Gene Therapy

Doomed, a funny word when said out loud, but then again I was six and really didn’t know what doomed meant. But again I had heard the word and was sure that this was what I was. The morning had gone well, I stayed in bed long enough for my mother to give up yelling at the bottom of the stairs and come up to make me get out of. I had brushed my teeth, washed my face and looked out the bathroom window of our house, our house that I learned just the other day, was located at One-eighty-six North Main Street. It was a cold winter day and the snow had not fallen yet, but you could see by the way all the bare branches on the trees looked stiff in the wind it was raw. I went to the window and placed a wet warm hand on the pane to watch the fine art work of Jack Frost melt in the intense super heated power rays that I was sure that I had in my hand when I saw him. This is where I thought of the word doomed, my father crouched low to his car on the drivers side and my mother with about thirty feet of extension cord trailing from the house, the cord was plugged into a hair dryer. It seemed that the lock to my dad’s car had frozen, in effort to blow into the hole and unfreeze it he had (doomed) ended up with his lips stuck to the metal. It was terrible, couldn’t dad have waited just a few more years before I found out that there was a sticky situation/accident prone gene coursing through his son’s body. My little brother Brooke came into the bathroom, he was four, quickly I ushered him into the other room, I knew that it was my job to save him from finding out. He was only four, he needed a few more years, (live my young brother, live happy and free, ignorance is a virtue!). Me on the other hand, I was affected almost immediately, (Although I would use the knowledge that wet lips stick to cold metal on him in later years at the time he needed shelter).

Cultivating the Gene

LaMark said it best, use it or loose it, I guess my father seeing that we had defeated natural selection felt that it was time to hone this sporadically used, (bike crashes, stove top fires, near death of a friend) gene into the awesome machine it was meant for. The covert destruction of ones self and other close to you unintentionally. Point in case, marking; now you may think if marking like branding or tattoos but the true markings are those of play. My dad chose a tire swing, It was awesome. The three of us, my older brother Chris, Brooke and I watched as dad used a chainsaw to cut a tire into a swing, When he was done it was beautiful, we cheered, he found two ten foot lengths of rope and looked around. We being the ones who would surly ride this great creation suggested a tall oak tree that stood outside, clear of any obstacles that we may have hit during a high swing (silly us, where’s the challenge). But sensing that this was a good way to teach us about pain and humiliation dad chose the inside of the barn, we questioned this course of action, but then again, he’s our dad (and was about to make sure that everyone knew it). Our barn was big and old, the inside had been cleaned out, (this meant sharp objects placed in dark corners) and the bricks stacked up the walls and the large dory set off to the side. He tied the rope to the center beam and the swing to the rope and smiled. Now, I can sit here and say this now but the point hadn’t crossed any of our minds, when you tie a ten foot rope to a beam eleven feet of the floor and there is a wall of bricks nine feet away, there is great potential for disaster. But nooooo, we wouldn’t dream of letting simple though processes get in the way of our fun. It was at that point David, one of our neighbors came in, (remember, those close to you) saw the swing and smiled.
“ Can I go too?” he gleefully asked.
“ Sure” My dad said.
“ Can he go first?” My older brother said nervously.
“ No, I made this for you guys.”
“ Oh.” Chris said with a shaky voice.
I was in awe of the persuasive techniques used by my dad to get Chris onto the tire swing of death, with a slight bit of reverse psychology he was able to get him to mount the swing on his own accord. I had to admit, it looked fun, higher and higher he went finally yelling.
“ Higher daddy!”
“ Here we go!” dad was laughing, Chris was laughing, it was a scene from any wonderful childhood back yard.
Then it happened, since we hadn’t really thought the bricks would come into play, why in the world would we think about the beams (sure they were there but we were having fun). With a great push the swing rose, the ropes caught on the beam a few feet in front of the swing causing the swing to launch into a rocket-like upturn. I am sure that if the next beam was not placed at exactly where we heard Chris’s head crunch he would have been propelled into the barn’s loft and safely land on the soft hay strewn all over the floor. There was a blood-curdling scream and he came shooting back hitting my father the shins almost toppling him onto a now bloody Chris. Dad always the trooper showed his calm in dire situations, he unloaded the first damaged body set him on a bench off to the side handed him a handkerchief and looked painfully at me.
“ Ben, Your turn.” He winced as he spoke.
“ Yea.” My voice was low as I looked at my semi-conscious brother. I really don’t know what made me do it, maybe it was fear, but I mounted the swing, holding back tears. How could I not we were having fun with our dad…quality time. There was really no need to yell higher daddy; there was no need to talk, just to wait until this was over. Later as I look back at this I realize that this was a rite of passage into scarred manhood, and a good lesson in if your brother almost gets decapitated are you going to follow him? (Of course! I’m an idiot….swing on!). Dad was getting pretty good with the swing, it only took three pushes (a better ratio of weight of son versus height of beam) to give me my mark of manhood. I was set next to Chris and we shared the handkerchief and laughed about our near death experience and talked of the good time we had on the swing, because in our short lives so far we now had a scar and a story to tell the kids at school. Brooke was the toughest to get on the swing, he wined a bit, something about wanting a memory, but we convinced him that it wasn’t that bad to only live with a damaged short term memory. And how the feeling of not knowing who you were and where you were for about ten minutes was sort of cool. He finally mounted the swing and within two pushed he was wondering around the yard with the rest of us (brothers to the end…I think). Then our day of fun took a turn, David seeing how much fun we thought we were having wanted to ride. Dad looked at our little neighbor and smiled, I think he knew that marking a neighbor boy like he marked his sons would be wrong. So he changed his grip a little and heaved, one push, one large grunting push was all it took. The ropes hit the beam and something different happened. David was no longer in the swing, we all watched with a blurred amazement, as David hit the bricks about halfway up the wall and stopped. He then he bounced backwards landing in the boat, this would have been fine but the bricks fell at once and covered him. After reviving him, patching him up and sending him limping home (Funny, we didn’t see him for about a month), we went inside, cleaned up and had some soup, to this day we all have little scars on our forehead, and an intense fear of tire swings. It was that day that we were shown the use and potential danger of the gene and it was our turn to use it and practice using it until we had harnessed the power.