The Experiments
by Michael Prihoda
1. Crying: I quickly discovered it got me what I wanted, even at all hours of the night. I will make no comment as to my mom’s upper organs. Also, I remember nothing. And no, that’s not a cover just to avoid the NSA. I recall nothing. 2. Fashion: I had a sailor suit and a blue wind jacket my mom made me wear to the playground. I unzipped it every time she turned around. I would run in the wind, pretend to be super, pretend to be heroic, pretend to be on the verge of saving someone, the desperation seeded but unnoticed. 3. Teeth: I chewed things before letting them slide from my mouth like deformed chunks of walruses sliding back into a frigid ocean. My dad didn’t appreciate my so-called rebellion and somehow the phantom of a board, of standing in front of their closet waiting for the slap, the quick smarting sensation, the way I pouted but didn’t sit down, already recognizing certain postures as submissive. But really, just injured. It has stayed with me. It will stay. Action and reaction and the world subsumed into tiny corners edged with confetti. 4. Coughing: my lungs had something wrong with them and I had weeks in the hospital to prove it, numerous doctor visits to a man named Twig. My grandma gave me a car that I could pull back and let go, the wheels torqueing the vehicle forward. I had to watch others wind it up until the nurse came to disconnect me from something clipped on my finger. Something was there. I swear. And my cousins came. And maybe I should have been scared for my life but mostly I ate hot dogs, mashed potatoes, drank chocolate milk, and wondered how soon I could go home to sleep in my own bed in a room that didn’t have little kid wallpaper. Because I was almost a grown-up by then. 5. Baseball: my father handed me a small black mitt and the next ten years of my life vanished into the thud of a ball hitting a glove, the strike of a bat, the clack of cleats. I looked at him in awe, never readier to start something than that moment. 6. Snow: we broke a window. I cried, effortless, cognizant of how much this could cost me. Mercenary until the end. I had been the target. The snowball missed me or I dodged or maybe I discovered a sense of burden, responsibility, the creaking of trees in autumn as they warn of something. I asked my parents to buy a block of this type of cheese that had bits of sausage in it and then, three weeks later, we threw it out because it got moldy. I hadn’t taken a bite. 7. School: things started coming home with me instead of me choosing to bring them. I never quite shook humanity after that. 8. Vacation: I insisted on taking the pictures with a disposable 24-click camera. Kodak. I would run my finger along the winder, ready for new opportunity, the chance to record, to etch history in color. I spaced each photo accordingly to capture the week in its entirety. I became absent from family photographs, sneaking into others that my father took with his Canon that clunked against his chest in a ratty brown case that seemed prehistoric. I saw Mt. Rushmore but can’t prove it anymore. I saw Niagara Falls but can’t prove it anymore. I saw my family’s smiles falter. I can prove that from time to time.