Machine Man (serial)

I was sickly as a child. I guess that comes as no surprise. I was that kid who spent a whole summer inside, curtains drawn against the sounds of others my age hooting and laughing in the street outside. Glandular fever. Then complications in the lungs. When I got back to school, every gym class I walked up and handed the teacher the note that said I was to be excused to the library. He made me show him that note every time, even though it clearly said until further notice. I think he was waiting for the day I would decide, through strength of character, that I was ready to handle gym class, and damn what my note said. That day never came. That day was never going to come. In the library, I read about trains and DNA and how they built Hoover Dam. And later, walking home, I would watch a boom gate descend across a level crossing and know it did so because the wheels of an approaching train had dipped the track’s inductance below a pre-programmed level. I loved that.

One day my note ran out. The gym teacher took it from my fingers and deliberately crumpled it into a ball. I had known this day was coming, but still, it felt like losing a friend. “Now, Charlie,” said the gym teacher, a man with skin like parched earth, eyes that had seen everything. “Go get a ball.”

I threw like a four-year-old. I couldn’t catch at all. When I ran, my arms and legs flailed like I was drowning, and after a hundred yards I was exhausted. I swung at balls with desperate hope but no faith, and was not surprised. I could not catch anyone, ever, not even the kid with one leg shorter than the other, who wore a brace. On the field, other players wove through me like I wasn’t there. I stopped a soccer ball, one time. It was the physical highlight of my term. I heard astonished shouts. I prepared to kick it forward, sensing glory, a change of fortune, the kind of turning point my gym teacher believed in. My foot had barely begun to swing downward when another boy stole the ball away. I was so slow I amazed myself.

Still, that night, I lay awake thinking it over. I had stopped that ball. Maybe that meant something. Maybe I should get a soccer ball, and after school kick it against the wall of the alley outside. Maybe I would improve. Become good, even. And I would barely remember this time, when I couldn’t pull on shorts without my classmates’ eyes filling with pity and disgust.

I wish I could talk to that kid now, and say: Don’t bother. I would tell my younger self that it turns out to be a lot of stupid, mindless effort for no reward. I would explain that as far as the other kids are concerned, sucking pretty badly is just as pathetic as sucking really badly, so he might as well just read books. Being able to kick a ball, I would say, that gets less and less important. By the end of high school, the kids who can leap and dive and kick balls like missiles, a lot of them will have already dropped out. The ones who remain will walk into class with their textbooks gripped tight, because the muscle they need to survive now is the one they’ve never mastered: the loose, flabby one that gets easily tired, inside their heads.

I wish I could tell that kid: You know how the strong boys get respect, while smart kids like you are circus freaks, only good for entertainment? Well, pretty soon, that starts to swap around.

48.