Give Me A Suicide.
Trigger Warning — This has nothing to do with self-harm.
When I was a kid in the late 80s, I begged to be able to play little league. My pleas paid off but I was told in no uncertain terms that I ‘better do good’, as if the cost of signing me up were a king’s ransom, and thus a burden on the family accounts. I don’t know how I got interested in baseball though. My memories are fragmentary, as one would expect after four decades. I can remember being inculcated to like cars and The Dukes of Hazzard, being dressed like a redneck cliche one year and then off to something else the next. I mean, I think I have a vague memory of some older kid giving me some baseball cards and telling me the baseball was the best sport and then…BASEBALL BASEBALL BASEBALL!!!! My cousin even once told me that when he once came to visit, he said hi to me and I was so fixated on the game on TV that I barely acknowledge him…
So yeah, I apparently didn’t have the necessary sense of self to realize or understand that everything I wanted was something someone else had decided was good for me. And I went along with it all because I was inculcated to understand that my worth came from external sources, and only that. So I went along to feel like I did actually belong. It was a waste of energy though. I mean, let’s put aside the fact I was never going to play center field in the big leagues (I was never close to being that good). I’ve since learned that reciprocation is never a guarantee. No matter how much you give of yourself, you are going to feel used if you don’t surround yourself with ethical people who understand what it means to give and take in fair proportion. And I don’t mean an exact tit-for-tat transaction either. I mean, Joe borrows Jack’s rake one day, Jack borrows Joe’s garden hose the other. It’s about mutual support, not getting what you think you’re owed. That kind of transactional thinking is repugnant as far as I’m concerned.
But I digress. While we’re speaking of transactions, it was customary after every game during the almost five years I played Little League to get a treat from concessions for the day’s effort. It was usually Big League Chew and a soda or something like that. One of the drinks I got exposed to during this time was a concoction that was half Pepsi/half Mountain Dew, and it was called a suicide…don’t know why, that’s just what we called it. From then on, if I wanted a suicide away from the baseball park, I had to explain what it was. Must have been strange for every server under the sun to have a kid less than ten asking for something called a ‘Suicide’…shock and horror… Anyway, I’m still fond of the concoction but I don’t drink soda as much as I used to. I’ve tried different combinations of late though. Just the other day I tried the half Pibb Xtra/Half Diet Dew variation, which wasn’t too bad.
I guess it’s fair to say that the point of this brief missive isn’t about soda per se, it’s about balance. My childhood, on the whole is a painful memory I would gladly forget if I could, but occasionally there are a few sweet memories of things that make it somewhat bearable carrying the scars of indifference, irreconcilable familial dysfunction and being constantly ostracized from my peers, for whatever reason. I’m sure that everyone who’s been through some shit will understand this. So I have to ask, if you’ve had a painful life, what’s your Suicide solution?
