Author Archives: tim

“Two places?”

“Did I forget to mention that? You only get four places.”

“Yes, you forgot to mention that!”

“Sorry.” He flashed a sheepish grin and crouched low. “Choose well.”

My baby self was beginning to cry as the priest poured water on its head. It was kind of humiliating, actually. Who wants to see a more helpless version of himself? Not me. “I need something a little more confidence-building,” I told the fairy.

He shrugged.

“Ooh, I know!” I said. “Prom!” It was perfect. I could go back to Prom night and watch as Julie Davis begged me to go all the way with her.

“As you wish,” he said, taking a bow.

And then there we were, looking on as Julie and I smooched in the back seat of my car. What came next was not exactly how I remembered things going.

Julie pulled away from my teenaged self and said, “We should get going soon.”

“Okay!” my boy version said, and he dove in with new zeal.

She pushed him away. “That’s not what I meant!” she said.

“Oh come on! It’s prom night!” he replied. “We may lose or we may win, but we will never be here again.”

“Oh no,” I said to the fairy. “Did I actually quote an Eagles song?”

“I’m afraid so,” he said, fluttering onto my shoulder. “And the sad thing is, it worked.”

“The Eagles!” Julie said, brightening. “I love The Eagles! I have this huge crush on Don Henley!” Her expression was vacuous as the teenager next to her kissed her neck.

“”˜Should old acquaintance be forgot?'” the fairy asked. “The answer is yes.”

Julie stopped me once more and asked, “Can we at least put on some Eagles?”

The fairy sat down and patted my shoulder. “I think I know of a better place.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Let’s go.”

I was horrified. “Get me out of here,” I said.

“You’re the boss,” he replied. “Where to?”

My mother was screaming her head off in between fits of Lamaze breathing. She exhaled, “Hee hee, who who,” contorting her wide-eyed face to disturbing proportions. It was creepy. We’re talking clown creepy.

“Where to?” the fairy asked again.

“I don’t care!” I screamed. “Anywhere.”

And poof! Just like that, we were sitting in a church. My mother and father were standing next to a priest.

“Is this my parents’ wedding?” I asked.

The fairy shook his head. “You wouldn’t have been alive for that, now would you?” He shot me a condescending look.

“Are all time fairies smart asses?” I asked.

Before he could answer, we were interrupted by a baby crying. My mother was holding the child, attempting to calm it down by whispering to it and making mother faces.

The fairy buzzed in my ear. “Guess who that is.”

“This is my baptism!”

“Who’s the smart ass now?” he said.

The priest was droning on and on about “the sacraments” and “efficacious signs of worship” and “bearing fruit.” I turned to the fairy. “Look, why did you bring me here?”

“You’re the one who wanted to leave the hospital.”

“I didn’t want to come here.”

“I thought this was an important moment for you people.”

“Well, yeah, I don’t know,” I stuttered. “You’ve seen one of these things and you’ve seen them all, you know?”

“Alright,” he said. “Your call. You got two places left.”

The Fairy and the Sock Drawer

I think it was last Tuesday when I found the fairy in my sock drawer. I took out a pair of Gold Toes and he sprang up from his hiding place and hovered about six inches above my dresser. It freaked me out.

“Hi there,” he said in a little voice.

“Holy crap!” I responded. As you might imagine, it took me a few minutes to accept what I was seeing. People say “seeing is believing,” but when a fairy jumps out of your sock drawer, it puts that expression to the test.

He bowed theatrically, like magical creatures tend to do before granting wishes. “Where would you like to go?” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“Where would you like to go? I can take you there.”

“You mean, like San Diego?” I asked.

“No.” He put his hands on his hips. “I’m a time fairy. I can take you to any moment of your own life.” He buzzed down to the top of the dresser and stopped flapping his wings. “Unless . . . Have you been to San Diego? I’ve always wanted to go there.”

