Two days after my 3rd birthday, Dad came home from cashing the week's pay with a horror story about how hard it was to find an ordinary round rubber ball on the island of O'ahu. He had one, and he made sure I knew that his shopping for it was a supreme sacrifice. It was his Iwo Jima, his landing on Normandy Beach, his Alamo. Except that he had lived, of course, and was unscratched.
It was about 4 inches in diameter. I remember it being red, white, and blue, with five-pointed stars on it. The important thing, though, was that it was spherical, and it bounced predictably.
I completely ignored his speech about how much pain he went through to get the ball. All I cared was that I was going to be bouncing it.
And I bounced it, and bounced it. I was obsessed, really, with bouncing the ball. That's what I had wanted it for. I'd seen another boy bounce a ball, and I wanted to do that, too. Endlessly.
My Father could not relate to that. He offered to play catch with me. I kept bouncing the ball. He had to keep reminding me what the point of playing catch was. Finally he gave up. "Why did he need the damn ball so badly if he didn't want to play catch with it?" I was free to bounce it to my heart's content.
For days I bounced it on the sidewalks all around the house. I wasn't allowed to take it away from the house. It was too precious, the sacrifice to get it was too great, for me to ever lose it.
Then I discovered that if it hit a wall it would bounce back to me. I bounced it off the front of the house. This went on for about two minutes before my Mother sent me around back, hoping the noise would be tolerable back there. I then bounced it off the back of the house over and over again, softly singing chants to myself.
After doing this for an hour or so the ball took a bounce off something on the lawn and rolled into the crawl-space under the house. At that point there were slats in the way, and the space was too low for me even if I could get past the slats. I tried to reach the ball but my arms wouldn't stretch that far. My Mother's would, though. I knew that she would have to help me get the ball that Dad had struggled so much to shop for.
So I hollered as loud as I could, "E Mami! Ke ka'a ka pōpō malalo o ka hale!"
My Mother came to the kitchen window at the back of the house and looked out. "What did you say?"
"Ke ka'a ka pōpō malalo o ka hale!" I pointed under the house.
She came out and looked where I was pointing. She said, "The - ball - rolled - under - the -house."
I was really excited for a second. I thought she had understood Hawaiian finally. I said, "Ae."
But she hadn't understood. She said, "Say 'The - ball - rolled - under - the -house.'" She was just describing what she could see and giving me an English lesson.
I slowly repeated, "Da pall wollet una da hale." Then I added, "malalo o ka hale," for emphasis.
She was satisfied that she had made progress with me, and got the ball out, and I went back to the wonderful bouncing.
Showing posts with label ball. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ball. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Sunday, July 1, 2007
Another Crappy Birthday
OK, it wasn't as bad as the first. It was even better than the second, which wasn't celebrated at all, since animals don't get birthday parties.
It began with my Father getting his photographic equipment out. He set up a tripod in the middle of the living room, and a dining chair was set in front of it.
I was placed in the chair. He had to focus the camera. He measured the light and did his calculations to set the exposure time just right. He had to hang a sheet up to block sunlight from the window.
Then the big moment came. My Mother handed me an oblong object and my Father said, from behind the camera, "Here it is! Here's the ball!" I was excited! I looked around for the ball. I didn't see it, but I was sure it was there somewhere. I was happy, and there was a flash, as my Father got this picture.
After the picture was taken I said, naturally, "Where ball? What ball?"
My Father said, "It's in your hand, silly"
How is a football a ball to a 3-year-old who has never even seen a football game?
I've often wondered how bad it would have been if we were a normal family, and my parents hadn't tried to kill me on my first birthday, and I hadn't only just recently begun to bond with my Father again.
The way things were, it just symbolized everything that was wrong. I had a Father who couldn't see me unless he was imagining me being him. If I couldn't be identical to him, I was disposable. My Father was a football fan. I must be a football fan.
Even before I started crying, my Mother said, "I told you he wanted a round ball." I burst out in tears, and my Father said, "It's a ball! What's wrong with him that he can't see it's a ball!" "It's not a ball," she said. "It's a football." "A football is a ball!"
It took several minutes for my Father to calm down. Mother talked him into promising to get a real ball soon. I was talked down out of my sobbing, as I gradually was convinced that the next time wouldn't be just like this one, and the next "ball" wouldn't be shaped like a donkey, or the Eiffel Tower, or a stupid coat hanger.
Another present was brought out. I got a "kelepona", a telephone. It was a toy telephone with a spinning dial, just like the new one that my parents had recently got, replacing the old wall model.
Below are four photos. In all but the one on the lower left I was Kona. My Mother said something mean about me just before that shot was taken, and Alaka'i came out, protecting Kona from hearing the insult. You can see anger that Kona wouldn't have had. My Mother said to my Father, "See? See what I've been telling you? Look at him. You can see he's different! I told you the freak's got a split personality!"
My father told her she was crazy. "There are no such things as split personalities."
It began with my Father getting his photographic equipment out. He set up a tripod in the middle of the living room, and a dining chair was set in front of it.
I was placed in the chair. He had to focus the camera. He measured the light and did his calculations to set the exposure time just right. He had to hang a sheet up to block sunlight from the window.
Then the big moment came. My Mother handed me an oblong object and my Father said, from behind the camera, "Here it is! Here's the ball!" I was excited! I looked around for the ball. I didn't see it, but I was sure it was there somewhere. I was happy, and there was a flash, as my Father got this picture.
After the picture was taken I said, naturally, "Where ball? What ball?"
