I Wear Boys Underwear

Chapter Twenty: After All, You're My Wonderwall

 

Chapter 20: After All You’re My Wonderwall

 

“Back beat, the word is on the street that the fire in your heart is out
I'm sure you've heard it all before but you never really had a doubt
I don't believe that anybody feels the way I do about you now

And all the roads we have to walk are winding
And all the lights that lead us there are blinding
There are many things that I would like to say to you
But I don't know how

Because maybe
You're gonna be the one that saves me
And after all
You're my wonderwall.”

-Wonderwall, Oasis

“You see daddy my life is the exact definition of insanity,” I said as I sat on the sharp green grass that surrounded my father’s resting place. Today was the tenth anniversary of his death and I decided I would tell him everything, literally. From my break up with Spencer, which I am positive he would have strangled the boy were he alive. To my heroic game stopping catch which I am sure, even in heaven, he is smiling down at me with a proud glint in his emerald eyes. From all the good things in my recent life that, inevitably, came with some bad things as well.

I explained to him that, although the head of the athletics department was impressed by what he called ‘courageous stupidity’ (apparently they could have been sued if I were injured badly, but whatever), they wouldn’t be reinstating the powder puff league. Even though a lot of girls were already complaining about the sudden change in athletic events, he didn’t seem to want to budge; he didn’t want to give in even though everyone was prompting him too. However, all the district teams were planning on getting together to protest against this and hopefully we would have our league back. And if not, then we will have fought enough to be proud of ourselves.

I also, regrettably, mentioned my mom’s new boyfriend, Paul. He was a typical surfer dude from Corpus that she started seeing him while I was away at camp and I couldn’t help but feel the disdain coming from my mouth when I talked about this man. He wasn’t too bad, better than most actually, and my mom talked to me about him before she got too serious, but I could never fully let another father like figure into my life so easily.

 “He has got some big shoes to fill,” I told my father as I patted his tombstone.

Before my dad passed away, he told my mother and me that the only thing that would make his life worth anything was to see, from heaven, that we were happy. Even if that meant my mother opened her heart again and allowed herself to fall in love with someone else or if I confided in that man, a new father. I knew he wouldn’t be mad at mom, but I still felt bad breaking the news to him on his death anniversary. That’s just not something you can break so easily to man who is six feet deep in the earth.

I checked my blue children’s Marvel watch, with a picture of Spiderman souring through the skies by a thread, for the hour and decided that it was time to go. I picked myself up and dusted my jean shorts (yeah I own a pair, shocking) of any dirt from the ground and placed the bouquet of flowers I got at H-E-B by his gravestone.

“I will be back soon daddy, I promise,” I knelt by his gravestone marked: