Driving Mushrooms

Originally an essay which I decided to call now a story. Enjoy.

I blame my aunty for the concept of chasing something to make you feel and look bigger, when really deep down you believe you are a small and pathetic mound of ever-heightening stupidity; with a face that contradicts the idea that because children are small, they don’t know about bad things that come from big, bad monsters. Since when does one’s age come with a suitcase that thickens and bulges with years’ worth of stored and dusty experiences, only to be brought out and shaken in the faces that are open and ready to drink the sun of a new day? I beg to differ; I wonder how ageism came to be, where it sprouted from and what idiot planted the seed to begin with.



     When I was a little girl, my aunty came to New Zealand from her home in Japan. She was like a bright, warm furnace that frayed the skeletons in my closet, but only to mere frames of reminders that just because her brother was my father didn’t mean he had the same radiance as she did.
He stood protectively like an anxious black widow spider in the doorway of the room me and my sister shared, while Aunty Alice introduced us to the Nintendo NES: I remember prodding it with a pudgy shrimp finger with curiosity as she unpacked it and set it up for us.
       This is a fun game. Very popular in Japan, she said as she unravelled the controls and handed one to me. And then we were playing Super Mario. I saw those golden blocks with the flashing question marks and it made me think: what is this box?
What happens if I hit it from the bottom with my head? Why would someone smash their head for the cost of curiosity? Why is the pixelated wonder still alive and healthy after bumping his head several times through the level?
       Now, after my many years of experience �"God forbid I define myself as experienced at age twenty- I ask myself this: Is that a sign to say that no matter how many times you use your head, you will forever survive and have to live with the repercussions of curiosity?
Yes, I saw that bright red and white spotted mushroom sliding away. It threatened me; hey look at me! I’m gonna fall down the gap and if you don’t eat me you will forever be a grumpy little s**t.
       Even though I didn’t know what it was, my boggled and inquisitive peepers followed it all the way to the end of the ground where the grass stopped at a narrow gap.
     Aunty Alice then leaned forward, and pressed one of the buttons to pause.
That’s a good mushroom, she said. If you eat it, you can be big and happy and have a lesser chance of dying.
But watch out for the bad mushroom, though! It’s purple and if you eat it, you lose.
       At once, I unpaused the game and gobbled the mushroom before it tumbled into nothing and was wasted. I was six; and people now, in their forties, are still boasting that they had an Atari, and what a classic gaming console it was. I had one too, so don’t be so quick to judge.  

After “dying” several times with frustration, I soon realized that there were invisible boxes suspended in the air in which you could knock down a ‘good’ mushroom to your rescue. Somehow, I knew the pixelated Mexican man found these ones a lot more tastier; was it the fact that he worked for his freedom and superiority, or was it the fact that good intentions are hard to find?
       Aunty Alice would always pet my back and point a hardened parsnip finger to the screen and say,
go back! you missed the mushroom! as if I didn’t know that. Her voice was so incredulous and gushing with the desperate drawl of a Niagara Fall’s fury that I simply had to go back and get it, so I could be big and strong and desired. That never stopped the baddies, though. Even after injuring me, I would shrink and they would triumphantly paddle past me without a scratch. Maybe big and strong means nothing after all, or maybe what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. I hate that phrase so much; because how can I be stronger when I’m little and with the face of a gruff failure?
       If we played the game for too long, Dad would storm over and switch the game off with an infuriated flick; and the red power light at the base of the console would die down to a blank charcoal. He wanted to watch the news, where heaps of people would cry and shout about bad things in the world. But I liked Super Mario because the grass was always green, the money never-ending and the music seeming to have a cheerful jiggle to it. Mam was always complaining about how she was running out of money since Dad stopped working because he had a stroke, his third.
       After the third stroke, he touched me less; but he would still grab at parts of my body around the house and hush it off as if it were a playful gesture. On the news there was a lady whose body had been found. I heard the policeman say she was raped and I asked Dad what rape was. He only smiled at me.
The news was too sad, too boring and a lot like home life. I was young and not supposed to worry about things; unfortunately I had plenty to.

 

 

Sometimes when Dad would make me do sad and far from boring but very hurtful things, I would picture the world as green and healthy, and the bad people in my mind as baddies I could stomp to a brown and red slot like a narrowed, victorious eye and move on from.
How wrong was that, and how dare older figures think they can tower over you and say they have seen more than just green grass and bad people who evolve with time and size?
       The big baddie in my house shared his glory of the world with me but I was too new to the world to take it all in. Now it seeps from me and I am like a tired sieve holding too many digested and uprooted dreams and ideas in. I wonder if my sisters feel the same weight, or were they simply carved with optimism because they got away with being untouched? They must have found the hidden pink box with the melodic note on it, and bounced to a high degree through the clouds where there are no baddies and only fortune to collect.
It will soon come to an end, when they reach the tunnel and have to return back to  Earth.    
       I’ve been up there a few times, but Dad was always there to catch me in his web when I descended down; other than touching, one of his few talents to upset people was complaining that his sister had gone back to Japan and left him to deal with the stroke on his own. Boo-f*****g-hoo.  Now he wouldn’t dare try anything, or I would forget myself and hit him one.
Aunty Alice: she knew, I think; but she was more infatuated with the idea of living in fortune with her head in the clouds. I don’t blame her for leaving, but I blame her for other things definitely.

Dear Life,
there is no ageism; only mere fear and regret.
Adults are worse than children, in some ways. There is great disregard, ignorance, confidence and cruelty in this world. They all ate the wrong mushroom; the one that looks pretty but once eaten you are contaminated and doomed to death. You see, cruel desires blind you to the simple things.
       I think I ate it too; and I often regurgitate pain into my words when I write. It’s a habit that can’t be helped, but has proved an effective closure mechanism. I am already as big as they are, because I ride through life on the back of a bright red and white mushroom using my hardened glare as reins for direction and path. Without this, I will surely be a small figure with the face of shrivelled promise and post-mortem hopes. And thus, the birth of driving the mushroom.

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[Pól]

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