I was a fat kid, people gave me titty twisters on the school bus. I turned up the Eazy E and looked out the window as the straw colored hills of Morgan Hill rolled by. When I took the Presidential Fitness Test, the result was that I was not fit. It was no surprise.
My teacher, who taught me to code Logos on beige Apple ][e’s in the computer lab, which I loved and was good at, handed me a rope and asked me to climb it. It was attached to the ceiling. Of the gymnasium! Later they took us out to the monkey bars to climb poles. I got the wind knocked out of me and saw stars.
We played Dungeons and Dragons at recess. I was the Dungeon Master. We didn’t have books to follow, just one twenty-sided die. We took turns rolling it and then I made up what happened. Who died, who killed the Dragon, who saved the maiden, who got turned into a bird and then a donkey. We huddled in the shade of a small tree in the parched clay school yard. It was dusty. I sweat from my armpits.
My grandmother told me that she didn’t believe in Hell except for Ronald Reagan who was going for closing halfway houses and defunding disability programs while governor of California. Arnold Schwarzenegger had helped to design the test. They’re both going to Hell, I thought.