A Selfish Moment

A Selfish Moment

When I was a little child I had a favorite toy that my parents gave me. It was a simple toy, but I loved it more than anything else in the world. I would play with it any chance I had (even when I wasn't supposed to) and took it with me wherever I went. Sometimes, if I became lonely during the day or frightened during the night, I would just cuddle with it for hours and hours. And then I grew up.

Suddenly, I wasn't allowed to play with my toy any more - that was something that only ugly little children did and I wasn't supposed to be an ugly little child. But I didn't care. When nobody was looking, I would unwrap the cloth that covered it and play with it because, like any good toy, it had become my best friend - my only friend in a world I still didn't understand. All throughout my teenage years I played with my toy - secretly, of course - but I loved it nonetheless. And then I moved out to college.

I met an elegant woman with crimson hair and bright eyes that could turn men into stone (or, in my case, jelly). We were in love and I set out to prove my feelings for her. So I gave her the one object in my life that ever mattered to me - my toy. My lifelong companion given away to someone that I believed could understand what a tremendous amount it meant to me. I felt joy in my heart when she accepted it, but at the same time I felt a little death inside. And then we married.

The years passed. I held on to my new companion and hoped that she took care of my old one. But one day, one terrible day, I talked my way out of the building in which I worked and came home a few hours earlier than usual. I opened the door of our warm house and walked across the wooden floors to our bedroom. When I looked inside I saw my wife -- naked, with another man. I pushed my dark blue glasses back to the top of my nose, turned around, and walked out of the house. I didn't need to wait and listen to my wife explain away the situation because I knew exactly what had happened.

When I came back later that evening, we had an argument. The sound reverberated throughout the teak panels that lined our walls. And I left. Alone. Heartbroken.

She had given me back everything that I ever had in that house. But the one piece of my life that I ever cared about, the one that I had given to my wife for safekeeping, wasn't the same anymore. She had broken it. And I despite my loneliness, despite the fact that it was quickly becoming dark outside and I felt that feral fear creeping into my mind, I couldn't bring myself to cuddle with my toy for comfort. I suddenly realized that my toy, no matter how well taken care of throughout all the years of my life, could not survive the tumultuous seas of lost love.

And here my story ends. If there is anything that you have learned today, I hope it is this: Do not give away your childhood toy to anybody, because, if you ever get it back, it will never, ever, be the same.



Some background information: this was just a writing exercise to test out an idea I had. I'm not particularly satisfied that I pulled it off quite the way I had imagined, but this isn't the kind of thing that I'll keep now and revise later. Perhaps it'll find it's way back into my brain sometime in the future, but for now, I'm done with it. (And yet, even as I write this, I'm going through the text and changing major concepts...)

I hope you at least get a good chuckle out of it.