(no subject)
it got a lot longer and probably not a drabble anymore, but ihad to put it somewhere.
nature vs. nature
Eddie hasn’t figured out how to count his blessings, yet. So he’s been numbering them and rearranging them and trying to find combinations that add up to perfect numbers and inspire perfect sequences. But with every one he adds to the shelf, he has to erase the numbers from two more. Finding the fiver under the bench was some kind of amazing and entirely deserving of #394, but that bird he discovered the day before last made one big mess in his bathroom and left him with a nasty horrible feeling in his stomach. Bird flu, it must be, influenza his mother had warned him about. He nearly threw up on the pretty girl down the hall and she slapped him so hard his eyes stung, which took away the importance of #196: “girl down the hall brushed her arm against me in the elevator and we’ve created the foundation for physical contact”. Physical fucking contact; his mum told him that if a girl hurts you, she just might like you.
His mother gave him a lot of nice solid pieces of advice that are just monumentally cluttering up his blessings. Making him stock pile too many of them up and creating the basis for a very unfortunate spring cleaning. She told him to always “say what you feel” and “stay true to yrself” and a lot of other bullshit that really only serves to devastate a child’s self-esteem. Independence is brilliant, but at seven and a half it’s better to be co-dependent and the slightest bit conformist for the sake of friends to play with at recess and people who will share yr pudding, not just take it away from you.
“Say what you feel”. Well Janie down the street didn’t feel quite the same way about jumping to the moon on a frog’s back; in fact she felt it was stupid. “That’s why God invented airplane, dumb head”. And “Stay true to yrself” wasn’t so great when the yrself you were at the moment thought baseball caps looked great on sideways and all the other boys informed you that not only did it look “messed up, loserface” but that anyone who was anyone liked hockey.
Oh yes, his mother was a great provider. Better than “yr son of a bitch father. What did he every give you? Big blue lying eyes and went on his right fucking way now didn’t he? Gave you a face to help you get away with things and didn’t really bother to stay around and help learn to fight.”
His nose, ears and chin were his own, but he had no doubt that his eyes were indeed stolen. They’d gotten him into trouble nearly as many times was they had set him free, they were fairly balanced in that aspect. His height was another thing his father could take the blame for. His mother was barely breaking five feet, but Eddie was soaring. Devoid of skill as he was, he consistently made the basketball team. His gene pool hadn’t failed him. But he ate the entire apple. It amused his friends, seemed cost efficient to him and drove his mother insane. His father did the same thing: the skin, the core, the seeds, the pit, everything save the stem. It was the most obnoxious of reminders. “Eat the whole fucking thing while yr at it, what more could the stem hurt?” It wasn’t a very attractive habit and not one that earned him parental love, but he did it at least once a day without fail, until his mother started crossing them off the grocery list.
“Count yr blessings, boy. Yr damn lucky to have had a mother like me.” Eddie locks the cupboard when he’s done re-labeling for the night. His head hurts from recognizing how “goddamn fucking lucky” his childhood was.
nature vs. nature
Eddie hasn’t figured out how to count his blessings, yet. So he’s been numbering them and rearranging them and trying to find combinations that add up to perfect numbers and inspire perfect sequences. But with every one he adds to the shelf, he has to erase the numbers from two more. Finding the fiver under the bench was some kind of amazing and entirely deserving of #394, but that bird he discovered the day before last made one big mess in his bathroom and left him with a nasty horrible feeling in his stomach. Bird flu, it must be, influenza his mother had warned him about. He nearly threw up on the pretty girl down the hall and she slapped him so hard his eyes stung, which took away the importance of #196: “girl down the hall brushed her arm against me in the elevator and we’ve created the foundation for physical contact”. Physical fucking contact; his mum told him that if a girl hurts you, she just might like you.
His mother gave him a lot of nice solid pieces of advice that are just monumentally cluttering up his blessings. Making him stock pile too many of them up and creating the basis for a very unfortunate spring cleaning. She told him to always “say what you feel” and “stay true to yrself” and a lot of other bullshit that really only serves to devastate a child’s self-esteem. Independence is brilliant, but at seven and a half it’s better to be co-dependent and the slightest bit conformist for the sake of friends to play with at recess and people who will share yr pudding, not just take it away from you.
“Say what you feel”. Well Janie down the street didn’t feel quite the same way about jumping to the moon on a frog’s back; in fact she felt it was stupid. “That’s why God invented airplane, dumb head”. And “Stay true to yrself” wasn’t so great when the yrself you were at the moment thought baseball caps looked great on sideways and all the other boys informed you that not only did it look “messed up, loserface” but that anyone who was anyone liked hockey.
Oh yes, his mother was a great provider. Better than “yr son of a bitch father. What did he every give you? Big blue lying eyes and went on his right fucking way now didn’t he? Gave you a face to help you get away with things and didn’t really bother to stay around and help learn to fight.”
His nose, ears and chin were his own, but he had no doubt that his eyes were indeed stolen. They’d gotten him into trouble nearly as many times was they had set him free, they were fairly balanced in that aspect. His height was another thing his father could take the blame for. His mother was barely breaking five feet, but Eddie was soaring. Devoid of skill as he was, he consistently made the basketball team. His gene pool hadn’t failed him. But he ate the entire apple. It amused his friends, seemed cost efficient to him and drove his mother insane. His father did the same thing: the skin, the core, the seeds, the pit, everything save the stem. It was the most obnoxious of reminders. “Eat the whole fucking thing while yr at it, what more could the stem hurt?” It wasn’t a very attractive habit and not one that earned him parental love, but he did it at least once a day without fail, until his mother started crossing them off the grocery list.
“Count yr blessings, boy. Yr damn lucky to have had a mother like me.” Eddie locks the cupboard when he’s done re-labeling for the night. His head hurts from recognizing how “goddamn fucking lucky” his childhood was.