I shared a version of this story on my facebook page thirty-four million years ago, so if you’re reading this now and we were facebook friends back in the Eocene Epoch, you may already have read it, though I suppose it’s more of an anecdote, as most of my stories are. Anyway, I’m gonna tell it again now because regardless of whether it’s a story or an anecdote, I think it’s funny and absurd and just a little bit tragic. You can read it again if you want, I’m not the boss of you.
When I was in kindergarten, we sat in a sort of alphabetical fashion at five or six hexagon-shaped tables placed round the large, well-lit room. In theory, I shared my table space with up to five other kids my age or thereabouts. In reality, I shared my table with four other kids my age and one kid who seemed somehow older.
I was one of the youngest people in my class, so most of the other kids were actually older than me, but “Timmy” must’ve been at least thirty years old.
One fateful day, we were instructed to stack our crayons in the center of the table so the assigned helpers for that week could collect them and put them away in the cabinet before we all went to lunch.
Timmy turned to the hapless chump on his right and said “stack em.”
Eons passed, then Timmy spoke again.
“Stack em.”
The woebegone wretch let out a sigh, then placed his crayons in the center of the table and stared at the box. Timmy grew a foot taller, then turned to his left.
“Stack em.”
This hopeless boob was smaller than me, and he was already stackin em before the words even got all the way out of Timmy’s mouth. Timmy’s shoulders spread, a condor taking flight. The first kid was still staring silently at the growing stack, but everyone else followed Timmy’s glare to the next unfortunate lummox, second from his right, and also, as it happened, my immediate left.
“Stack em.”
She paused briefly, then stacked em before Timmy had to repeat himself. Next, the star-crossed doofus to my right. He hesitated a hair too long, and suddenly Timmy was eighteen years old, and his voice was a one-eyed possum climbing out of a storm drain after a flash flood.
“Stack em.”
The forlorn dolt stacked em dutifully, and I suddenly became aware that everyone was looking at me. Well, not the first kid, he was still stuck in the swamp of his very first existential crisis. Everyone else was looking at me, though. My short life flashed before my eyes. It was mostly Tom & Jerry cartoons, Peanuts comics, Kool-Aid, Count Chocula, and my favorite song.
I’d lived a pretty good life, right up until that exact moment, when a twenty-five-year-old man named Timmy was staring dead-eyed into the depths of my soul from across that table. His nose was caked with snot.
“Stack em.”
Fighting every instinct, I met his eyes and mustered my meanest glare. For the first time, I noticed a scar across the bridge of his nose.
“I said stack em.”
I began to sweat through my shirt. Timmy had grown bigger than my dad, who was the second biggest thing I had been aware of up to that point. His eyes were razors. His gritted teeth, rusty barbed wire.
“Hey bud! I said to stack em!”
I wallowed in my defeat for a single moment before admitting it to Timmy, or to my fellow travelers on the Miserable Doofus Express. I took a deep breath, I swallowed my pride (along with about three gallons of throw-up), I looked Timmy in his coal black eyes, and I stacked em with enough force to level the maple tree in our front yard, which was the biggest thing I was aware of up to that point.
Timmy was now ten feet tall. He triumphantly placed his crayons on top of the stack and croaked “I told ya to stack em,” and then he died of old age.
I made up that last part, but it’s a peculiar fact that forty-four years later, my sole memory of Timmy is “stack em.” I’m not sure how that’s possible, but it seems he was only in my class for one day, which happened to also be picture day, as he appears in my kindergarten yearbook. Thing is, I scribbled his picture out pretty bad with a red magic marker, so I have to assume that he was in my life for more than the three minutes it took him to establish stacking dominance over a gang of luckless goobers.
When I shared this story on facebook, I decided to see if I could find Timmy, and brothers and sisters, I’m here to tell you that I found Timmy. Suffice to say that while he may have been victorious when it came to stackin crayons, all signs indicate that I ended up above Timmy on the big stack that we call life, so suck it, Timmy.
Thanks for reading. Tell a friend, why don’tcha?
Clockwise Circle Pit 