The Wheel of Time Turns… and my Parents still aren’t Watching Me

To begin to understand my state of mind at the age of fourteen, you must first understand that time is a wheel. As the wheel of time turns, ages come and go, leaving memories that become legend, legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the age that gave it birth comes again. Or so I have read. At fourteen, I had finally moved onward from my obsession with superheroes and had found myself thoroughly intoxicated with Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time, a series of fantasy novels with which I would remained obsessed throughout high school.I spent my entire spring break scraping together enough money to pay for a piece of memorabilia I had seen advertised on a website. It had been my whole motivation for learning how to roof a house, instead of just picking up waste. Once I mastered the art of laying down a shingle, it had only been the matter of a couple of roofing jobs before I had enough money to make the order. Five weeks, the complete emptying of my piggy bank, and fifteen dollars in shipping and handling later, it arrived. My wondrous prize. The tangible object of my inner fantasies.

It was a replica of a Rand al’Thor’s heron-marked sword, made by Aes Sedai in the Age of Legends. My very own heron-marked blade*… which unfortunately had a heron on one side only, the word “INDIA” stamped in large prominent text on the other, and was nowhere near as razor sharp as had been claimed on the website. I couldn’t stop looking at the word “INDIA” and feeling like I had been raped. My disappointment wouldn’t last long however, as there was a crate of apples at the foot of the bed with my name written all over it. I had bought it the morning before, in anticipation of my weapon’s arrival.

In order to feel more like a warrior, I wasted half of a role of duct tape to secure the sword to my back. A slick grey band ran down the front of my chest in a shiny, slanting arc. Even though it positioned my baby fat in rather unflattering positions, I thought I looked pretty damn heroic.

Emerging from a room with a three-and-a-half-foot sword tied across one’s back might have been a problem for other children. Luckily, I was no ordinary child. When I passed my father in the kitchen, he asked me what the hell I was doing with a “fucking machete” taped to my back, and a “crate of goddamn apples” in my hands. I cleverly said “nothing,” so he could go back to watching television without feeling the need for any further parental investigation.

As my fat, unarguably nerdy body prepared for the exercise I had planned, I similarly began to prepare my mind for the challenge ahead. As did the truly ferocious warriors in The Wheel of Time, I imagined a flame and fed all of my emotions into it. It was a truly sacred exercise that I gave over ten seconds of my life to mastering. At the end of those ten seconds, not feeling much different than I had before, I had to spend another five minutes peeling duct tape off of my shirt so I could hold my sword again. I had accidentally taped it ever so slightly out of the reach of my hand. When I again held the sword in my pudgy fists, I could only imagine that I was a figure to strike fear in the heart of any darkfriend or Trolloc.

Much like an epileptic with a knife stuck to his hand, I danced around for few moments to get in touch with my inner warrior. In no time at all, I was in a blood rage that had me spewing dialogue from The Wheel of Time with every frothy gasp for breath, and swish of my blade.

“Take that, Father of Lies!” I shouted, thrusting furiously into the open air around me. I was almost ready. I felt just like the Dragon Reborn at the end of the The Great Hunt. I shouted again, in sheer ecstasy that I finally owned a sword. In my mind, there was no way that this totally didn’t make up for not having any friends.

“BC, what are you doing?” Bryan asked, catching me by complete surprise. I jumped in shock, and the tip of my blade danced every which way. My shouting had disturbed him from playing video games.

For a moment, crashing back down into myself, I realized I was really just a fat kid with a fantasy sword in one hand and bits of duct tape on his shirt. In order to preserve my dignity, I quickly said, “None of your business, Bryan!” and waited for him to leave. When he just stood and looked at me for a minute, I finally laid on some muscle by saying, “Go back inside, or I’m telling Dad that you asked me what a ‘boner’ is!” Rand al’Thor would have been so proud.

“He won’t care.” Damn it. He was right.

“Just leave me alone, Bryan! This is personal!”

Completely unfazed, Bryan shrugged and left. My brother had yet to discover the glories of The Dragon Reborn.

My pride slightly hurt, I decided I could wait no longer. There was a crate full of apples that was begging for a fistful of steel murder. “Father of Lies!” I announced. “If I can cut this apple in half twice before it hits the ground, I win Tarmon Gai’don!” I plucked up an apple, and held it before me. I glared at it like it was the source of all the world’s evil. I threw it up in the air and swung at it with all of my might.

When I failed to cut the first apple in half even one time, I quickly amended my previous statement. “I meant to say ‘one of these apples.’” As the world failed to erupt into hellish flames, I guess the Father of Lies accepted this bargain. Stupid Father of Lies. So easily tricked into bargains.

I was lost in my fury. If, at that instant, all the world’s applesauce factories had all been suddenly destroyed, all that the world would need to do to meet its demand would have been to unleash me in an orchard. Panting, and temporarily deluding myself into thinking that I manifested some actual talent, I took a look at my crate. There was only one shiny red orb remaining. I picked it up, squeezed it, and felt the crispness of the flesh crush beneath the skin and give rise to sugary wetness. I was going to do it.

