Chapter Four
It’s the only thing I can think of. It’s not the best idea, but I’m going for it.
My GoodWord task this time is to “be a kid again.” Seems simple, so I’m trying not to overthink it.
I’ve been asked to do something that makes me feel like a kid.
The only things that come to mind that are truly kid-like activities involve food with my grandma, who is no longer living.
Or watching TV on Saturday mornings with my Dad, or things I wished I could do as a kid, like eat a twenty pound bar of chocolate, but now seem repulsive.
So, I’m settling on the park. My goal is to go sit on the swings.
It won’t take long. I can say I tried and then I can move on with my life, being a better person because of it.
At least that’s my thinking when I get here.
By here, I mean the Letter Street Park not far from the downtown market.
They have the largest swing-set I think I’ve ever seen, probably because it dates back to before playgrounds were Darwin-proof and sterile.
I figure as an adult, I’ll be better off with a bigger swing.
After trying to make peace-of-mind small-talk with the few moms naturally protecting their kids from the creepy-grown-man-who-wants-to-swing, I’ve been having a great time.
I find myself swinging and remembering all the stupid things we used to do on a swing.
I remember the tree swing at my grandpa’s house which hung from a branch that wasn’t exactly level, so it was always off-kilter.
I remember tying up the outside swings so you could swing in the middle one in a circular orbit until, of course, your mom, or someone’s, yelled at you.
I remember swing races where you’d have to start from a full stop and try to be the highest swinger first just by foot-kicking and body-thrashing alone.
I always won that one! And, I remember jumping out of the swings, and that one time my shirt caught on the chain and I jumped free of my clothing. And got in lots of trouble.
The good ol’ days.
I’m astounded at how the gravity shift from the weightlessness at the top of each swing, to the heavy pull at the bottom, over and over again, somehow changes me.
I feel so relaxed and carefree. I watch the blue sky appear and disappear behind the surrounding trees, now blazing red and orange and yellow in the early fall afternoon.
I have an overwhelming sense of nostalgia mixed with a surge of sadness when I think that most kids have replaced this feeling with something digital.
I’m not alone on the swings. There’s a kid on the swing next to me, maybe ten years old.
He’s kind of a nerd, I prejudge. Wow. I am being a kid again!
I keep pedaling, um, or whatever this leg-pumping is called to get higher and higher, and the highest. What if I swing all the way around the top pole!
Would that be legendary, or terrifying? I’m lost in my imagination.
Then, from somewhere deep in my soul I get the dumbest idea ever: I could play kick-off-shoe!
That’s the game we used to play on the swings where we loosen the laces on our shoe, swing the highest you possibly can and kick off your shoe at just the right moment so it flies the farthest. There was a day when I was awesome at this.
Perhaps because my feet were always bigger than my competition.
As a thirty-year-old, I discover that it’s way more perilous to untie shoes while swinging, so I actually stop to untie my sneaker.
Then, swinging as high as I can, with shoes barely hanging on and laces flapping, brings back every training cue from all the official playground practices I attended: Don’t kick at the top of the swing, it goes too high.
Let your shoe dangle from the bottom of the arc.
Turn your body slightly to favor the leg you’re kicking.
Use your upper body as leverage. And, most importantly, hold on to both chains tightly.
I’m right-footed, so that seems like the most natural place to start. I pump as hard as I can from the back of the swing, and halfway up the forward swing, I fling my foot as hard as I can.
Holy crap! My shoe is gone! It flies in a perfect arc between the gap in the trees, maybe seventy-five feet and lands ten feet from the low fence surrounding the dog park. It sure pays to have thirty-year-old feet!
I am electrified. With a little more oomph and a tiny bit of precision, I can totally get my other shoe into the dog park! I know it! I pump up my swing to get my greatest momentum again.
“What are you doing?” I hear from the next swing over. The kid is swinging and looking at me back and forth.
“I’m going to get my shoe in that dog park!” I declare.
“No way. Not possible,” he grunts.
“Watch me.” I think I’m breathing hard, but mostly I’m drawing the trajectory and calculating the physics of it all in my head. I’m also remembering how the left-foot kick is always different since it’s my non-dominant foot.
I notice that the kid is pumping way higher too.
