Play It Again

A puddle of blood surrounds me as I lay on the ground, struggling to breathe. My SUV flipped on its side next to me. I managed to climb out, but I don’t think it did any good. My body becomes heavier and heavier, and I start to feel numbingly cold. Soon, I’m unable to move, and my eyes shut for the last time.

I open my eyes, something I never thought I’d do again. I peer into the surrounding darkness, making out the outline of rows of chairs. I realize I’m sitting in a chair as well. The seat is a comfortable fabric, but it has plastic armrests. A screen lights up in front of me, casting light over the dark room. I’m the only inhabitant of a theater room. Looking around, there appears to be no exit.

I look back to the screen. A woman is lying on a hospital bed. After a moment, I realize this woman is my mother. My father stands to her left, holding her hand. She is surrounded by a couple of tired-looking nurses and a doctor. After a few moments of the doctor encouraging her to push, a baby comes out screaming and crying.

“It’s a boy!” The doctor calls out.

My mom cries, looking over to my father. “Look at him. He’s so beautiful,” my mother says, “Little Barry Turner.”

The nurses clean me off and hand me to my mother. I watch as my parents take me home. The days pass by on the screen as they change me, feed me, and talk to me sweetly. I see the first time I crawl, the first time I walk, and my first word- it was baby, funny enough.

The screen shows little me learning to ride a bike. I am a bit of a clumsy child, so I have the training wheels on a while longer than most kids. I eventually get them taken off when I’m eight. At ten, my four front teeth are pulled out- cavities. They don’t start to grow back in until a year later. I played basketball in both years of middle school. There are many days of practice and a handful of games. We won more than we lost, thankfully.

I had my first kiss with a girl named Emma at thirteen. I relive my first day of high school. I remember being so nervous. The school was huge, and the middle school teachers always made high school sound so daunting. Of course, it wasn’t as scary as they made it out to be, but younger me didn’t know that.

I got a job at a local shop called Tracy’s at fifteen. I get my driver’s license at sixteen, like most people, but I don’t get my own car until I’m almost seventeen. I had to save up what I was making at Tracy’s to buy it. It’s a navy blue SUV with a sunroof, the same car I crawled out of and died. Each memory brings me closer to my death. I’m only nineteen, after all.

Before I can watch all the way through, I get to a day when I’m eighteen. Before the images show up on the screen, I already know what’s going to happen. This is the day I would describe as my perfect day.

I wake up to the sound of my mother’s voice calling me to come eat. It’s a Saturday morning during early fall. I slept really well the night before, so I sprung out of bed and headed down the hall. My mother, father, and I sat around the table to eat. After we’re done, I watched some television and then grabbed lunch with my girlfriend, Alice. We light off some leftover fireworks we find in my basement after we get back from lunch. Then we go for a walk. Afterward, we go to the carnival that’s in town and ride the ferris wheel. I take her home after the carnival, and she kisses me goodnight. That’s how I remember it, anyway.

The day plays on the screen. It starts off how I remember. I wake up to my mother and sit down with my parents to eat. They are in more of a hurry than I remember, but not too much so. I watch television and then go grab lunch with my girlfriend. On the way there, I hit a squirrel that ran in front of my car as I was driving down Rearwood Drive. Whoops. We went to Yum & Done, our favorite diner. She got a grilled cheese and a chocolate milkshake, and I got their loaded BLT, my favorite item on the menu.

We drove back to my house when we were done and went down to the basement because we were bored, apparently. Before watching, I couldn’t remember why we had originally gone down there. We lit off some of the fireworks. One blew up in my hand. It was a little one, so it didn’t hurt much. Regardless, we decided to put the fireworks back up after that. The walk we took afterward had a nice breeze, making it clear that it was fall.

We headed to the carnival at five-thirty. We played a couple of games, none of which we won, unsurprisingly. We also rode a couple of rides, including the ferris wheel. While we were getting on the ferris wheel, it started to sprinkle. We sat there, slowly getting wetter. Then the rain stopped, and the sky cleared. We finished our outing with a funnel cake, as is customary to do at a carnival. We then head to her house so I can drop her off. She goes to get out but gives me a kiss before she does. I then go home and lay in bed, thinking about the day.

I wish I could rewatch the day again. As soon as I think about it, the day restarts. I’m back in bed, and my mother’s voice calls for me to come eat. I notice different things this time. My mom’s eyes have dark circles I hadn’t noticed before, likely from late nights at the nursing home. There is traffic on the way to lunch that I hadn’t paid much attention to before. I watch the day again

The chair I sit in at the diner is a little wobbly and I teeter-totter on it the whole time I’m there. When the breeze blows past us, I watch as Alice’s hair gets swept around and then lies back down. She looks angelic. The moon shines into Alice’s eyes when we’re on the ferris wheel. Her normally blue eyes look otherworldly. The day ends.

I watch it over again. Each time, I notice different things or look at something in a new way. The day is less picture perfect than I originally remembered it to be, but that doesn’t make it mean any less to me. With each replay, I find something new to love. I watch the day over again and again and again.

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