My Non-Fictitious Life (Volume 3)

I have been blessed to only have two near death experiences in my life and I feel as though the one when I was barely old enough to remember, for that reason, was a more traumatic event. In fact it was the first memory I ever had, other than the memory of sliding down the bannister of my old house the day before we moved out of New Jersey for good. I was always too scared to do it and my sister gave me shit constantly, so I did it on the last day we lived there, and when I told her, she didn’t believe me, but I did it for myself anyways.

My first surprisingly clear memory is when I was in my fathers lap, we were sliding down a water slide and he was wearing jean shorts. The friction of his jeans caused him to slide very slowly, worrying him that we were going to be hit from behind by the next people coming down the slide; he panicked and some faulty fatherly instinct made him decide to carry me back up the slide, thinking he could make it to the top and therefor to safety. Why that would make it less likely for us to be hit from behind is still a mystery to me, and a mystery to god and all other rational beings as to why this would be beneficial to his young son’s life.

The next thing I remember is after he dropped me, sliding down without my father there to completely fail at protecting me, while fully realizing exactly what was happening. I knew that I didn’t know how to swim while I was peacefully sliding through open and closed green plastic tubes, looking up at the alternating view of the sky and the roof of the cylinder, while my behind thudded every time one piece of tube attached to the next. I knew that I was soon to be submerged in water and I was completely aware that these would inevitably be my lasts visions of this earth. I was eerily calm when I reached the very last stretch of slide, I was suddenly exposed to the afternoon sunlight in this final stretch of glorious oxygen and surreal blue sky and clouds that seemed to last forever just before I was plunged into the blue chlorinated water of my death.

I held my breath as I swayed through the water helplessly looking at all the legs of the children and their parents; parents who would never let their children float around under the water without supervision and drown. I was completely ready to die, probably because I was too young to fully realize the consequences of dying, and the guilt my father would feel when they pulled my limp body out of the water, only feet away from the rest of my family congregating in the pool that the water slides feed into, totally unaware that seconds before I could probably see their legs and was in need of their rescue. I would have been totally unaware of the irony of my death, when finally I was suddenly yanked up from the water by someone else's mother, who says jokingly, “What are you doing down there all by yourself?” I remember thinking how much I wished this amazing, funny, kind, motherly woman was my mom.

This was the first of many events that made me think of my dad as pathetic and meek . I have always since been highly disappointed with the incompetence of my dad. Someone who is very intelligent but never bothered to teach me any of his valuable knowledge, a man who could fix anything if he put his mind to it, (but much preferred to take the easy way out and pay someone to do it) but who’s 25 year old son can’t even change his own oil. If it wasn’t for my mom I never would have learned to cook my own meals, clean up after myself, hold a job, basically do anything needed to live a normal functioning life.


On a lighter note, the other night I saw Leslie and the lys. A white, female, multi-talented, rapper/singer/artist (an expert bedazzler) from the great state of Iowa. When you check out her myspace page be sure to watch the videos and listen to my favorite song Zombie Killer. The show was funny, especially when she picks out people from the crowd with the best gem-sweaters and points out the beauty of each work of art and then proclaims what she will call each gem-sweater, which is usually something like "smurfette-molten-magenta-incandescent -frown-lover." Well... just as random but usually more creative than my attempt. And as she belts out the last part of the name she bumps the poor unsuspecting fan with her belly knocking them surprisingly hard onto the wood floor of the stage.