Write about an event from your childhood through your adult eyes. Add perceptions that you could not have known at the time.
Back when I used
to live in Virginia, my brother and I would often invent our own sports to
entertain ourselves on the long summer days when playing video games were
considered a shameful activity in the midst of such beautiful afternoons. I
remember these games to be sporadic manifestations of our imaginations combined
with our battle to overcome the monotony of daily life. Often, they would come
to fruition out of our usual competitive nature with one another; even though
most of the games we invented never seemed to have any real goals in the first
place. Our parents were always against us seeing any ‘R’ rated movies growing
up, however, violent action movies were never a problem. This was also before
the era of violent video games so we had to use our imaginations to fuel our
need for an aggressive output. That being said, this particular game we
invented seemed to be the one to end them all. The destruction of our youth.
I
can’t exactly remember what this game was called, although I do recall what it
consisted of. I imagine it arose from the type of dispute we always had over
‘who got who, first’ every time we shot at each other with our pointed fingers.
That was how ‘The Shooting Game’ came to be called ‘The Stick Game.’ I’m sure
you can figure out where this is going, and it pains me to think that we didn’t
at the time. If you’ve ever heard your parents tell you not to do something
because there was a chance someone could get their eye poked out, this was one
of those situations. Nevertheless, the game consisted of throwing sticks at
each other while hiding behind two adjacent trees. The object was to try and
dodge the other player’s stick while trying to hit your opponent at the same
time. Let’s just say my brother won after I dove out from behind my tree and
connected my left eye to his stick.
As
soon as this happened, I ran inside and cried to my mother like a little girl.
I was then rushed to an eye doctor to see if there had been any real damage to
my retina. I could only imagine the hell my brother was going through at home
with my crazy father, despite the game being his idea in the first place.
According to the doctor, my vision appeared to be fine, which made me wonder
why I was forced to wear an eye patch over my face for the next two weeks.
Although I knew how ridiculous it made me look, I kind of liked looking like an
Asian pirate baby. I suppose it made me feel like a man who now had a cool
battle scar and a good story to tell his friends at the lunch table. After I
came back, however, my dad pulled my brother outside by his sleeve as I walked
into the house. My brother began crying after he saw the patch on my eye.
“Look at him!” he
cried, “Look at what you did to your brother!” It was then that I felt
something strange come over me that I had never felt before. At the time, I
couldn’t exactly describe it. It wasn’t sadness or empathy. And it wasn’t even
the sight of my brother breaking down over such an unforeseeable accident. It
was my father. It was the first time I had actually seen him give a shit about
my general well being. I mean, I knew he was doing this to teach my brother a
lesson, but it was over something that he’d done to me. Something that might’ve actually caused me permanent damage for
the rest of my life. It was then that I knew why I started to cry in that moment. My father might act like he hates
me sometimes, but there was something in him that caused him pain at the sight
of me actually getting hurt. What was this feeling? And why had I never seen it
before?
