When I was even younger, like six, I’d begged them for a Commodore 64. Begged.
“Mama! Papa!” I squeaked. “We’re talking high-impact Commodore prototype technology here. We’re talking eight bits of processing, a full sixty-four kilobytes of RAM with a VIC-II graphics chip. We’re talking Arkanoid and Pitfall! and Contra and more intensity than your minivan-driving, fanny-pack-wearing adult minds can possibly comprehend! I know I could be great at this! I know! Please please pleeeeeeeeeease let me have one!”
That’s right. Even as an emotionally repressed child, I had a flair for communication.
But shockingly, my parents refused. They wanted me to eat my breakfast and do my homework and read books. And not cool books, like this one, which might actually be the only cool book ever, and which obviously wasn’t even written yet. But instead lame sissy books like Little Women and various dictionaries and almanacs, and other crap my editor, Nigel, probably read when he was growing up.
Most important of all, they taught me to always, always run from danger. I was too precious to them. They wanted to keep me safe, but instead of toughening me up, they taught me to hide. They taught me to run. They taught me to be afraid.
So my mind grew weak and my muscles became atrophied. I’d lie in my bed at night in my little book-themed pajamas, scared of the boogeyman, scared of the darkness that dwelled outside my safe little house, whimpering for my mama and papa, doing everything I could to live up to their expectations and follow their silly little rules.
So yeah. By the time I reached ten, I was getting my ass kicked pretty much nonstop.
Wild packs of eleven-year-old street punks would hunt me down after school, preying on my subpar reflexes and total lack of athleticism. They had rough-and-tumble names like Ramrod and One-Eyed John and Razor Frank and Steve, and they were armed with steel-plated Trapper Keepers and frozen Fruit Roll-Ups sharpened into shivs. Fifth graders can be tough little assholes in the East Bay.
I always ran. Always! Just like Mama and Papa said. But the punks would catch me in all my cuteness and innocence, and they’d hold me down and beat me to a quivering pulp. And I’d be crying and sobbing, this helpless, defenseless little ten-year-old boy, and—
—shit, hold on, I have to clear my masculine gravelly throat—
AHEM. AHHHHHHHEM-HEM.
—sorry, these are some hard-hitting First Dimensional memories. I’m getting fucking emotional here. Don’t want any of my massive, superior tears to short-circuit this advanced experimental Dell Inspiron with twelfth-generation Intel® Core™ processor and WordPerfect 5.1 emulator I do all my word processing on—
AHEM!
—okay, cool—
And so then I’d whisper, “I don’t understand… Why are you doing this to me?”
Then they’d laugh.
“Because you exist,” they’d say. “And your body is puny and your voice is squeaky and your jaw is soft. And okay, we’ll be honest, we’re also totally jealous of the waterfall of glorious hair cascading down your shoulders. We wish we had hair like that, so we beat you.”
Even at that age, my mullet was astonishing, and the Pert Plus 2-in-1 shampoo-and-conditioner I’d just started using left it supple and gleaming like black steel, so I couldn’t really fault them on that one.
They’d finish bludgeoning me, and I’d scrape myself off the pavement and limp home. My mom and dad would find me battered and bruised and bloody.
“Well,” Mama and Papa would say, “just be satisfied knowing that you’re the better person.”
What…
A load…
Of BULLSHIT.
These punks were kicking my ass! Like, literally, this kid, I think it was Steve, he was always the meanest—he kicked me in the ass so hard this one time that his foot actually got wedged between my butt cheeks. Like it got stuck there for a solid three seconds. I thought I was gonna need the Jaws of Life to get this tool’s Reebok out of my butt.
Shit still pisses me off. Even now.
Then one day, the pack of hoodlums came after me again. Again I ran.
But this time, as they were chasing me down the street, I saw an alleyway I’d never seen before. I ducked into it at the last second.
It was long, dark, and winding. So long, dark, and winding it felt like it would never, ever end, its shadows black and dripping and thick like tainted blood.
I could hear the gang of punks behind me, shouting, screaming, jeering. Getting closer and closer. So I kept running as fast as I could, till the air felt like fire in my little-boy lungs.
Then suddenly I tripped. I fell hard onto the pavement, the rough concrete cutting my palms and tearing a hole in my lame corduroy slacks.
I groaned and looked to see what I had tripped over.
It was an original Commodore 64, still unopened in its dusty old box. Somehow, for mystical reasons I couldn’t yet fathom, the computer I’d always begged my parents for was lying here, in this random alley, among scraps of trash and rat turds.
Then, in my pain and delirium, I heard something in the distance. It wasn’t the footsteps of my preadolescent tormentors. It was the sound of an eagle screaming its rage.
An eagle? What the heck?
(I was so damn innocent, “heck” was my go-to profanity.)
I looked up from the grime and filth. There in that dark, winding, endless Oakland alleyway, I saw the massive heights of Mount Olympus looming over me. A giant eagle circled the tippy-top of the snow-covered peak, flames in his eyes and danger in his heart. Just below him, a vicious, muscular lion clawed his way over the ice, roaring in anger and dominance. Just below him, a powerful green python slithered and squirmed, hot black venom dripping from his razor-sharp fangs. And just below him, an ancient Celtic warrior held the beating heart of his enemy up to the blazing sun right before he took a big, juicy bite, with
