The Kidnapping of Honus Wagner

Today at work while I was folding and stapling, it occured to me that I indeed felt very guilty about stealing Troy Babcock’s genuine replica Honus Wagner card when I was in third grade or whatever. I didn’t actually get away with it mind you, and maybe I’d feel ironically less remorse if I had.

I was at his place cause his mother babysat me when I was younger. He taught me how to play “farm,” a silly game with no rules that involved using minature pieces of farm equipment to cultivate and dig up the hallway. I took a peculiar joy in watching him slowly drive the vehicles over the floor, as I do and always have when I watch people do certain things. Aside with examples: Jonathan Rydberg using the ball-mouse on the old Apple Powerbook in sixth grade, Dean-o and others demonstrating the proper method to tape over a staple in the corner of a box, one of Drew’s friends loading and unloading a nine millimeter pistol, Jessica’s fingers sliding around on a black Nintendo d-pad. All of these actions elicit in me a peculiar state of arousal, not necessarily sexual but merely — intrigue, I suppose. There was always something about Troy rolling each vehicle meticulously over the hall floor with a very quiet “fssssshhh” sound of the engine coming from between his teeth. When Jessy was over and playing Zelda, rocking her thumb to each of the four directions on the d-pad, she probably thought I was staring at her chest or something but I was just watching her hands. It’s like that with so many things, bizarre, odd things people do that catch me offguard in their simple human beauty.

Anyway the story I was trying to tell was the one of how when Troy showed me his replica Honus Wagner card, I somehow thought it was actually worth 167,000 dollars or something and put it in my bookbag, then proceeded to carry my bookbag around for the hour until my mother came, pointing out to Troy first that his Honus Wagner card was missing.

I don’t suppose I could have wanted to steal it, taking it and putting it somewhere distinctly peculiar then carrying that somewhere around with you after telling the victim of their loss is hardly sneaky behavior and incredibly foolish. Anyway his mom caught onto that so hard and I denyed it for hours to my own until we forgot about it.

I felt bad and Troy’s mother never forgave me. I got back at her by playing with the BB gun they had in the toy box, a real BB gun by all accounts, single pump but never loaded. Anyway one morning while she was watching the Today show I took it from the toy box, cocked it, and shot a blast of air right into her ear, making her scream at six in the morning right as we got there, causing her to wake up not only the little bitch Michael, but Troy too. I’d like to think that it was my little piece of revenge at her for always being such a slutbag and thinking that one vanilla sandwich cookie and a Dixie cup of water constituted a snack.

She looked at me in that discerning manner for the following months until my mom got laid off and that meant I didn’t have to go back there anymore. Mom was sad I guess but Dad always was gonna make lots of money so I just assumed things would always be alright. So that’s how that all went down.

“Dear Writer,

Thank you for sending us your work. After some consideration, we’re sorry to say it is not right for our magazine.

The Editors.”

My first rejection letter. So expected, so glorious. I feel like I’m alive now. I feel like I’m doing things right.