Confess

I confess! I find it all rather disconcerting. As my mind lends
chase to elusive fragments spun sluggishly about in murky eddies, I
grow markedly perplexed. I suspect that at some undetermined waypoint,
in some undisclosed location I may have skirted, a small imperceptible
piece of thread, one that I likely should have noticed and picked up,
lay strewn about the ground while I idled by, kicking stones and laces
dragging, blatantly unaware. As i sit here, trying in vain to retrace
the steps I've never taken, mulling over memories as unfamiliar to me
as the face that apes me every morning in the mirror, I confess.

As a kid growing up in Spencerville, Tennessee, I had all the righteous
charms of a small town boy. What I may have lacked in demeanour or
social skills I made up for by remaining obscure and aloof. This, of
course, aspired into a mystique, which I eventually parlayed into some
form of a reputation. This served me well as it seemed to attract all
the requisite attention a young man might desire. Unfortunately, as is
usual, there were certain associated discomforts, as you shall
see.

In short time, my name travelled in wide circles and broke away wildly
on romps I can now only wish I'd been along to witness. One such
adventure involved a lonely neighbourhood housewife with whom,
according to ? credible ? first hand accounts, I'd had a short but
torrid affair which threatened to crumble her marriage and see her
leaving her children and husband behind to dash off around the world
with me. The truth being that I delivered her morning paper; my first
sexual encounter never took place until nearly 3 years later and that
was with a drunken widow behind the Bingo hall; and I've never set foot
out of Spencerville save for a family trip out to Nashville back in
'83. Nevertheless, I couldn't help but be impressed by the painstaking
attention to detail with which this story was recounted to me. No less
impressed, I'm sure, than my purported lover's husband. But, I'm
getting a little ahead of myself.

Cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore, I am. Ren? Descartes coined the
phrase in his Meditations at a time, I can only assume, when identity
and life purpose were laid out for you, neat and tidy, like fresh
morning linens. Today, a snappy little catchphrase like that can only
mislead. Now the reason I bring Descartes to the table is that, in some
absolutist diluted fashion, I believe he may be right. On the other
hand, I've never found anything in his or any other philosopher's
writing that shed any insight on my particular circumstances: those
being that I am what others have imagined. I am the culmination of
half-truths and novel fabrications, my memory of which is but a faint
illusion of familiarity, much like reliving moments beyond memory
through photographs. I am certain Descartes would edit his slogan along
the lines of: I think, therefore, I am utterly confused and am no
closer to knowing with any certainty what, where, or who I am than the
time I shit my pants in my 3rd grade class. But, that wasn't him. Nor
I. And yet, apparently it was. And, I concede, it's as good a story to
start with as any. I will try to remain faithful to the manner in which
it was told to me less than a year ago by the local butcher, Mr.
Innfeld, over his small deli counter.

It was a balmy day in June. The school year was nearing its close and
as my third grade teacher, Ms. Krotsh, was away at the hospital being
treated for some Greek tragedy "down there", we were blessed with a
substitute. Intent on applying some far flung philosophy, which had at
its centre some misinterpreted snippet of Taoism Mr. Trickle had
gleaned as he coasted through college, which loosely translated as
exerting the absolute minimum amount of energy to arrive at ones
destination, Trickle, his goal being to get paid, set about filling the
last few days of the school year with as much meaningless fluff and as
little personal inconvenience as he could. Thus, our final three days
were left completely open to student show and tell presentations. As
topic, style, format and length were benevolently left at our
discretion, I embarked on a plan to use the venue in order to lead my
classmates through an earnest scientific experiment.

My hypothesis was simple and clear. My mother had, on a more than
regular basis, claimed that if I hadn't bad luck, I wouldn't have any
at all. Fuelled by pure empirical curiosity and by a desire to prove
Mom's drunken exhortations as false, I immediately set out to eke out
the best laboratory materials for my experiment. I decided, from the
start, that in order to lend any credence to my findings, I would have
to prove my results to as many right-minded individuals as possible.
And so, I opted to involve my classmates as variables in the
experiment, thus implying a 1:31 mathematical ratio of exclusion.

After sifting through the couch for change, which netted me exactly
2,13$, I chased off to the corner store for supplies. I returned with
three tablets of chocolate and one box of brand less chocolate
laxatives. I melted down the chocolate and laid it our in small drops
on a sheet of wax paper. I poured out exactly 31 drops, taking extra
pains to ensure they were all of equitable size and shape. I then made
the one laxative drop using the same exacting means I had employed for
the benign drops. I stored the trays in the freezer overnight. The next
morning, anxious as only kids can be, I raced to the kitchen, peeled
every drop off into a paper bag and skipped off to school without
having breakfast. My turn at the head of the class didn't come until
after morning recess, by which time I was discernibly agitated.

Finally, Mr. Trickle, apparently not overly enthused by Mary's
protracted dialectic about the stick she found on her way to school or
Peter's 20-minute demonstration of the Velcro flaps on his newfangled
running shoes, mumbled my name. I raced to the front and proudly
exclaimed that I wished to conduct a scientific inquiry involving
chocolate, at which my classmates all cheered while Mr. Trickle sucked
his teeth and proceeded to visually inspect the ceiling tiles. I
explained the premise of my hypotheses, describing the laxative as a
clearly identifiable loaded chocolate in order not to dissuade anyone
from participating. I held out my bag of chocolate drops and shook it
vigorously for all to see and explained that this procedure was
necessary in order to prove that drop distribution was completely
random. I proceeded to distribute the chocolates to everyone, pulling
away from Johnny before he could grab his intended handful. I took the
last remaining drop and, as per my instructions, everyone chewed their
drops and sat staring at one another for the approximated 20 minutes
the laxative would take to work it's colon magic. It was a tense wait.
The non-loaded chocolates were having their own unpredicted effect on
the other kids as I could see their butts squirming around on their
chairs, every now and again, nervous giggling would break out in spurts
across the room. The giggles turned to chortles and snorts when I let
out my first ripper, the noise of which shot out from under my chair
and sped out down the school hall. I was sweating profusely at this
point and was feeling rather ill. I was overcome by a certain urgency
that distracted me from the fact that my experiment was now concluded.
As is customary, I raised my hand in order to be excused. However, Mr.
Trickle was indulging in some form of doodling at the time and remained
completely ignorant of the urgency transpiring at my desk. I shot my
hands up and down. I waved frantically. I even managed a slight yelp
that quickly died into a gurgle as, constrained by my desk, a vain
attempt at standing had proven too strenuous an act. There I stood,
awkwardly leaning over my desk, a stream of diluted crap sailing down
my pant legs accompanied by a remarkable series of farts of which I
might've been rather proud at any other venue.

I sat down slowly. The mess in my pants squished and seeped. Then the
stench wafted slowly up and across the room, eliciting varied
reactions, from nose pinching to heavy gagging. Mr. Trickle, brought
out of his daze by the sound of dripping on the floor, sat, in
disbelief, mouth ajar, staring down the aisle at the floor beneath my
desk. I was assailed by a plethora of mixed feelings. For one, my
experiment had been successful and I was pleased. The fact that my
mother was right brought a certain sense of existential angst. The load
in my underwear, while not overly uncomfortable, left me slightly
humiliated. It was, of course, an unforeseen turn of events.

In fact, with all the excitement leading up to the day's events, I had
never taken time to examine my hypotheses in order to ascertain whether
or not I truly wished to discover the ugly, wet truth. My impeccable
scientific objective had clouded the all too human result. And so, as I
streaked home that fateful day in June, feces caked and flaking up and
down my backside, head hung, I found myself embarked on a new life
path, and cried.