Little Games with Myself

By Adam Kaz

Mom taught me to play little games with myself. 

Secret Missions, she called it. 

I remember when I got emotional in high school, when the pressure would build and build and bubble and boil, when I felt worse than I was—I would cry sometimes. And mom, she’d sit with me for hours. My head in her lap. We’d watch TV and eat popcorn, and she’d untangle the knots in my hair until I calmed down. 

I would cry because of basic stuff, like if I thought the teacher didn’t like me, or if the work was too hard, or if a friend was mean. But I remember things got pretty rough senior year when Mr. Beasely—who was a real life retired Salamander Guerilla, by the way, with the full body tattoo and everything—when Mr. Beasely assigned us five AP ENGLISH Practice Tests a week for four weeks straight, which amounted to one timed-no-stopping essay every evening after school, which usually meant after soccer and/or wilderness survival training. 

And, quite frankly, it was not going well for me.

Time management was not my thing. So if I got the test done it was usually in bed right before I crashed. They weren’t great. And sometimes we had to read them aloud in class, and Mr. Beasley was pretty intense, and it was an all-around bad time. 

I remember I got so bubbled up about it once. So nervous and cranky and scared about the work and Mr. Beasley and everything. I went to Mom. And she made popcorn, and we watched TV, my head in her lap, and she untangled the knots in my hair. Mom looked at me like she does when she sees something I don’t. She told me she had an idea.

“Just for fun,” she said, “every time Mr. Beasley said the word, ‘constructionism’”—which is a word he said a lot, I forgot I told her that—“(I) should make a tally mark in my notebook.” 

“This is your Secret Mission,” she said in her funny Big Man Booming Voice, making it sound like some super important government thing.

The plan was I would use tallies to keep track of how often he said that same random word, and over time I could watch them accumulate. Each and every time.  And I could think how funny it was Mr. Beasely kept saying this every time I made the mark. Just for fun. Just for me.

She said if I made the marks my “Secret Mission,” if I walked into class every day with the single goal to count every time he said “constructionism,” I would feel better in the long run, she said, because the new goal would be more fun than the old. The old goal was Don’t Be Nervous So Much, and it was nowhere near completion by senior year.

Mom told me I was just getting in my own way.

“Your perspective is the problem,” she said.

And she was right. Every time he said “constructionism” I got a little rush. I flipped to the cardboard back of the notebook where I kept the tallies, and then I made my little mark. And I liked it. It was so clean, so simple.

I saw it fill up the page, and then I added more tallies to count more phrases and words and coughs and nose rubs. By graduation my notebook was like a little color coded art masterpiece made from groupings of four vertical lines cut by a fifth. Some groupings were spirals, some criss-cross, sometimes I would make them into smiley faces or symbols from The Revolution. It’s the most artistic thing I’ve ever done, and I keep it in a box back home.

I never told anyone at school, though, about the tallies. That would spoil the secret part of the Secret Mission. But I told Mom, and I showed her the notebook, because that was like returning to HQ, giving the Boss Man the Intel. I was a Salamander Guerilla and she was my Generalissimo Dan, and it made me feel safe, and I realized I actually started listening in class. I learned a few things, to be honest.

I did well on the AP ENGLISH Exam, I think. I think everyone did well. But it was easier than we expected because Mr. Beasley, as it turns out, made us all into like mini-Einsteins for in-class essays by the end.

So that was high school.

Then I remember when I went off to Academy I had a whole lot of friend drama. Jaime, my friend, knew I had a big crush on our friend Tyler—and she knew I hooked up with him a couple times—but she still swooped in with sex at a Halloween party. And then they were dating.

We were all still friends, me and Jaime and Tyler, sort of, so I had to watch them get all cutesy at mess hall, see them tickle and giggle each other right in front of me, and it just boiled me up so much. It was not a good time. And when I told Jaime how I felt she said I shouldn’t be so “sensitive,” that as her friend I should be happy to see her in love.

My perspective was beginning to be a problem again.

So Mom gave me another Secret Mission. She said every time I saw them touch each other at mess hall I should pretend to sneeze. And I told her that was too obvious, she was being weird. She said, “If they’re the sort of people I think they are, they won’t notice the pattern.”

And they never did.

From January to MacAlistaire I sneezed nearly every day at dinner. Sometimes they were really touchy, and I’d machine-gun fire off like four or five in a row. They’d say “Bless you,” and then carry on with whatever. They never even asked if I had a cold. And that’s how I learned most people don’t notice or care about a single thing you do, which is freaky in a way, but when you’re on a Secret Mission it’s sort of like a super power, a real life invisibility cloak.

And earlier today when we swarmed a Kathalara Village and exterminated a whole block of Snibsters, I sort of bubbled up again for the first time in years. These Critical Objectives are always just so hectic and messy and freaky and gross. There was a lot of mud everywhere, Snibster body parts, rats, and all sorts of things that twisty-turny your insides into mush. I was not in the right head space going in. My perspective was off.

So I thought about Mom, and I gave myself a Secret Mission. This time ‘round it was for every time I heard a Snibster cry out that weird, creepy word or phrase they’re always using in their like slickish sort of Snibster voice, right before we slice em’ up. I hear it all the time. It must be a thing for them or something, I don’t know. But it’s like:

“Kreee--uuuup”

Like:

“Kreee--uuuup”

So that word, right?

OK, so every time I heard “Kreee--uuuup” I took out my pen and put a little dot on my arm. Like I said there was a lot going on, so I’m sure I missed some. But in the end I got a pretty nice collection going. See? And my commanding officer had no idea, didn’t even ask why my arm was coated with these random dots.

I guess I can’t shower tonight, which is too bad because there is literally every kind of Snibster blood-n-guts imaginable on me right now; but hopefully by the time I’m home tomorrow the pen won’t have rubbed off. Mom is gonna freak when I tell her what this one’s for. I can’t wait.