Out on a Limb

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It isn’t easy to act normally when it’s constantly pondering on your mind that sooner or later your body will no longer belong to you.

That, of course, is what’s said by the people who believe that we’re all souls, living for eternity and merely “borrowing” these concrete vessels for our single stay on earth and all that supernatural stuff. The rest of us believe that we’re the 3-pound tube-like slab of meat resting in the space of our big heads AKA the brain, if you haven’t already figured it out. I greatly cling on to the latter theory because if I’m going somewhere, I’d at least want to take something with me (if nobody at the Pearly Gates minds if I drag a pair of kidneys or a severed foot around). If we are the brains, then what will we be like when we die? Will we be brain ghosts floating around and scaring the shit out of people? I wouldn’t have a clue. What I do have certain knowledge of, however, is that in a week’s time I would literally, never feel the same way ever again.

This morning for school, I put on a set of some of the comfiest clothing in my closet. If this was my last week as my complete self then I’d better make the most out of giving it the best. I decked out a polo topped with a brown leather jacket, jogging pants which were baggy at the ankle, smooth socks, and perfect-fit sneakers. It felt really easy to move around in and when I tried walking I ended up gliding out of my bedroom and down the hallway instead because I couldn’t resist taking advantage of the fact that everything felt light as a feather.

Mom and Dad were already hustling towards the door for work by the time I plopped my feet down from the last step on the stairs. When they heard the little shuffle I did, however, they simultaneously turned around and greeted me a good morning.

“Seems like a Normal Morning to me,” I cheekily replied. Why did people always precede the time of the day with Good? What if it sucked?

“Now come on Grey. Let loose a bit, will you? You seem a little grimey.” Dad laughed at Mom’s joke. They never got tired of making RoboJokes, as I like to put it, even though they themselves had been loaded with metal arms, legs, skulls, torsos, and whatnot when they were my age.

I rolled my eyes and smirked the slightest smirk I was capable of.

“You guys go grease the grime in your joints. No really, I can already hear them creaking. It sounds like the sound you make when you drag chalk down a chalkboard. And really, you guys could have named me better. Like seriously, Grey?”

“Your Mother and I thought it was a handsome name,” Dad chimed in. “You must be the only person who doesn’t take a liking to it. Jarvis likes it, doesn’t he?”

“He got an entire clique to splash splotches of grey paint in the classrooms and hoard several pictures of me to be pinned on the walls.”

Jarvis Prosper was my part-time best friend whom I got acquainted with in kinder. During the part of the time when he wasn’t my best friend, he was a part-time asshole.

“See? He’s obsessed with the name and the color.” My parents were probably just defending their stand to avoid me into persuading them to rename me.