---------------- LIFE IMITATES CARTOONS PART I--MONGO SNOWBALL I lived across from a rich kid, Keith. His parents were divorced and his dad owned a small local airport. In the winter, we would go snowmobiling on the runway, becoming airborne over where the plow had pushed the snow into a hill at the end. He was the one who introduced me to Levi's(red tag) and Adidas Roms. I thought he was pretty cool and we hung out a lot. Behind the townhouses where we lived was a huge mongo hill. Back when it used to snow, we would roll a waist-high snowball, set it at the top of the hill, and push it over the edge. It would become enormous by the time it reached the bottom, way bigger than either of us were. Whenever someone would find us there and ask if we were building a snowman, we would say(before that Calvin & Hobbes cartoon ever appeared on the scene), "Yeah, this is his big toe." One day, I was feeling adventurous and decided it would be neat to stand on this snowball and run on it as it rolled down the hill. "No way, man. You'll never make it. I bet you fall into the creek." "Bet? How much?" "I bet you my Gerry jacket." He knew I wanted that jacket. It was trim and sleek and didn't have a furry hood, like mine did. "Deal. And if I don't make it?" "Just do it." So I stood up on the ball, shifting my weight and moving it carefully to the edge. I slipped off and was hit on the chin with an iceball. It didn't come from Keith, but from some smaller kids who saw what we were up to and were coming to watch. "You fall into the creek, you're history," said one, blowing into his gloveless hand. "I'm not gonna fall." "Bet?" "One dollar from everyone if I make it." "And if you don't?" "Then I'll be dead so what do I care?" The set up a toboggan and four of them went down the hill, wiping out before they reached the big rocks in front of the creek. "Ready?" said Keith. "This is gonna be great." I stood up on the snowball, steadying myself with a hand on his shoulder. "I am king of the mountain...clearly," I said, as someone hit me in the back with an iceball. Keith looked. "You're dead meat. Truly dead meat. Ready?" "Bon Voy-adgee." I went. It was all right at first, for about two seconds. But I overcompensated for something and I moved my feet too fast and I fell forward, landing right on top of the already huge, galloping ball. As I fell I tried to lean away from the creek and flailed around crazily, desperate to grab on to anything. All my hands found was the snowball. This is where it gets weird. The landing knocked the wind out of me and soon it got dark as the mongo ball rolled me right up. I could hear the crowd of kids at the bottom yelling and hollering as the ball seemed to gobble me. After a dizzying, wild ride, it stopped before the creek. The ball split in two; one half landing right on top of me, wobbling on my stomach, the victor. I lay there, spread-eagled, trying to regain my breath. I could hear Keith, in tears laughing, at the top. "Pile-on," was the last thing I remember hearing. Even though I'd technically lost the bet, Keith still gave me that jacket. I wore it well into the Spring. PART II--SWIMMING Pete swam like a fish, Chris like the next best thing. I, however, was not so well-accomplished. I struggled, I floundered, I cried for help. If humans were meant to swim, I argued, we'd have fins. If humans were mean to swim, we'd look better in bathing suits. If humans were mean to swim... "Enough," said the swim instructor, foreseeing no end to my stalling. "I want to see you dive into this deep end here, and then I want to see you come out at the shallow end there. I really don't care what happens in between." "Yes sir, Mr. swim teacher sir." I looked around. Pete and Chris were on the side of the pool, having easily swum the single lap. They would be receiving their Beginner's Certificates. I, on the other hand, was fairly certain I would never be heard from again. I'd emerge somewhere in a New York City sewer, live on a diet of mutant alligators, grow strong. Then I'd track down this swim instructor and feed him to my crocodile friends. "C'mon, Rich," said Pete. "Hurry it up. Into the pool or we'll push you in." I am alone. I am so alone. Taunts on one side, reptile food on the other. In front of me, clear blue, deceptive calm. What will it look like when the kid does his flop? What will it look like when I sink like a rock, hit the bottom like a lead balloon? I am pushed in. I do, as I thought I would, sink straight to the bottom. Defying all known laws of buoyancy I find myself standing on the bottom of the pool, looking around as if I'd been transported to some alien planet. I try to will myself to the surface. No go. A long pool skimmer invades my privacy. I am supposed to grab it and be pulled to the surface. No way, uh-uh, not for me. I was told to get to the shallow end and I will. I'll walk. I'll walk like the great Wallenda over Niagara. Nose in the air(kinda), I set my sights on the shallow end and begin my march. Stoic, proud, arms folded across my chest: 7', 6', 5'--the numbers fall like enemies on a field of battle. I break surface and take a breath. First hair, then eyes, nose and mouth. Once my chin is out I look from side to side, waving at my friends like a visiting dignitary. I use the royal wave. Thank you, I say, thank you. Pete and Chris stand on the edge, mouths agape. The instructor has no words for my situation, no common chant, no hymn, no prayer. As it is, he stands mute, in awe of the boy that can walk the tightrope. I am awarded my Beginner's Certificate. I vow to never swim again. I break that vow. PART III--LAGOON It was a thousand steps from my house to Pete's, that winter we were ten years old. A thousand up, a thousand back, a cool grand both coming and going. Ten street lights along the highway, each forty-two steps apart, leaving five eighty, divided like this: two-ten before the lights, three fifty-eight after, and twelve big ones across the lawn to his screen door, opening and closing in the bitter wind. "Let's