Sleeve-rolling and Solipsism
A blond kid, maybe 20, sat in the rear corner of the bus with his school bag seated beside him. He leaned back and put a foot up on the arm of the perpendicular seat in front of him almost casually, but not quite. He didn’t seem to be getting comfortable, so much as seating himself in the position that he believed onlookers would expect of him.
Nobody was paying any attention.
He looked out the window. Because that’s what you do on a bus, look out the window. He didn’t care what he saw, but he fit in and that was enough.
Again, nobody was paying any attention.
He didn’t care what he saw, that is, until his eyes fell briefly on to his own person and he realized, for shame, his sleeves were rolled up to different heights relative to his elbows. He pulled his foot down from its perch and scooted back in his seat. He leaned forward a bit and extended both arms, elbows locked, until his hands rested where his foot had been.
There he sat, head oscillating 15 degrees from right arm to left arm and back, like a stern father silently judging his two children for a only a single offense before resolutely spanking them both.
He sat back and unrolled both the sleeves of his red plaid button-down. They dangled limp at his wrists. From above his elbow down to his cuffs, they were hopelessly spider-web creased from only ever having been worn scrunched up around their timid owner’s biceps and upper arm fat.
Carefully, but with the ease and obstinacy of having done this hundreds of times and never considered an alternative, the kid tucked his left cuff inside itself, then folded it once more till it bunched just below his elbow. He stopped for a moment to scrutinize his work. He shook his arm slightly, straightening the stretch of sleeve that remained unfolded and testing the mettle of the portion he’d just gathered.
It passed muster and he completed his left sleeve with one more roll.
He held out his arm, slightly bent and wrapped carefully in its completed cuff, and looked down at the inside of his elbow like his blood pressure was being taken. Then he straightened it, swiveled his wrist in, and tucked his shoulder forward to get the best view as he could of the back of his punctiliously rumpled sleeve.
After this once-over, he seemed at ease with the bunched-uppedness of his left sleeve and turned his attention to his right arm where his shirt still hung in flaccid, fearful shame, like all kids who have to wait for their spankings do.
He began the same process there. Tuck, roll, appraise, roll, inspect.
Only now, two additional factors complicated his task. One, he must work with his left hand, which obviously didn’t feel as sufficient for the task as his right. And two, now, with his left sleeve already finished, there was more than just an unincarnated ideal cuff to compare his work to. The right sleeve must become the left sleeve’s identical twin—despite their having different fathers.
After finishing his second armroll. He again stuck his arms out straight—the way he had when he noticed the original discrepancy. This time his judgment fell solely on his right arm, which he re-unrolled, leaving his left, in its scrunched-up state of apparent adequacy.
Tuck. Roll. Appraise. Roll. Inspect.
Still not good enough. Unroll. Start over.
Tuck. Roll. Appraise. Roll. Inspect. Five times he did this. Tuck. Roll. Appraise. Roll. Inspect.—ad nauseam.
Finally, he seemed satisfied. But not happy-satisfied. Just that’ll-do-satisfied. The way a teacher feels when she marks “Satisfactory” on a report card. We wish little Jimmy did better, tried harder, learned faster, paid a little bit of attention, and could tell time on an analog clock at least to the quarter hour, but we don’t want to split him from his friends. He can move on to 4th grade, I suppose. But be sure to work with him on his spelling and timetables over the summer, keh?
That kind of satisfied—Oh, and here are some flash cards you can borrow and a paper clock he can practice with. Just bring them back to me in September, keh?—Which isn’t really satisfaction at all.
It’s a hard life when you require and expect order—not to mention, symmetry—from randomness…
Having shown his power to achieve near-adequacy with at least his shirt, the kid sat back and looked out the window again, the way he instinctively knew he was supposed to. Occasionally he glanced down to recheck his work, flexing his biceps to see how the roll of his cuffs felt against his arms at various girths.
Are my rolled sleeves the same length? Do the rolls look the same as each other? Do they feel the same against my arms? How will they hold up to what today might bring? What will today bring…for my sleeves, I mean. What will people think?
Nobody was paying any attention.
His foot was back on the arm of the seat in front of him. He held his toe in position while his heel bounced up and down with the rest of his leg like he had to take a leak or perhaps something else was troubling him.
But nobody was paying any attention.
His eyes pointed aimlessly out into Minneapolis as the bus passed 4th and pulled to a stop. I stepped out into the hazy blue-glass-glare of a downtown morning onto a wide, empty sidewalk where I would wait for the 22. As the 14 pulled away, I looked back up at the kid through the window, but he wasn’t looking out toward me. His head was down and his sleeve was unrolled.
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