I had been to San Diego. It was on a vacation with a girlfriend, but we broke up three days into the week, which made the whole thing kind of awkward. So I lied. “No.”

The fairy eyed me skeptically. “Fine, choose some other place, then.” He began picking dirt from under his fingernails.

I tried to think of some moment of my life I’d want to relive, but I was having trouble.

“Most people begin with their own birth. How “˜bout we start there?” he suggested.

I said, “Okay, let me just think about this for a minute,” but apparently, he only heard the okay part.

Suddenly, we were in a hospital room. A young version of my mother was lying on a table, screaming, “Jesus Christ!” My father was next to her, wincing in pain as my mother squeezed his hand. Doctors and nurses were swarming around, telling her to push, and saying things like, “Okay,” “Breathe,” “Almost there,” and “You’re doing good.”

The fairy flew around to the base of the table and said, “The view is better over here. Oh look, there’s your head.”

This one will come in five installments over the next five days.

Chain Link Fence

I had this friend in 8th or 9th grade, his name was Mike Vandershoot. He kinda marched to his own drum, you know? One day, I was out walking my dog. It must have been late winter. Rainy, 40 degrees, muddy. Crappy weather. I went by the tennis courts and I saw Mike walking toward me. He was carrying a racket, bouncing a tennis ball on it as he approached.

“Hey,” he said, when he got close enough.

“Hey,” I said back.

“Your dog wanna fetch this ball?”

“No,” I said. “She’s got bad hips. Can’t run.”

He stuffed the ball in his pocket and turned the racket around so that the handle was facing me. “You wanna try something?” he said.

You never knew what to expect with this guy. “Like what?” I asked.

“Check this out.” He jabbed the handle of the racket at the chain-link fence surrounding the tennis court. “Did you know that eight out of ten times, the handle doesn’t go through an opening in the fence?”

I gotta be honest. If anyone else had been there, I would have called him a freak. You know how things are when you’re just starting high school. Teenagers aren’t the nicest people.

He didn’t look at the handle as he jabbed it at the fence. He looked at me and counted off ten attempts. Two of them went through. “See?” he said.

I looked at the fence with all that space, wondering how the handle didn’t go through more often.

Mike guessed what I was thinking. He nodded at me. “Crazy, isn’t it?”

I admit it. I was curious. “Okay, let me try,” I said.

He passed the racket and I jabbed it through the fence. It went through. So did attempts two, three and five.

“You’re cheating,” Mike said. “You can’t look at it. You’re influencing the results.”

So I looked at him and continued. The first five attempts failed. In the next five, two went through the fence. Eight out of ten. “How do you know that?” I asked.

“I’ve done it a lot of times,” he said.

I kept looking at him while I made more attempts. “How many times?” I asked.

“About 850.”

“Eight hundred fifty?” I said. “You’re sick.”

He answered by quoting this guy named Krishnamurti: “”˜It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.'”

“Who the hell is Krishnamurti?” I asked.

“The Dalai Lama called him the greatest thinker of the 20th century.”

I still don’t know what jabbing a tennis racket handle through a chain link fence has to do with some Buddhist thinker. I kept at it, though. Mike’s estimate seemed to hold up.

After I walked the dog home, I didn’t think much about it. In fact, I forgot about it for years.

I hung out with Mike less and less as the next school year came and went. And then, in the summer of our freshman year, he died. He was out West, hiking some trail in the Rockies with his family. He fell off a scenic overlook. Part of me thinks he did it on purpose, like he wanted to know what it would feel like to fly through the air or something stupid.

I tell ya, recently, I can’t stop thinking about that guy. I’ll be standing in line for the urinal at a football game or sitting at my desk on a Monday morning or I’ll get home from work on a Friday excited to let loose for the weekend and I’ll plop on the couch with a beer and then I’ll get all depressed thinking about Mike.

Crazy, isn’t it? I mean, that was 25 years ago, for Christ’s sake.

And besides, what do I got to be sad about?