Table Football #1

Since October I have started to enjoy writing small pieces with myself as the audience. Now I am attempting something a little different. Editing my words so that they will make sense to others is hard. Here we go.

Very occasionally I attempt to tell people who I am. Not sharing for the purpose of getting emotional support or advice, which I seem to do as naturally as breathing, but because I briefly cease to remember why I must imprison myself. In these moments I am driven onwards by a sort of reckless disregard for reality.

The earliest of such moments was me telling my parents of an encounter I had whilst at a children’s day club in Majorca. I was an eight year old talking about being a four year old. There was a day where the children’s club staff had taken us on a trip. The only distinct memory of the destination was a table football table. A member of staff walked over to it, opened the side with a key, took out a coin, put it into a slot in the side and shut the hatch. This caused a ball to come out and we were able to play table football. We played, and every time a goal was scored, we would push a lever to cause another ball to pop out.

I can’t remember if I actually played the game or just watched, but I do remember being fascinated by pressing the lever to make the ball come back in. We did this until the ball stopped coming out. So, I opened the hatch on the side, took out a coin, and put it in the slot. And we could carry on playing. I was fairly elated; I had fixed the machine and we could carry on playing.

I’m unsure exactly how many times we opened the hatch and reused the same coin, but eventually the staff must have noticed, because one of our supervisors came over, took me away from the game and scolded me for stealing. Imagine my surprise. I had been fixing a mechanical contraption on a regular basis and I was being scolded for it! I thought they would have praised me for my ingenuity in keeping the whole thing running and the kids entertained without bothering them.

It took a few years to work out what had happened. To understand that the game wasn’t breaking, but was designed to stop on a regular basis and prompt you to put coins in it. That this was a fundamental part of the world we lived in. My parents found the story hilarious and wondered why I hadn’t told them sooner.

My current reaction is one of bemusement and has been for a while. I have this sense of knowing a story in intricate detail but it not meaning anything, until enough unrelated ideas had dropped into my mind and I had an explanation. It leaves a nagging sensation that the explanation was never complete. Even after I had told the story for the first time, I had still not achieved closure. It feels like this story contains something of who I am. I just can’t solve the riddle.