schweblog

Let’s get started, but before all that, let’s clear the air. When I was young, I used to take pleasure in torturing bugs. Burning ants–sometimes with a magnifying glass, sometimes with gas. Throwing grasshoppers in ant piles after ripping off their back legs. Putting roly-polies in my bicycle chain and then turning the pedal, smashing them in a sequenced genocide. In addition, I liked to pee on things. Especially campfires when it was time to go to bed. Sometimes I even peed on ant piles.

Now that I’m a “mature” “adult” I don’t do most of these things. I feel bad for the bugs that I maimed and tortured and urinated upon. I don’t really feel bad about peeing on everything because that’s what boys do. Regardless, most of my inappropriate, anti-social tendencies are relegated to the realm of my mind in my adulthood. I’d like to say I’m better now. I’d like to say I’ve grown. But I’m still the sick, twisted individual that used to pee on ant piles. Only it’s all relegated to my imagination now.

Most people say you lose your imagination as you get older. That, as your life becomes more and more saturated in life–”real” life, the little imaginary things fall by the wayside. For me, the exact opposite is occurring. As I find myself surrounded by deadlines and assignments and “adults,” I also find myself escaping–retreating?–into my imagination.

I’m at the initiation for Phi Sigma Tau–the philosophy honors society–yesterday. I step out onto the small veranda that sits atop the fifth floor of the humanities building. Everyone is enjoying their pre-initiation refreshments and I step up to the edge of the wall. We could bungee jump off of this! “No thanks, no punch for me!” With a good running start I could probably make it to the roof of the SUB from here.

It continues as I arrive home and I’m going up the elevator to the apartment. Suddenly, I’m in a devastating battle with some bastard that can fly around. But I can too. And we swoosh around the apartment complex and he’s hot on my trail but I dodge this way around the tree that I always walk by. There’s enough space to get by between the tree top and the building–I know, as I always walk by here, but he doesn’t. He hesitates as I come up over the tree and down upon him, smashing him into the fish pond and following him in his descent. I pummel him my fists, which are now approaching the speed of sound, and I sonic boom (Guile!) him into a million different pieces. He’s beaten, the facsimile of the grasshopper tortured and ants pissed upon so long ago. But will the seemingly innocent koi feed upon him and reproduce to make a devastating half-man, half-fish super soldier that can swim and fly?

Only time will tell. Right now, though, I need to get in the apartment and eat the enchiladas that Chris made up for me.