Stand By Me Flashback

by Tiffany Fitch

In the summer of 1986, I spent ninety percent of the months of June and July on the worn carpet of our duplex on Kynette Street, with my finger attached to the record button of our first VCR. MTV played the commercial often, one short clip an hour and a longer one every other hour.

When not zoning out to videos between commercials, I imagined myself as Ace's fresh-faced girlfriend, fifth friend of Gordie, Teddy, Chris and Vern. I read The Body, then wrote revised versions including my friends, Lana and Amy, and myself, in various roles. Which we acted out with pillows when my mom insisted on watching Cheers or Moonlighting.

I did not, however, envision the part I would actually play, last Thursday at the doctor's office.

The day started off like any other involving all children being out of school.

"Georgie looked at me wrong!"

"Nicholas's shirtsleeve touched me when he walked by!"

"Henry's digging a hole to China in the flowerbed."

"Hannah put makeup on her face with permanent marker."

By noon I was feeling as though my head were being alternately bashed with hammer and squeezed in a vise. I prayed it would quit so I wouldn't have to take Tylenol, which I learned from the World Wide Web might damage my liver.

"My head hurts, Mommy," my youngest son said, after a particularly invigorating romp through the leaves. I offered Blue Raspberry Ibuprofen and head massages in the hope that the pain would go away.

"Are five-year-olds even supposed to get headaches? Or is that toddlers?" I thought, feeling my heart start to race.

He fell asleep 20 minutes later and slept for three hours, giving me plenty of time to think up every exotic disease in the known world. Meningitis, an ear infection that had moved to his brain, encephalitis, West Nile, Bird Flu.

At 4:30 P.M., he woke up screaming, probably due to me poking him to make sure he was still breathing.

"Can you touch your chin to your neck?" I asked him, feeling his forehead with the back of my hand and then with my lips. He felt cool but would not walk around the room so I could check his balance, and his eyes started watering when I pulled the light down to check his pupils.

"That hurts my eyes, Mama!" he howled and turned away from me.

"I wonder if he's going blind," I asked my mom, a few moments later, on the phone. "Weren't Ray Charles' eyes watering all the time before he went blind?"

"Can he touch his chin to his neck?" She asked me. "Maybe you should take him to the emergency room."

In my defense, I stayed calm for about five seconds before getting everyone dressed and heading to the pediatrician's after-care clinic.

Two women talked on their cell phones in the waiting room. A 12ish boy, who resembled a cross between Ron Howard in his Andy Griffith stage and the guys from the Outsiders, clicked his pen open and closed, Henry screaming along with each beat. The man in front of us, Rustler jeans sagging in a non-trendy way around his buttocks, insisted to the receptionist that he could not sign the notice of patient's rights.

I wished he would just move, as my chest clenched up and the rest of me went to Jell-O from Henry's screams.

Hannah pranced around, oblivious, touching every chair she passed, picking up more germs than a chicken house in Asia. The man yanked up his pants at the waist, his eyes focused on the paper in front of him. And the mini-blinds shimmered in front of my eyes. I had to turn my head lest they start flapping and fly around the waiting room.

"Bend the knees slightly," I reminded myself, praying to God that I didn't end up laid out cold on the floor, Henry howling on top of me. When it happened.

All of a sudden, I was right in the middle of Stand By Me, minus Teddy's voice, the smell of a campfire and blueberry pie. But it was very, very blue and all over the boy with the clicking pen, the man who wouldn't move and the waiting-room carpet.

"I believe it's just a sinus headache," the doctor told me later, after people and floors had been cleaned and fumigated.

"That's EXACTLY what I thought," I answered, with relief.

Well, maybe for a nanosecond.

The Author

Tiffany Fitch was dragged kicking and screaming to small-town Mississippi from Dallas, Texas, in 2001. When not chasing her four wild munchkins through the house, or caring for the stable of animals her husband has rescued, she writes about the state she has come to love. Her essays can be heard on Mississippi Public Broadcasting or read on her blog.