You can only hold your breath for so long. And, although it may start as a game, eventually it becomes a matter of life and death. You might think that you can fool yourself, but eventually your bodys primal mechanisms take over it is either life or death.
I can remember a day spent at the Water Park the Aquabogin in Saco Maine. It was a trip my mom promised each year. I think all of my friends moms did the same thing, and we used to subtly make sure that every ones mom chose a different day, so that instead of only having only one trip to the water park, we could sometimes get three or four each summer. The park was pretty much standard mid 80s waterpark fair. There were several intertangled waterslides, a mini golf park, a wave pool and all of the bad food you could eat at the concession stand. The highlight was a three story tall suislide that rocketed you to a small pool waiting below. It took me a few years to get the guts up to even climb the stairs to the top of that slide.
Other than the slides, the great attraction of this place was the girls. I didnt realize this until probably my fourth or fifth summer visit. I dont remember how old I was. I must have been about 13. A tough age for boys. Especially for me I wasnt exactly an early bloomer. I was right at that cross stage where I knew girls existed was even genuinely interested but would really rather have been running through the woods with the arsenal of toy guns I had collected over the prior 8 years playing war games with Mike Bradford. But at thirteen Mike and I wouldnt want to admit that. We were forcing ourselves to move on to new make believe battles.
The great thing about the Aquaboggin in the summer was that you were able to see girls form all over the greater Portland area. This is especially important when you are unable to drive. Seeing girls from a neighboring town was about as exotic as it got. Might as well have been women from a foreign land. Girls who knew nothing about your past failures with the girls in your own school. With these foreign girls, I could be anyone the schools soccer star or budding rock musician instead of the science fair geek.
As I said, the one summer that really sticks out in my mind, I must have been about 13 give or take a few years. I remember this summer, because not only did I notice the girls but I realized that they could notice me. Crap not only were they on display for me, I was on display for them. Now I am not an unattractive guy. I know this. And I am convinced that I am only going to get better looking as I get older. But I also know my strong points. I have been with enough women to know what most will find attractive about me. And I have never had a woman compliment me on my ripped abs or bulging biceps. Now mind you, I am not overweight or anything like that it just that you are not going to see me on the cover of People magazine with an open shirt and a caption like sexiest man alive! underneath. And not that I really want that anymore. But at 13, I still had some hopes. At thirteen it still hurt to look over the interns shoulder at the yearly school physical in the boys locker room and notice that his only comment scratched in my medical file was unusually soft abdomen. He could have at least said something nice about my platelet count.
So, at thirteen I realize I am going to be walking around the Aquaboggin. And for the first time, the rules will have changed. No longer will it be about who can make the fastest trip down the suicide or about who can eat the most corn dogs in a row. This time it will be about the girls. It occurs to me that I will be walking around the water park with all of these beautiful girls girls from other towns and I will have my shirt off. I need to do something about my unusually soft abdomen.
The morning before we leave, I spend some time alone in the bathroom. I am looking at myself in the mirror from every angle I can find. Moving my moms make-up mirror into every contorted angle to see how I will look to all of the girls passing by no matter which way they might pass everything from walking straight up to passing at an oblique angle from the left. Somewhere in this process of looking at myself, I come up with what I thought was a novel idea to make myself really knock all these girls out. (I have since learned that this is a trick employed by most pre-teen boys.) It occurs to me that it is not about reality, but about image. I dont need to have rock hard abs I just have to look like I have rock hard abs. And I realize I can easily achieve this look by simply sucking in my gut a little bit. Now the key is to suck it in just a little. You see, if you suck it in too far, you look silly like a starving African on TV but if you just suck it in a half inch or so perfection. Or almost perfection. The only drawback was that I had one hell of a hard time breathing.
To hell with breathing. It is only a day. I can manage to suck in enough air to make it through a day. Only one day, and then I can spend all evening enjoying deep full breathes as well as the satisfaction of wowing all those girls. It was a plan.
It was miserable. I spent the day looking in every piece of reflective material paranoid that I was either sucking my gut in too much and looking anorexic or letting it out too far and looking like well I guess looking like myself. I couldnt laugh at the jokes being tossed back and forth over mini golf and refused to eat even one corn dog. The only time I felt any relief was during those few minutes down the waterslides protected by the swirling water and high safety walls. It was by far the worst day ever at the waterpark.
I know there should be a lesson in all of this. And that is probably where you think this story is going. But if the lesson is obvious to you, it was totally missed on me. I learned nothing. I wish I could say that I vowed I would never make such ridiculus compramises again. That never again would I attempt to hold my breath to make it through any event in my life. But I cant say any of that. At best, maybe I can say I must have forgot.
I have been holding my breath for the last six years. And once again for all the wrong reasons. I stopped breathing the day I made that phone call to my father. To tell him that I got a job offer from Fidelity Investments. God damn my dad was proud. I could even hear it through the phone lines. And I loved hearing that pride something I didnt hear often. And I remember walking out of that Fidelity building trying to let my dads pride crowd out the second feeling in my gut. I told myself no problem. I wont be here forever. I can do this. I can just put the rest of everything on hold for a little while. I can hold my breath. Hold it in just a little. Not so I looked starved like an African on TV but so that I looked stronger better. And these were the thoughts fighting for space in my head as I walked out of that Fidelity building in December of 1997. But the one thought that I kept trying to ignore was the one that said you have already stopped breathing. It is only a matter of time. You are already dead.