My Father said, "It's in your hand, silly"
How is a football a ball to a 3-year-old who has never even seen a football game?
I've often wondered how bad it would have been if we were a normal family, and my parents hadn't tried to kill me on my first birthday, and I hadn't only just recently begun to bond with my Father again.
The way things were, it just symbolized everything that was wrong. I had a Father who couldn't see me unless he was imagining me being him. If I couldn't be identical to him, I was disposable. My Father was a football fan. I must be a football fan.
Even before I started crying, my Mother said, "I told you he wanted a round ball." I burst out in tears, and my Father said, "It's a ball! What's wrong with him that he can't see it's a ball!" "It's not a ball," she said. "It's a football." "A football is a ball!"
It took several minutes for my Father to calm down. Mother talked him into promising to get a real ball soon. I was talked down out of my sobbing, as I gradually was convinced that the next time wouldn't be just like this one, and the next "ball" wouldn't be shaped like a donkey, or the Eiffel Tower, or a stupid coat hanger.
Another present was brought out. I got a "kelepona", a telephone. It was a toy telephone with a spinning dial, just like the new one that my parents had recently got, replacing the old wall model.
Below are four photos. In all but the one on the lower left I was Kona. My Mother said something mean about me just before that shot was taken, and Alaka'i came out, protecting Kona from hearing the insult. You can see anger that Kona wouldn't have had. My Mother said to my Father, "See? See what I've been telling you? Look at him. You can see he's different! I told you the freak's got a split personality!"
My father told her she was crazy. "There are no such things as split personalities."
Pronoun Problems
At first, it was clear to me that Kona was me with a different personality. But that didn't last long. As it seemed that Kona stayed behind when I roamed away from the house, or anyway, he wasn't accessible when I was with Lani and Lono, the illusion was created that he had a separate physical existence. Since I was only just turning three, that illusion could overcome my limited experience with the world. I came to think of Kona as capable of splitting off from me.
The use of the word "me" gets problematic. At first, Kona is a creation of my imagination. He's an idea that has been allowed to take on a life of its own.
But people who have thought deeply about human existence carefully for thousands of years will tell you that we are all ideas that have been allowed to take life. All existence is illusion, right? This is part of what that means. The me that did the creating of Kona was a fiction to the same degree that Kona started out being.
Once Kona could be believed in, once the illusion was strong enough, Kona had as much right to be the "me" that the first imaginer had. I should say imagined imaginer. Alaka'i didn't really imagine Kona into existence. Kona came into existence by the same imagination that imagined Alaka'i into existence, and that imagination simply imagined that it was Alaka'i.
At any rate, it's admittedly a tangle, and I dealt with it at the time by using "me" relatively. "Me" was whoever I was at the time. There were 3 names. Alaka'i meant the original personality. Kona meant the new one. Wesley meant either one, depending on who was active.
By the way, my English was still not very good. I mostly pronounced words in accordance with Pidgin rules for changing English sounds into Hawaiian sounds. That means b and f become p, that s, t, d, z, zh, sh, ch, and j and g all become k and sometimes t, that r becomes l, and that vowels are inserted after consonants that don't already have them. So "Wesley" was actually "Wekali" to me, accent on the first syllable.
I still wouldn't use Wekali with Lani and Lono, because it meant nothing to me, except that my parents gave it to me, and I detested it.
That's not to say I detested all of my parents' gifts. My Father was by now in the habit of spending a small amount of each payday's check on cheap presents for me. There were jacks, marbles, toy cars, toy soldiers, pinwheels, balloons, and sometimes picture books. Not all bad. I learned that Fridays meant stuff.
As my birthday approached I kept asking if that Friday's stuff included the promised ball, only to be told that my birthday hadn't arrived. I didn't know calendars yet.
The use of the word "me" gets problematic. At first, Kona is a creation of my imagination. He's an idea that has been allowed to take on a life of its own.
But people who have thought deeply about human existence carefully for thousands of years will tell you that we are all ideas that have been allowed to take life. All existence is illusion, right? This is part of what that means. The me that did the creating of Kona was a fiction to the same degree that Kona started out being.
Once Kona could be believed in, once the illusion was strong enough, Kona had as much right to be the "me" that the first imaginer had. I should say imagined imaginer. Alaka'i didn't really imagine Kona into existence. Kona came into existence by the same imagination that imagined Alaka'i into existence, and that imagination simply imagined that it was Alaka'i.
At any rate, it's admittedly a tangle, and I dealt with it at the time by using "me" relatively. "Me" was whoever I was at the time. There were 3 names. Alaka'i meant the original personality. Kona meant the new one. Wesley meant either one, depending on who was active.
By the way, my English was still not very good. I mostly pronounced words in accordance with Pidgin rules for changing English sounds into Hawaiian sounds. That means b and f become p, that s, t, d, z, zh, sh, ch, and j and g all become k and sometimes t, that r becomes l, and that vowels are inserted after consonants that don't already have them. So "Wesley" was actually "Wekali" to me, accent on the first syllable.
I still wouldn't use Wekali with Lani and Lono, because it meant nothing to me, except that my parents gave it to me, and I detested it.
That's not to say I detested all of my parents' gifts. My Father was by now in the habit of spending a small amount of each payday's check on cheap presents for me. There were jacks, marbles, toy cars, toy soldiers, pinwheels, balloons, and sometimes picture books. Not all bad. I learned that Fridays meant stuff.
As my birthday approached I kept asking if that Friday's stuff included the promised ball, only to be told that my birthday hadn't arrived. I didn't know calendars yet.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
