Get Critter
Scroll
The Poem
Get Critter
Nobody was watching.This is the first thing you need to know —the door was unlocked,the afternoon was long,the neighborhood was just the neighborhood,which meant it was also the whole world,which meant everything in it was availablefor purposes its designers had not intended.
The Big Wheel was designed for driveways.He noted thisand filed it under interesting starting point.
He did the math.This is what people don’t understand about the fearless ones —they are not without calculation.They calculate faster,accept the answer sooner,don’t spend time arguing with itthe way the rest of us spend time arguing with it.
He looked at the car.He looked at the Big Wheel.The math said yes.He said yes back.
The math said yes
The man in the car is all of us.Mouth open. Hat wrong.The specific expression of someonewatching something they did not know was possibleuntil the moment it became undeniable.
The man in the car is all of us
We never believed what we were seeing with Critter.That was the point.That was always the point.
The powerlines cross the sky above him.He is above them for a moment —above the grid the rest of us agreed to without being asked,free the way the latchkey kid is free —not because no one loves himbut because the afternoon is longand the world is availableand the math says yes.
He went on to do this professionally.Of course he did.Where else was this going?The neighborhood was practice.The dirt bike was practice.The stunt was just the thing you do in front of camerasthat you already knew you could doat nine years old on a Tuesdaywith nobody watching.
I don’t know what the last ride felt like.I know it felt like freedombecause everything felt like freedom —the Big Wheel, the dirt bike,the arc above the car,the apex before gravity remembered its opinion —all of it yes,all of it the same kid from the same neighborhoodwith the same answerand the same complete irreversible commitment to it.
The man in the car will tell this story for the rest of his life.You won’t believe what I saw.No. We won’t.We never did.That was the gift.
Get Critter.The afternoon is long. The math says yes.He already knew.
He was always
already going.