Heart Shaped Boy II
Theodore Thursday won every race he ran, and couldn’t remember a time when this rule was disproven. Ordinarily, he sensed, a boy with his athletic skills would be set. In this case, and in others, “ordinarily” meant for Theodore Thursday “in a world in which he had a different name and face.” In this world, being the fastest boy would go a long way.
Look at Rory, who was beyond stupid and miles past ugly, but had continued to be well-liked all the way through middle school on the merits of his strength at kickball, even though kickball was either a baby, a girl, or a fag sport depending on who you were talking to. Everyone had decided kickball was done for - at least, all the boys had decided so - midway through fifth grade. Instead they turned their attention to a new and complicated variant of tag in which you could not - even a little bit - touch the gravel around the play set, nor could you leave the gravelly area entirely. Even though Rory turned out to be no great shakes at Ground Tag, as the new game was called, the memory of him being good at even a disgraced activity earned him points. Theodore, who continued no matter what sport was popular to be good at being fast, continued, in fact, to be the best at being fast, continued to be ignored.
In fact, a suspicious observer – two adjectives that describe Theodore nicely – might point out, as if in passing, that Ground Tag seemed expressly designed to take away Theodore’s advantage over the other boys without singling out that advantage. In generally, Theodore’s speed was politely ignored by his classmates, much in the way you should ignore an aunt’s facial tic, or an uncle’s drinking problem. As it turned out, Theodore was lousy at Ground Tag; speed alone didn’t help him climb over the jungle gym or slither through the blue plastic tunnel, especially since Theodore Thursday was hopelessly, painful to watch, uncoordinated when not running flat out. Theodore would have been among the worst boys a ground tag had he not been so naturally inconspicuous – for the most part he was able to stay out of the way and not get chased at all.
It was from the inspiration that comes from not being chased or bothered at all except by flies that Theodore got the idea that made him, briefly, the very best at Ground Tag, the same idea that ended Ground Tag forever. From the remote arm of the elaborate Funtime Apparatus, traditionally ignored by Grade 4 and up, but reclaimed by Grade 5 without apparent embarassment during the Ground Tag fad, Theodore found himself staring a few feet over at the five foot tall plastic hut he hadn’t played in in years and years, and hadn’t enjoyed playing in then. The hut was a sort of miniature log cabin made not out of wood but plastic, used only by extremely young kids during their recess earlier in the day, and in pretty bad shape after six years of service to the school’s kindergartners. Theodore saw that one of the yellow plastic shutters on one of the playhouse windows was partially off, had popped out of the little groove it normally fitted into – it’s makers understood that if they couldn’t make their playhouse indestructible, like the Funtime Apparatus, they could at least make whatever damage it suffered easily reparable, they could win by giving in.
It was no great effort, then, to reach across from the ladder he was crouching on to rip the wounded shutter all the way down, so that it fell at his feet on the gravel. He stepped on it, there was just enough room for him to stand comfortably. Then he ripped the other shutter down, tossed it in front of him, stepped onto it, reached behind for the first shutter to toss it ahead, and quietly made his way in that manner to the far corner of the gravel pit, where he was just as ignored as before, but this time in the shade, and this time for good, without the apprehension of possibly getting tagged.
The first person to note Theodore’s discovery was a small, shovel-faced boy named David who was best known for being unpleasantly dirty all the time, despite not being poor, and who was recognized by all for a certain strange resourcefulness – he stole and hid erasers. Nobody knew why, least of all David, but he’d been doing it for a while and had gotten pretty good at it. David had, at the start of recess, hurried up to the very top of the highest of the roofed areas on the Funtime Apparatus, had scrambled up to where he could see the entire game and could not be tagged without a great deal of effort, as the rules held that it didn’t count as a tag unless you touched the person’s body, not their shoe, and to touch David’s body you’d have to:
a) touch the unpleasantly dirty kid and
b) climb up with him onto the roof, as he could scramble around to avoid anyone reaching up from the railing below.
