A Clean Break

I've always wanted to write a book. Well, I guess not always. I can't remember playing with Tonka trucks and postulating on the title of my first best seller. But for the last several years, I have wanted to pen my own novel, either fiction or autobiographical of sorts. The desire was really spurred on after reading "My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One Night Stands," by Chelsea Handler. Not only did she hilariously whip her life into a cocktail of sex, drugs and... more sex, she connected with me on a personal level and helped me to really take a look inside my own life.

Not really. Shit was just funny.

And I want to write that. I want to write a book about the hilarious stories throughout my life, family problems that people probably wouldn't even believe because of the ridiculous nature, the childhood drama of my voyage through puberty... all of it, pure gold.

I actually did write many of these stories in my years of high school for the writing portfolio forced onto us by the great commonwealth of Kentucky. They were funny, but written at a high school level. They need jazzed up. So I've decided to rewrite one here and see how it turns out.

A Clean Break

By the time I was 10, I was a veritable ladies man. I had a girl for each season, each holiday; all lasting approximately three weeks before spiraling to a quick, amiable end. Then, onto the next.

That changed with Beth.

We were in the 5th grade together. We shared all of our classes, as the same group of students would travel from one room to the next, so we spent a lot of time together. Sitting beside each other, passing notes, holding hands under the desk; it reeked of puppy love. Thankfully, Beth had her friends and I had mine. Recess was a time that we spent with our separate friend groups. I could often be found playing Power Rangers (me, starring as Kimberly, the Pink Ranger with a kick ass bow,) or Alligator, a game we had created that was like playing tag on a slide; she, with her friends on the swing set, putting on makeup from Polly Pocket Lockets or some other crap. I didn't care. Recess was my alone time.

Then she started getting clingy. She'd want to play my games with me. She wanted to be the Pink Ranger. She wanted to play on the yellow corkscrew slide. She wanted to do lemondrops off the monkey bars. If you don't know children, 10 year olds get sick of things quickly. I blame my short attention span and horrible memory on the hours of TV I watch(ed). In any case, I was fed up with this relationship. It was nearing Valentine's Day, and I distinctly remember thinking that it would be a waste to stay in this relationship only to have to buy her something, then end it. I was also a penny pinching child. So, since text messages didn't exist to 5th graders in 1997, I called her one afternoon and told her I wanted to break up.

"Ok," she said. Her voice didn't quiver. She didn't sound upset. No tears. Easy as pie, it seemed.

Too easy, really.

The next day was business as usual. We still sat beside each other, but there was no note passing; no hand holding. Things were going splendidly as we went to recess. Beth made her way across the mulch covered playground to the swing set and I raced off with my friends to the adjacent seesaws. Beth sat on a swing, alone, barely rocking back and forth with her head slumped down. She certainly didn't seem as happy and cheerful as she had the day before on the telephone. I watched as her friends, clustered into a large flock, approached her. I couldn't hear anything over the screams and voices of the other children playing, but I could read the lips of Megan, a mutual friend of ours, as she stood in front of the rest of the group.

"Did Curtis break up with you?" her lips formed. Beth looked up sullenly and nodded.

The shit had hit the fan.

Here is where my memory suddenly fills with fog and enters some sort of surreal time warp. As if in slow motion, I see the eyes of 15 girls lock onto mine, bodies twisting to face me in perfect synchronization, and the newly formed lynch mob replete with pitchforks approaching my very seesaw. I catch the eyes of my friends who are suddenly panicking, but I attempt to keep my cool. Megan's arrival by my side, the rest of her posse in tow, sends chills up and down my spine.

"Curtis," she said as my side of the teeter totter hit the ground, "could we talk to you over here for a minute?" She gestured to the clearing beyond the seesaw area in front of a chain link fence that protected the playground from neighboring houses. I agreed, shooting a fast and final look at my friends as I stepped over the wooden plank and walked toward the fence.

"Did you break up with Beth?" she asked in a calm tone. I turned to face this group of cross-armed, angry-faced females, and was suddenly very aware of my surroundings.

"Y..."

Before I could even finish the word, I was thrown backward, off my feet, into the fence. Only, it wasn't just a fence. Growing from the other side was a patch of briars that had looped and woven itself amongst the links, serving as the perfectly painful way of denying my escape. My shirt had become completely ensnared by the devilish thicket and I was now dangling openly in front of a group of vicious animals, lusting for my blood.

Maybe a little dramatic, but thus are the eyes of a 10-year-old.

The girls began screaming at me, none of the words discernible from the next in their high pitch squeals of incredulity. Finally, they organized themselves and instead began taking turns. One girl would step up, give a snide, biting remark, punch, slap or kick me, then head to the back of the line. This continued for a while until a girl named Ashley took her turn. Twice as tall and wide as the other girls in our grade, Ashley would have been something to fear if she hadn't been such a priss. She wasn't the smartest in our grade either, so I really never respected her much. When she asked me, "How could you be so stupid?" I really couldn't help but answer in any other way than, "How could you be so fat?"

The impact of her punch to my stomach was enough to rip my shirt from the fence and send me to my knees, breathless and on the brink of unconsciousness. Incensed by my comment, the girls encircled me and began kicking me, not only causing me harm but succeeding in covering my body with pieces of the painful mulch-covered bed I lay on. Once they considered me sufficiently covered (and I had passed out,) the throng turned and left me in my mulchy grave.

I'm unsure as to how long I was there. My friends had long since run off, leaving me to be beaten bloody (and woody.) My next memory is coming out of my unconscious state to see multiple shadowy figures bent over top of me. I screamed and attempted to protect myself only to hear the voice of my teacher calming me, explaining that everything was alright. As she picked pieces of mulch out of my hair, she asked what had happened to me. I explained the whole story, detail by detail, ending the nightmare in tears. I was sent to the nurse to check my injuries.

Thankfully nothing was broken. Just a pump knot, as my mother called it, the size of an egg resting on my head. The nurse made me hold a pack of ice on it for the rest of the day. I wore it like a crown. I headed back to class where my teacher said that, at her request, Megan had written me a letter of apology.

I opened the note to see six words scrawled by a quick, sloppy hand.

"I'm sorry for beating you up."

I folded the paper neatly, stuck it in my copy of "Where the Red Fern Grows," and adjusted my new diadem.

I haven't dated another girl since.