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Fragments From the Memory Log, Entry Three

When I was a kid, I was indestructible.

Now that’s not to say I’m some sort of titanium-skinned super being from another galaxy, or was blessed with such a superior level of good fortune as to avoid any injuries in my youth. I scraped myself up quite awful on a number of occasions, and have the lasting scars to prove it. You should see the one on my knee; what a beaut! What I meant was that as a young pup, I rarely — if ever — thought on the now bloody obvious fact that going for a ball head first often leads to a concussion, or allowing one to be dragged down the road by your feet removes most of the skin off your arms and upper torso, or that jumping from the roof of the family garage is a pastime of dire consequences, at best.

I had been provided with full access to a textbook definition of danger so I knew of it, but for me it was like the Chinese language, or European history, or Golf: something other people learned about. And for the most part I did follow The Rules: chew your food thoroughly; look both ways before crossing the street; slow and careful when walking on ice, never put your tongue on an open electrical socket. But where the rule book appeared to get fuzzy, or when an important precept carelessly went unstated, I felt it to be an open invitation for lawlessness. (No one ever sat me down and emphatically insist I not “jump off buildings or any other high structure.” If someone had, who knows how I might have turned out.)

I look back, and I recall how I’d shimmy up the sides of sheer stone walls with no more protective gear than a pair of shorts (on one occasion not even that!). Or I dwell on my habit of leaping between parked cars, never realizing one of them may have a driver in it preparing to pull away. Or I watch in horror with my mind’s eye as I squat on a bicycle, zooming downhill through intersections, brake-less and oblivious to traffic. Afterwords, such remembrances leave me aghast and with a simple question: “What in hell was wrong with me?!”

Well, there was nothing wrong with me, and there was everything wrong. When in motion, I became something with few things on the brain other than finding the most interesting but hopefully still most direct route from Point A to Point B — unless something potentially life-threatening got in the way. Then I’d skuttle over it, or push through it, or bang up against it until it fell over. The opportunity to simply walk around never came up, as far as I was concerned.

Admittedly, that lack of opportunity occurs to me even in the present, from time to time. Only now, I grab my kneepads first.