What’s The Matter With You

Originally published July 2004

It has been brought to my attention that I spend a considerable amount of time bashing other people and maybe it’s about time I turned the tables on myself. So this column will be dedicated to stories that explain why for many years I thought my name was “What’s the matter with you?”

The first and most compelling piece of evidence deals more with gullibility than stupidity, but I’m not here to split hairs. I was eight-ish and my older brother needed some entertainment, which, as we all know, is a little sister’s primary function.

Carrying a white, neatly folded tablecloth, my brother approached me and said—in a hushed tone—that he had to tell me a very important secret. But there was a catch: I could never, ever tell Mom and Dad what he was about to tell me. Well, I couldn’t cross my heart and hope to die fast enough.

As it turns out, I have super powers. (Believe me, I was just as surprised as you are.) I was not, however, supposed to know about these super powers for a few more years. But my brother in his infinite, pre-pubescent wisdom thought it imperative that I get comfortable with some of the trickier moves before there was an actual crisis that needed my intervention.

Flying, it seems, was his biggest concern. After all, gravity isn’t something to be taken lightly. So we ventured out to the front porch. And since our house is at the top of a hill there are areas of the porch that offer a substantial vertical drop. He secured the tablecloth—I mean, cape—around my shoulders and told me to jump, flap my arms, etc. He also, thorough bastard that he is, fed me a line of BS about how almost nobody gets flying right the first time and not to be discouraged if I didn’t fly right away blah, blah, blah. Apparently, this was going to take time and practice.

After two, yes that’s right, two solid “thuds” and a lot of moaning and wailing, my parents picked me up and took me inside. In voices barely able to hide their growing concerns that I was “special” they asked, “What’s the matter with you?” But I had promised not to tell and did, in fact, believe I was Batman. (Yes, I know Batman can’t fly, but I was little and had a limited frame of reference.) So I sat there, bruised and shaken, but silent.

Until I cracked. And then the whole sordid story came pouring out of me the way only an 8-year-old could tell it: stuttering, sobbing and with grandiose, yet wildly uncoordinated, re-enactments (cape still attached). And that was the day I tried to fly.

The second story is so embarrassingly stupid that I can’t believe I’m committing it to paper. It involves my brother (shocking) and a really old metal fan that looked better suited to slicing ham in a deli than keeping one cool on a hot summer night. Jamie said, and I quote, “I bet I can stick my finger further into that fan than you can.” Now any child with an IQ above room temperature would not have accepted that bet, but I’m the imbecile who fell for “heads I win, tails you lose” until I was 13.

So Jamie put his finger just barely inside the fan and pulled it back. “I can do better than that!” I squealed in my head, then jammed my index finger into the meat-grinder. I know, the stupid factor is beyond comprehension. You’ll get no argument from me on that one. My parents went from “What’s the matter with you?” to “Seriously, what is the matter with you?” And finally I was given a laundry list of reasons why it’s never a good idea to stick one’s finger into a fan that is not only plugged in, but also switched on.

It was a silent trip home from the emergency room that day. (We actually had a rotation of three emergency rooms because I was in them so often my parents were afraid Child and Family Services would take me away.) Dad, would shake his head periodically, picturing, I’m sure, me falling off the short bus day after day. Mom, next to him, wondering who would care for her idiot-child when they were gone.

I’ll spare you the stories about how I broke my nose tripping up a flight of stairs, the stained-glass window that got broken due to poor judgment and a temporary loss of motor skills, and other tragic tales because I think I’ve made my point. And as long as I have my medication and my helmet I’m not a danger to myself or anyone else. And now, back to you.