hatriotism

I’m yet unconvinced by replica potential, calling back days living in upstate New York, where I actually have friends, blacks, puerto ricans, asians and whites, all army brats, transplanted to this mountain tundra where we SUPPORT THE TROOPS by breaking light posts and steal traffic signs and smoking pot with the officers’ kids. You’re not here with me now, so I’ll remind you it’s 1987.

Here I learn to hate television. If we’re in the TV room when he gets home from a hard day defending freedom, we are allowed to change the channels for him during commercial breaks. Make the humiliating trek from couch to set, pushing black buttons like push-ups. The kids at school ask me if I like The Cosby Show. I have no idea what the hell they’re talking about.

I get a few dollars every now and then. I like the word allowance. It means someone has had to sacrifice for the very air I breathe. I’m grateful. I spend it because with no TV I need a HOBBY. I buy model airplanes, while my sister screams, ‘I didn’t ASK to be born!,’ which for all you parents/non-parents is the PERFECT argument, against which there is NO defense, not even unplanned pregnancy.

The F-4 Phantom fighters are my favorite, Vietnam-era jets that remind me my REAL father went AWOL in 1972. Legacies rule.

Little jars of paint and corresponding brushes. Exacto knives. Glue, most of all. Epoxy and paper bags. No hobby should be without a brown paper bag.

I spend the days putting models together, taking excruciating lengths and pains and other excruciating qualifiers to make them perfect. I add my own details, scratching tiny holes into fuselages, then flecking the scars with bits of chrome. Perfect anti-aircraft holes.

And then I look at the work, the craft, the time spent not turning channels and decide this replica wants to fly. So I throw it through the air, give it its freedom, for a brief moment before it crashes against the drywall separating brother from sister and shatters, to, disappointingly, only 5 or 6 pieces. The glue is remarkably strong. I string what’s left from the ceiling by fishing wire. Heroes of war.

When we moved into our house in 2000, I received a box of my old toys, and found a dozen or so model airplanes. All broken and busted, perfectly painted and detailed.

What happened?

Nothing happened. That’s how fighters look in real life.