Marley Solomon
Toys
I am shaking as I squat behind the enormous tree. Blood is pounding in my ears. I am suddenly hyper-aware of my surroundings. The dry loose earth patch, the lush leaves on the tree above me and the yelps of joy from the children squealing in the playground across the path; it all seems to be magnified a hundredfold.
“I can hear you laughing, Solomon!” My friend, Jose, barrels closer to my “hidden spot” behind the tree. He rears back and slams a water balloon into my thigh.
“Shut up, Rambo!” I yell to Jose, “Mr. Tough Guy...with a glitter filled balloon!” I punctuate my sentence by hefting my own balloon into the air, smacking one of my best friends in the shoulder. It bounces off of him and uselessly soaks the thirsty ground.
“Good shot!” cheers Tatiana, another close friend of mine.
“You're supposed to be on the opposite team, Tatiana!” remarks Jordan, the final member of our group of four.
I smile to myself inwardly. We are mature individuals. Tatiana, Jordan and I have our orientation for Stony Brook University the next day, and Jose has his at Suffolk Community. Yet instead of searching for classes we might like, setting up various online accounts or buying school supplies, we are running around Lakeland County State Park, throwing water balloons at each other. The balloons come in all varieties, ones with simply water in them, others with food coloring and yes, a few that have glitter inside of them.
“You talk a lotta smack, Jor-dan,” Jose mocks jokingly “But can you...” He is interrupted by a wet water balloon, which upon breaking coats his face in red water.
“I'd say he can,” Tatiana says thoughtfully.
I listlessly toss one at Tatiana. The boys have a competitive spirit, and they are currently chasing each other on the other side of the grassy field where we are playing. Neither one of us wants to bruise the other, but it's too hot not to want to be soaked.
“Tatianaaaa! ATTAAACK!” Jose dives behind his “base” to retrieve a floppy green balloon from his green bucket.
“How about…no.” I smirk and throw one at Jose. He jumps aside.
“Brrriiiinnnnggg. Brrrrriinnnnnggggg!” The sharp trilling of Jose's cell phone cuts through the conversation and teenage tired panting.
“I never liked that stupid thing” I gasp out from running across the field.
“Where'd we put my phone again?” Jose questions as he jogs around the wooded side of the rectangular cleared area.
“Over there,” Jordan gestures over to the base of a close by tree where prior to the battle we left all electronic devices.
“Gotcha” Jose grabs the black cased phone and picks it up. “Hello?” His normally cheery face folds into a concerned look, and a wrinkle appears between his eyebrows. “Yes...” He walks away from Tatiana, Jordan and me towards the dirt path that leads back to the way to the parking lot.
The mood of childish frivolity has ended with a grinding halt. I nervously clench the water balloon in my left hand, dimly aware of the slow leak that is soaking my hand.
“Think he's coming back?” Jordan asks after an uncomfortable silence passes.
“He has to,” I reason. “The Geo wouldn't let him abandon us.”The Geo is Jose's car, a tiny lima bean colored coupe that has served as getaway vehicle for many an adventure or donut run.
Several heartbeats later, Jose returns to our group smiling tightly. “So.”
“...So.” Tatiana echoes.
“That was Suffolk.” Jose sighs mightily. “They said that because my deposit wasn't received, I am no longer enrolled.”
“But.. you have a receipt!” Tatiana chews the inside of her cheek in thought. “I saw it!”
“Yeah, the admissions counselor said I should come down and dispute it as soon as possible.” Jose looks down at his cell phone screen bitterly.
“Well.” I murmur under my breath. I glance over at the four formerly overflowing buckets of water balloons. They are now almost if not completely empty.
“They didn't say I had to do it right now....” Jose says weakly.
Nobody says anything. The implication is there, and in our minds we know what we must do.
“One last one!” Tatiana walks over to her bucket and retrieves her last balloon. She lifts her arm up high over our close huddle and breaks it over all four of our heads.
“Aaah that's amazing,” I smile as the water trickles down the top of my head and spine. “Let me see... I was more conservative with my throws.”
