Year 8

Today after work I drove over to CVS and bought 2 knee supports and some Ibuprofen. It's great to be heading downhill towards 30. It's going to be the time of my life. A time in my life where my body breaks down, and I become less sharp mentally, but I compensate for it by claiming that I am much "wiser" than I was in my twenties, not so given to fancy flights of the mind. Read: Becoming rigid in all thoughts, opinions etc.

Eight years old-One of the great things about being eight years old is that you can have a flat top. If you have a flat top as an adult people pretty much know you're military. However, you can sport the flat top without repercussions.

In this year you take a vacation to Oklahoma. You stand in the four corners, witness a violent storm at the rim of the Grand Canyon. You explore caves, and hike in Colorado with the sound of coyotes accompanying you on the ridge top. You meet parts of your family that you never see again. You spend hours at your fake aunt's house playing Mike Tyson's Punch Out. You pass the controller to cousins and siblings for hours and hours without any of you ever getting close to beating him. None of you even now what about the winking jabs that begin in the second round. You realize, looking back now, that you can say something like "They don't make them like they used to." That game was hard.


When you are eight you perfect the long bomb pass with Nate. No matter how many times you complete a deep pass over the other kids heads they always cover you tight at the line and get beet deep. It seems like every day you are running and waiting for the football to drop, watching it spiral against the lapis lazuli dome of the sky, the occasional tree branch in your peripheral vision. And then you remember catching it, and racing for the large iron gate that marked off the end zone. It was a good year.

In this year you get in the one and only fist fight of your life. You still have to use it as a reference point. The troubled kid in class punches you in the face in the middle of recess for a reason that you were never able to discern and you took the palm of your hand and rammed it into the bridge of his nose. He bled and cried. You got off without any punishment and he was sent home. It pays to be the good kid.

In this year you move from the second highest reading group to the highest reading group mid-year. The teacher expects you to read the in-between reader over the course of a few weeks to catch up, and you read it over the weekend. You still wonder what the hell you were doing in the second highest reading group. In seventh grade you read faster than anyone. Years later, your teacher's will know that you read so quickly because you didn't even bother to notice the punctuation. But you are young, and read quickly.

In this year you come in second place in the spelling bee. Every round your heart is beating rapidly. You hate being in front of groups, but you also hate displeasing people. You lose on the word encyclopedia. You will remember how to spell this word forever.

In this year a girl tells you that she loves you for the first time. She hands you a sheet of white drawing paper with a sun in the center, green grass, and two stick figures walking hand in hand. At the top, mid-center of the picture it says, "I Love You." You shove the picture into your desk hurriedly and turn bright red. The kid next to you notices the note and makes fun of the girl. You aren't old enough yet to know that it's a good thing when girls like you. This will take years.

This is also the year that you develop your first crush on a girl. It's hard to remember that this little person, a third-grader, could have a crush on someone. Your best friend tells you to feign a stomach ache because the little girl will notice and feel empathetic pain for you. You fake a stomach ache, and it works. This is a great and strange day. You realize how appropriate this start was, how we lie to one another in the courting phase, even when we're eight.

Well, off to my bed and headed towards thirty. My knees are aching, the clock in the guest bedroom is ticking loudly. At least I can beat Mike Tyson now in Punch Out.