COLUMN: What's the Matter with that Kid?

By Tobin Barnes
I was a killer in my youth.
  
Yup, cold blooded, cold hearted.
  
I killed flies.
  
Man, I must have killed thousands.
  
I can’t say I feel any remorse, however. Both the flies and I were pawns in a bigger game. They played their part, I played mine.
  
The flies swarming around the pop bottles in the wooden crates at our motel were a nuisance that drove my old man nuts...flies, and other things.
  
So, anyway, the flies had to go. Though there were other fairly obvious solutions, I and my swatter were the closest to his mind.
  
That’s why my old man would see me sitting around, doing nothing, maybe watching TV--just like him--and he’d send me out to do something productive instead, like summarily executing insects. He’d tell me to kill fifty.
  
I suppose my old man could have told me to go out and kill flies until lunch or until supper or till the cows came home or until he told me to come back in, but such an amorphous sentence would have sounded like punishment, and he wasn’t trying to punish me. He was giving me a job.
  
Fifty flies.
  
It was a crappy job, but it was a job, nonetheless. There was a beginning to the job, at fly number one, and there was an end to the job, at fly number fifty. It was a job with defined purpose and symmetry, maybe more than many can say about their jobs.
  
I only wonder what the guests must have thought of that little kid out there. Probably wondered when I was going to move up to torturing cats.
  
And after completing my job, I’d come in, get something to drink, possibly something to eat, sit down on the couch there and watch a TV program. Then, oftentimes, my old man would tell me to go out and kill fifty more. Yeah, this job had a rewind button.
  
In my contemplative interludes while waiting for the next fly to land, it sometimes occurred to me that the 50 X 50 X 50 fly carcasses were piling up. And that perhaps new cannabalistic flies were now attracted to our motel beverage area by the dead flies already there. It seemed that no matter how many flies I killed, it never put the merest dent in the problem.
  
I’ve since theorized that flies, like other scavengers such as vultures and sharks, keep an eye out not only for nourishment but also keep an eye out for their fellow scavengers. When they see other flies (vultures, sharks) circling in on a prize, they nudge on over to that area, too.
  
Therefore, it’s my belief that though I was killing flies at a steady clip, the worldwide fly population was merely shifting its multitudes incrementally in the direction of our motel where there seemed to be boundless opportunity, thereby almost infinitely refreshing our supply.
  
Yes, my job was a bottomless pit in so many ways.
  
But, for this and some other more normal chores, my old man compensated me with the proceeds of the pop machine, making me an young entrepreneur in the refreshment business. It was my job to keep the machine filled with pop and change, collect the coins from the tin box, and pay Cappy Ferguson, the route man who delivered fresh bottles. And I kept the profit...yeah...well, to save up for college.
  
Cappy loved to BS with my old man, just like Rocky, the car dealer, so he’d take his break at our place when he delivered to us and spring for cokes for the three of us.
  
Also in the interest of fairness, I have to admit that my old man took his turns killing flies, too, but I don’t think he was ever under the constraints of a quota like me. While having a smoke outside, he’d lean his weight on the hood of our car--or sometimes a tourist’s car--parked in the lot by the pop machine, and reclining like that on his elbows, he’d nail flies with the swatter whenever they landed. He was all wrists as opposed to my stalker style.
  
Unlike me, my old man looked upon this pastime not so much as a job but as a sport with a life purpose.
  
Anyway, things proceeded much like this at the motel until yet another crime spree broke into our summer quietude. I might tell you about it next time.