“Feh, it's because you can't throw!” Jose's lip curls into something between a smile and a smirk.
“Are you going to complain?” I hold the true final balloon high and like Tatiana, squeeze the balloon until it bursts.
As the four of us break apart from our circle, we break into hysterics. The last balloon was a glitter and water balloon, and we are all now coated in sparkly silver glitter on the tops of our heads. We try to wipe the glitter and water off of our heads as we walk slowly through the wooded trees toward impending responsibility.I feel a tension in my chest as I walk back to the Geo with Tatiana, Jordan and Jose, feeling something more significant has ended.
I mull it over as we drive to Brentwood in silence, and I come to the scary and somewhat disturbing conclusion: We are adults now. No matter how much we want to run away from it, it is only putting off the inevitable. The longer we pretend we are not, the harder it will be. Our parents are no longer the ones to hold our hands and deal with these problems. We now have to do these things on our own. Our childish games cannot last forever, and this is proof of that. We are no longer in our own little bubbles The things we do will determine the rest of our lives.
After some waiting on line and arm waving, Jose is proven to be a matriculated student and we are off, to enjoy our last few hours of freedom. Something obvious has shifted in all of us- personal responsibility is now more important than ever. If we do not make sure we do the things that we are supposed to do, it can change our lives for the worse.
I go home that night and do all of the things I have put off ever since I have enrolled in Stony Brook. I purchase a commuter meal plan, buy a locker and apply for a parking permit. As I do all of these things I catch my reflection in the screen of the laptop and see traces of glitter clinging to my hairline. This should probably be an annoyance; but instead, I find myself inadvertently smiling. Childhood, like this glitter clinging to my scalp, clings to my sense of self. It need not be around all of the time, but it is essential for making life more fun.
I was never one of those kids who wanted desperately to grow up. If anything, I was that child that desperately clung to every aspect of childhood that I could. I had my Barbie backpack until I was in the fourth grade, something I had been mocked for, but I blissfully ignored. As long as I was happy, I didn’t care about the whisperings of my classmates.
But things are changing and as I look back on this day, I am pained by how naive we were then to think things were going to be okay regardless of any impending adulthood.
The following fall, Jose would transfer to SUNY Albany and say to me “I finally feel like an adult now, I have my own space, my own life here. You def gotta move out..it’s the only way to finally grow up.”
I vehemently disagreed with him, as I feel I am just as responsible as him even though I commute. I have to get up at “unreasonable” hours, put on pants and drive to school rather than rolling out of bed and trudging to class across the campus. In the end we agreed to disagree, but it marked a schism that almost imperceptibly has crept up on us as we get older and older.
This made me incredibly mopey, and finally, my brother got tired of my constant sighing when I returned home from a late lunch with Jose.
“What’s your problem?” Christopher questioned as he leaned back on his rolling blue office chair. I absently noted how strange it is that my brother is nearly 23, yet looks younger than I do at 19.
“How do you know when you’re an adult?” I asked him, with a slight hitch in my throat. “Is it when you notice things are changing? That someone that used to be your best friend is now someone so different? Is is when you graduate? Move out?”
“I’ll let you know if I ever get to that point.” My brother dryly retorted as he unpaused Diablo 2 and turned back around.
“What, graduating?” I teased him lightly. My brother’s graduation date being a year late is something that should be a sensitive topic but oddly enough is not.
“I meant reaching adulthood, you butt.” He shoved me lightly out of his line of vision and I allowed him to return to his game undisturbed.
I wandered downstairs where my dad is demolishing a box of Trader Joe’s chocolate covered bananas that I thought was hidden effectively in the back of the freezer. “I think adults are just tall children..we never really grow up.”
“Dad, you shouldn’t be eating that for dinner...” I said as I leaned forward and snatched an end piece out of the box.
“Stop trying to pretend to be an adult and finish the box.” He shook it temptingly in my face and I dig in.
“See, a good well balanced diet before you go off to work,” My dad smiled impishly. “Dairy and fruit!”