Since there were between twelve and fifteen other boys to chase, allowing a give and take of a few boys each day for illness or detention, it wasn’t worth the effort to go after David, who climbed up on the roof at the start of every game and stayed there until recess was over.
As you might imagine, David had grown bored with sitting on top of a roof for forty minutes every day for two weeks running, because even though it seemed to him like never getting tagged counted as winning, nobody else accepted that interpretation when he suggested it, which he did, every day, at lunch. When he saw what Theodore had done, David leapt at the chance to incontrovertibly win the game, or at least take credit for a truly clever move, as Theodore, he knew, wouldn’t. He scrambled down, made his way quickly over to where he could reach the playhouse, and lightened the hut of its door, scooting it with hip jerks and not-quite-jumps until he was well out of range of any potential tagger. Then all he had to do was draw attention to himself, which was easily enough accomplished, even without the aid of a teacher not paying enough attention to her chalkboard inventory. He screamed victory, and for a few moments nobody had the words with which to contest the claim.
The next morning, Mrs. Hull, who taught first grade, led her children, all of whom struck Theodore as having strangely huge heads in proportion to their bodies, out to recess. Her class’s recess was the first of the morning - normally kindergarten would have gone first, but kindergarten had a student substitute teacher that day and student substitutes weren’t allowed to take students outside the school building for safety reasons. Instead the kindergartners had to make do with indoor playtime the entire week their real teacher was in Puerto Vallarta, and by the week several had been sent to the nurse with injuries related to having wooden blocks with letters - “A, a” “B, b” and so forth – written on all six sides, so as to provoke simultaneous interest in reading and architecture, thrown at their foreheads. Mrs. Hull had been teaching first grade for thirty years, and was therefore both hard to surprise and easy to anger, traits which she was prompted to display in full upon finding the playhouse completely dismantled and scattered in bits and easily reformable pieces around the outside ring of the gravel pit. Amongst the wreckage were school notebooks that had served as rafts for the kids who weren’t quick enough to profit from the playhouse’s fate. The notebooks were hard to recognize at first, having been left out after 5th grade recess, the last of the day, had ended, and swollen and disfigured by overnight rain showers. Ground tag was cancelled forever.
Look at Rory, who was beyond stupid and miles past ugly, but had continued to be well-liked all the way through middle school on the merits of his strength at kickball, even though kickball was either a baby, a girl, or a fag sport depending on who you were talking to. Everyone had decided kickball was done for - at least, all the boys had decided so - midway through fifth grade. Instead they turned their attention to a new and complicated variant of tag in which you could not - even a little bit - touch the gravel around the play set, nor could you leave the gravelly area entirely. Even though Rory turned out to be no great shakes at Ground Tag, as the new game was called, the memory of him being good at even a disgraced activity earned him points. Theodore, who continued no matter what sport was popular to be good at being fast, continued, in fact, to be the best at being fast, continued to be ignored.
In fact, a suspicious observer – two adjectives that describe Theodore nicely – might point out, as if in passing, that Ground Tag seemed expressly designed to take away Theodore’s advantage over the other boys without singling out that advantage. In generally, Theodore’s speed was politely ignored by his classmates, much in the way you should ignore an aunt’s facial tic, or an uncle’s drinking problem. As it turned out, Theodore was lousy at Ground Tag; speed alone didn’t help him climb over the jungle gym or slither through the blue plastic tunnel, especially since Theodore Thursday was hopelessly, painful to watch, uncoordinated when not running flat out. Theodore would have been among the worst boys a ground tag had he not been so naturally inconspicuous – for the most part he was able to stay out of the way and not get chased at all.
