My Future Self Sure Let Down My Present Self by Dave Prager

      My pants are around my ankles, my shirt has been yanked up, and my classmates are all laughing at me. A trio of eighth-graders are holding me while two others, employing a technique known as "Pink Belly!," vigorously slap and paddle my stomach. Their goal is to make my stomach turn pink, at which point they and the audience will joyously shout "Pink Belly!," and continue to slap and paddle for an indefinite period, savoring the moment and perhaps hoping my belly will turn even pinker than it already is.

     Unexpectedly, my classmates scream and clutch at one another, and my assailants slap fives. I'm confused by such unusual enthusiasm for their routine tri-weekly auto-da-fé in the hall outside math class, until I notice that my little penis has flopped out. My lowest moment yet. The crowd loves it.

     Abruptly, I realize that I'll never invent a time machine, and I start to cry. My classmates gleefully assume my tears to be pain or humiliation, but their observations equating my emotional maturity with my physical development fail to further their cause, for the trauma of shattered purpose has engulfed my entire consciousness.

     A roar from the crowd acknowledges that my belly is officially pink. I sob. The awareness of my lost destiny has overwhelmed me, and I slump, my pimpled arms and pale froggy legs no longer flailing in the grasps of my oppressors. I remain limp as the girls take their turn paddling, and it isn't until after a man dressed as a roman soldier charges through the group that, temporary neglected by my surprised adversaries, I find the willpower to move, staggering away, grateful to fate for the respite, grieving the sudden loss of my only sustaining hope, lamenting the failure I now recognize I'll become.

     Two years of middle school have been two years of daily torment. As a particularly skinny weakling, with all the acne of puberty but none of the pubic hair, even the other skinny weaklings take sport in me. And with no realistic means of defending myself, I have relied wholly on the belief that I'll one day invent a time machine and come back to help my past self defend myself.

     But now, stumbling half-heartedly through the halls, with my adversaries not far behind, it's clear I have been clinging to fantasy. Because now, at the nadir of my existence, would be the perfect time for a futuristic laser rifle, or a magical medieval invisibility cloak, or for my future self to appear in a flash of light and zap everyone with a shrinking gun. Yet, nothing. No assistance from the future me at all. The future me is a failure.

     As I wander, my mind regains composure, my apathy drains, and misery turns to contempt for the man I am to become. Rage awakens my sense of self-preservation, and I break into the gangling lurch my body calls running, beginning a desperate search for a place to hide until the end of lunch period.

     I stumble around a corner and dead-end in the locker room. Normally, in such hopeless times, I close my eyes and make a mental note for my future self to come back and leave a weapon or tool for my past self to escape or disintegrate my enemies with. This time, wracked with bitterness, I don't even bother.

     With shouts not far behind me, I open a locker, thinking I can squeeze in and hide. To my surprise, I find a pair of thick-rimmed glasses, a wig, a fake beard, and a three-piece pinstripe suit in my size. What incredible luck! I thank fate for favoring me and swear quietly at my loathsome future self.

     My assailants thunder down the hall, slowing to a walk as they pass me, mistaking my disguise and my trembling gait for our school's asthmatic assistant principal. But I can't costume my nature, and I trip over my untied top-siders and cry out in my high-pitched girly voice and my wig slips and my beard shifts and my glasses fall off and suddenly they realize that I'm not Mr. Rosenblum at all! So I start running and they start running but they're faster than me and just as they reach me a saber-toothed tiger leaps at them and I make my escape, blessing fate and cursing my future self, that pathetic failure who will never invent a time machine to come save me from my torment.