Daddy Don't Hit Me - July 19, 2007

By BC Woods

by bc woods"So...yeah, I stabbed myself in the leg with a sword. Not really one of my prouder moments, but there it is." It had only taken five minutes to tell Lydia about the time I had stabbed myself in the leg with a sword, but it took her another two minutes to stop laughing. As Lydia wiggled and shook with laughter, I pondered the great paradox of my character: that I could so easily tell a story to make someone laugh and was simultaneously so completely out of my element in a one-on-one conversation. Behind Lydia a group of four other thirty-something year-old soccer moms had turned their attention from their children to temporarily listen to my story. They too could not stop laughing.

On the verge of tears, Lydia buried her face in her hands. "Oh my God...BC, you are so retarded." Several of the women behind her sobbed their agreement, by murmuring such words as "jackass," "dumbass," and "dork," but in a playful manner that said my story had been more than amusing.

Clearing my throat, I said, "Thank you," to the collected masses, which caused Lydia's abs to ache and her nostrils to tremble. While my almost crippling eccentricity barred me from having serious conversations, the discussions had allowed me to raise the absurd to an art form.

I had met Lydia several weeks ago, while taking my little sister to one of her soccer games. She was the mother of one of Karen's teammates, and we had had an instant rapport. I had a thing for what the great sage and philosopher John Hodgman refers to as SMILFs, and Lydia had a thing for idiot man-children with strong resemblances to computer animated green ogres. In other words, she had been divorced for six months and was trolling for anything that showed interest.

That summer it was a part of my weekly routine to take my little sister Karen to and from her soccer practices whenever I had a day off from working on the oil rig. That was fine except that Jacob had to come along, and if there's one thing a seven year-old American boy can't do, it's watch girls play soccer. Tearing my attention away from Lydia, Jacob tugged on my arm. "BC, I don't want to listen to stories anymore. I want to go play on the playground."

"Well just go on then, honey. Your big brother will be fine," Lydia laughed, taking hold of one of my arms. Despite the fact that she was twice my age, I felt stunningly normal with a woman holding onto my arm.

Jacob's large round eyes looked up at me, imploring. "But I wanted you to play with me." Politely shrugging Lydia off my arm, I knelt down on one knee before Jacob.

"Okay, Buddy," I said, ruffling his hair. He smiled. Lydia seemed somewhat upset that I would take off and leave her, but I didn't let it bother me. I had liked the normal feeling I had had when Lydia held my arm, but Karen and Jacob had always come first in my life, and they always would.

Following him through the nearby playground, and the four or five inch deep swamp of jagged wood chips that was somehow supposed to protect children if they fell, instead of stab them, I watched him play on a variety of different pieces of equipment. In the matter of a few moments he had declared himself the best slider, stair-climber, and jumper on the whole playground. In only moments he had taken off to find the swing set.

It often seems, that aside from the few poles of aluminum that make its frame, the hundred or so feet of steel chain that comprise its levers, and the half dozen rubber seats that support its loads, the largest component of any swing set is nostalgia. Swings are every bit as about sunshine, puffy clouds, and that one moment of weightlessness at the top of the arc when it seems like you could take off and fly forever, as they are about kinematics, dynamics, and gravitation. When one stares at a lone swing, one is forced to wonder at the last time they were truly as unbound as at the top of that self-propelled arc of childhood when forward and upward forces are held in perfect balance.

At a height of 6'2" and the ogreish weight of 230 lbs, my philosophical wonderings provided a perfectly acceptable reason to join my little brother on a swing set designed for small children when he asked me to, even if physics did not. Jacob smiled as I sat next to him...in a similar expression of emotion the swing set saw fit to creak. Though I was at my slimmest in years from the strenuous work of being on an oil rig for the past few months, the rubber beneath me stretched almost to the point of breaking, and the chains to either side of me dug tightly into my sides. Had my grandfather been alive to comment, he no doubt would have said I looked like "ten gallons of shit in a five gallon bucket."

When Jacob's small dimpled face looked over to me and laughed joyfully, I decided to ignore the warnings of the universe as promptly as I had decided to ignore Lydia's arm. In the first pump of my legs, my sense of rationality fell out of my back pocket and was lost in the wood chip floor. I would not find it again for some time.

It seemed for every swing I took, a year of maturity fell off the end of my life until soon I was a child again, lost in wonder, with eyes full of hope and a stomach full of butterflies. Side-by-side, child and ogre pumped their legs, and dreamed the dream of Icarus. If the swing set wobbled a bit every time I tossed my weight around, so be it. That was the concern of an adult, and had no place in my mind.

I was like a kid at Disneyland set free in a kingdom of magic. I was laughing with my little brother, and my laughter was wild and weightless. I looked at Jacob's big dimply face and said, "Hey! Buddy! Do you think I can make it over the top?" Time stopped.

Jacob dug both of his feet into the wood chips beneath him, mouth agape. His eyes opened wide in disbelief, and he said, "Can you really do that?" I have no excuse for what happened next but to say that I completely forgot that I couldn't. His eyes said, "You're my big brother, and you can do anything." Who was I to argue with that logic?

Stopping with both my feet, I looked around. There were about thirty or so kids on the playground, and about hundred or so kids and adults over at the soccer field. I looked my little brother right in his dimply face and said, "Yes, Buddy. Yes, I can."

