I have twitter now for those who are interested.
As my body bounced up and down, I thought that there was no real way to describe exactly how much I hated long-distance running. Suffice it to say, if I could have ripped off my head to give my lungs better access to the atmosphere, I would have. I had a stitch in my side that felt like an old woman had sewn me together earlier that day from the dead bodies of not one, but two fat kids after choosing the worst half of each. My body wanted to break in two at the diaphragm so badly I couldn’t even feel my legs any longer. Half a mile ahead of me a group of boys my age ran in perfect military unison on the stone paths of the campus. I was giving everything I had just to keep them in view.
When I told my grandfather that I would do anything… anything to go to Space Camp, I do not know what part of his brain misfired and decided that what I really wanted to do was go to Camp NBC and play basketball. Maybe he didn’t want me growing up to be a nerd. Although he must have known he had about as much chance of that as I had of catching up with the rest of the boys in my dormitory.
The brochures for Space Camp had been exciting, offering pictures of exotic experiments, fantastic simulators, and I had collected them the way other children collected baseball cards. I read about all of the activities, almost salivating at the idea of learning about physics. My heroes in life were Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, MacGyver, and Dr. Egon Spangler. I knew Michael Jordan only as a very large black man who liked to sell shoes. One weekend morning before summer had started, I had lain all those pamphlets in front of my grandfather like a Buddhist laying out objects trying to find the next lama. When my grandfather nodded at me sternly and grunted, I hugged him frantically, thinking he had understood. So when he told me he had a surprise for me, I had naturally assumed that I was being sent to Space Camp… until he pulled out the new Air Jordans. My frown hadn’t lifted since.
The Air Jordans were nowhere near as wide as my feet, which was why in addition to being out of breath, I also had a sort of half-hobble that sometimes caused me to skip on the sides of my feet. I looked like a zombie trying to power walk. Earlier that day there was a camp-wide competition to see who could make the most shots out of a hundred from the free throw line. The winner made around forty. I had made one. I knew no matter how I pleaded or begged that I would be at camp for a whole week. A whole week of doing basketball related activities. Basketball, as you may or may not know, has nothing to do with outer space.
As I ran along, wishing for death and wheezing like a bellows with a bent nozzle, I wondered what had compelled my grandfather to try to bring out the athlete in me. Perhaps it had been the diorama I had made in a shoe box of an alien world? Maybe it was the two great wooden replicas of the Starship Enterprise I had made in his workshop? Maybe it was the fact that I had populated those ships with action figures and rehearsed giant space battles in my room doing a different voice for every character until, through a closed door, it sounded like a tv show was on? I didn’t know. All I knew was that my grandfather decided the one thing I didn’t need was Space Camp. So I ran. I wheezed. My stomach burned. Generally, I was miserable.
After morning exercise, moments before our run, I had seen a drinking fountain and proceeded to put my mouth around it like a trailer park skank trying to deep throat her boyfriend. Then I turned the nozzle on full blast and tried to get as much water as I could into my body before they made me run. I could have said no to running if the counselors had yelled at me. Instead they had a sort of super upbeat, life is beautiful attitude, that made me feel like a real prick for even contemplating refusal. It was the kind of chipper attitude usually held only by women selling beauty products, kindergarten teachers, and Mormons. The day before they had cheerily made me hop on one leg through a set of tire tracks until I broke down and sobbed. Tires have nothing at all to do with the wonders of space, and furthermore being able to jump through them will never enable me to build a proton accelerator.
I licked my lips as I ran, feeling like a big sweaty ham. The water in the fountain had tasted wrong from the first swallow. It had had a bitter metallic tang that seemed all wrong, but I needed every drop of that moisture. I had decided right from the onset of camp that no matter how much I didn’t want to be there, or how exhausting the exercise was, or how much I cried that I wasn’t going to give up. I ran as fast as I could, which just happened to be nowhere near as fast as the other boys. My hope was that if I did a really good job and improved my athletic ability that my grandfather would send me to Space Camp the following year. My stomach knotted. My mouth tasted very much like iron all of the sudden.
