The Great White Flash (Part 1)
IT USED TO BOTHER ME when people would stare and point their fingers when I wasn’t looking, but those kinds of things don’t really bother me anymore. After all, I can’t blame them. How often do you see a kid with no arms?
My long, straight white hair, glowing white skin and crystal blue eyes don’t help me blend in, either. “Albino” used to be the term for my condition, but I’m not sure people are supposed to use that word anymore.
When you don’t have arms, you have to use your feet for everything. And I mean everything — brushing your teeth, combing your hair, eating cereal for breakfast in the morning, and taking out the trash on weekends. It all has to be accomplished using a combination of your feet and your teeth. Your toes have to do what your fingers would typically do, and it all takes a lot of practice and patience.
Fortunately, I live in Southern California where it is hot and sunny year-round, so I never need to wear shoes. That’s the main thing — wearing shoes. If you have to wear them when you don’t have arms, you are totally out of luck.
* * *
I am in the sixth grade now, and things are getting easier each year because I have a great group of friends. I have found that as time passes, people stop noticing things that are different about you. However, there will always be those who stop and stare and point and laugh. But I have learned to tune them out the best I can.
People are always surprised when I tell them how much I enjoy playing sports. Sure, there are a few activities that are not options for me, such as basketball and baseball. But if you are creative, there are always ways to participate.
* * *
On the first day of fourth grade, the principal made an announcement over the loudspeaker:
“Eisenhower Elementary School is forming a new track team. Anyone who is interested needs to bring home the permission slip for their parents to sign. Then show up on Friday afternoon at the big field behind the cafeteria. Coach Tucker will be there to get you started.”
I brought the permission slip home that afternoon, and my dad signed it right away and give it back to me. Even though I knew that my dad was worried about me trying to make it on the track team, he always made me feel like I could accomplish anything.
“Good luck, buddy. Let me know how tryouts go on Friday. Just make sure to wear a hat and sunscreen so you don’t get burned out there,” he said, with a wink of his crystal blue eyeball.
* * *
We are a family of albinos, and skin protection is the ongoing family theme. Why we live in Southern California, I don’t quite understand. We would be better suited for Alaska, or maybe even the North Pole. But here we are, a clan of white skinned, white haired Californians trying to shield ourselves from the mercilessly hot sun.
Anyway, I showed up at the big field behind the cafeteria on Friday afternoon, and met Coach Tucker. He wore an orange collared shirt tucked into elastic bright blue shorts that were pulled up past his belly button. Coach Tucker’s arms and legs were so hairy that I wondered whether he needed to take a flea bath on weekends. His belly was perfectly round, like a barrel, and a shiny silver whistle dangled from his neck, like a pendulum on a broken grandfather clock. Coach Tucker was a nice enough fellow, and he tried not to stare, but I don’t think he could completely stop himself. He stuttered and stammered a bit, but we eventually got down to business.
The first thing that Coach Tucker asked me was whether I would be willing to wear track shoes. I politely told him that I had never worn shoes in my life, and that I didn’t see the point in starting now. I could jump, kick, and do just about everything else barefooted, so running around a track barefoot should not give me any difficulty.
The brown dirt on the track circling around the football field felt firm and inviting beneath my bare feet. The sun was warm on my face and a group of pillowy white clouds hovered above us, like a group of floating spies.
Let’s just say that I ran fast enough during tryouts to impress the coach and everyone on the track team, and I was selected to be team captain that year. Our school went on to win the track and field state championship that year, and I even managed to get my picture in the newspaper! It wasn’t the best picture that I had ever taken, mostly because I had gotten a really rotten haircut the weekend before when my dad dragged me to Cheapo-Cuts. He gets his haircut there once a month, and if you have ever seen my dad’s hair, you would know that. The crazy hairdresser lady basically beat up my head with the hair buzzer, making it look like half of the hair on my head had mysteriously gotten up and walked away from my head in the middle of the night while I was sleeping. Anyway, my mom says it is still a great picture because I gave a nice, honest smile straight into the camera.
A funny thing about muscles is that they grow bigger and stronger without you even realizing that you are getting bigger and stronger too. One day in the summer, I tried to put on my favorite pair of swim trunks, and my leg muscles were so big that when I bent over to pick something up, the trunks ripped right up the sides.
* * *
Every January, my elementary school would have a “Colossal Coin Drive” to kick off the new year. Each class would compete to see who could come up with most pounds of coins. The principal would then take all of the coins in a great big laundry sack down to the bank. All of the money would then be donated to a local charity. The class who had the most pounds of coins to donate would be treated to an ice cream party at the end of the month. Not just any old ice cream party, though, the school would actually provide hot fudge, nuts, sprinkles, and Marciano cherries, so that each kid in the winning class could make a custom sundae. If there was enough ice cream, the teachers would let you have two, or maybe even three scoops in your sundae, as long as you ate all of your lunch before hand.
I hate doing chores more than anything, but I found myself spending all my free time picking up dog poop in the backyard and taking out the trash, just to earn a few extra quarters here and there. Nothing encourages me to work hard and behave myself more than the prospect of mounds and mounds of icy cold ice cream! It seems that the other kids in my class share my passion for ice cream, because each day I sat in class in January, I noticed that the sacks and the stacks and piles of coins kept growing bigger and bigger in the corner of our classroom, to the point that it looked like a great big silver mountain had magically sprouted up from the earth.
By the last day of the month, January 31, our teacher, Ms. Glasscow, would just stand there and scratch her head and wonder how we were ever going to transport all of this precious silver loot out of the classroom and to the bank where it would be locked up in a safe. It looked to me like there were so many coins that if you wanted to, you could pour them all out in a swimming pool, jump off a diving board, and dive right into them and swim around like a duck in a lake. Heck, you could probably even do the backstroke and swish all those quarters around in your mouth and then spit them out like a little shiny fountain.
As much as I enjoyed staring at our mountain of coins and daydreaming about all of the ice cream I would eat after our class won the contest, I eventually had to get back to work. They hit you pretty hard with homework in the fourth grade these days, and I had been falling behind on my multiplication tables. I was hard at work, trying to remember the answer to 4×4, with the tip of my tongue peeking out between my sunburned lips.
I heard a jiggling of the door handle to our classroom, and I looked up. Through the tiny square window in the center of the door, I saw two faces covered with ski masks. Beady little brown eyes peeked out through the holes in the mask of the first fellow. The second man was standing too far back, so I could not see him clearly. Suddenly, the door to our classroom slammed open, as the leg of one of the men kicked its way into our classroom. Ms. Glasscow screamed so loud that it made the little tiny hairs on the back of my neck stand up as straight as razor blades. The second man rolled a large metal cart into our classroom, and started shoving the sacks of coins into the cart, while the first man stood there with his fists on his hips, just staring at us.
Stay tuned for PART 2…
J.S. Lender’s new book “They Are Here Now (Short Tales)” is now available in paperback on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/They-Are-Here-Now-Short/dp/1708895272
