Chapter 2 / Poor Me

Chapter 2 / Poor Me

A Chapter by justjohn

 

Chapter 2
Poor Me
 
Remember the guardian angel I told you about earlier? He’s the other main character here. My wife and kids and parents and siblings and relatives and friends and co-workers and acquaintances are the supporting cast. They are a conventionally normal crowd, appropriately interspersed with the proper percentage of odd ducks. I, for my part, am relentlessly normal. Obsessively normal, perhaps. A buddy once called me “lethally normal.” Another one was more clever: “Uncommonly normal,” he joked. I chuckled and put it out of my mind. Until just now, it seems.
 
“Uncommonly normal?”
That’s my guardian angel. He butts in a lot, mostly because I’m trying to put him out of a job. What with being constantly normal and all.
Yup, and don’t forget uncommonly normal, Ricardo. (His name is Ricardo. It really is.)
“And so, you’re called this because, what, your… normal-ness is too, um, abnormal?”
I think it’s just an expression, Ricardo. Stop being so sarcastic. Anyway, that's a losing battle. Ricardo was born sarcastic, or at least he came that way when we first met.
 
* * *
 
I’m seven. Recess is almost always fun. But today, since it’s Friday, it takes its regularly scheduled turn for the worse.
“Lunch money, FREAK!” yells Walter Green, the official bully of Sunnyvale Elementary School. Walter is in fifth grade, which explains why it is so easy for him to grab me by the neck and slam me against the brick wall. Meanwhile, Walt’s posse snickers. This has been going on for a good two months now, and I’m getting tired of it. I haven’t done anything about it, but it’s getting old. Courage has never been my strong suit, but I suppose any kid gets tired of giving his lunch quarters away every single Friday just so some future ex-cons can go buy whatever it is they buy when they’re too young to smoke.
“What if I don’t, uh, want to?” I hear myself say in between breaths. I’m a little taken aback by my own words. Whatever will I dream of saying next?
Next, I say “Ugh,” reacting to the impact of Walter’s knee in my stomach. More goons laughing as I clutch my ribs with one hand and dig for that lunch money with the other. Walter puts out his hand, receives my dollar’s worth of coins, and mutters “Good decision, freak,” as he struts away.
 
Stupidly, I decide then and there to make a big stand next time. I will fight for my lunch quarters, I will not be the kid who continually gives in to his stereotypical bully. This ends next Friday, Big Walt.
 
So a week goes by in what seems like minutes, and suddenly my nemesis is again ambling over to me, right in the same spot he beat me up at a week ago. For reasons unknown to man, I’d previously emptied my pockets, so even if I’d WANTED to fork over the money (and I do suddenly find myself very much wanting to), there’d be no way to make that happen.
“Freak. Hand it over. Don’t make me hurt you.”
“Uh, no, Walter, not today.”
“Freak. The money. Now.”
“Don’t have any. Musta, yeah, forgot it.”
He lunges, he swings his meaty fist, I duck, I miraculously evade another punch, and out of the blue, I kick him in the nuts. This works in spectacular fashion �" he doubles over, clutching his crotch, moaning. I guess I didn’t expect this level of success, because all I do is stand there, observing his pain, wondering what comes next. He stays hunched over for a moment, then he croaks: “Get him.”
My lack of a plan B comes clearly into focus when Walt’s four enforcers bolt right at me. I take off around the corner, and I run, like the wind for a while, then like the winded, which is when I trip on the stairs, tumble awkwardly to their base, and crunch goes my arm.
Great. I managed to beat MYSELF up. Shock’s over, and as I roll over, it begins to hurt more than a sprained wrist ought to, it hurts like nothing I’ve ever felt, so I don’t look down. Instead, I start sobbing, all the while thinking, you were right, Walter, I am a freak.
And Walter, right on cue, barrels down the steps, three at a time. He lands next to me, flips me onto my back, c***s his arm. But then he glances sideways at my nauseatingly misshapen arm, and quickly turns away, as if to puke. Which he doesn’t, but still, I get the point. My arm is not just regular-old broken. Something is not right.
His goons arrive on his heels, they grimace violently when they see me, and one of them has the presence of mind to go hunt down an adult. Fifteen minutes later, I’m in the hospital, where I’ll spend the next three days. Turns out they had to work pretty hard to get that bone back INTO my arm.
 
At some point within those three days, that’s it, I decide. No more idiotic heroics for me. From now on, I will blend in; I will give in to life’s bullies within reason, and try my best to never be called ‘freak’ again. I will act normal. As normal as I possibly can. All the time. It doesn’t pay to color outside normal’s lines.
 
The day I get home, a rainy Monday, after a long session of staring at my cast �" this is when I meet Ricardo for the first time. My mom, wanting to make a joke, says she’s going to the store to buy me a new guardian angel for when I return to school. The old one must have expired or been transferred, she jests. Haha, I tell her, and all she REALLY brings back is some pizza and ice cream for dinner… but sure enough, when I turn the light off that night to fall asleep, there he is flying around in the corner of my room, a winged, robed, miniature human-shaped spirit being. I blink, and he speaks.
 
“Hi, I’m Ricardo, your guardian angel. I’ve been keeping an eye on you for six years now, ever since your almost-two-year-old self swallowed that unshelled peanut you found under the sideboard. Thought we should meet at last, after all this time.”
 
Now you’d think I’d be elated to meet a real, live angel, but I’m too busy being mad about my recent lame injury. So I lay into him: “Where were YOU Friday? Come on! I have a guardian angel watching over me for six years, and when I need him the most, he disappears? That does me no good at all!” I’m pretty pissed at Ricardo. An unnecessarily broken arm is not cool no matter how old you are. In second grade, it’s like a life sentence to Boredom Penitentiary. And surgery is never, ever cool, especially not three days hence. Plus, it hurts today, more than yesterday.
 
“What kind of guardian angel do you think I am?” Ricardo replies. “My job IS NOT to keep you from any unpleasantries. My job IS to keep you from mortal peril as best I can, within the rules and regulations of my powers. If I spared you all discomfort, all the time, I’d be anything but an angel.” He’s smirking. My guardian angel has an attitude. He uses big words, too.
“Oh,” is all I manage. “But I still hurt myself pretty bad.”
“It could have been a lot worse,” he says, with a dash of serious mixed in this time. “I pushed your arm around at the last fraction of a second, to make sure it hit the pavement first. Imagine if you’d landed headfirst. Kids would have called you gravel-face or worse all year, assuming you ever woke up,” he added. Eyebrows raised: “And I’m thinking that you’re not keen at all on being called a freak.”
“You noticed,” I admit. “I just want to be normal, uh, guardian angel dude.”
“Like I said, I’m Ricardo. Rick if you want.”
“Thanks Ricardo. And thanks for making things a little less horrible than they could have been.”
“You’re welcome. That’s what a guardian angel normally does.”


© 2010 justjohn


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Nice, John! More please!

I'm a little bitter that you've preemptively headed off my planned bipolar reviewing tactic by publishing a chapter containing the concept of "uncommonly normal" in the first paragraph, such that any attempt on my part to be witty will, instead, be assumed to be immitation, but... oh, well. I wasn't likely to be that clever, anyway. :)

Seriously, though - More please.

Posted 15 Years Ago



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Added on February 17, 2009
Last Updated on September 5, 2010


Author

justjohn
justjohn

Seattle, WA



About
I'm a novel-starter who aspires to graduate to a novel-finisher. I like to think of myself as aware politically, semi-enlightened spiritually, and seriously unserious. more..

Writing