Lots of Monkeys

It’s raining.

I can smell the wet playground from here. The windows are open. It’s October. I can tell because of all the orange and black decorations on the bulletin boards. Mr. Christiansen is at the front of the class, teaching algebra underneath the crucifix. I can see an x and a y on the board, but I’m finding it hard to listen because of the rain.

It’s getting progressively louder on the awnings above the windows. Then the sound of rain gives way to something that sounds like tons of gravel being poured out of a truck. Mr. Christiansen opens the door to the playground and takes a look outside.

He laughs.

“Hail.” He says.

I stand up and look out the windows.

The playground, normally black asphalt, is white.

Pieces of ice, the size of chocolate malt balls, have covered the entire playground. I’m astounded. Frozen water, falling from the sky.

We all look at Mr. Christiansen for a moment. Nothing is said. Finally, he takes a step outside the door and tells us, “Ten minutes. And no running.”

I run outside and pick up a bunch of hail that’s frozen together. It looks like a clump of fish eggs. People start throwing chunks of ice at each other and it all starts to melt too quickly.

The ten minutes are over and Mr. Christiansen calls us back inside. He tells us about how hail is formed, how specks of dust collect supercooled water that are then buffeted by winds up and down in the atmosphere before they become heavy enough to fall to earth.

I’m not really listening.

It’s raining. Continue reading →

The parking lot cum playground wasn’t the only place we’d play. On the off days, (we’d switch with other grades) we’d play in Spreckel’s park, the public park across the street.

Sometimes, we’d play with Uncle Larry and Aunt Mimi. Uncle Larry would pitch wiffle balls to us, and we’d swing wild with the oversized plastic bat wrapped with medical tape.

Uncle Larry was missing his right index finger. I never asked why, but we’d always laugh whenever he would point at something, because he’d have to use his middle finger. That was enough for us.

Not so funny now, but funny then.

Aunt Mimi would be the umpire, watching over us with her thick bottle lenses and blue grey hair, enforcing the rules of wiffle ball with her shrill voice. Sometimes, even when she wasn’t looking at us, she’d catch us doing things that we weren’t supposed to do. She’d catch us before we’d even made up our minds to be naughty. I’d pick up a palm nut to hit James Rorrick in the head, and before I could even cock my arm back, she’d be there. She’d seen everything, knew every trick in the book. She had watched over many generations of children in her lifetime, and god help her if she was going to let someone misbehave on her watch.

Of course, she never caught it when Matthew Dickory hit me in the head with a palm nut. It was there, on the battlefields of Spreckel’s park where we had our nonsensical wars, in between the contested territories between the public bathrooms and the stage that the city used once a year for the annual flower show. We never kept score. Just fighting for the fun of it. Of course, fighting in this case meant getting pegged in the butt by a palm nut at grade school velocities.

I’m surprised that no one ever lost an eye, like Aunt Mimi said. Then again, the eye’s a pretty small target, and the palm nut is a pretty small projectile.

Wet asphalt.

My eyes tell me that the automatic sprinklers have stopped a few moments before my arrival. The runoff from the landscaping paints wet streaks across the freshly paved road to my office building. It’s September, and the air holds a crisp bite as the city begins its transition to its fall colors.

The smell, on the other hand, sends me, tells me that I’m back in grade school. I don’t know what month it is. In San Diego, the weather is the same all year. You end up with one, long nondescript season. Well, actually, it only has one description.

Partly sunny, partly cloudy, high of 73.

I’m attending a catholic parochial school located on an island just off the coast of downtown. I guess my parents sent me there to avoid my exposure to any unsavory elements. No doubt if I had attended a catholic parochial school in my own neighborhood, I would have become a bloodthirsty miscreant.

My school had an asphalt playground, really just a large parking lot with old cracked, yellow paint that marked off play areas. There was hopscotch, basketball, volleyball, four square, a numbered ring for cake walks, and even a court dedicated to that most barbaric and wonderful of grade school sports, dodgeball.

I remember the looks I got when Lourdes Rasay got hit with a volleyball in the face. I didn’t hit her with it, but everyone looked to me, as the other Filipino in the school, to defend her honor. I had a crush on her then, probably because she was the only one that looked even remotely like me.

Then high school hit, and so did the realization that she wasn’t all that great.

The bit over there in the “about me” blurb is fairly accurate. If it’s a longer post, odds are that I just posted the damn thing right away. Then I start noticing grammatical errors on the order of “Paris in teh teh Spring.” Then the broken links start to show up. Then of course, there’s the elimination of adverbs. Then cutting the extraneous sentences.

Then there are the errors pointed out by my “editors.” (Thank you!) So, by the time the post is the third or fourth down the page, it has gone through approximately four or five edits. No lie. Then, at some point, I let them go because I’ve done all I can.

I’m not sure why I don’t edit before I hit that publish button. I either don’t believe in the rough draft, or I believe in organic, living text.

Yeah that last bit sounded like bullshit to me, too.

In any case, just like my posts, I’ll be editing and tweaking and doing my best to not break the site. For those of you that have been here a while, drop me a line and let me know what you think.

New readers should just come back when I say something funny, which should be any week now.

     It was cold that day.
     “I didn’t mean for this to happen.” Her breath took shape in the cold winter air as she spoke. “I’m sorry.”
     Before, he forgave.
     Before, she promised.
     That was then, when he believed that they could work everything out. Now, now was different. She was different. She had made a decision.
     “I’m,” She paused and bit her lip, a sign of stress that he recognized. “Leaving.” She brushed hair away from her face with a mittened hand. The orange coat was closed close around her, buttoned up to her neck.
     He berated himself for falling in love with her. He berated himself for falling in love with her so much. He looked at her. He closed his eyes, remembered to breathe, opened them again. He kept his hands in his pockets. For the first time in his entire life, the thought of striking a woman appeared and was dismissed.
     She shivered.
     He knew she was cold, and he did not care. He didn’t say anything. Gloved hands in pockets stretched, tried to keep warm and failed. He was cold throughout, but he didn’t care about that, either. He knew that even when he went back indoors, he’d remain cold. He looked away. The last leaves swirled around the empty playground, and he watched them create circular patterns around their feet. How cliché, he thought.
     “I’m moving to California.”
     He looked up. “California?” With him, he added to himself.
     “Yes.” There was an almost imperceptible nod, something he knew as distinctly, utterly, “her.”
     He thought about an appropriate response but couldn’t think of one. He picked anything. “I wish the two of you the best of luck.” He turned and started to walk.
     “Wait.” She said.
     He turned. He saw her hand reaching out to him, her taking a tentative step forward. He shook his head, “No.”
     “Just,” He took a deep breath, exhaled. “Go.” He turned and started walking. He didn’t have a destination in mind. He just wanted to walk.
     She didn’t follow.
     Everything’s a cliché, he thought. Until it happens to you.

     He walked to the grocery store, to the drug store, to work, and to the metro station. When he came back, she was gone. He went inside, sat on the couch for a few moments. He took off his gloves, felt the warmth slowly creep into his hands. He looked at the thermostat.
     The heat was on full blast. She was always cold.
     He stood up and turned the dial down to sixty-five. He could wear a sweater.