I don't remember much of my preschool days except for a few memories that left a lasting impression, traumatic or blissful, more than often a mix of them. The last day I saw my maternal grandfather, running away from the kindergarten on it's first day for my very first adventure, breaking my dominant arm just a few weeks shy from first day of elementary, and the consequences of these actions...
First one did result with a quality set of hogriculrire equipment in it's own well used little wallet and a funeral that I was not allowed to attend, probably one of the very first reasons of my love of gardening and hate of life events despite being clumsy in both of them due to the lack of experience.
The second one was probably the best day of my early life. Living my very own first adventure resulted being expelled from kindergarten in it's first day, just as planned. This was most likely the very first example of my peculiar first days.
The third one was due to having a light case of attention deficient hyperactivity disorder on my preschool days, not that it was diagnosed. You see, it wasn't fashionable to be diagnosed with a mental disorder back in the day. People simply didn't think adhd was a problem, but the way how boys of that age is. It resulted me attending the fall semester of the first year of elementary school with a broken arm and being forced to learn reading while everyone is learning writing, compensating it in the spring semester by learning how to write while everyone else is learning reading. I still blame my hate of everything that is too hyped or recommended on this one.
My earliest memory however, was of the day I experienced a temporary blindness due to high fever at the age of three. It turns out, playing under the summer rain and then continue wearing wet clothes for hours due to the lack of supervision of a maternal aunt's side could really cause a killer high fewer for a small child.
Despite recovering completely after a week long stay hospital, it left me with a severe case of myopia. I was forced to use glasses for my entire preschool and elementary together with the better part of the middle school days. I still don't understand how high fever may cause myopia and how can't it heal completely after a decade without a medical operation and blame my hate of glasses on this one.
Ironically now, in front of the mirror with those hateful glasses was standing my sun kissed twelve year old body with an absolutely horrendous haircut.
"Damn boy, your own mother is a hair dressers. How could you get such a haircut?"
Despite my adult height being 6' 5" (195 cm) and my ideal weight between 200-210 lbs (90-95 kg), I didn't reach that height untill first year of high school and weight untill the end of my collage years. Basically, I lived first part of my life as a scrawny boy with a permanent tan regardless of my height.
My tan was so dark just out of summer that I could have easily landed a role as a background slave in a historical drama, especially with that ridiculous haircut. I have no idea what was my younger self thinking spending more than eight hours a day under the sun in subtropical humid climate. All I know that my permeant tan didn't disappear more than a decade, untill I joined the workforce a decade later in a much northern state.
"I really should reduce my time under the sun."
Blame genetics, but men of our family, maternal or paternal, are all late bloomers gaining height suddenly just before fifteen and didn't bulild up till early twenties. I was one of the lucky ones according to my maternal uncle who was 106 lbs (48 Kg) despite being 6'1" (185 cm) at the age of 18 when he joined the army for mandatory service.
Similar to his experience, by the time I started to fill up at early twenties, I was hunk of a man and even a little bit of a stunner. I even got more than a few marriage proposals untill finally landing one of the most beautiful girls of the collage as my wife.
I know I would never loose my hairline, won't start going gray untill early fifties, look like ten years younger and never suffer from any kind of cancer. The trade off was, increased diabetes and heart attack rate together with a hard adolescence due to my gaunt appearance. I lost a father to an early heart attack and a maternal grandmother to chronic complications of diabetes, and didn't land any girlfriends untill it was already too late despite being both in the drama club and basketball team. Yet I still consider myself a winner in the generic lottery.
But enough of these... I should visit the principal's office and return to the classroom, or should I really? It is funny how my brain works sometimes, refusing to think about the elephant in the room or anything else that could cause a panic attack and focusing on the mundane details. If I survive this one with my mental health intact it would be a modern miracle.
You see, when I say I got the genetic lottery I wasn't only talking about physical properties. My own fucking fight or flight response was freezing a few moments with an increased rational brain activity and lack of emotional response.
Fire in the lab? Stun for a few seconds looking at the burning oil bath on the neighboring bench while everyone else is yelling and running, and just get the fucking dessicator to cover the whole thing under one inch (2.54 cm) thick borosilicate to suffocate the fire. It was already over by the time teaching assistant and the instructor arrived with the fire blanket and the extinguisher.
Six hounds suddenly decide to surround you and start growling, baring teeth and barking just outside the private property? Stun for a few seconds without losing eye contact while the other center of the highschool basketball team is yelling and hugging you like a bitch, and suddenly start praying aloud and walking at a steady pace while removing your coat to cover your non-dominant arm. By the time I was on the third step mutts were already running away.
I was pretty much a small time legend amongst my friends during high school and collage and even my small time crush was seeing me in her dreams walking into the fire to save her. Not that it stopped her from dating with the voleyball team libero three days after refusing me. Women!
Now, don't misunderstand me. I was not some kind of idiot with hero complex. Despite my wife's insistance on me being a heartless fuck with a severe lack of empathy, I was simply fashionable late with my emotional reactions and responses. As soon as the danger was over, I felt the rush just like everyone else. The madly beating hearth, the churning stomach and cold sweating was still there together with the anxiety of what could have happened, but they were simply muted due to the knowledge of danger already being averted. There were simply no one around or care enough to realize my condition after everything was already over. Just like now.
The first day of the middle school started with the classical meet and greet and then the homeroom teacher started to set the sitting arrangements. Naturally, he decided to put the short and skinny nerd with thick rimmed glasses on the front row, right between the two overly familiar bundles of energies to lower their interaction during the class hours and left the classroom. THE STUPID FUCK LEFT THE CLASSROOM WITHOUT SUPERVISION ON THE FIRST HOUR OF THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL!