As Jacob took off to tell the other children of the great feats about to unfold, I pumped as ogres are not meant pump. My thick lumber-like legs kicked in and out with a rhythm as perfect as it was furious. I was going to do it. I was going to do what MythBusters had only been able to do with several rockets, a steel rig, and a precision timer. I was going to swing my fat ass straight over the top. I was going to be a playground legend.

Jacob ran all over the playground, crying out, "MY BIG BROTHER IS GOING TO SWING OVER THE TOP!" Children near and far came to see what the mysterious "big kid" might be able to pull out of his hat. They lifted their little voices in cheers for "Shrek! Shrek! Shrek! Shrek! Shrek!" Somewhere beneath the fury of my pumps I made a note to never wear green sweatshirts again, or to cut my hair so short.

A sheen of sweat broke out on my face. I was almost even with the top bar. I was swinging on thin metal chains with all of my might. I had to do it. My little brother's honor was on the line. I put all of my might, every last ounce of effort I had into a swing more powerful than any I had ever before mustered. I kicked outward as though I was trying to leap to the moon in one thrust.

I had not thought that my might was so much greater than that of a thin metal chain.

At the end of the arc, under maximal centrifugal forces, a 6'2" 230lb ogre was only dimly aware of breaking contact with the support that had previously held him, and started to soar through the air in a majestic 12 foot parabola...into the middle of a throng of children. Behind him, a seat supported on only one side swung backwards and dragged itself to stillness on the ground.

Flying through the air, I was grateful to note that the children dispersed quickly. The chips below me fled even more quickly as they rushed out in a hail of dirt and wood in order to escape being crushed by my monster body. I landed with an inconspicuous thud. Everyone around me was suddenly filthy. I didn't care.

I couldn't breathe.

Laying face down on a bed of wood chips in the middle of a playground, having terrified a group of children that I landed in the middle of, and having thoroughly knocked the wind out of me, I found it doubly injurious when my little brother jumped on me, arms hugging tight, whimpering, "Please don't die, BC! Please don't die! I love you!"

Although I desperately wanted to hug my little brother, and tell him that everything was going to be all right, I really wanted to breathe first. I closed my eyes for about two minutes, trying to reorient myself to the world around me. Although the experience was ripe for life lessons, the first I learned was that I hated having the wind knocked out of me.

When I opened my eyes, I saw another surprise.

The SMILFs were standing above me.

Worse, Lydia was standing in front of them, and I was laying on the ground, completely humiliated in front of her. It would have been different if it were a war and I had just taken some kind of wound while battling the enemy, but this wasn't war. This was a playground. This was something the most vulnerable members of society played on for fun. And it had incontrovertibly kicked my ass.

Bending next to me, Lydia put her hands to either side of my face and felt for wounds. I felt dizzy. "Oh my God, BC, are you okay?"

I responded with a very heroic, "Uh... uh-huh." I would like to say my voice didn't have a puberty-esque squeak on that last syllable. I would like to. But it wouldn't be true.

"What happened?" asked another SMILF, trying to sort out the simultaneous explanations of thirty children.

"I was uh...I was uh..." I gulped, staring into Lydia's pale blue eyes, at the startling realization. There was no way out of this. Two SMILFs grabbed either of my arms and started to help me to my feet. I was covered with wood chips, dirt, and as I would find later that night, seven gum wrappers, three pieces of gum, and one half-eaten sucker. "I was uh...on the swing...and uh...."

"Oh my God, what were you doing!?! You're way too big to be on a swing like that!" Lydia asked incredulously. She had on a glorious SMILF coat, her hair was in a ponytail, and she was wearing tight spandex pants. I took one last regretful look, thought about how pretty she was, and realized that Lydia probably wasn't going to like me anymore, divorce or no.

I ran through every possible way to relate it to her in my head, but my ineptitude with interpersonal conversation tied my tongue in knots. My thoughts could not relate themselves into cohesive sentences. How could I say that I had looked into the eyes of a little boy, remembered my own childhood, and wanted to make that little boy's dreams come true? "I...ahem...that is to say I was trying to go over the top." The SMILFs looked at each other silently for a moment, like the calm before the storm.

I closed my eyes. My sense of rationality crawled back into my pocket, from where I had previously dropped it. Reality hit full on. I was a 6'2" 230lbs ogre, covered in wood chips, still trying to catch the rest of my breath, in the middle of a throng of SMILFs who were laughing their asses off at my expense. There were no good-natured insults this time, like when I had told the story earlier. Their laughter was too powerful for words. Lydia laughed loudest of all. I opened my eyes, looked down, and sighed deeply.

After just a few moments, the throng of SMILFs parted as my little sister came over to see what all the fuss was about. Even in their delirium the SMILFs watched her approach me.

Hands on her hips, dressed from head to toe in her soccer gear, she angrily demanded, "BC, what are you doing?"

"I fell off of a swing honey. Don't worry. I'll be all right." I mumbled.

I managed to smile a bit. At least Karen and Jacob weren't laughing. Karen and Jacob, my little angels, whose diapers I had changed, whose mouths I had fed, and whose bodies I had clothed. They understood me. Karen's arm cocked back. She threw her water bottle at me, the lid came off, and a bit of water splashed on the front of my chest. "Oh my God! You are EMBARRASSING me!"

The SMILFs fell to the ground, howling.