Life's Little Lessons

I remember a string of little lessons that whacked me around the beginning of second grade. None of them were major life events, like attempted murder or gang warfare, but each little lesson taught me that my reality and my world view were alien to others.

I often underwent fugue states in those days. I would be walking along and suddenly find myself two blocks further down the road with no memory of the intervening walking. Some of these hiccups in consciousness turned out later to be Alex slipping in and out. But some of them never got any explanation. It wasn't until I was ready to start 3rd grade that I really began to experience consciousness as a continuous state, and came to expect it to remain so.

Somehow, it never even occurred to me that other people didn't experience disconnected consciousness the way I did. The lesson that made it clear to me happened one day when I went to visit my friend Charles, the wood eater. I was outside the door to his house when I entered a fugue state. I regained consciousness in the kitchen of Charles's house. In front of me was a very pissed off Charles's Dad, who was demanding to know how I got in. I told him the truth. I didn't know how I got in. One minute I was outside, the next minute I was inside.

Charles's Dad said that was a crock. I had to know how I got in. I was lying, he said. He called my parents, who had to come and get me. He treated me like a criminal while we waited for them to come. He told me and my parents that if it ever happened again he'd call the MPs.

Another lesson was the Marble Game. I had loads of marbles because my Father would buy small bags of 10 or a dozen for me now and then, and they added up. I never played marbles though. I didn't know how.

A new kid I got to know told me he'd show me how to play marbles. So I got my marbles out and he played marbles with me. It was one of those deals where every time I thought I was getting the hang of it a new rule would be announced, and I'd find out I'd gone out-of-bounds, or gone upsies or downsies, or some idiotic thing, and another marble would go to the other kid's side.

Finally my mother said my guest had to go, it was time for dinner. I started collecting up my marbles, and my marble instructor said, "Hey, what are you doing? I won those!"

Through events like that I learned that boys are from Mars, girls are from Venus, and I'm from Earth, where we don't expect people to read minds. How was I supposed to know we were playing for the marbles? He never said so! I screamed foul so loud he thought he was going to get in trouble, and ran off.

[Below: After that I couldn't be interested in games of marbles, but I still appreciate the art of it. Photo by Sam Fentress, see larger version.]

Then there was the rabbit incident. The rabbit was a half-inch plastic representation of a rabbit meant for a charm bracelet, which I had found somewhere and adopted. I carried it loose in my pocket and took it out from time to time and talked to it. His name was "Rabbit." He may have been related in my mind to Crusader Rabbit. Or not. But he was definitely one small increment away from imaginary friend toward real friend, by virtue of having a physical presence, albeit tiny and inanimate.

A kid named Roger started hanging with me. I thought of him as Roger Silver Dollar, because his hair was mostly light brown but he had a patch of silver hair the size and shape of a silver dollar on the back of his head. Roger was very pushy and domineering. I actually felt sorry for him, because it seemed to me that his urgent need to have his way all the time was sad. He wasted a lot of his own energy getting other people in line. I tried to help by humoring him, and always doing things his way.

I drew the line at Rabbit however. He said Rabbit was stupid. He said Rabbit wasn't real and doesn't really talk to me, so I should get rid of him. I said I didn't care if he was real, I still liked him. Roger said you can't like something that isn't real. I said that must be wrong, because I do.

Finally one day when I took Rabbit out to look at him, Roger snatched him out of my hand and threw him down a sewer drain.

I was in such tears over it, my Mother called Roger's Mother to demand an apology. Instead of saying she was sorry, Roger's Mother said he had done me a favor. It was just a piece of plastic, she said. I needed to be made to be realistic.

So I learned that there are human beings who detest imagination so much that they will destroy anything that gets its life from it.

These people called themselves Christian. Roger told me Jesus was the True Son of God, and he wasn't dead, but was resurrected, and he talked to him every night when he said his prayers. He knew Jesus was real because the Bible told him so.

It occurred to me there'd be no hope of retaliating by shoving Jesus down a sewer drain, 'cause he'd just come back up after three days in the sewer. The Christians have got their imaginary friend rigged so you can't hang him, drown him, or shoot him.

Too bad. Invulnerability is stunting.