Of All Games Children Play...
to: H
A tough one.
Actually not. As pure as spring water or freshly fallen snow
yet the minds of modern readers are so heavily soothed with misconceptions that, well,
some may decide differently.
Which is insufficient reason for me to lie, isn't it?
You see, I was a fiver
by which I mean to say five years older than I was at the time I was born
and my friend was an adult, twenty percent older than me
(not that I knew what percents meant at that turbulent period in my growing cycle)
thus commanding my entire attention and respect
from the impressive heights of a sixer's experience in life.
I was far from an innocent bystander myself, I grant you that,
I was knowledgeable way beyond my deceivingly young age
knowing already that the stork was responsible for the baby boom of the second big war
and that God was second only to Stalin
and that Jewish boys are born with such a deformity when compared to Christian boys
that they had to be taken aside and apart from time to time at school,
for their own benefit and education, you know. Maybe "it" will get "repaired".
Leaving me with an aching desire to find out
if also Jewish girls suffered from a similar deformity.
That,
and the party decreeing in its wisdom that school children should not go to movies, amen (?)
and the party decreeing in its wisdom that sexual education is a crime, amen (?)
and the Yamauchi dynasty having not yet developed the Game Boy, amen (!!!)
and the neighborhood medical doctor living underneath us, amen
led to my early decision to become a doctor myself
and drove me into an investigative mode even before taking my Hippocratic Oath
(of which I knew nothing, the only Greek I knew in translated form at the time
being the one telling of Ulysses and the Cyclops and their communist friends).
Okay, these days I would have been sent probably to a juvenile delinquents institution
for life,
and or get probably all front page titles on all leading newspapers
for life,
and or get probably sentenced to the chair
for life...
Hey, it was a different, much different world those days.
A kid was a kid.
So he stole apples from the neighbors because they were tastier
and he got a smack behind the head while the world smiled and moved on,
so he jumped from roof to roof to roof and broke his leg
and he got a stick across his ass while the world smiled and moved on,
so he... I, played doctor. A kid has the right to study anatomy,
ain't it so?
It's called initiative, enthusiasm, progress (none of which words I knew at the time),
ain't it so?
Let's see the discoveries made.
So C had the nicest bum
and L was the ugliest since she was a red-head
and Z had the sweetest face and the rest did not matter
and A ran home and told her parents
and all were the same
and I did not yet have confirmation to my research's objective
since I did not yet obtain a reference specimen of the other kind
(all above were Jewish and by then I concluded and extrapolated -
another word I learned only some ten years later -
that at least all Jewish girls were the "same")
and because A told her parents who told my parents and they all had a healthy laugh together
I was banned from any further interaction with the opposite sex
(goodness, how can I write an intimate poem with all these unknown words?)
for a full twenty four hours
after which A's parents asked me to run and buy for them a loaf of bread
following a rumor that there was bread in a certain shop in the town
and knowing that I was the one who stole apples and jumped roofs
and finds his way around which I finally did
playing hotchpotch with A twenty four hours and a bit later.
They also needed me to deal with the mouse that got trapped in their cellar.
And then there was H.
And. Then. There. Was. H.
Haughty, Aloof, Arrogant, Standoffish, Lofty
(you can check the synonyms dictionary on your own)
orphan (divorced mother), ugly (short straight hair), weak (couldn't break a walnut)
walking like a duck
loving cats
giggling
playing football like a girl
and of all above horrible things
the horriblest of all was that she would only allow my adult friend (the sixer, remember?)
peek "there". And I was excluded.
Not that it was in any way detrimental to my inconclusive research,
but somehow it hurt my pride that she would only go for old people,
even if the oldie was my best friend.
*
Twenty years later, give or take.
It took some time to find her,
me and my friend now only four percent apart, and by now I knew of percentages
as well as other appropriate knowledge,
inclusive the conclusion to my earlier unconcluded research.
Even if I did not make it to medical school,
the sight of blood leading to my unconditional faint.
We found her. It took some effort... we did.
She changed her name,
H became J and even the family name changed,
we found her because we insisted.
She opened the door, all smiles and no giggles.
And, my God, was she prettier than Miss Universe first runner up
(everyone knew how Miss Universe herself got her title)
and, my God, did she walk more gracefully than a gazelle
and, my God, her hand was softer that a hatched chick's down
and, my God, she had a friend limp of hand and narrow of skull and wearing a goatee...
oh, my God, how I hated him at that moment.
Circles. Rolling. Doors. Closing.
We found C. Oh, what a gracious beauty did she become.
We found L. Oh, what a flaming beauty did she become.
We found Z. Oh, what a life loving beauty did she become.
We found A. Oh, what a cheerful beauty did she become.
My mind stayed with H. Or J, as she insisted.
Cannot take her off my mind.
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