I am still smiling as I get into Bianca, my tempestuous Honda, to drive to work. Parked in front of my silver car is my brother’s old black Toyota Celica which is being slowly restored by my brother after a car accident several years ago nearly totaled it. I am suddenly reminded of a toy car kit my brother had when he was young that he meticulously worked on for days. I have nothing but faith in him-the Celica will live again.
My first job could be considered an ear marker for entry into the adult working world, but its never been true in my case. I had practically grown up in the public library and thus was not pushed into anything alien or foreign. Shelving books and assisting with the computers was something that came natively to me. And anyway, how adult do you have to be when dealing exclusively with under-12-year olds who ask me if I like Littlest Pet Shop. (I do, although the toys looked significantly different when I was a child) or whether or not I think Sam and Freddie like each other on iCarly. (I think so, but it’s probably not going to go anywhere for a long time.)
I’ve only been at work for about twenty minutes when one of my favorite kids, Antonia, comes up to me asking me for something. She, like most perceptive children, knows there’s something wrong, and I tell her about my musings about my own adulthood. As she rocks on her light up Sketchers, she punctuates her sentence with a grimace, “I mean, you’re old and stuff, you’re like 16, right?”
I don’t blame her for thinking that. The girl who held the job when I was her age seemed impossibly old to me, even though at 18 she was younger than I am now. At 19 ½ I’m not sure whether to be offended that at this age I’m over the hill or complimented that she thinks I’m nearly 4 years younger than I actually am.
Another little boy the next day, thrusts a homework sheet at me, declaring, “You’re old, you must know how to do math...all tall people know how to count...”
(Which I am particularly proud of, that at this age I do, in fact know how to count. Calculus, not so much, at least according to my college professor who gave me a pity C to ensure that he wouldn’t have me sitting in his class in the fall.)
My job is where I live an elaborate fantasy life of arrested development rather comfortably. Antonia’s little brother will probably need therapy someday because he believes my elaborate lie I am a superhero at night, although he did interject “It would be way more cooler if you were a Power Ranger.” Here, being young is encouraged because it takes away the veil of scariness “all people taller than me have,” as young Danny would say.
What I take away from this is what my co-worker Fran has told me about adulthood;“What’s important is that you keep that childish sense of wonder and joy or else life is going to be miserable for you.”
Even if I never figure out what it means to be an adult, I am pleased simply, at the idea of living life happily...and that for Christmas, wrapped neatly in blue “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas” paper, I received two plastic packs of water balloons.
In childhood, almost everything that you encounter seems magical. My younger cousin, Chloe is amazed by an origami bird I can fold for her without even thinking, while I am amazed by her childish imagination and spirit.
As we get older, these moments become less and less frequent. Maybe because we become more jaded. Moments like those described in the essay make it all worthwhile. We cannot prevent growing up, and the world around us reminds us of that. My fence serves as a physical reminder of how I have grown and changed, while this incident serves as an emotional reminder of how much has changed. I tried last summer to replicate it...to no avail. Sometimes lightning can only strike once. I created these projects to show and emphazise that. The Beatles said it once about pools of joy, and I believe in that wholeheartedly.
Toughest thing about this project? Doing the voiceover. Like most people when doing this project, the sound of hearing your own voice freaks you out, never mind hearing it over and over again while trying to make the sound work. Luckily, my brother got annoyed with me screaming explicitives while trying to make it work, and swept in to save me with Audacity. Everyone needs help sometimes, and this project is no different.
My first draft was horrible. Absolutely horrible. I was trying to change my writing style from dialogue heavy and short punchy descriptive sentences to something like a mockumentary style of interviewing people to get their idea at adulthood. My peer reviewers, correctly came to a unanimous decision that it wasn't working. So I scrapped most of it and went back to basics and writing what I think I do best and I think it worked out better this way. Lesson learned, that some things we can't fundamentally change about ourselves.
Most importantly, I realized that sometimes its better to show than to tell. I told my readers about how frustrated I was talking about adulthood to a friend of mine who berated me for not moving out. In telling about it, it came off as being judgemental and resentful rather than the sadness that I felt. I used dialogue to show this, and it completely changed the mood of the vignette.