It was from the inspiration that comes from not being chased or bothered at all except by flies that Theodore got the idea that made him, briefly, the very best at Ground Tag, the same idea that ended Ground Tag forever. From the remote arm of the elaborate Funtime Apparatus, traditionally ignored by Grade 4 and up, but reclaimed by Grade 5 without apparent embarassment during the Ground Tag fad, Theodore found himself staring a few feet over at the five foot tall plastic hut he hadn’t played in in years and years, and hadn’t enjoyed playing in then. The hut was a sort of miniature log cabin made not out of wood but plastic, used only by extremely young kids during their recess earlier in the day, and in pretty bad shape after six years of service to the school’s kindergartners. Theodore saw that one of the yellow plastic shutters on one of the playhouse windows was partially off, had popped out of the little groove it normally fitted into – it’s makers understood that if they couldn’t make their playhouse indestructible, like the Funtime Apparatus, they could at least make whatever damage it suffered easily reparable, they could win by giving in.
It was no great effort, then, to reach across from the ladder he was crouching on to rip the wounded shutter all the way down, so that it fell at his feet on the gravel. He stepped on it, there was just enough room for him to stand comfortably. Then he ripped the other shutter down, tossed it in front of him, stepped onto it, reached behind for the first shutter to toss it ahead, and quietly made his way in that manner to the far corner of the gravel pit, where he was just as ignored as before, but this time in the shade, and this time for good, without the apprehension of possibly getting tagged.
The first person to note Theodore’s discovery was a small, shovel-faced boy named David who was best known for being unpleasantly dirty all the time, despite not being poor, and who was recognized by all for a certain strange resourcefulness – he stole and hid erasers. Nobody knew why, least of all David, but he’d been doing it for a while and had gotten pretty good at it. David had, at the start of recess, hurried up to the very top of the highest of the roofed areas on the Funtime Apparatus, had scrambled up to where he could see the entire game and could not be tagged without a great deal of effort, as the rules held that it didn’t count as a tag unless you touched the person’s body, not their shoe, and to touch David’s body you’d have to:
a) touch the unpleasantly dirty kid and
b) climb up with him onto the roof, as he could scramble around to avoid anyone reaching up from the railing below.
Since there were between twelve and fifteen other boys to chase, allowing a give and take of a few boys each day for illness or detention, it wasn’t worth the effort to go after David, who climbed up on the roof at the start of every game and stayed there until recess was over.
As you might imagine, David had grown bored with sitting on top of a roof for forty minutes every day for two weeks running, because even though it seemed to him like never getting tagged counted as winning, nobody else accepted that interpretation when he suggested it, which he did, every day, at lunch. When he saw what Theodore had done, David leapt at the chance to incontrovertibly win the game, or at least take credit for a truly clever move, as Theodore, he knew, wouldn’t. He scrambled down, made his way quickly over to where he could reach the playhouse, and lightened the hut of its door, scooting it with hip jerks and not-quite-jumps until he was well out of range of any potential tagger. Then all he had to do was draw attention to himself, which was easily enough accomplished, even without the aid of a teacher not paying enough attention to her chalkboard inventory. He screamed victory, and for a few moments nobody had the words with which to contest the claim.
The next morning, Mrs. Hull, who taught first grade, led her children, all of whom struck Theodore as having strangely huge heads in proportion to their bodies, out to recess. Her class’s recess was the first of the morning - normally kindergarten would have gone first, but kindergarten had a student substitute teacher that day and student substitutes weren’t allowed to take students outside the school building for safety reasons. Instead the kindergartners had to make do with indoor playtime the entire week their real teacher was in Puerto Vallarta, and by the week several had been sent to the nurse with injuries related to having wooden blocks with letters - “A, a” “B, b” and so forth – written on all six sides, so as to provoke simultaneous interest in reading and architecture, thrown at their foreheads. Mrs. Hull had been teaching first grade for thirty years, and was therefore both hard to surprise and easy to anger, traits which she was prompted to display in full upon finding the playhouse completely dismantled and scattered in bits and easily reformable pieces around the outside ring of the gravel pit. Amongst the wreckage were school notebooks that had served as rafts for the kids who weren’t quick enough to profit from the playhouse’s fate. The notebooks were hard to recognize at first, having been left out after 5th grade recess, the last of the day, had ended, and swollen and disfigured by overnight rain showers. Ground tag was cancelled forever.
posted by Jeremy at 8:00 AM
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