Jesus Man

The condition of the swing set out back is what disgusts me the most. You can’t play on it, so knock it down. Why not? It has killed the grass beneath the rotten posts and termites are eating the heck out of it. So I glimpsed at it, what ever. Maybe I just want a reason to not go back inside.

That swing set was built by some lunatic. Some crazed man with a nail gun. Nothing says manly like nail gun and some elbow grease. He was working out there, all day. The heat was creasing he skin and the sweat was making all kinds of funk. I never wanted to say anything, he was doing a favor for us and you don’t insult people that help you. At least that’s what grandma says, said. I waited in my overalls but I wasn’t wearing shoes nor was my head in the right position to see the man trip and fall, missing the saw by only three inches. Everyone ran to him with the utmost care and grace. As if they were running to Jesus or something.

Then came the unexpected. The dude got fame. “Man Misses Death By Three Inches.” It was in the headlines and in my house. I would have told it to get out if it wasn’t for my mom’s new love interest. She loved him for his safety, the small crow’s feet beside his eyes, and the farmer’s tan on his legs. Right where the top of his socks met the hair. She drank with him and talked like him. Sometimes she wore her hair differently like letting it frizz and keeping it short. Gross. Then she picked up smoking. I forever questioned myself if any of this was my fault but how could it be when she had this Jesus man sleeping with her.

The next thing I know, they’re getting married. He persuaded her to have a backyard wedding, right where he escaped death, “For good luck”. They said their wedding vows by a swing set. I pictured my children looking at an old photo album and fantasying how cool it would have been to slide down the slide instead of looking at their grandmother. As a matter of fact, I think I was swinging the whole time the man in the black robe was talking. I could tell what he was thinking. These people are crazy, look at the poor girl sitting on the swing, miserable as a duck in Antarctica.

Then they told me to get off. The wedding was over and the sunset provided the perfect photo op., I can hear her voice saying, “The two of us will look so cute together, sittin’ on this swing.”, so he sat down and then she sat on his lap. The swing started off being ten inches off the ground and has sunken seven. They posed for the Kodak disposable and then the swing broke.

She was fatter, pregnant probably. Gross. We ran out of food once. She ate it all just to feed the thing in her belly. After six months, I noticed the weight she was gaining but she didn’t have that rounded stomach that pregnant women have. She wasn’t pregnant, just fat. But at some point it came true, a bouncing baby boy with locks of blond against my brown. He demanded the attention, the son of Jesus man.

The swing set had a new swing. A baby swing with a seat belt and the kid grew up with my swing set, frolicking up and down the slide with ignorance though. He burned his thighs when he came down it on a hot day, still it was basically his. “You’ve grown out of it.”

And he mistreated it, jumped off the swings instead of sliding off and tossing the seat over the top of the set, just to make it higher up. Everyone knows you unlatch it if you want to let your legs dangle. Now the chains are rusted, and the bolts undone with the common mistake by the maker. Mistakes were his thing. Get a woman pregnant and then divorce her. Gross.

But the condition of the swing set out back is what disgusts me the most.