go to the lagoon," said Chris, already at Pete's. We called it a lagoon, but it was really just a rancid, slimy creek, even more so in the winter because the top froze and didn't move until April. There were trees on both sides that bent in over the top, giving the lagoon a safe, secluded feeling. It was there that we had our sling-shot wars, smoked cigarettes, and plotted our ten year old plots. Pete made an angel in the snow. I didn't care. I was going to be the first on the ice. That was my mission. It took a long time for the lagoon to freeze, since it was actually a running creek, and it was always something to be the first to stand on it. Pete used to joke that they should award a merit badge for stepping out onto the ice. (We were all three of us in the Scouts. I quit just after Webelos but Pete stayed on until Eagle Scout, mocking the whole organization, really. He had by that time been busted twice for possession.) But that bitter cold day in December, nothing mattered except me and the ice below me. I inched down the snowy bank and set one foot on the lagoon. The surface made hideous cracking noises underneath, but I was resolved. I moved the foot out farther and brought the other one on as well. I heard more cracks and when I looked down it looked like Mr. Rabb's windshield did after Pete heaved a brick on it one day. I decided it wasn't my weight that was making these cracks but my *shoes*, my shoes which were the real problem, each issuing lightning bolts into the ice behind it, each concealing a miniature Zeus. Well, I thought, my shoes I can control. I looked down and inched out still farther. Little sticks had frozen into the ice, along with a tennis ball or two, and a child's plastic toy. These items formed an obstacle course for me, the intrepid pioneer. I inched out further. The ice had give to it, like a long clear trampoline. The cracks were frightening, but controllable. Once to the center I bounced lightly on the balls of my feet, master of these expanding cracks. "Look," I yelled to Chris and Pete, who were both upstream, chipping away at some ice with tree branches. "Look," I yelled, standing on the ice like a tightrope walker--arms out to the side, eyes forward, hips giving a little wiggle. "Look," I yelled, coming to realize the awesome glory of my state, my divine right to the ice. "Look," I yelled, "I can walk." I heard them yell something back and come towards me. The air was clean and crisp and felt good to breathe it in, empowering. The sky overhead was pure blue, broken only by some journeying black birds. I blew into my fists to warm my hands, and I stared as my breath rose and dissipated like cigarette smoke. Pete and Chris arrived. "So it's strong enough?" said Chris, crouching on the bank with Pete, daring only to touch the ice with tree branches. "Yeah, stay there. I don't think it'll hold all of us." The ice cracked some more. Pete and Chris looked at each other then back at me. "Rich is going down. Going down big-time." "I am not," I said. "I own this lagoon." I started towards the opposite bank, not lifting my feet but rather sliding them. The cracks followed me. Somehow, in my reverie, I hadn't noticed Pete and Chris banging on the ice with long sticks, chipping at the ice around me. I looked down and the cracks soon came together and formed a perfect circle. Then there was this odd hesitation moment, and I imagined Wile E. Coyote running off a cliff, pausing before he fell. The water hit me like a punch to the gut, and I couldn't find my breath. The lagoon was icy cold and untouchably deep. Pete and Chris ran up the creek to the crossover and ran back for me on the other side. It seemed to take them hours. Finally, they made their way down and helped me out. My fingers wouldn't close on their arms so they ended up pulling dead weight, which took forever. I wanted to call them something rude but my lips were unresponsive. I thought I was going to die. The walk back to Pete's house was an exercise in humiliation. I, stiff-legged and dripping, unable to even turn my head. Pete on one side of me, Chris on the other, apologizing into the air. I could feel my corduroys freezing on my legs as I walked. People on the poorer side of the creek stared out of their homes and looked at me. Chris flipped them the finger. Pete's mom undressed me immediately, wrapped me in a blanket and sat me in front of the space heater. I made a face when she took off my underwear, but she said, "I live with three men. Believe me I know what one looks like." Pete and Chris laughed and watched and made hot chocolate. As the heater brought life back to my limbs it also brought back pain. "It burns," I told her, when my lips could finally move again. "I know, she said, her voice calming. "I know." I was shivering and my breathing came quick and shallow. Pete's mom was afraid I would go into shock or something. She told Pete to get more blankets and she sat by me near the heater. She held me close until I calmed down. She was a plump, buxom woman with straight black hair. When she held me that day she rocked me and pushed my head down against her breasts. They were warm and smelled of gardenia and honeysuckle. She held me until my breathing slowed and was in unison with her own. I was in love; I was the luckiest boy alive. "It still burns." "Better that than being numb," she said. "You stay numb for too long, your toes turn black and you get frostbite. That's bad." Pete's mom knew things like that, things of which my own mom had no conception. She knew how to handle a gun, and she knew how to drive a stick-shift, and how to skin an animal and cook it, which she did when Pete's dad took them all out camping. Pete's family was the type that went camping, and I envied him for this. He got to fire guns and sleep in a camper. He knew how to clean a fish and what a thirty aught-six was. Even though his dad hit him a lot, I still envied him. When he got a B.B. gun one Christmas I wished I was in his family. That one winter day, it felt like I was.