Avalon Bombshell

Episode 2: In the Beginning was THE BOMB

Portrait of a Mattie as a Young Man

Lemme flex my flux capacitor
back to the beginning:

Cape Christopher High,
end of sophomore year -

May - with salt from the nearby Atlantic
spitting through the darkness.

I stayed late after school
at a graduation rehearsal for the seniors -

my mother's idea:

"You need to get more
involved at school!

Make some friends,
instead of sitting at

home

all the time!"

Yet another campaign
in her endless war
against my nebbishness.

(By that point
I'd half-convinced myself

I was a hobbit!
Content in my little hole -

no adventures for me,
thank you very much!)

But Mum wouldn't have it,
she gave me a "little nudge"
straight out the door

(Mum's 'little nudges'
could make grown men
quiver.

So I suppose this is the long way
of saying

all this
was her fault -

however indirectly...)

I didn't have any choice.

On that particular night,
they'd made me a practice usher

until

they realized my
wheelchair
didn't fit down any of the school auditorium's aisles

(I could've told them that - and I did! -

but nobody likes to listen
when they're trying to play good Samaritan
to the disabled kid

...least of all to the actual disabled kid...)

So, instead, they hastily dubbed me as 'outdoor greeter' -
a position I was pretty sure
they'd just made up on the spot.

(here's an SAT word for you:
superfluous:
unnecessary;
useless;
invalid -

   in valid.)

They left me outside in the dark,
outcast.

Now I remembered why
I never went out anywhere.

I tried not to think about it.

I focused on the wing of classrooms
just behind me,
their windows with no lights;
chalkboards with blank stares.

And then I heard them:
voices on the wind -

~ girls ~

a chorus of angels!

*RECORD SCRATCH*: Cripple 101

Ok.

Before I go any further,
lemme make one thing clear:

up till that point
I had NO IDEA
how to talk to girls:

it all seemed like a secret alchemy
far beyond any meager peasant knowledge
I possessed -

normal teenage boy terror
& yet....

it was more than that,
too.

Everyday I wrestled
- against my own body -
my muscles: