Fix by Force

My dad gave me a tape recorder for my sixth birthday.  I thought it was nice, but my mom said it was garage-sale garbage.
    I recorded the fight that ensued.  
    Later that night while listening to the playback, I accidentally taped over one of my mom’s profanities, with my own, “Oh, shoot!” taking its place.  
    I thought it was hilarious—like my own little ad-lib exercise—and after I had worn out that segment of tape by replacing my parents’ attacks and accusations with the best stuff my six-year-old mind could conjure up, I moved on to making up my own skits and pretend celebrity interviews.  
    My impromptu productions eventually developed into fully scripted stories and songs—things that I would work on non-stop by rewinding and erasing, then re-recording until I was satisfied with the finished product.  
    I could manipulate everything on tape.
    But then one day the last of my batteries died, and so did my dad, and I was forced to follow someone else’s script.
    And that’s all life was to me—some kind of massive screenplay with a role for everybody.  But I hated my part.  I even hated my name—Spencer Allen Shane, son of David Spencer Shane, who was still somehow reprising his role as the town’s most hated person years after his death.
    Almost every script I knew was basically about good versus evil—heroes against villains.  I figured real-life was probably the same, except my family wasn’t either of those.  We didn’t deserve a lead role—not even as villains.  We were too insignificant—too one-dimensional.  We were more like the cowards that ran whenever trouble would arise.  We were everything the heroes were not.
    I was well aware of how I’d been cast, but that doesn’t mean I accepted it.  I tried whatever I could think of to rewind, erase, and force a rewrite.  I played on the football team, changed my appearance with every trend, pried my way into social situations with the popular kids, and even pretended that I liked whichever pseudo-reality show everyone was talking about.  But all that any of my classmates seemed to remember about me was my performance as, “idiot who broke boy’s wrist,” when trying to help the kid with a bone disease into his wheelchair, or, “loser who lost half his hair,” after dyeing it school colors for football homecoming, or my most recent act as, “tool who busted the teacher’s lip,” while I was rescuing her from an aggressive hornet by throwing a few open-handed jabs.  No matter what I tried, I was center stage, portraying the character I was meant to.  
    But now that I had made it to senior year, I knew that I’d have to fade into the background if I even stood a chance of graduating.  
    So I wasn’t going to try anymore.   
    No more acting.  No more posing.  I had failed a third of my classes and missed about two total months of school during the last three years of tirelessly fighting to change the script, and if I continued this year, I’d never earn enough credits to graduate.  
    So the plan for senior year was invisibility.  A full year of hiding.  Nothing more than the background actor that nobody notices.
    But my plan had too many special clauses for things I didn’t really want to change, and there I was in plain sight, running across the football field as Zack Durbin—my story’s arch-nemesis—motored right toward me with unwavering eyes and stanch determination, in wannabe hero fashion.  
    Even though I was one of the smallest on the football team, my speed worked in my favor for tackling, and all I had to do to bring down most guys was drop my shoulders and create an impact.  But Zack was just too tough.  His dad looked like a title winning Mr. Olympia, and Zack seemed to be in training to keep the title in the family.  
    But it didn’t matter to Coach Laverne or anyone else how much bigger and stronger Zack was.  My position was the last line of defense, and it was my job to keep him out of the end zone.  I was usually quick enough to force most runners to the sideline, and I could anticipate spin-moves and jukes.  But Zack was the fastest on the team, and he never shied away from contact, especially with me.  
    I knew that he’d probably come in high with a hard stiff-arm to the face, and I was preparing to go low at his knees, but then I accidentally caught a glimpse of our team’s best defender, still slumped in the aftermath of Zack’s stampede, and I suddenly realized that I was completely alone and exposed in the open field.  I remembered that everyone was watching, and I hesitated.  My slight pause was all Zack needed to wind up.  He traded his stiff-arm for a helmet, reared back his head, and aimed at my facemask.  I closed my eyes and waited for the familiar hollow cracking of plastic on plastic, but my head was tilted upward and I didn’t recognize the sound of plastic on bone until I was sprawled at the forty, tasting blood and gagging on my mouthpiece.  
    I immediately attempted to rise to my knees but was pulled back into a sit by Coach.  He held me down by my shoulder pads.  “Just take it easy, Spence.”
    I reached for my chin strap but it was no longer attached.  Coach tugged gently on my helmet.  
    I brushed him off.  “I got it, Coach.”  
    I pulled a little at the earpiece to loosen up the helmet’s hold and when I did, my jaw fell limp.  I instantly became dizzy and hung my head, listening through flashes of blackness as blood poured from my mouth and cascaded down my chin, covering my jersey and pooling in my hands.
    I could feel myself slipping in and out of consciousness, and although I felt more out than in, I pushed up gently on my chin and held my mouth closed as I slowly rose to my feet and pushed away from Coach again, standing wobbly as I searched for the sideline.  I finally spotted it and staggered forward, but was immediately knocked back a few steps as the pain set in.  It was like nothing I had ever felt before, throbbing at my jaw, swelling inside my skull, and I struggled not to cry.  
    Coach stepped in front of me and tried to hold me still as he repeated, “Slow down, Spence, slow down,” but I twisted away from him and stumbled into a slow jog, keeping my eyes fixated on the sideline.  I thought I heard a couple guys chuckling, so I tried to run faster, but that only made my balance abandon me sooner, and I lurched forward as my upper body was being pulled downward, leaving my legs lagging too far behind, causing several open-mouthed collisions with the earth.  
    I tasted the soil and rolled over as mud dried on my face.  My last attempt at speaking took the form of loud whimpers, drowning out Coach’s calls for help.  And as whimpers became weeping, another noise was rising and reverberating in the fast advancing darkness.  
                   The audience following cue—with laughter.