Unable to do anything else I fell over to my knees. I tried to suck some air in, but I couldn’t get enough of it in time, so I vomited. A high pressured eruption that seemed driven out of my body by more than gravity and a gag reaction. I blacked out for a second as the vomiting interrupted my breathing. I looked over at a park bench less than a foot away. I vomited all over it. Far ahead of me one of my counselors turned around to run back for me. They did that every now and again to make sure I hadn’t dropped dead of heat stroke. Counselor Ryan arrived over my crawling form, then bent over to ask me what was wrong. I repaid his favor by throwing up all over his shoes, and then rolling over on my back to expose my sweat soaked face to the sun. The words my counselor uttered next would change my fate for the course of the afternoon.
“Scott,” Counselor Ryan said, looking at his shoes, “have you taken your medication today?”
Having recently thrown up, and not yet having caught my breath, I was not very articulate with my response. “My name isn’t Scott.” He might have heard one syllable in the jumble.
The counselor looked down at me with a look that screamed “oh my God!” The next thing I knew he picked me up by one arm, and was dragging me to the office like a soldier pulling his buddy out of a combat zone. Too weak to relate that my name wasn’t Scott, that I was not on medication, and that I really just needed a few minutes to get it together because I drank some bad water, I clumsily followed. The more I wheezed and tried to explain that my name wasn’t Scott the more my counselor assumed I was delirious and in desperate need of medication.
When we arrived at the office, I was carefully placed in a chair as I continued to dry heave into a waste basket that was thrown into my lap for that purpose. Counsellor Ryan, meanwhile began to passionately beg the secretary for Scott’s medication since I, being Scott, was so obviously in need of some serious medication and normal protocols couldn’t be applied. From Counselor Ryan’s tone, he seemed ready to shove his hand down my throat and put a pill in my stomach if he had to.
From what I could gather, bent over in the garbage can, there was a picture of Scott next to his medication, and while I did look a good deal like Scott the secretary wasn’t quite sure. Counselor Ryan, convinced I was dying began to shout. “He’s fucking swelling up! Give me that god damn pill bottle before he has a seizure!” While I’m not sure this makes medical sense, this seemed to get the secretary in action. They both pounced on me with the pill bottle like two jaguars on a rabbit. I had to clench my teeth together to keep them from shoving it in my mouth. I had enough relatives who took prescription medicine they didn’t need, and I’d seen how awesome it had made them.
“Jesus! He’s seizing!” Counselor Ryan shrieked.
Covering my mouth, while trying not to puke from the smell of my hands I shouted “My name isn’t Scott! It’s BC Woods!” Then I puked a tiny amount into my palms, which I let slide through my fingers into the garbage. Counselor Ryan and the camp secretary backed away from me. White and quivering, I regarded the adults cautiously, using the garbage can as support to hold me upright. In the event of another pharmaceutical attack I was ready to crawl inside the garbage can with my own vomit and wait it out like a turtle.
“Are you sure your name isn’t, Scott?” Counselor Ryan asked. Apparently along with epilepsy, Scott also suffered from some sort of identity disorder.
“Yes.” I nodded.
“Oh.” Counselor Ryan said.
“So where’s Scott?” the secretary asked.
“I don’t know.” She seemed confused at this. It’s the same logic accusing parents have when they demand to know that if their child didn’t do it, then “who did, hmm?” Toddlers seem to lose the good sense to know this is bullshit by the time they reach thirty.
Still unsure that I was not really Scott trying to get out of taking his medication I was instructed to sit in the office for the next three hours until matters could be sorted out. Eventually, I was released to go back to my dorm room. I think people would have been smarter at Space Camp.
Author’s Note:
After trying many times to track down the video of me at Mr. Irresistible, I have been informed by the science department that they do not know where the video is, but will keep their eyes opened for it. I also contacted the person who made it (Thanks Brett!) and they do not have a copy either. I will let you know if there are any further developments.