I can remember a day spent at the Water Park the Aquabogin in Saco Maine. It was a trip my mom promised each year. I think all of my friends moms did the same thing, and we used to subtly make sure that every ones mom chose a different day, so that instead of only having only one trip to the water park, we could sometimes get three or four each summer. The park was pretty much standard mid 80s waterpark fair. There were several intertangled waterslides, a mini golf park, a wave pool and all of the bad food you could eat at the concession stand. The highlight was a three story tall suislide that rocketed you to a small pool waiting below. It took me a few years to get the guts up to even climb the stairs to the top of that slide.
Other than the slides, the great attraction of this place was the girls. I didnt realize this until probably my fourth or fifth summer visit. I dont remember how old I was. I must have been about 13. A tough age for boys. Especially for me I wasnt exactly an early bloomer. I was right at that cross stage where I knew girls existed was even genuinely interested but would really rather have been running through the woods with the arsenal of toy guns I had collected over the prior 8 years playing war games with Mike Bradford. But at thirteen Mike and I wouldnt want to admit that. We were forcing ourselves to move on to new make believe battles.
The great thing about the Aquaboggin in the summer was that you were able to see girls form all over the greater Portland area. This is especially important when you are unable to drive. Seeing girls from a neighboring town was about as exotic as it got. Might as well have been women from a foreign land. Girls who knew nothing about your past failures with the girls in your own school. With these foreign girls, I could be anyone the schools soccer star or budding rock musician instead of the science fair geek.
As I said, the one summer that really sticks out in my mind, I must have been about 13 give or take a few years. I remember this summer, because not only did I notice the girls but I realized that they could notice me. Crap not only were they on display for me, I was on display for them. Now I am not an unattractive guy. I know this. And I am convinced that I am only going to get better looking as I get older. But I also know my strong points. I have been with enough women to know what most will find attractive about me. And I have never had a woman compliment me on my ripped abs or bulging biceps. Now mind you, I am not overweight or anything like that it just that you are not going to see me on the cover of People magazine with an open shirt and a caption like sexiest man alive! underneath. And not that I really want that anymore. But at 13, I still had some hopes. At thirteen it still hurt to look over the interns shoulder at the yearly school physical in the boys locker room and notice that his only comment scratched in my medical file was unusually soft abdomen. He could have at least said something nice about my platelet count.
So, at thirteen I realize I am going to be walking around the Aquaboggin. And for the first time, the rules will have changed. No longer will it be about who can make the fastest trip down the suicide or about who can eat the most corn dogs in a row. This time it will be about the girls. It occurs to me that I will be walking around the water park with all of these beautiful girls girls from other towns and I will have my shirt off. I need to do something about my unusually soft abdomen.
The morning before we leave, I spend some time alone in the bathroom. I am looking at myself in the mirror from every angle I can find. Moving my moms make-up mirror into every contorted angle to see how I will look to all of the girls passing by no matter which way they might pass everything from walking straight up to passing at an oblique angle from the left. Somewhere in this process of looking at myself, I come up with what I thought was a novel idea to make myself really knock all these girls out. (I have since learned that this is a trick employed by most pre-teen boys.) It occurs to me that it is not about reality, but about image. I dont need to have rock hard abs I just have to look like I have rock hard abs. And I realize I can easily achieve this look by simply sucking in my gut a little bit. Now the key is to suck it in just a little. You see, if you suck it in too far, you look silly like a starving African on TV but if you just suck it in a half inch or so perfection. Or almost perfection. The only drawback was that I had one hell of a hard time breathing.
To hell with breathing. It is only a day. I can manage to suck in enough air to make it through a day. Only one day, and then I can spend all evening enjoying deep full breathes as well as the satisfaction of wowing all those girls. It was a plan.
It was miserable. I spent the day looking in every piece of reflective material paranoid that I was either sucking my gut in too much and looking anorexic or letting it out too far and looking like well I guess looking like myself. I couldnt laugh at the jokes being tossed back and forth over mini golf and refused to eat even one corn dog. The only time I felt any relief was during those few minutes down the waterslides protected by the swirling water and high safety walls. It was by far the worst day ever at the waterpark.
I know there should be a lesson in all of this. And that is probably where you think this story is going. But if the lesson is obvious to you, it was totally missed on me. I learned nothing. I wish I could say that I vowed I would never make such ridiculus compramises again. That never again would I attempt to hold my breath to make it through any event in my life. But I cant say any of that. At best, maybe I can say I must have forgot.
I have been holding my breath for the last six years. And once again for all the wrong reasons. I stopped breathing the day I made that phone call to my father. To tell him that I got a job offer from Fidelity Investments. God damn my dad was proud. I could even hear it through the phone lines. And I loved hearing that pride something I didnt hear often. And I remember walking out of that Fidelity building trying to let my dads pride crowd out the second feeling in my gut. I told myself no problem. I wont be here forever. I can do this. I can just put the rest of everything on hold for a little while. I can hold my breath. Hold it in just a little. Not so I looked starved like an African on TV but so that I looked stronger better. And these were the thoughts fighting for space in my head as I walked out of that Fidelity building in December of 1997. But the one thought that I kept trying to ignore was the one that said you have already stopped breathing. It is only a matter of time. You are already dead.