Frisbee's on the Roof

There's no greater emblem for suburban futility than a Frisbee on the roof.  You're playing with a friend, enjoying the sun and the breeze, when an errant toss and a wind gust conspire against the afternoon: Frisbee's on the roof, man.  Step back to the furthest edge of the yard and crane your neck and peer at it, if you can see it, and you know that the day's possibilities have been foreshortened not only by the mishap but my your youth, your size, the fascistic insistence of parents, older people, necessary people.  The sun seems to be disappearing too quickly.  You have to wait for your dad to get the ladder.  You're too small or scared to get it yourself.  You wait.  You'll have to wait.  But isn't there always a cooler kid—or maybe it's your friend who's cool, suddenly—who'll get the ladder, laughing wide-eyed as he wrestles it out of the garage or the backyard, it's impossibly heavy, and your chest tingles; or he climbs a tree and lunges dangerously for the roof, and inside you're excited for the outcome, this nerve against adults, oh man the possibilities!  Or you simply wait.  Where's the memoir written by that cool kid with the nerve to step into Grownupland?  I want to read that account, see how it's been tempered, or reduced, or elevated, or exaggerated by the passage of time and the scars borne of dutiful citizenship in Adultville.  Where's that kid now?  I need him.


Frisbee On The Roof via BrianKaneOnline.