THE WORST DAY OF MY LIFE
There's always a dull ache when I look back at my childhood. Somewhere in my lower intestine there's a pull and a pressure. I don't know what it is exactly as the gamut of emotion is often widespread, ranging from joy to abject despair, from freedom to physical and emotional abuse. I have a good hunch though. I don't want to sound too dramatic, but it's more or less a coagulation of sin and lost potential. In other words, it's the broader context of who I have become and who I am today that brings the ache along as I look back.
One memory stands out today. I was maybe 6 or 7 years old. My parents had just bought a new house in the middle of Browns Valley in Vacaville, an upper middle class suburb, and I was playing in the backyard — currently a quarter acre mound of dirt — with our two new puppies, Gurch and Timber. We spent hours chasing each other, and, when they knocked me down, they’d jump on me and begin licking my face.
During one pursuit, I was fast approaching what looked to be a flat, steady platform. I decided to launch myself from there onto the wooden fence that lined our property, avoiding capture at the last second. When I stepped on it though, my foot crashed right through, fracturing what appeared to be a thin plastic. I didn’t know it then, but I had set foot on a plastic storm drain. I immediately stopped and gathered up the pieces. Gurch and Timber wandered off of their own volition as though aware of the seriousness of the situation.
At first I thought of burying the evidence, but I knew my father would find them soon enough and thus give me a much more severe punishment. He was a shrewd operator in those days, governing the household in a military-like fashion, ensuring the trash was taken out, the dishes were cleaned and the sink was scrubbed… and god help you if you undercooked his chicken…
After consulting all available faculties of my young mind, I decided to confess. I carried the pieces inside and, with my head hung low, I told him all that had happened. In classic father-fashion he jumped up from the sofa and began screaming at me. In a guttural baritone, he called me CARELESS. He said my head was LOST IN THE CLOUDS. I couldn’t look at him anymore. His eyes, nose, and mouth seemed to move independently of one another in a sort of rage-nebula, each piece ascribing a judgement of their own. And my mother, god bless her soul… she had disappeared into another room. I had to stand there alone and take it. I began to cry.
Later that afternoon, I wrote in my diary. To this day, I remember writing “This is the worst day of my life." It certainly felt that way at the time. I had let my father down yet again. Dinner would now be quiet, tense. The sound of our dinnerware, by contrast, would be sharp and seething and awkward…
Years later, in my 20’s, I was shopping at a hardware store and saw the very same plastic storm drain in a bin of about two dozen. They even had the same dead green color. The price per unit was $5… and about a dollar less if you bought in bulk…
The worst day of my life for $5… and I still ache.
