Free Falling in First Person

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Since free fall writing, by definition, is not edited, I don’t need to hold this “essay” back for my peers to edit. I can simply cut-and-paste yesterday’s Free Fall Friday. (10 a.m.-12 noon at the Alexandra Writers Centre, in person and another group online)

Prompt- afraid

One day, I realized I was afraid. I, the roughest toughest boxer in town. I awoke feeling anxious, wanting to stay under my warm covers. But I’m a heavy sleeper, like most big boxers, so my alarm clock was across the room, right where it would be if I threw it.

I staggered over, turned it off, and went about my morning routine. This was the next sign that I didn’t understand: I kept walking like I was fighting through molasses. Even my arms at the sink seemed to move slowly. A verse from my dad’s Kipling poem came to me about a troop of soldiers:

And like a man in irons, 

Who doesn’t want to go,

They move them off by companies,

Uncommon stiff and slow.

But I wasn’t in any danger of death, not like in the earlier verse

And now the hugely bullets,

Come pecking through the dust,

And no one wants to face them,

But every beggar must.

I was almost late for my bus, but hey, I’m a disciplined boxer. So I was at my stop on time, enjoyed the view to downtown, and had no clue as to why I might be anxious. I got off at the Husky tower and had a block and a half to walk to a downtown post office. The walk energized my body, the wind brought fresh air, and as I turned into the branch I felt fresh dread. What? Now I got it: I was going to pick up a letter from my P.O. Box, and I realized, then, that I feared the answer. I resolved to read my letter right in the branch, putting the envelope in the garbage can.

There it was, with the stencilled “On Her Majesty’s Service”

… …

Prompt- a meal they loved

Times were tough, but we were together. I had lost all sense of hunger, because what was the point? People use hunger as a signal to eat, but we needed no signal: if you found it, you ate it. Right away. No deferred gratification. Fancy words we wouldn’t use in real life.

Sometimes I survived by mentally removing myself. When my cousin said happily, “It’s all carrots and apples” as a sign of joy, I thought of how people on the coast would say, “It’s all peaces and cream.” We knew what cream was, from visiting our auntie, but none of us had ever tasted peaches. I tried to imagine, but imagination failed me. Folks on the coast would have dog shows, like in the old books. But here our dogs were always skinny like in an old oil painting, and always closely guarded.

We had no food for any dog. When my legs got tired just climbing the stairs to the lookout I knew we had no choice. I told my cousin, “I realize it’s hopeless, but we need to go on a food expedition, because we are passing the point of no return.” She agreed, saying, “My legs are on fire when I go up the stairs.”

You’ve heard of “the grass is greener on the other side”? We desperately needed to believe that there are more rabbits in further fields. We had bows. Ginger was dressed in shapeless clothing with shapeless hair, for all the good that might do. It was amazing how many men in our neck of the woods were bisexual or something. Who knew?

Well, those of us who lived knew things. Those all-boy gangs? I’m sure one of the gang was a fall guy for the others.

I think the olden days were better. At night we would read aloud about King Arthur’s world. Ginger said, “The olden people wrote about such chivalry because they didn’t have it in real life.”

“Yes they did! I protested. The same day we shot somebody’s dog and sneaked it home as fast as we could.

… …

Prompt- party etiquette

Did I ever tell you about how I learned etiquette for parties and dinners and such? So there I was, my battledress covered in dust and mud—oh, let me tell you: Those stories about the mud in Europe being horrible and omnipresent? It’s all omnitrue. You could not line up on pristine grass for an outdoor mess table without a line of mud forming before the tenth man had trod the ground.

But at least we never had to dig muddy trenches. Not in peacetime, when for generations Europe had been one big armed camp, with trenches everywhere. Trying to dig would be like excavating Troy: lots of surprises, not all pleasant.

Being from Canada, the joy of not digging made up for a lot. So there I was, back in barracks, wearing my peacetime civilian clothing because we don’t have to wear our uniforms all the time. No, we book off like bankers—I know, it’s weird.

“I am going,” I told everyone “to see the Belgian consul’s daughter. She wants to date a wild colonial.” That was us, to them.

So I go traipsing down the street in my leather Romeo shoes. And she picks me up in the sort of car James Bond would drive, and off we go. Luckily I had already been on leave in so many ritzy countries. Let me tell you, they have ornate furniture and antique china and swirly silver spoons even in their cut rate places. I soon got the hang of it: They don’t expect us colonials to speak foreign, and they don’t expect us to know how to put out our pinkie with our tea cups. So I never did.

Etiquette? I found it in a book at the Stars and Stripes bookstore. Right next to Sex and the Single Serviceman. So I’m dining with the consul’s daughter and I’m learning that the books don’t know everything. Turns out that part of her politeness was to rearrange the remaining food on her plate. She told me so. I thought that was a good sign that she hadn’t written me off as being too wild.

So I could have told her about what single serviceman have to know, but my memory wasn’t good enough, except, as I said, “Don’t have the same condom in your hip pocket, because it expires faster.” I said it just as the was drinking from a straw: so amusing to see a princess sputtering out her nose.

… …

… …

Sean Crawford

November

2024

Climate note: We expect a return to hard winters because El Niño is gone this year.

Fear note: My late brother once wasted two or three days of his holiday by staying home, before angrily tossing stuff in his car and driving off to see a friend in the Okanagan valley. His behaviour was baffling to him and his siblings at the time, but I realize now it was fear, perhaps from shame issues of having his friend judge his life.

Food notes: I couldn’t bear to write about a real life meal we loved. 

Regarding food, there is a childhood flashback in Nineteen Eighty-Four where the adult hero still feels guilty about eating some super-rare chocolate when his mother and sister didn’t. Say, they aren’t present in the novel as being his adult relatives, so I presume they had died of some poverty disease.

I don’t know if I remember from guilt, but one Saturday I got up to find mother and sibs at our kitchen table, all looking at me forlornly, informing me that our house had no food whatsoever… I was energetic enough to optimistically rummage through the kitchen cupboard to finally find a big old cracker that had escaped the box and been lying there for God knows show long. I tactlessly announced my find and happily ate it right then and there. …I presume our dad brought home the bacon that night.