Fuck

“Fuck!”

The noise echoed through the neighborhood, sound waves bouncing from wall to wall. The word ripped through my ear and into my head with savage authority.

“Are you okay Ryan?” My friend Tony asked. He began to wave his hand in front of my face.

“Yes, get your stupid hand away from me!”

“Well, it’s just, you’ve been staring at the monkey bars for at least a minute or two.”

I guess I had. It’s not that I was afraid of monkey bars or anything, I actually loved them. Of all the equipment at the park, they were easily the best. Any kid who didn’t like the monkey bars was obviously a loser; there were so many uses for them. Sure you could slide down a slide, but could you play chicken on it? You could climb up a ladder but could you climb ACROSS it? You could twist your ankle while jumping off the swing but could you break both of your wrists at the same time? Okay, I suppose that you could, but not the same way that my friends had. If the monkey bars were not the cause of my current condition, then what was?

“Let’s just go back home, then,” Tony said, as if going home would solve things.

“No, I can’t!” I responded, shaking my head vigorously. Go home? What a terrible idea. Had he not heard, “Fuck!” really loudly? Was I the only person in the neighborhood with ears? My father was obviously upset, I could recognize his, “Fuck!” anywhere. This was not a good time to be heading home.

“Well, if we’re not going to be doing anything here, then why not go home?” What a confused child Tony must have been, did he not understand the situation at all?

“Look, going home is a bad idea; didn’t you hear someone yelling a minute ago?” I was sure that the sound must still have been echoing, moving on to the rest of the town for them to know the horror that I felt.

“Yeah, so what? People say bad stuff like that all the time,” Tony responded. Wow, this kids head was like a pile of sand bags and my words bullets the stopped dead before being given a chance to reach his brain.

“What do you mean so what? That was my dad, couldn’t you tell? My dad, going home would be like putting down a mine and then stepping on it, you know my dad’s anger.” Everyone did, after all. We were at least a block away from my house and we had heard him. Tony agreed that we’d stay but said I owed him.

We ended up staying out two or three more hours, not really because we were doing anything, more because I dreaded going home. Besides, I thought I had told him from the beginning why we were going to the park. Everyone knows that I don’t stay home during the Cubs game.