I can't remember exactly what happened after that, but it was pretty obvious that the boys being boys, they started a stupid game about who could make the stuck up boy with bad haircut, me, most angry. The lanky one with a hawk nose won the game with a landslide by saying something about my mother and thus I went ballistic. By the time homeroom teacher heard the commotion and come to separate us, I was already on the ground being double teamed and sent to the principal's office due to starting a fight in the classroom. I cat even remember what did the little fuck said that day but still think that worth it.
Sadly, things didn't happen like that this time around. The moment I hit my head to the ground and stunned for a few moments my brain went overdrive, something that didn't happen untill the freshmen year of the hight school. This time around however, it didn't went overdrive to find a way to save me from the immediate danger. On the opposite, it went overdrive to make sense of an impossible question. "What the fuck am I doing at the middle school I have graduated half a lifetime ago?"
I stood on the ground, getting beaten by Matt and Cole while trying to find an answer to my existantial crysis untill the teacher came and stop the fight. I was in daze during the whole thing while Mr. Jones tried to underatand what happened. There I stood, scanned the crowd, looking at the familiar yet so unfamiliar faces trying to remember their names, untill I saw Desiree Johnson.
At that moment, my brain decided that it was already enough to have an ongoing existantial crysis and adding a moral one to the mix was counterproductive, and the longest daze of my life abruptly ended. Suddenly my spinal cord took control and I started to walk steadily to remove myself away from the main source of stress, the classroom itself. Interestingly, noone tried to stop me .
Human brain is really a marvelous thing. I had no idea which classroom was mine and can't even remember the names of the better half of my classmates but the moment I started walkin everything started to fall into place. So here I was, checking myself on the mirror inside the toilet at the end of the corridor and trying to collect my thoughts which obviously wasn't working.
One of the first things you must come to realize as an adult adult is, nothing goes the way you want in real life. You must learn to either accept or adapt. Life is all about compromises.
So, what do do when thinking doesn't solve your problems but only cause a moral crysis after an existential one? Easy... STOP THINKING!
Well, obviously I am not an expert in meditation but I am pretty sure that it is simply impossible to stop thinking so, some compromises must be made, like pp
reducing the complexity. Thankfully, I am not the first person that experiences an existential crysis. History of philosophy is filled with delusional little fucks like me who can't shoulder the unbelievable lightness of being. So keep it simple, keep it short.
Fact I: I think, therefore I am. God bless Descartes! Best philosophies are always stem from practicers of natural sciences. Regardless of this shit show being a natural or supernatural phenomenon, I still have the ability of rational thinking. Everything else is for the future me to solve. Procrastination until it doesn't work anymore. Beet recipe against panic attack.
Throw some water to your face and try to inhale from your nose and exhale from your mouth. Washing your face activates mammalian dive reflex. Just ride the wave and control your breath to further lower your heart rate.
Fact II: Fuck Steve Jobs! Stay full, stay wise. You are neither the first, nor the only one. If whatever this shit is happening to you, then it has already happened countless of times before and simulationsly happening at least ten more people.
You are neither a horny teenager on your quest of harem to collect legendary pussies, nor narcisst enough to think that you are the protagonist and the world is yours for taking. Beauty, money, talent and fame are not gifts if you don't have the means to protect yourself, but curses. Only idiots would believe that you can just plagiarize songs, books, movies ahead of time, buy top gainig stocks and most successful corporations like buying an Apple from market, or invent fictional artificial intelligence assistants for your way towards success. Real life doesn't work like that. Hard earned success, gift of God, right of inheritance or sheer dump luck doesn't matter. Greed is in the nature of humanity.
Just win a few million from lottery and suddenly you would gain a few new relatives, several new friends, and plenty of suppliensts. Each one you refuse would be your new enemies.
The moment you have a successful business, someone would either want to buy it for a pittance or ask you to pay for protection against such people, sometimes even politicians, corrupt or not. I don't even want to talk about bankers, brokers and accountants. Just make sure you won't be the one thrown to the jail if they suddenly decide to run away with your newfound fortune.
Power either comes in plenty or not at all. You either have personel, economical, and political power all together, or the illusion of just one of them. It won't be too long before you loose whatever power you think you have when you start to gain attention from wrong kind of people, or worse from the government itself. Not to mention, I don't even want to think about gaining attention from someone like me or something that can cause whatever is happening right now.
Fact III: The only constant in life is change itself. I have been living in my new reality less than fifteen minutes and I have already changed something just by stunning instead of continue fighting.
I didn't have a protruding lip and this much bruise on my face last time. I just went to the classroom and even sit at the same seat like an idiot after visiting the principal's office. It was only later at home my mother realized the bruises on my body despite no hint from me and all hell broke loose.
So? If I am forced to re-live the worst years of my life all over again by unknown means, fiction or not, it would be in my terms not anyone else's. I didn't live decades of my life just to have the same feelings, the same thoughts and the same wants. I not only refuse to do the same things all over again just for safety's sake but also refuse to follow any other will other than mine, be it natural or supernatural. Meaning if something or someone have a hidden agenda on my current circumstances, I would do anything in my power just to spite them, starting this moment.
If I am not mistaken, that teacher of mine must be waiting in the classroom for me. Let's just go home instead of principal's office then. I want to see my late father. Let's see if the dead can be resurrected, it would be a fine distraction.