At the time, I was unfamiliar with the protocol of running over a man. In fender benders, I knew enough that you avoid blurting out anything self-incriminating before undergoing the ritual of exchanging insurance information. But, being the pedestrian he was, the man was absent a car. And, as far as I knew, there was no such thing as pedestrian insurance—though I was thinking there ought to be. At a glance, he seemed to be in good condition, a slight limp, maybe, but I still felt obliged to find out for sure. I rolled down my window and said, “Hey! Sorry. Are you all right?” Here, an interesting thing occurred. The man, avoiding eye contact, nodded quickly, and picked up his rusty pace away from my car. It seemed he wanted nothing to do with me. My brain in a fog, I looked both ways several times before making the right turn I had set out to do earlier.

I got halfway to McDonalds before I snapped out of it and decided to turn back to check on the man once again. I found him inside CVS, his head floating down an aisle. As I homed in on him, he began moving faster toward the back of the store. I was getting out of breath when I tried to slow him down, “Hey!” I said. No response. We had both broken into a near full-blown sprint. “Hey!” I shouted. Heads in the greeting card aisle turned, but the man kept on target, his pace steady. I knew he’d heard me. Finally, there was nowhere left for him to run. I had the man trapped between myself and the pharmacy. The pharmacists, in their white coats, hovering over their half-filled prescriptions, eyed me nervously. Then, a funny thought came over me. Do I introduce myself as the man who hit him with his car? Or had these preliminaries sailed on the moment he rolled over my hood? “Are you sure you’re okay?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. His face went flush and he averted his gaze. His beret was slightly ajar. The man seemed tortured not physically, but mentally by my dogging persistence. I decided not to push it any further. I said, “Okay,” offered another weak apology, and removed myself from the man’s sight as quickly as possible. It was rather awkward behavior on his part, I thought. I could not understand why the man was so bent out of shape. I left slightly offended.

Some years later, I clipped a college kid crossing the street. Once again I was turning right, but this time it was at the stop sign of a busy outdoor mall intersection. Amazingly, I got the same response from the kid as I did from the man in CVS. It just must be the standard, I concluded. As the poor kid hobbled toward the curb, I leaned out my window and asked cooly, “Are you all right?” Already having one hit pedestrian under my belt, I felt sure of myself this time around.

In the midst of a fast and slightly painful-looking getaway, he gave a curt response, “I’m fine.” I watched as he stiffly reached the door of the restaurant across the street. He was probably on his way to meet up with some friends. For a half-instant, I thought of going in after him to see if he really was okay. Instead, I checked for more pedestrians, stepped on the gas, and decided to do the kid a favor. I’d drive away and get out of his hair as soon as possible. And this time, I wouldn’t take it so personally.

Inside the zoo, near where a bearded employee handled an armadillo before a gathering of moms and screechy kids, we went over the zoo map I had snagged from the ticket booth. The layout of the place appeared to run in one big loop. The animals were sorted by continent. Nonetheless, all the ”continents” we visited maintained the same steady sweltering climate of the Sahara desert. I feared my body would eventually run out of sweat.

North America was our first destination. I figured this part of the zoo would be nothing short of taking a leisurely stroll through my backyard. I was partially right. Three steps deep inside the Western Hemisphere, I caught a dreadful odor that rivaled that of our garage trashcan the day after I threw away the dead mouse we’d caught in our basement. Nonetheless, we pressed on.

Just off the walking path, a sign called our attention to a low patch of weeds. It informed us that black ants were in there. I strained my eyes but could not make out even one anthill, not even an ant. Slightly puzzled, Jess and I never arrived at a solid conclusion over the ants’ whereabouts. The best I can come up with is that they probably filed their way to the nearest overflowing trashcan and got tangled up in a swath of cotton candy. To be honest, as long as they didn’t end up in my pants or something, I was fine with not knowing their mysterious location. By the time Jess had me posing for a snapshot with a tired old goat with stubs for ears, the ants had left my mind.       

Counting the invisible ants, there must have been a million animals in the zoo. Many seemed immobilized by the noonday heat, either slumped in a shady corner or sprawled out inside a hollow tree trunk. Some animals came off as rather pedestrian, like the mallards, that swam and quacked like the ones back home, but some were worth noting, namely the penguins.

Heavily influenced by Coca-Cola commercials, I have always pegged penguins for snow birds. These particular ones, however, were out and about in the sizzling sun. Not to be mean, but the poor birds looked diseased, as if they constituted a sort of bird leper colony. Instead of donning their usual tuxedo coats, the penguins hobbled out in something more like a dung colored blazer with the stuffing coming out. They were losing their feathers in clumps. What feathers remained mashed into a chaotic mess, looking as if the zoo staff had taken to cooling them off with fire hoses.    

