ROBERT HYMA, FORMER SEVENTH GRADE PIRATE
There are times in my adult life when I think all my ideas are great ideas because – and I think we all feel this way – they come from me. There’s a system of checks and balances in place, certainly, but upon first stumbling upon an idea or loosely assembled philosophy I assume my ideas are justified mostly because I thought of them.
During these times, there’s a specific set of memories I replay from my childhood that remind me of other “great ideas” I’ve had and how – get this – it turns out they WEREN’T great ideas. At all.
So, I thought I’d share one of the memories from my childhood I reference for a reality check from time to time.
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When I was in seventh grade, I pretended I was a pirate for three entire months.
Maybe some context:
I didn’t quite understand how to be true to myself when I was thirteen. What I liked, back then, were characters in movies I had seen at the time because they were cool, capable, and unabashedly themselves—a complete mystery to my 13-year-old self. So: imagine a quiet, unintrusive middle schooler without a whole lot going for him other than being (I assume) not so annoying and fairly decent with grades.
And then: Pirates of the Caribbean came out, and I soaked up that movie for an entire summer. Johnny Depp’s portrayal of Jack Sparrow was the coolest thing I had ever seen to that point: funny, charming, always had a plan, talked in an interesting way, his look was unique, and above else:
He was cool—everything I wasn’t.
(To illustrate how warped my tastes were as a teenager: I LOVED Dragonball Z, but I felt “Meh,” when I first saw Star Wars—so, just an objective critic in the making.)
And at some point near the beginning of the school year, I assumed the Jack Sparrow identity. I don’t know when, but I imagine there was a penultimate scene right before I made the decision. At 13-years-old, I was scrawny, pasty, with a hairstyle that said, “Gel, what’s that?” as it fell frumpily over my expressive forehead. I must have looked myself in the bathroom mirror with a belated sigh and said, “Ok, this isn’t working.”
And I started talking, acting, and otherwise BEING Jack Sparrow everywhere I went.
No, I didn’t dress like a pirate. I’d like to state that. But this likely made it all the stranger my mannerisms and gesticulations, my complete change of diction and talking style, and just what the hell that thing I wore on my ring and pinky finger was. I had found an old necklace that was torn and weathered, so I wrapped it in loops and tied knots to wear around my fingers because I thought it looked “pirate-y”. No one asked what it was or where it came from, and I think that speaks to the capacity human beings have for accepting others (yes, that’s the interpretation I’m sticking to).
The other remarkable coincidence from this era, and because I had an absence of close friendships at the time (“I wonder why,” he said, rolling his eyes), was that I sat at a table of what can only be described as “popular girls”. I had unofficially joined a group of seventh grade boys in somehow attaining a girlfriend, which, at the time, was a little like ordering a meal from a restaurant (“Yes, I’ll take one girlfriend and I’d like it on the side with fries, thank you.”). And with a girlfriend came an unofficial credential to sit at this so-called “popular table”.
But then the fad of “having girlfriends” faded early in the year and there were mass breakups from all of us puppy-love boys (including me, which ended in a similar restaurant-fashion: “Yes, could you send this back to the chef? No, I didn’t like it and would like to try being a single teenager again. No, I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. What do you mean you have to ‘call’ her?”)
Unbeknownst to me, all the boys left the “popular table” and I stayed.
Because I didn’t understand what was happening, I just kept sitting with the girls, not knowing any better, having nothing much to say to them, and they never said anything about it in all that time I sat awkwardly (which, in hindsight, was very kind of them).
And then I became Jack Sparrow.
“Hi, Robert,” said one of the popular girls (I’ll call her Jen) at the table upon my arrival in the cafeteria.
“I’d say hello, but you already knew I was going to say that.” I said, twisting my face like Johnny Depp might in the movie.
Jen said nothing back, quickly turning to a lifeline next to her, and I sat down in a very pirate-y way.
“What’s on your hand?” asked another popular girl (Maggie).
“This?” I said, twirling my hand like it had a mystical power. “Some say it’s good luck.”
“So, what is it?” she asked again, after a beat.
“Save-ee, just a trinket I found.”
“What does SAVE-EE mean?”
“I think he means SAVVY,” said Jen, keeping a straight face while the table laughed.
“Drink up Me-hearties,” I said—I should note I seldom ate, so there was no tray or drink in front of me, which confused everyone.
Three girls lifted their Dasani waters. “Yo-ho.”
And from that I thought I was massive success. After all, I was barely speaking to anyone before becoming a pirate. This character brought on confidence, and I was speaking to pretty girls—I mean, it worked for Johnny Depp in the movies, why couldn’t I have that in my life?
So I kept it up, purposely becoming a pirate every time someone spoke to me.
“Could you be a dear lass and pass the ketchup?” I’d say to my sister at the dinner table. Several weeks into this character and no one asked questions. I was readily ignored, which seemed normal for my sister at the time anyway. No alarms there.
