busted balls and broken dreams

they had been waiting for twenty-seven minutes for his father to show up. the afterschool program is over at 6 p.m. on wednesdays, but his father wasn't there to pick him up. it was not a surprise. daddy had forgotten before.

for the first twelve minutes of their extended time together, the tutor and the boy threw a bouncy ball at each other. the tutor was trying to help the boy develop soft hands so that he would become a better second baseman. the boy was trying to throw the ball in the street in hopes that the tutor would curse, scamper into traffic and perhaps get killed. no such luck. the tutor has soft hands.

at 6.13 p.m. the tutor handed the boy his cell phone and instructed him to call his father. his father immediately answered and said he would arrive in "two seconds." no problem, the tutor thought, the father only lives three blocks away. so the tutor and the boy went to the front of the parking lot and waited.

and waited. around 6.25 p.m. the father had still failed to materialize and the tutor knew that he was going to be late for dinner with an old friend. this pissed him off. aware of the tension, the boy started to chatter with the tutor. while chattering the boy slung his keys, which were attached to a curly, elastic cord, around his body. "whap" the keys slapped against the boy's thigh, while he told the tutor how crazy his dad is. "whap" the keys hit the opposite thigh while the boy made fun of the tutor for fretting about his dinner date. "slap," the keys resounded as they slapped the little boy's genitals. "ooooh, ah ha ha," the boy said. "that hurt." ever the educator, the tutor suggested that in order to protect himself from future damage he might want to stop swinging the keys. but the boy just smiled and continued: "whap, slap, slap, whap, whap, slap, slap." after smacking himself in the genitals five times the boy doubled over in pain and stopped slinging the keys.

but, by that point, the damage was already done. the boy's balls were sore, the tutor's ideals were shattered and they were both far less sanguine about the future of humanity.