It occurred to me that the penguins might be contagious. As I considered how life might be like living in quarantine, I read up on the penguin facts posted outside their habitat.  Apparently they make nests out of mounds of seabird guano, aka, bird poop. I wanted out. Though not totally undone of my suspicion, I was put partially at ease when I overheard a lady in a zoo polo shirt explaining to an equally uneasy observer that this is molting season.

So maybe they weren’t diseased. But it was an image I knew would stay with me for a long time. I’ve heard of molting, but never witnessed it first hand. I learned a lot from my visit to the zoo. Although it has its plusses, Nature can be very ugly at times. Especially during molting season.

As I got older, it struck me how speedily Tom would recover after he took, say, a cannon ball blast to the stomach. The very next scene, there he’d be again hot on Jerry’s tail, no arm sling, no 9-1-1 calls, no emergency squads, just business as usual. It was amazing! Had this happened to your typical human, he’d certainly be dead, or at least severely maimed–but cartoons had it different, I guess. They had the remarkable ability to throw themselves back together again and start where they left off. A 1000 volt shock, where Tom’s skeleton would flash like a strobe light, did little but maybe slow him down a bit. He’d still be good to finish out the rest of the episode. Cartoons held the key to violence without repercussion.

And this is exaclty why Tom & Jerry was not a show for kids…or actually…it was, but, perhaps, it shouldn’t be for today’s kids. Hardly able to discern between fantasy and reality, today’s kids seem compelled to immitate what they see on TV. I, however, was immune to such urges. A cat chasing a mouse in circles with an ax hardly influenced me. Nor was I tempted to pull a similar stunt on my sisters whenever Jerry caught Tom in the mouth with a cast-iron skillet, breaking his teeth to the sweet song of shattering glass.

Although, in all honesty, I must mention here that my record isn’t completely clean. One day I caught myself employing a basic Bugs Bunny tactic–but only this one time, I promise. If I could take it back I would, but at the time, I was 5 and the temptation took a near-supernatural hold on me. Even now, I try to push my delete-memory button as I watch my cousin hanging precariously from the porch banister. I cry out to him, try to warn him of myself, who is moving across the width of the porch toward him. My cousin, so sadly trusting, pays me no attention. He reaches for the Matchbox car I had so wrecklessly flung off the porch and into the shrubs three feet below. Wishing not to pass up the opportunity, I go right to work peeling each of his fingers, one-by-one, from the banister. (You know, like how the cartoons do it. Except, he hung from a porch banister instead of the way-up-high I-beam of a skyscraper, or a cliff.) 

He looks up at me, startled, confused. E Tu Brute?  His irises are swallowed up by two black pools of pupil. I can almost see my cartoon grin in them. My cousin’s pleas for me to stop falls on deaf ears. I just finish working loose my cousin’s second to the last finger when I watch him roll off the porch side. His delicate blond hair disappear into the scratchy, tangled mess below. Tom & Jerry couldn’t have done it better. What a dreadful little boy I had become.

The results weren’t nearly as satisfying as I’d hoped. I felt stangely empty inside. It must have been my first taste of remorse. He did not briefly stand on mid-air with a funny face and wave to the camera before he fell, leaving a humorous, smoky plume behind. No, gravity did its job right away. And further to my dismay, he must have hit his knee on a stump or a root or something, because an ear-splitting cry immediately rose from his new hiding place. I thought for sure it was the end of him. So, I did what any normal kid that age would do and ran like heck. The rest of the day, I stayed inside grandma’s house, across the street, where I peeked through the window curtains. Any minute I expected to see my uncle’s furious face emerge from the front door of their house across the street. I dared not come out until my parents said it was time to leave. And then I lay low in the backseat until we were at least a mile outside of town.

“Just sleepy, mom.”

On a good note, my cousin must have made it out of the bushes okay, because no police ever showed up to arrest me. And besides that, many years later, I attended his wedding. Even better, there appeared to be no physical damage from his fall. I detected no limp, no new stutter in his speech.

Unfortunately, my cousin had to learn a hard lesson that day (and maybe I did too): people aren’t cartoons. Fact: this world is rough; people get hurt. That’s just the way it is, or at least until heaven comes to earth, and maybe then we can live like cartoons, never feeling pain or hurt. But for now…were stuck here, with frail bodies and the rest of the package deal that came with the Fall of man. 

