Writing Resources from Fifteen Minutes of Fiction

What Daddy Taught Me

I sleep on the first floor because I'd have a heart attack trying to climb fourteen steps to the second floor. My bedroom used to be the family room, but Mom converted it after Daddy died. It's supposed to be the biggest room in the house, but nothing is big compared to me.
Hello my name is Arnold Tweed, and I am a teenage blob.

My mornings always start the same, I'm very into routine. At quarter after six, Mom pads into my room to wake me up, wearing her fuzzy blue robe and slippers. I've been awake since five, thanks to my sleepless stomach, but I pretend to wake up anyway just to keep Mom happy. She always tousles my hair and kisses my forehead, with lips that smell like blistex.

My wardrobe is pretty simple. Since the family room never had a closet, Mom hired the guy down the street to built me some shelves to hold my clothes. Mom offered to pay him fifty bucks, but he said he'd do it for free. After seeing me, I think he felt bad for her. I pick out pretty much the same outfit every morning; a loose pair of basketball shorts that I swear would be too big for Michael Jordan, a black tee shirt and a black sweatshirt. I hear black is slimming.

After I'm dressed, I squeeze down the hall and into the living room. I’ve broken too many kitchen chairs, so I eat on the couch instead. Mom brings me breakfast on a tray that has little kittens painted on it. I have this little game I play, where I eat as fast as I can before the kittens steal my food.

This morning I have frosted wheaties, four apple slices, Mom's special cinnamon toast, and a steaming cup of coffee served in Daddy's favorite NASCAR mug. I smile at Mom and she pads back into the kitchen. She knows I hate when people watch me eat. When I'm done, I hoist myself up off the couch and brush my teeth quickly. I'm a slow mover, and Mom's already in the car.

I don't mind school, I really don't. My teachers are great, with the exception of Madame Lavinia, the soggy old French teacher who makes us call her by her first name. I think she’s embarrassed that she’s not really from France. Her last name is Green.
The other kids don't really bother me, even though Mom thinks they do. In my mind, they're just pesky flies, and I'm a tough hippo. Sure, they itch me, but like the hippo, I just swat them away and keep on chewing. Besides, nobody bullies me. Who would bully a hippo?

When the lunch bell rings, I grab my brown bag from my locker and head to the cafeteria. Lunch is my second favorite part of the day. I get an entire lunch table to myself and a turkey sandwich, a juice box, a bag of nacho chips and my cream-filled twinkies. Daddy used to pat his belly and say that twinkies are evil. I’d laugh and he’d wink at me, popping two in his mouth at once. He always used to get fluffy cream stuck in his mustache.

After lunch I have gym. Fat kid gym. I guess kicking a ball isn’t my thing, because the principal held this big meeting with the Phys Ed teacher and the counselor. They told Mom to come and asked if she’d bring me along. Everybody sat around and talked about my feelings, about Daddy and my health. The school decided to set up this fancy new class just for me, called Mental Education. I guess I like it OK, even though I have to read these corny stories about some dumb mouse that goes on dumb adventures. Each story has some kind of cliché message in it that’s supposed to lift my self-esteem and motivate me to decide not to be fat anymore. I guess I don’t pay attention close enough, because I’m still fat.

History is my last class of the day. I love history, I really do. This week, we’re learning about ancient South American civilizations. I was grossed out when I learned that some cultures would cut peoples’ hearts out as a sacrifice to their gods. I wonder if God would want my heart, because I’ve heard it’s kind of useless. Mom gets mad when she hears me say that. She says I’ve got the biggest, sweetest and most loving heart in the world. I like when she says that, it makes me think of Daddy.

The teacher ends the lesson by telling us how the ancient people were conquered by European explorers. I know it’s wrong to conquer ancient civilizations and all, but I lean forward in my seat, eager to learn more. My mouth is hanging open, I bet I look like a stupid puffy fish.

At the end of the day, when I’m laying in my bed, I decide that I want to conquer the world. It’s times like these that I love the most, when the sun is down, the lights are out, and nobody can see me, not even myself. Occasionally, noises leak through the ceiling from Mom’s room upstairs. Sometimes it’s just the creaking of her too empty bed as she rolls in her sleep, but often it’s the sound of her crying.

When she first started crying at night, it really scared me. I used to crawl out of bed and into the kitchen, where I’d sleep on the floor curled up with a box of Cheese Nips. She used to cry about Daddy, but it’s me she cries about now, I know it is. I can feel it in her Blistex-coated kisses, I can see it in carefully sliced apples and the sprinkled cinnamon on my toast. But most of all, I can hear it when she says my name. See, Arnold was my Daddy’s name, his Daddy’s before that, and so on. It’s a never ending line of tragic Arnold Tweeds, a bunch of broken beanstalks that could only grow sideways, outgrowing their clothes, their chairs and finally their hearts. When Mom says Arnold, I can hear the sadness, the frustration and the fear. I hear her guilt the most. I know she blames herself, believing that if she’d been there more, I wouldn’t be the giant mess I am today. I want to yell at her, to hug her, to make her believe that it’s not her fault, that there was nothing she could do. Instead, I eat my toast and sip my coffee and pretend that everything is alright.

Tonight is different. As I lay here in the dark, I think about my Daddy, and all the things he taught me. My daddy taught me that life is a joker who tricks people into believing there are limits to what they can accomplish. He said that the people who see past this trick are the ones who truly live. He said that any man who lives his life without limits, no matter how long or short he lives, will accomplish more than any man who lives his life wearing a leash and collar. When I asked my Daddy if his life had any limits, he laughed and shook his head. Sitting up in his arm chair, he pulled me close and said, “The only limits I ever had were broken the day I got a son. When I looked at that red and wrinkled face, I realized that nothing is impossible. You see Arnold, life can’t trick a newborn baby. A baby is never told that ‘he can’t do this’ or that ‘he’ll never be like that’. To a newborn baby, life is full of possibilities and limits simply do not exist.”

I understand now why my Daddy died. He taught me all that words could teach, but he knew that I needed more. He knew that life would trick me and that I would find it difficult. He knew he needed a way to show me that impossibility is a lie. He needed a way to show me that I am more than a teenage blob, more than the laughs and the funny looks. My Daddy taught me that the only limits in life are the ones that I allow others to place on me.

Hello my name is Arnold Tweed, and my Daddy taught me to conquer the world.

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