I also see that he’s leaning over dangerously to untie his shoe, without a worry in the world.
I momentarily wonder if I’m being a terrible influence, but quickly resolve that this kid is at least not playing a first-person shooter game on a screen somewhere.
“Let me go first,” he hollers, breathing harder.
I say nothing. I just watch and keep pumping higher.
“Ready?” he says.
“Don’t forget to hold on,” I scream behind me as our swinging paths cross. I guess I just can’t help but expose my grown-up tendencies.
He reaches the top of his forward swing, classic mistake, grunts and kicks and his right shoe goes flying. Straight up. He whoops and hollers like he’s won a million dollars as he thrashes in his seat.
“Did you see that? That went so high!” His voice has gone up an octave, his smile is luminescent and his shoe is falling perilously close to the monkey bars where other kids are playing. I’m torn between joining in on his sheer joy and lecturing him on the actual goal here, distance, pal!
“My turn!” I say. “This one will clear that fence!”
He whoops again, pumping higher and higher. “No way!”
I’m in the zone, pumping and planning and tilting and bracing, and I flip my knee as hard as I can with my full-grown quad muscle flexing, hands wisely gripping tightly to both chains. My shoe flies. I think it might actually even spiral.
This time there is no arc. It flies straight. And fast.
What I have failed to notice in my exuberance is that between my swing and the dog park there is a running path. A running path with adult runners. Adult runners who apparently don’t consider that a man’s size eleven running shoe might be something to be on the lookout for!
“Heads up!” I yell at the same time as my 10-year-old friend screams something incomprehensible.
A man running down the path sees my spiraling shoe and dodges just in time, cursing. Nearby runners take cover momentarily and then carry on warily.
Before I know it, I’m trying to slow the swing and hop off, which I now remember is the tricky part because I am attempting this in only socked feet.
Wood chips fly and sting my feet as I half-brake, half-jump from the swing-set, running full-tilt toward my shoe.
“I’m so sorry!” I’m screaming at the man, who seems to be intent on retrieving the shoe from the grass beyond. “I’m so sorry!” I scream again.
In my sprinting, I see that he’s found my shoe, is bending to pick it up and I have a panic moment where I think he might just take my shoe and run off with it!
I had forgotten that part about kick-off-shoe.
The other-kids-can-be-bullies part. I sock-foot sprint faster from the adrenaline rush, ignoring the increasing pain on the bottom of my feet.
When I arrive at the man, he’s standing back up, holding my shoe, looking very confused, and very much like…
“Martin!”
He looks at me, then my socked feet, then my shoe, then at me again. “Liam?”
We both pause for long enough to slow our breaths. I also think neither of us can conjure up the appropriate words at the moment.
“That’s my shoe,” I declare, pointing.
He holds it out awkwardly. I take it from him and, scanning the field for my other shoe, sprint off to retrieve it, hollering back at Martin as I go, “Hold on, let me get my other shoe!”
I return breathing heavily and stand there, shoes in hand, laces dangling, staring at him.
“What are you doing?” He’s smiling now and can’t help himself from chuckling.
I’m still heaving and say, “Have you ever played kick-off-shoe?”
He stares blankly.
“It’s a game. On the swings. You kick off your shoe. And see who. Can kick it the farthest.” My heaving breath is making game instructions difficult.
He looks at my shoes, then back at me, again.
“Wanna play?” I smile broadly and shake a shoe at him.
He’s speechless.
“Watch this one!” We hear, from behind us, the kid in the swing, who is now fully pumped, locked and loaded.
We turn just in time to see his shoe fly in a perfect arc toward us.
We are in no danger. This poor kid has tiny feet despite his noble shoe-kicking dreams. The kid cackles with laughter, screaming: “Did you see that?”
I look to Martin and back to the kid, who is now learning the art of shoeless braking. He’s a quick learner, and comes running toward us and his shoes.
We hear a woman’s alert voice coming from the perimeter of the woodchip area: “Charles, what are you doing?” There’s a hard edge to it, I notice.
The boy doesn’t miss a step: “Kick-off-shoe, mom!”
I smile at Martin. How does that kid even know the name of this game? I know the answer; it comes from just being a kid!