Anyway, after that little experiment with my cousin, I vowed to never mix cartoon behavior with reality ever again. That is, if you don’t count the little trick I picked up from The Little Rascles that gray Sunday morning, when I socked my sister in the nose, but in a funny, little-rascal-sort-of-way. After the shrieking and crying died down, I decided the same goes for Buckwheat and reality. … Okay, I shouldn’t ever be allowed to watch TV again.  

But when I dare tap into the shadows of my elementary years, I see a sad sight, a kid, his eyes boiling with tears beneath a hot head of curly brown hair. Scuffed knees top his grass-stained socks, and his shorts are much too short by today’s standards. Once again, head hanging, he drags himself across the summer grass, the endless stretch of connecting neighborhood backyards, in route to the wounded milk jug. It is caved in on one side, where just moments ago a foot had met the plastic with mean force, echoing like a gunshot between the houses and throughout his soul. Again, all his prisoners are free, and his hard work is ruined - an endless, ruthless cycle.

With all the neighbor kids back in hiding, the world is a ghost town. The birds in the trees chirp occassionally to break the twighlight silence only to mock him. Tears in the kid’s eyes smear together the rich summer colors with a liquid worn out sky, as he goes after the confounded milk jug. This time they had booted it clear to Mrs. Moon’s. She’d probably come out and yell at him for setting foot on her grass. 

For two hours now he has been it. Now, two options lay before him: (1) he can retrieve the milk jug, set it back in its place, and go back to work again, collecting his escaped prisoners; or, (2) he can run the risk of being called a baby, quit, and go inside. If I know the kid as well as I think I do, he will choose the latter. 

This is how it was for me growing up. My neighborhood pumped out a brood of mean-spirited kids who shaved and would knock endlessly at my door to get me, a first-grader, to play kick-the-can.

“Come on,” they’d say, “we need only one more player.” Through my screen door, they’d disarm me with pleasantries and warm smiles, insisting we were friends and I’d be well liked - because that’s all I ever wanted, anyway - if I’d just come out and play this once. This time it’d be different. Besides, I’d be selfish not to play, because if I didn’t, mysteriously, no one else could. And, of course, young and naive as I was, I’d play. And two minutes later, I’d be forever it.     

Kick-the-can was a big deal in our neighborhood. I don’t know who invented the game. Perhaps its orgins are from the Deep Depression, when all that anyone owned was an old can. As for us, we prefered an empty milk carton, because it got good hang time. Also, I vaguely remember the older neighbor kids having me stick my nose in it and breathe the carton’s spoiled insides - “Take a whiff,” I can still hear them saying - so there may have been other more sinister reasons why.   

Kick-the-can is not a complex sport. A can is placed in a designated spot, preferably, a nice dirt spot in someone’ s yard, but any agreed upon spot will do.  The person who is it (I’ll call him the ”jailer”) (which usually was me for hours on end) guards the can with his life. Everybody else hides behind houses, cars, bushes, or if they’re a good climber, in a well foliaged tree. The jailer (which, again, was usually me) must round up everyone he sees in hiding and put him in jail.  This is done by calling out the name of the spotted person and where he is hidden, and running like a maniac to jump the can and complete the prison sentence before some jerk kicks the can half way to China. For example: “I see Jason! Jump the can!” Once all have been captured, someone else gets to be it.

Whenever the can is kicked, everyone runs free, hollering and taunting the jailer all the way to their new hiding places. Say twenty kids are playing and nineteen are imprisoned, if the twentieth man kicks the can, everyone is free, the game starts afresh, and the jailer (which was always me) experiences the soul-wrenching feeling of having two hours of his hard labor, not to mention his only chance at freedom, crumble into oblivion, right before his eyes.

Sometimes, if the neighborhood kids were feeling particularly merciless, they’d form a terrible, human kick-the-can train. Appearing suddenly from behind a house or an oversized pine tree, they would rush the can. Of course, the jailer must shout the name of and jump the can for each person he sees. Impossible. Under such conditions, if the fourth of fifth person were unable to make it, the ”caboose” would, and off to Mrs. Moon’s yard I’d go, building up the courage to quit. 

The kick-the-can train was only one of the many strategies used against me. Another good one that particularly irked me involved switching shirts or hats and running behind the house to the opposite corner from where I saw them. They’d emerge about five minutes later after I’d shouted their name: “That was Scott you saw. I’ve been hiding here the whole time. And plus, this is a red shirt, see? It’s different than the blue one you saw. Now, close your eyes and count to fifty while I go hide again.”       

