“Rad Racer”
May. 7th, 2017 11:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ateolf Blue and cloud skim past the panes. My father is standing outside, but the car is moving. The car moves past flat fields of soy and cotton, vast expanses of land beneath a vast canvas of sky. The clouds are moving opposite the car, but my father stands still. I look to the front seat to see my mother behind the wheel. My sister is the passenger. My father is still outside. Twenty miles have passed, my father is still outside. I turn my attention back to the Tiger game in my hands. I maneuver black splotches in predetermined slots across a light grey screen in the finite-state machine of a digital watch. The game is awkward and more frustrating than fun and only makes me wish I could play the console version left behind at home. You can’t bring a tv in a car. Which leads me to wonder why my father is still outside and not inside the car. Is my father a television? Is this why he cannot sit inside with us?
But the television is in the car with us. I see that now. It takes up most of the backseat next to me. I want to turn it on. This drive will be so much more bearable, but the screen and dials and buttons are leaning into the back rest of the backseat. I call for my father to help turn it around so we can watch it, but he is outside. I call for my sister to help, but she is in the front seat and cannot reach. I call for my mother to help, but she is in the front seat and driving.
I listen carefully to hear what show the speakers are sounding into cushions of seats. At first I hear only static, but slowly voices find their way into the air, in between the cracks of static and tire and wind and passing cars and soft rhythms of low-volume fm radio. Who is speaking from the speakers and what are they saying?
My sister turns around and asks me to turn it up. The control panel is pressed into the seat; I cannot. She rolls down the window and complains to our father. I look outside and see his face turn stern. “Quit antagonizing your sister. Turn it up so she can hear too. Do what she says. It won’t hurt you to turn up the tv now.” I can’t hear him; he is too far away. But I know what he says.
The television is now perpendicular to its former position. It is sideways on the seat facing me. I change channels but each one I find has an empty screen except for a faint horizontal line across the center. I can see that it wasn’t ready, but now it is ready. Now my hands are holding the grey-beige box. I set it aside to roll down the window. Without looking at my dad, I toss the handheld unit towards pebbles, rocks, and speeding asphalt. I close my eyes and see it smash into dozens of pieces. It is obsolete with a tv here in the car, here with me.
I find the smaller grey box at the end of a black wire which I affix to the coaxial screw. Seatbelt’s undone as I lean over the giant television, reach my arm into the narrow space against the door, reach past the pyramidal growth—Aztecan—emerging from the back of this gigantic appliance, search for coaxial counterpart to connect my device. After several minutes of blind struggle, I make my way to the input and forget the connection.
The power button settles firmly into its spot at the push of my finger. I raise the door upward as if it were a time machine and see the empty slot. This is when the realization strikes that there are no games, there are no cartridges. And I look to the door and I look to the window and I look at the road and I look at my hands that destroyed the shitty game and my only source of entertainment. And I return my gaze to my dad whose look tells me this is everything that I’ve deserved.
I turn the knob to hear the click of the television shutting down. My sisters complains but I do not hear it. The radio pushes sound to speakers but I do not hear it. The wind rushes against the windshield but I do not hear it. The tires churn against the ground but I do not hear them. The trip continues in silence.
I push my hands against the convex curve of glass and the screen opens, accepting me inside. I find this new womb gentle and warm. My cheeks brush against the thinnest wires. My arms graze circuit boards. My fingers caress resistors and diodes. Capacitors hum softly in my ears. Scan lines form me in my own imagination, signal a new vision.
When we arrive at my grandparents’, I am an antenna. I am formed. My fingers stretch, crossed into aerial comb. But I am inside, within the television. I am shielded and will find no programming no matter how hard my sisters pushes the buttons embedded deep within the panel.
But the television is in the car with us. I see that now. It takes up most of the backseat next to me. I want to turn it on. This drive will be so much more bearable, but the screen and dials and buttons are leaning into the back rest of the backseat. I call for my father to help turn it around so we can watch it, but he is outside. I call for my sister to help, but she is in the front seat and cannot reach. I call for my mother to help, but she is in the front seat and driving.
I listen carefully to hear what show the speakers are sounding into cushions of seats. At first I hear only static, but slowly voices find their way into the air, in between the cracks of static and tire and wind and passing cars and soft rhythms of low-volume fm radio. Who is speaking from the speakers and what are they saying?
My sister turns around and asks me to turn it up. The control panel is pressed into the seat; I cannot. She rolls down the window and complains to our father. I look outside and see his face turn stern. “Quit antagonizing your sister. Turn it up so she can hear too. Do what she says. It won’t hurt you to turn up the tv now.” I can’t hear him; he is too far away. But I know what he says.
The television is now perpendicular to its former position. It is sideways on the seat facing me. I change channels but each one I find has an empty screen except for a faint horizontal line across the center. I can see that it wasn’t ready, but now it is ready. Now my hands are holding the grey-beige box. I set it aside to roll down the window. Without looking at my dad, I toss the handheld unit towards pebbles, rocks, and speeding asphalt. I close my eyes and see it smash into dozens of pieces. It is obsolete with a tv here in the car, here with me.
I find the smaller grey box at the end of a black wire which I affix to the coaxial screw. Seatbelt’s undone as I lean over the giant television, reach my arm into the narrow space against the door, reach past the pyramidal growth—Aztecan—emerging from the back of this gigantic appliance, search for coaxial counterpart to connect my device. After several minutes of blind struggle, I make my way to the input and forget the connection.
The power button settles firmly into its spot at the push of my finger. I raise the door upward as if it were a time machine and see the empty slot. This is when the realization strikes that there are no games, there are no cartridges. And I look to the door and I look to the window and I look at the road and I look at my hands that destroyed the shitty game and my only source of entertainment. And I return my gaze to my dad whose look tells me this is everything that I’ve deserved.
I turn the knob to hear the click of the television shutting down. My sisters complains but I do not hear it. The radio pushes sound to speakers but I do not hear it. The wind rushes against the windshield but I do not hear it. The tires churn against the ground but I do not hear them. The trip continues in silence.
I push my hands against the convex curve of glass and the screen opens, accepting me inside. I find this new womb gentle and warm. My cheeks brush against the thinnest wires. My arms graze circuit boards. My fingers caress resistors and diodes. Capacitors hum softly in my ears. Scan lines form me in my own imagination, signal a new vision.
When we arrive at my grandparents’, I am an antenna. I am formed. My fingers stretch, crossed into aerial comb. But I am inside, within the television. I am shielded and will find no programming no matter how hard my sisters pushes the buttons embedded deep within the panel.
