after a long pause Doug said quietly, “I’m not doing anything.”

I was stunned, but I didn't say a word. It was Doug’s way of rising above it. He wanted some time to cool down, but he wasn’t refusing to ever speak to us again.

The rest of the ride to Doug’s house occurred in silence, and he got out with the briefest of farewells. Stan moved to the front seat. When we were on the road again, I said, “I guess we shouldn’t give Doug such a hard time.”

“We? No, you mean me, Jones,” He nailed me with a critical look. “You bend over backwards to keep the peace with that guy. But I hate it when he comes on phony and acts like he’s smarter than everybody else!”

There was some truth to what he said. “Yeah, sure, I know. But he means well. And back there with those girls, he at least tried to talk to them. You just sat there and giggled like a moron while Doug and I roasted slowly on a spit.”

I glanced at Stan and saw that his anger was gone. He started laughing at the memory of the McDonald’s Massacre. He shook his head in sympathy and said, “Ah crap, I knew those girls weren’t going to give us the time of day, and I kept wondering why you two were wasting your time. Hell’s bells, your only good line was, And what’s her sister’s name?’”

He had me cold there. My memory of the incident was riddled with regrets. I wished I hadn’t done this and I wished I had done that. “Why is it so hard to talk to people of the female persuasion?” I wailed pathetically.

Stan knew the question was rhetorical, so he was silent for a moment, then he said, “We’re going to be seniors this year, Jones. No offense, but I’m getting tired of riding around with a bunch of guys who have just as little experience with the female sex as I have.”

This frank assessment cut like a knife, but I faced it like a man and said, “I know what you mean, buddy. I keep feeling like there’s a big party going on out there and we weren’t invited.”

“Exactly,” Stan said, looking uncharacteristically serious. “When school starts, I’m going to join the track team. Or a biker gang. Or the U.S, Marines. Something that will get me noticed by the people in this world who aren't male! I’m tired of being ignored!”

He was giving himself a personal pep rally, so I played the cheerleader. “Right!” I shouted. “Tell ‘em, brother!”

“I’m bustin’ out, folks! I’m breakin’ all the rules!” His voice rose in volume as he addressed the road ahead. He rolled down the window and leaned out as he raised his fist and shook it at the universe. “Get out of my way, people! I’m pissed off and proud of it!” The wind whipped his fiery red hair like the Russian flag in a brisk wind.

“You better listen to this man!” I screamed, pointing at Stan. “You’ve been warned!”

The bright blue sky of a perfect Saturday afternoon was the only witness to this passionate declaration. And after all, there could be no witness in the universe that was truer . . . or bluer.

________________________________________________________________



Cutting grass really gives a man time for introspection. I spent an hour and a half pushing a machine around the yard, sweating and introspecting.

Conclusion: the minor failure with the two girls had depressed me more than I would have guessed.

Additional conclusion: being the oldest and tallest person in the audience of a Saturday matinee had adverse affects on a man’s ego. It implied immaturity. Stan was right. It was time we left our childhood behind. We needed recognition and involvement. A guy couldn’t spend his whole life in the audience of a Saturday matinee.

It was a profound thought. Will Rogers lives again.

Cutting the grass was followed by a hot shower which felt so good I wondered if sex could really be any better. I might never know at my present rate of development. After the shower I climbed into a pair of cutoff jeans and collapsed onto my bed with semi-wet hair. A big sigh was followed by total relaxation. As I lay there sprawled out like a beached squid, arms and legs pointing in all directions, I felt a somber mood wrap around me like a cold, wet blanket.

I was a poor teenager who didn’t get his invitation to life’s party.

I was beginning to amuse myself. Pathos clashes with optimism, and with me, optimism always wins. Why should I feel sorry for myself? Sure I’d do all those things other people did. Someday.

Cheer up, Brad! You’re young, you’re reasonably good looking, and you’re healthy. Someday your fairy God Mother will float through the window, wave her magic wand, and turn you into a real boy. Even Pinocchio lost his virginity eventually. They should make a sequel and set us straight about that.

But suddenly, and without a bit of warning, my optimism suffered a power failure as I rolled over and looked at my room with an objective and critical eye. Several things about the room suddenly struck me as being hopelessly connected to my younger years. The picture of Green Lantern that hung on my wall was a standout example. I asked myself the hard question. Did I resent his childish presence? Did Green Lantern seem ridiculous and silly in his skintight green-and-black outfit? Could I pull that picture off the wall and chuck it into the trash without a backward glance?





The answers to these questions were — surprisingly — no, no, and no. That silly picture was an important symbol. I yearned to look like him, to be like him, and to fight evil like him. I did not idealize James Bond or Richard Petty or Sandy Koufax or Willie Mays. I didn’t want to play baseball or drink beer or be one of the Good Old Boys.

What I wanted to do was streak through the clouds and strike fear into the hearts of villains and make Lois and the girls at the office swoon at the sight of my rippling muscles, so well displayed in my skintight costume of indestructible material.

A voice in my head scolded me severely. You’re just a naïve kid, Brad my boy. Clayton Denault was dead right. That crap is for children. That stuff is fantasy, through and through, one hundred percent. It doesn’t exist in the real world! I thought about that for a second, and then I replied to the scolding voice in my head.

Maybe so . . . but if that’s true, what a shame. Who wants to live in a world without heroes?

______________________________________________




_________________
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)
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