Page 195 - What They Did to the Kid

What They Did to the Kid 183

7

June 20, 1962

Tick. Tick. Going home summers was like rowing out in a boat
chained to the shore. I paddled out only to be jerked back, tethered
forever to the land. I was true to my school and for me girls could
not exist. I could not run with the hot boys of the town. They always
chased down the same one track, luring the girls who actually existed
into cars into parks into bushes for short-breathed twitchings in the
darkening twilight. I had to go every where alone or with a few other
seminarians home for the summer from other seminaries that were
not as top-notch as Misery. That was the same as being alone.
I sought sanctuary in the dark of movie theaters that disguised
my estrange ment from a world of couples who saved no place for
me. The theater seats could be old and ripped, the floor could be
so sticky I couldn’t lift my feet when the mice ran by, the new wide
screen could be winging precarious ly out of the old prosceni um arch,
but I loved the silver screen and the muted blue lights high in the arc
of the movie palace dome.
I laid my head back on the seat and stared up at that hypnotic
blue circle, losing all my bearings. The cone of projector light flick-
ered and the stereophonic sound bounced around the walls.
People sat in two’s and four’s and people sat alone, sitting like me
two or three times through the same double feature. The world I was
giving up really didn’t seem like much, but the world was all some
people had. I pitied them. I pitied anybody who hid out at the movies
from the world I was sent back to for three months every summer.
Some boys fell in love with the world and never returned to
Misery again. I valued the world, but I was not cut out to be part of
it. As a priest I would be in the world, but not of the world. I would
save people from their worldli ness.

©Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved
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