Have you ever looked over the edge of your life and pressed the rewind button in your brain? Just looking back at the things you might have done, could have accomplished, or conquered like a battalion on a literal battlefield of life? I’m pretty sure the general in charge of my life was either asleep at the morning briefing or he was annihilated and no one informed me as I ran up and over the hill into the line of fire.
In my case, the line of fire was life in general. I didn’t get people in the past and I always felt that everyone had a hidden agenda. Smiling faces with shining graces masked threatening scowls and snarling comments. Okay, yeah, that’s a bit harsh, but, that’s how I felt. Let’s take Valentine’s day in sixth grade. Yes, please take it and run it off a cliff, Thelma and Louise style.

We were required to make these fancy boxes, decorated with construction paper hearts, glitter and marker—but a simple shoe box as it’s soul. Everyone’s box looked like they were either engineered masterpieces or a perfect example of “bless his heart”. So, everyone left their box on their desk and all of the valentines were collected by Mr. Reed. For the most part, the Valentines were the simple store bought kind with themes ranging from “Peanuts” to “Romantic feelings that are appropriate for twelve year-olds”. There were a few that were quite large and would never fit in the slot we all cut into the top of the box.

Mr. Reed became a postmaster during lunch and he was sifting through “love mail” while we ate our fiestadas with fruit cocktail and chocolate milk. Recess consisted of about twenty minutes of either soccer, swings, or the hurl-go-round. I usually stood on the edge of the swing set—that could accommodate twelve students on their own swing, of course. I wouldn’t close my eyes or really plot anything out, I’d just start walking through the living pendulums of doom. Yes, I feared what would happen to the rider, but I still did it anyway.
After completing the first trip I would circle round, the long way, back to the start. By then, there was a chorus of students—mostly girls—pleading for me to not walk through again. I would oblige and not walk through the swings, but, instead I took a few steps back, watched the swing patterns, and then ran through.

Twelve, eleven, ten, nine and a stop in the gap between the swing sets. Eight, seven, six, five, and another gap. Four, three, two…and a strike to the head by a pair of feet. I was informed the inertia threw me about five feet or so. It would have been a spectacular “Tik-Tok” video. I dusted myself off and walked away from the swings—I admit, I ignored the screaming from the girl as she kept asking “why did you do that?”
L‘appel du vide? Boredom? Or maybe it was because I could handle physical pain, I knew how to deal with it. Get a huge scar, pick at it a bit, and watch it heal in a few weeks. Mental and emotional pain however, were things I could not grasp back then.

And on that subject, as I look back, I have to wonder WHY it mattered so much. To bring a new toy or something to school usually ended up with it being stolen or smashed by someone so I didn’t do that too often. I was never into being popular and Valentine’s Day in sixth grade was as close as a popularity contest as someone passing out birthday party invitations to twenty-eight out of thirty students (as Shane was out that day). If the adult me went back in time, he would find the younger me and take him off campus and tell him that Valentine’s Day can be the second worst day in your life until you graduate from school if you don’t get it out of your system and learn it doesn’t matter.
Instead, I’m pretty sure he would walk back into the school, down the hallway, turn a corner, walk down another hallway and then open the second door into Mr. Reed’s class to see the boxes sitting on the extreme left side of our desks. Everyone would sit down and open their boxes, some would shake them. The rattling sound of a lollipop or chalk-flavored Valentine candy hearts along with a barrage of cards. The two of them would look at the “well, we gave it a shot” decorations of the box and then open the lid to see ONE card.

One…but perhaps it could have been a special card. Maybe from Amy? No, she was in another classroom all together. Patricia? Maybe…if her mom or dad had addressed the envelopes, as the writing looked very neat, very “signature-ish”. They open the small, white envelope and look at the short line by Charlie Brown on the card. The younger one flips the card open to see who sent it. It was a card from Mr. & Mrs. Reed—as his wife was another teacher at the school.

We didn’t cry that day at school, or that afternoon on my bike ride home. No, we saved that time for when we were alone in our room with a Phil Collins record on infinite repeat. The tears were silent and my thoughts were vacant. Yes, it was only a silly day, one that didn’t matter in the future where I could myself a twenty pound chocolate heart if I wanted to. Of course, I’d probably eat all of said chocolate heart as I sat in a chair playing my Sega system.

The box from school had been throughly smashed and destroyed before I left the school grounds. I made a mission of cramming it into a trash can that was already very full. There was no way I was going to take it home. Even if it could fit in my backpack, I didn’t want to be reminded of how bad I was in art and how empty the box was.
I was usually the first to get home as my parents worked and my older siblings had to take the bus to the junior and senior high schools, so there was no one at home to see I was angry at the world and myself. I did not take my frustrations out on my bicycle, as it did not make sense to things out an inanimate object. I opened the garage door and parked said bike in the location I was given that would prevent anyone from running over it. Tragically, at that point, I kind of wanted someone to run over me.

My house was on road that faced a small wooden area with a creek running through it. I walked across the street and into the still dormant from the winter bushes, sat down, and looked at the flowing water.

“Someday,” I whispered to myself, “someday things like this won’t matter.”

I had wanted that to be true for so long. I once wrote a letter to the editor or “Highlights” magazine, expressing I didn’t have a friend in the world. I assumed the letter would have been tossed out, maybe just forgotten, or all of the editors got together to read it and then laugh hysterically there was this kid who was crying. Out. To. A. Magazine in order to find support in the world.

“What If I wasn’t even here?”

As the youngest, I was usually overlooked or disregarded in things. I was never given a voice in the family on things we were going to. Kayden and Karen were always able to sway our parents to do whatever they wanted while I, Kyle, had no such Jedi powers. I was invisible at home and apparently at school as well that I might as well have not been there. There was so much that I wanted to say back then but I didn’t have the bravery to force my way into the conversation and make people see me.
“You don’t have to be here,” a voice behind me said. I didn’t recognize the voice, but it was a girl’s; and with my face red having multiple trials of tears and stuff from my nose mixing together in a mess, I dared not turn around, as maybe she was in my class.
“I can take over for you.”
“What?”
She walked to my side and I turned my head away.
“That’s one reason why you feel like this.”
“Like what?”
“Alone. You really like to be alone. No problem with that, you know?
“It’s a problem at the times when you want to be visible.”
“But no one hears you?” The girl then walked around me again and I turned my face again. “Kyle Andrew Morrison, look at me.”
How did she know my full name? Maybe she was one of my sister’s friends.
I walked a step closer to the edge leading to the creek. She grabbed onto my shoulder and forcefully spun my body around. The girl was older than me, maybe, I wasn’t sure, but she also looked family. Maybe a cousin.
“I’m you.”
“Me? No, I’m me.”
“And I’m the one who’s up there,” she tapped on my head, “that you shove into a corner instead of letting me come out. I can make our lives for the better. I’ve relived the play by plays. There’s so such room for improvement. We can be noticed, we can make it. Against all odds, we can find a friend.”
My face lit up, maybe a bit prematurely, as I thought maybe I had finally cracked and would be the first 12 year-old I knew to have a nervous break down. I wanted to hear more: “We could? How?”
“Let me show you. Agree to let me be in control.”
“What happens to me?”
“You’ll still be there, we have a connected past, we are us. I may make a few changes. Changes need to be made, you know? We have to get better at dodgeball.”
I nodded.
“I’m not saying we’ll be popular, but we’ll leave a mark on the school. A good one. One we can be proud of.”
I turned to the road as a school bus thundered down the street.
“I accept. When?”
“Right now.”
The girl then pushed me over the edge and I could see her smiling from above as I fell.
I don’t remember ever landing.