One day I had to get a physical with my family physician. My dad went along, silently watching as I fingered the bracelet that I twirled through my fingertips in the waiting room. This was before smartphones, so no distracting himself from the character being portrayed by his burgeoning son. He watched on, ignoring the magazine periodicals he might have sifted through on another occasion.
“Mr. Hyma?” called the nurse.
The nurse took my preliminary assessment, asking me questions about drugs, pains, how much soda I was drinking. I answered, “Aye,” every time when I might have said, “Yes.”
“The doctor will be right in,” said the nurse, happy to scamper out of the room and away from this odd teenager.
Our family physician had a beard that made his smile friendlier, somehow. He was always calculating and reassuring, chalking up most medical problems like he was helping a recently married couple pick the right coat of paint at a hardware store. “A sore shoulder, huh? Ok, let’s rotate it this way. How does it feel? Does it hurt when you bend it like this? Hmm, sounds like a sore rotator cuff. Try not sleeping on that side at night for a week, that should help. I’ll prescribe some pain relievers, too. Give me a call in two weeks and we’ll do something else about it if it still bothers you. Have you considered dressing your bedroom in Cerulean instead of Lapis blue?”
Quick and easy and our family was always out the family med-center without problems.
The doctor came in with that familiar bearded smile. “Hello, Robert! How are things? How do you feel?”
“A mighty fine day, even better to sail the seas, if it weren’t December, I’d say.”
The doctor looked to my father, who shrugged.
The doctor smiled again. “Ok, and how are you feeling health-wise? Anything bothering you?”
“A clicking in my ankle, nothing serious. Perhaps scurvy.”
“Scurvy?” repeated the doctor.
“He doesn’t know what that is,” said my dad.
“Ah,” said the doctor. “Steve,” that’s my dad, “can we chat for a minute while Robert gets out his clothes in the other room? I’ll be in with you in a moment for your physical. I just have to ask your dad a few things.”
Behind closed doors, changing into that napkin-like skirt that ties in the back, I overheard them. “Why is he talking like that?”
My dad sighed, the kind of sigh that was pent up for three straight months of enduring his son talk like Johnny Depp—which was longer than Pirates of the Caribbean was relevant at the Box Office. In fact, this resulted in a second sigh just to emphasize the first. “He thinks he’s a pirate.”
It all made sense to the doctor. “I see, now. Well, it was a good movie, but he’ll grow out of it.”
“That’s what we thought would happen by now.”
“I can give him scurvy,” suggested the doctor. “Maybe then being a pirate won’t be as fun.”
The doctor laughed. My dad laughed. The popular girls at the lunch table laughed (maybe not about this, but I’m sure they were—that’s what they did most of the time).
And as the doctor came into the adjacent room and placed an ice-cold stethoscope on my back, I reevaluated my life decision to be a pirate.
“Cough please,” said the doctor.
Maybe it wasn’t such a great idea to become Jack Sparrow.
“Cough again,” said the doctor.
Maybe being Jack Sparrow is only cool if you’re an actor cast in a movie about pirates and someone writes you all the best lines.
“One more time,” said the doctor.
“Ok, I get it already,” I told him.
“What was that?” asked the doctor.
“Sorry, I’m in the middle of this essay and it’s getting a little testy.”
The doctor shrugged. “Right. Speaking of, drop your underpants for me, would you?”
After my physical, I dropped being a pirate forever. I put away the old bracelet I used as pirate-y rings around my fingers in a desk drawer. I still have it and took it out the other day, prompting a memory that led to this Weekly Post-Ed. It actually looks movie-authentic; I had a talent for wardrobe, anyway.
“Hey Robert,” said Jen, one of the popular girls at lunchtime the following Monday. I still didn’t have the sense to sit elsewhere, even after sobering to a world in which I was acting like a pirate for the past three months.
“Hi,” I said normally, deflated.
The girls looked to one another. Maggie asked, “Are you ok?”
“Oh, just Save-ee,” I said, with a meager smile, making fun of myself.
They laughed, I tried to. And they hit my arm, playfully, because they liked me this way better, the kind of person who could make fun of himself.
Except, I didn’t know that.
I just wanted to be cool.
That next week I had watched A Beautiful Mind about a dozen times. I thought, “John Nash – you know, besides the schizophrenia and government paranoia – seems to be charming and funny to all the girls in that movie. I bet I could act like that…”
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PPF MUSIC
I’ll share this because his videos mystify me with how complex and brilliant they are. YouTuber PPF makes wonderful scores of old video game soundtracks with his own collection of instruments and assembles them into excellent videos that are released twice a year. This most recent cover was “Fear Factory” from Donkey Kong Country, one of my favorite games of all time. All of his videos are phenomenal – including all the renditions of songs from Chrono Trigger – and I hope you check him out!
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Wishing everyone as well as you can be. You’re not alone out there,
