PRODIGIOUS

ME

A Short Fiction

By

David A. Archer

02/15/1968

09/30/2006

I was a child prodigy and I didn’t even know it.

Through no effort of my own I had managed to reach the coveted area within human existence which connoted prodigious achievement.

Where was I suppose to go from there? I look back on it now and see that it was predestined. It was just “all down hill” as they say.

I do suppose I could whine and cry about how unfair it was that it was through no effort or even special talents of my own that I had been shelved with other greats in our human history, but I decided to forgo the self pity and try to enjoy the position I had attained in this life time. A sort of “go with the flow” attitude.

I really had no other choice. Once you reach such a height in existence, you simply have to cope with it as best as possible. So I did just that.

As I recall, it was just another day in the average life of the average familiar dwelling when I greatness was thrust upon me. I was quite young. So young that it is kind of hard even to remember the moment and I have had to rely on the accounts of my sibling who have since developed various jealousies pertaining to this unexpected development in my life.

How could any of them had known then?

My mother didn’t even know and it was from her that I received such notability.

By all accounts it was, as I stated, simply another average day… and further, another average moment leading up to that fateful occurrence. It is even one that was celebrated in the other youthful reasoning of my sibling, as some form of small victory at the time, none of them knowing what it would actually prove to signify in meaning.

I can recall the moment in a sort of slow motion. The brief but desperate grasping of my mothers every appendage as the moment transpired. As if to suddenly change her mind about bestowing such a lofty achievement upon her youngest son, at the very last moment.

No such luck.

The slow motion continued as the vision of the worn and somewhat dust ridden linoleum sped upward, in the slowest way it possibly could have.

I then lay there for just an instant, as I am sure those others in the exclusive club to which I now belonged, had done as well. I was far too young for it to have registered immediately and as I recall, I was still unsure as to how I should immediately react, and I am sure that such had registered on my facial expression.

What an odd moment it must have been from an entirely outside perspective?

The dense urgency in panic from a surprised and somewhat indecisive mother, accented with the celebratory laughter from the nearby kitchen table in the ranks of older sibling expressing a hidden distaste at having been displaced in the birth order, coupled with the perplexed essence and expression of an infant having just been dropped on their head. Still unsure of whether or not it was something to cry about.

I know that you must be a little confused at this point. It took me years to figure it out myself, but after some careful consideration I made the realization that having been dropped on my head as a child actually served in an existential sense, to award me instant membership in the elite areas of society known as prodigy.

It isn’t, and wasn’t as though I possessed any particularly pronounced talents. I have never once thought such to be the case.

It is however, that being instantly associated with such a widely celebrated occurrence through unwilling participation allotted said recognitions to my person through out much of my youth and early adult hood.

For the longest time, I thought that maybe people were suggesting my personality and disposition were somewhat outside of social norms and standards when it was that my presence and demeanor had been associated with an early childhood injury, such as being dropped on ones head. But after some time, I figured out that it was simply a means with which to denote that special quality and acknowledging that level of association with fame and notoriety that I possessed, through having been an active element of such a famous activity.

I was most definitely in a special club. A widely recognized, and highly denoted, club. I was world famous before the age of two… maybe even before the age of one, and I didn’t have to do a thing to achieve it.

I lay there on the cool linoleum suddenly noticing everything a bit clearer. The dust and hair balls in the corner, just under the stove. The craned neck of my older sibling peeking up and over the table from their seats on the other side of it. The small worn spot on my mothers house slipper, now just in front of my field of vision. It was at the very toe tip of the slipper, just under the lip of it.

I had no way to realize then that I would never top this moment. Not even when running naked through the house with a fist full of paper towels, streaming the role off of the wall as I streaked through the abode. Nor when it was that I decided to get all of the prizes in all of the cereal boxes we had, at once, through dumping the contents out onto the table. Full well intending, I assure you, to replace the other contents as soon as I was finished with the toy surprises.

How could I have been intending anything else in that situation? I was a prodigy, after all.

Copyright©2006 David A. Archer 02/15/1968