July 11, 2004

• Welcome to another installment of…

  
  

  Not So Great Moments in Dramamine Boy History

  
  

  Time: 2nd grade
  Place: School
  Object involved: “The Bubble”

  
  

  Or, as I referred to it, The Ominous Bubble of Death!!  Yes, you must use two exclamation points whenever you utter the phrase, The Ominous Bubble of Death!!  There should be like a thunderclap and lightning outside a window or some evil laugh and scary music playing in the background as well.

  
  

  Anyway, it’s not really a bubble, but a geometric dome, made out of triangular metal bars.  They put this monstrosity in the playground and kids climb all over it supposedly for fun, but in actuality, as Bill Cosby put it, it was there to “murder us“.  I went to the school the other day to take a picture of The Bubble for this blog and… it’s gone!  No doubt, the keepers of The Bubble moved it to another location to maim and kill other, less-suspecting kids.

  
  

  So, I had to go searching on the internet to find a decent pic.  At first I found…

  
  

  

  
  

  NO, NO, NOOOOOOO!  Bigger than that!  And more ominous looking!  What kind of a wimpy bubble is that!?!  So, I kept looking…

  
  

  

  
  

  Well, this is better.  But it was made of solid, teeth-chipping steel, not this crummy multi-colored plastic crap!  AND BIGGER!

  
  

  

  
  

  NOW WE’RE TALKIN’!  Okay, it was about this big… give or take a few hundred feet or so.  Regardless of size, no kid is climbin’ this thing without escaping death.

  
  

  In an earlier blog, I talked about phobias.  One of which was a phobia of high places.  Because of this, I would spend my time on the bottom or climb to the second level of The Bubble.  Other kids would pass me and climb to and around the top, tempting death with every movement.  Would seeing these kids survive the ascent to the top of The Bubble convince me that I should join them up there?  Yeah, right…I’m not a moron, I’m staying right where I am.

  
  

  One day, our class was given 10 minutes of recess.  Just our class, which was probably because our teacher wanted to have a smoke or a drink after dealing with 30 second graders for the last 5 hours.  So, we all jumped out of our chairs and headed for the playground area.

  
  

  For some unknown reason, I determined that this is it.  This is the day that I’m gonna climb to the top of The Bubble, scared or not.  Facing your fears is a good thing, right?

  
  

  As I ran towards the playground area, The Bubble grew larger and larger.  By the time I reached the tanbark-filled playground, The Bubble towered above me.  If you listened closely, you could hear the cries of the tortured children of the past howling through the bars of The Bubble.  A foreboding, bog-like fog hung in the air… a dense mist that smelled of death.

  
  

  Which was kinda strange for a sunny spring afternoon in California.

  
  

  Since there’s no pictures or video of this event (thank you, God), I’ll have to try to re-create it as best I can.  I’ll use the multi-colored plastic bubble as a reference only… cuz the original bubble was HUGE, I TELL YOU!

  
  

  

  
  

  Okay, here I am in my usual spot, hangin’ out on the bottom section of The Bubble.  Immediately, I grabbed a horizontal bar and climbed up to the second level.

  
  

  

  
  

  This was as high as I would usually allow myself to go.  Any higher could quite possibly mean instant death.  But this was a quest… nay, a requirement to put this 2nd grade kid on the path to manhood!

  
  

  Or, maybe it was cuz I wanted to stop feeling like a wimpy, little scaredy-cat.

  
  

  

  
  

  I grab another horizontal bar and slowly pull myself up to the third level.  I have now entered unknown territory.  You can no longer stand up vertically at this level, since The Bubble slopes towards the peak.  I hold onto the bars for dear life and take a peek at the ground below.  I’m approximately 125 feet high.  I have one more climb to make to reach my goal.  I take hold of the bar above me and slowly move my legs up towards the top, making sure I have a good grip in case The Bubble decides to try one of its evil tricks to cause me to fall.

  
  

  

  
  

  I REACH THE TOP!  I touch the middle metal connector with my hand, sorta like when Marvin the Martian landed on the moon, except I didn’t have a flag… or a cool helmet… or a ray gun.

  
  

  

  
  

  I claim this bubble in the name of Mars!… uh, Dramamine Boy… Land.

  
  

  I am now almost parallel with the ground, which is somewhere in the neighborhood of 600 feet below me.  Since I’m laying prone on top of The Bubble, I can’t help but see how high I am.  I’m still holding on for dear life, with the rest of my body laying on a couple of other bars to prevent me from falling to my death.

  
  

  At this point, I’m trying to convince myself that being this high is not so bad.  That many other kids have reached this spot and have lived to tell the tale.  This isn’t so bad… I think I can-

  
  

  TWEEEEEEEEEEEEET!

  
  

  What the heck!?!  That was the whistle our teacher was blowing to tell us that our recess time was over and to come back to class.  It took me ten minutes to climb to the top of this thing!?!  I look around and all the kids are pouring out of the playground area and running back towards the classroom.  Here I am, still at the top of The Bubble thinking, “Ummm… how do I get off of this thing?”.

  
  

  I could climb down, but in order to do that, I’d either have to climb head first down the other side of The Bubble like Spider-Man, or blindly climb backwards, praying that my feet find a bar to rest on.  Or, I could just jump from the top… allllll the way down to the ground.

  
  

  Since it took me ten minutes just to climb up to the top, there’s no way I’m gonna be able to climb back down.  Now, I’m kinda panicking, since I’m the only one left in the playground area.  My plan is to take a solid hold of one of the bars with both hands and pull my feet and body off of The Bubble.  From there, I can dangle from the top and then jump down and hopefully not break both of my legs.

  
  

  Here’s something I did not know at the time.  If you’re laying on top of The Bubble and you let your body swing down, you will not just dangle from the top.  Instead, your momentum will swing your body like a pendulum.  For example, as soon as I released my feet from The Bubble, my body suddenly swung almost 180 degrees.  I’m now inside The Bubble, staring at the sky and my feet are almost touching the underside, my hands still with a death-grip on the top bubble bar.

  
  

  The fun did not end there.  My body swung back the other way and riiiight about the time that I was parallel with the ground again… the grip I had on the top of The Bubble gave out.

  
  

  So… I fell… from the top of The Bubble… to the ground… face first.

  
  

  

  
  

  Aftermath: There I am, laying face first at the bottom of The Bubble, with pieces of tanbark stuck to my face, blood gushing from my mouth and my top two front teeth no longer attached to my gums.  As I recall, one of my classmates saw me fall and got the teacher, who ran out to see if I was okay.  She picked me up and I walked to the nurse’s office, head tilted upward, crying and screaming the whole way there.

  
  

  After getting cleaned up and making sure I was okay, the nurse (I think) accompanied me back to the playground to find my teeth.

  
  

  And the moral of the story is…

  
  

  Facing fears sucks.

  
  

  or

  
  

  I’m stupid.

  
  

  Take your pick.

  
  

  And now, for your viewing pleasure…

  
  

  

  • 3:44 am
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