My Earliest Memories, Part 2:

I remember my mom

Or my dad

Or maybe both?

Probably not both, they hated eachother by then

I remember

My mom or my dad or probably-not-both

Apparently all I remember is a parent

Sitting me down in the living room of our third house

The light was swaying or I suppose the curtains were

And mom-dad-both-whoever asked me: what do you want to be when you grow up?

He or she or they said I could be the president, or an astronaut

If I really wanted to

The world was my oyster,

(whatever that means)

I could be anything

So they said

…

What I really wanted was to be a GI Joe,

That was my idea of a

Superhero

(I guess the propaganda worked)

There was the cartoon

And I had the little plastic doll

With the fuzzy beard

And battle scars

He wore real camo pants and carried a plastic gun

It was for stopping bad guys

And it made cool war sounds

But our dog chewed that doll to pieces

Our dog gave him worser scars, the kind an army doll can’t come back from

And somewhere in the process of growing up I changed my mind (about war and “bad guys” and guns)

The propaganda stopped working— thank God!

Kid-me wanted to be a good-guy

In America’s Army

But it was a bleached fantasy

And it was make believe

Just like her-his hope that I could be anything

Before that conversation

About future aspirations

Before that sense of expectation

Filtered its way through my mind

I was simpler and I was purer

There was a time I didn’t want to be anything,

There was a time I just was

And I liked it

Earlier on (in our first house)

I remember decorating my bedroom with empty diapers

Then I was proud

Of the work I had done

And without even wanting to be,

I was King of Diaper Castle

When my dad and mom walked in

They both smiled

They both laughed

(they still loved eachother at that point)

And I didn’t feel ashamed of my work,

I felt all the more proud to put a smile on my grownups’ faces

Dad was so happy that he put me in a laundry basket and slid me down the stairs

For a prize

His hand was there the whole time,

Right in the side

But to me

The Laundry Sled was a heart-pounding ride

And I enjoyed being alive

Without any of the burden of hope

And I was full-happy, so dreams had no need

A simpler and purer time

Before all this fucking knowledge polluted my mind

I remember simply being, without the contamination of hope

But that was then and this is now

Today all I want to be is a good guy

A gentle man

Who can do no harm

And if it’s not asking too much

Maybe…

I’d also like to be good writer

Ah.

Fantasy