Besides this, we played many more neighborhood games. But whatever the game, they would all end in the same result: me crying and going inside. As a matter of fact, now that I think about it at the ripe old age of 32, that probably was the game. Anyway, my point is, if you’re a counselor and you want to get to the bottom of my psychological problems, kick-the-can is probably a good place to start.

My wife, a very reliable source and highly esteemed preschool teacher, told me the sad news just the other day. Her job is to know and love everything there is to know about shapes (and storytime). “What’s this, kids?” “Oball…(in unison)”

So you can imagine the gasps throughout the preschool halls the morning the moms arrived, kids in tow, and announced how if their child were to mark ”oval” for its corresponding shape on the kindergarten entrance exam, they’d wind up infinitely wrong, and perhaps a year older than their graduating class. Nope - now it’s called an ellipse. And the diamond, a rhombus.

The hard, cold imaginary truth of the matter is that this is what happens when you get a bunch of shape experts in the same room together. Realizing the shape field has experienced next to zero major achievements since King Tut’s day, when the wheel was dubbed the circle, and, therefore, their paychecks might be in danger, they did what any normal shape experts would do: they held a convention.

Someone needed to invent a need for change - and fast. Otherwise, what in the world were they getting paid for? No, seriously, what?   

 Since all the good shapes were taken, the assembly of minds unamiously agreed that the only real route to take was to rename a couple well-known ones. If anything, this would at least confuse the general public, not to mention the up and coming kindergartners, long enough to secure their jobs for the next few years (and, fingers crossed, open the opportunity for a nice Time Magazine write-up). Plus, the ellipse and rhombus sound a heck of a lot smarter than an oval or a dumb old diamond.

Well, this is all fine and well, I guess. A shape expert’s gotta make a living, too. But it dawned on me that I suddenly stood outside the with-it crowd. I no longer knew my shapes. I was an oval living in an ellipse generation. And, chances were, from old habit, I’ll still go on calling an oval an oval, only to be met, no doubt, by snickers and secretive giggles from those young lads in the know. I will be labeled with the folks who either can’t help or insist on calling a movie a picture show, or an automobile a horseless carriage.       

Worse yet, what about cards?! The Queen of diamonds is now the Queen of rhombuses (or rhombi; whatever its plural form). It’s dreadful; we are witnessing the extinction of those who call a spade a spade! This here was too much. I sat down, took some deep breathes. My head swam with the sense of a world spun out of control. Suddenly even my neighborhood felt strangely unfamiliar, like I’d slipped into a deep coma and woken up on Mars. I panicked, fearing for the triangle’s life, then the circle’s. Where does the terrible momentum of shape renaming stop? And, what about America’s votes on the matter? Does democracy only reach so far?

 Soon they’ll probably change my name. So, to avoid forever getting stuck with something ridiculous, I must get a jump on these guys. For now on, I declare my name to officially be Eoj (which is Joe spelled backwards) Oval (in memory of) Diamond (also, in memory of), Sr. (incase there’s ever a junior).   

Anyway, it’s been quite a rough work week with deadlines and software hang-ups. Last night, in the office (or rather, my “cubical”, for a more accurate word), I burned the midnight oil until 8pm. I say midnight, because since the time change, the darkest sky that I have ever seen hangs over this city come 5:30pm.

It has already sent me spinning into a mild depression. The hard fluorescent lights at work aren’t doing their job at replacing the sunlight. In fact, I think they’ve aided in producing a clog in my serotonin pump. 

It is my wish that they hurry and put up the Christmas lights, so I can battle these short-day blues with a little Christmas spirit.   

So much happened over the weekend: Jess and I were a part of our church’s annual Open House choir, and afterwards we invited both sides of the family over for an afternoon brunch. And even though the game never really took off, Cornhole was set up outside for anyone who was willing. So, it’s not like I’m lacking content. I’m just short on confidence.

But, as always, I’ll continue to battle it out, and my confidence is sure to show up again. It always does, usually in the midst of reading someone else’s work. Inspiration will fall from the sky and hit me in the head. Either that, or I will eventually get sick of being afraid, and just write.

And, as you can see, I’m forcing myself to write anyway, banging away at the keyboard, not really knowing or caring where it takes me. Sometimes this is the only remedy. So bear with me.

This hole I now refer to as a deep desire for God, a longing for the things of Heaven and how it should be. Tempted as I am to believe that I can feel happy by stuffing the hole with “bigger” and “better” things displayed in television commercials or Hollywood, or by chasing dreams that are not yet willing to be caught (on this side of Heaven), I refuse to give in to this ancient lie.

Instead, I dream for something more.

“I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” - Jesus

“Instead, they were longing for a better country - a heavenly one.” - Hebrews 11:16