As we all know quite well, the hallmark of any true blademaster is the ability to cut something in half twice before it hits the ground. At that time, Robert Jordan had not stipulated what qualities exactly earned someone the title of blademaster in the Wheel of Time, so I had arbitrarily decided, based upon several viewing of the movie Blind Fury, that being able to cut something in half twice very quickly was sufficiently impressive for me to earn my blademaster stripes.

One of my chubby legs stretched out the fabric of my jeans as I raised one leg and assumed what I imagined to be the stance “Heron Wading in the Rushes” as described several times in the book. If anyone else had been looking they would probably have just thought I had recently watched The Karate Kid. As I had just heavily exerted myself and had never had good balance, I wobbled on one foot.

When I threw the apple into the air, and felt it leave my fingertips, I knew there was no time to waste. I screamed. “Carai an Caldazar! Carai an Ellisande! Al Ellisande!” Which is of course a battle cry in the Old Tongue, that I am currently quite ashamed to know without the need for reference materials.

In that moment, I felt I had achieved what I had been trying to find ever since I had first opened the package. I was in the void. I was one with the sword in my hand. One with the apple soaring in the air. I swung my sword like a blacksmith’s hammer, eager to prove myself. Too hard. Much too hard for a boy on one foot. I started to totter… with a sword in my hands.

Even while falling I would not give up. I had felt the sword cut the apple once. I could not let it fall to the ground without cutting it again. Guessing where my “Farmer’s Choice” enemy might be, I altered the path of my sword. I felt the tip of the blade satisfyingly sink a half an inch into a fleshy target.

The fleshy target was my thigh.

In an instant, I knew I was no blademaster. In the same instant, I forgot everything I knew about the The Wheel of Time. It turns out the best way to stop having delusions of grandeur is to have a sword stuck in your thigh.

“FUCK!” I shouted, pulling the dull tip of the blade out of myself, and throwing it into the nearby grass. It landed “INDIA” side up.

I surveyed my wound, the rapidly spreading stain of blood on the faded fabric of my jeans, and summed up the situation as best I could by saying, “Mother… FUCK!”

For a while, I writhed on the ground, putting pressure on my wound with my hands, unable to do anything but call everything in sight a “motherfucker.” To my credit, I did not cry. I made up for this fact by calling myself a pathetic asshole several hundred times. Much like every human being who has ever hysterically injured his or herself, I began to think up plausible explanations for what had happened. When I realized half of my excuses involved me being attacked by jealous ninjas, I started to think that maybe I really didn’t need to go to the doctor after all.

After kicking my sword so that it was heron side up, because it somehow made me feel better, I hobbled into the basement. I found my brother standing by the door, waiting for me.

“What did you do, BC?” he asked, with no sign of emotion.

“Nothing. Just go back to your room.” Oh God, it was throbbing. I wrapped my fingers around it and gasped.

“Did you stab yourself?” I felt like he had just asked me if I had murdered someone.

“NO!”

“It looks like you stabbed yourself.” How dare he!

“You don’t know anything! How do you know there wasn’t a Ninja!”

“There aren’t any Ninjas in Aberdeen, BC.”

“There are too!” Realizing I was being completely pathetic again, I decided to change my strategy. “Okay, I lied… it wasn’t a ninja. Just don’t tell Dad okay? I’m pretty sure I can stop the bleeding.”

“Why don’t you want to see a doctor?”

“Because it’s really, really embarrassing.” Obviously.

My brother shrugged before ducking back into his room.

I wondered if the tip of my sword was covered in blood. I had forgotten to look. Even though I was in a fair amount of pain, the thought of my sword being covered in blood was sufficiently “awesome” for me to gather the mental strength to make it to the bathroom without being seen. The cut was clean, and hadn’t been as bad as I had thought. It was just bleeding a lot.

I put a bandage over the wound, and then quickly wrapped my thigh with gauze. After a while, I saw the bloody spot on the bandage stop spreading and was satisfied with the job I had done. I put on a new pair of jeans, and took the old pair into my room to be thrown away later.

I limped to the lawn, collected my weapon, called myself an asshole again, and then picked up the empty crate so I could throw it away. I re-entered the house through the kitchen door.

My father was still watching television in the kitchen. “What were you doing?” he asked, noticing the way I was walking.

In reply, I threw the crate in front of the garbage, angrily tore off whatever duct tape remained on my shirt, and muttered, “Nothing.”

My answer was happily accepted.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This website was included for visual reference only, and is not the actual website I ordered this sword from as a child. That website has since been taken down. All of the “awesome” terms used in this story are of course the sole invention of Robert Jordan. If you would like to find out more about The Wheel of Time, you may find Dragonmount.com to be a useful website. Recognize however, that I NEVER got ANY action in high school. Click at your own risk. Those books are like crack.