“Don’t Try This At Home” – (Writing Exercise #4)
December 29, 2008
I remember a moment in the house on Jules Street in St. Joseph, MO. My brothers and I had been jumping around on a mattress in the living room. I am not entirely sure what a mattress was doing in the living room. For all I know, it was there for this very reason.
We had created some game which involved jumping on the mattress until we were sweating like brothers should after many hours of play. Don’t quote me, but I’m sure our socks had worked their way nearly off of our feet. The ankle section of socks always have a way of grabbing a hold of your foot so they never actually come all the way off. Its almost as though they hold on like shipwrecked cruisers.
Most games played by brothers end in wrestling, and this one was no different. Whatever the original game had been, it had become a brawl.
The old house on Jules Street was so in many ways. Ragged shelves were built into the entry way. The kitchen was some awful color and design with reds and yellows, and there were radiators along the walls for heat.
The wrestling match may have taken place in the winter or the summer; I do not recall. The radiator may have been on; I don’t know. You tend to forget details like that in the shadows of events like I am about to unfold for you.
One brother and had seen too many episodes of the WWF and attempted a move that should only be done by professionals and not at home on a mattress near a radiator that may or may not have been on.
The other brother was flung across the mattress past the point where even the professionals would have had ropes. I am not entirely sure the professionals would have placed their mattress so close to a radiator either.
What seemed like minutes unfolded in only seconds. The clang rang out from the radiator louder than any noise could have completed at that moment.
CLANG!
The flung brother laid motionless for only a second before grabbing his mouth with blood flowing trough his fingers.
Time froze…I swear…it froze! (Perhaps the radiator should have been on.)
When time freezes, it has a way of fast-forwarding to catch up to the present.
Once the brother took his hands away from his mouth, he must have taken his hand off of the pain. At the sight of his own blood, he screamed out in excruciating pain. I don’t know that I really understood the magnitude of his pain. I was more taken by the sight of a bloody mouth and…is he…?…missing a tooth?
We would later realize he had lost his tooth complete to the root. We would search and discover the tooth on the wrestling mat. The tooth fairy knows more than I had realized because she gave the brother so much more than anyone has ever received for just one tooth.
What an oversight for the WWF not to give a warning before their matches. Those guys may actually be ‘professionals’.
A short prayer…
December 19, 2008
Perhaps my own words have been keeping me from you because, in fact, they are NOT my own words.
- St PC of the Formulated Pray-ers
