Neck and Neck

Writing and Reading Trauma

Photo by Colton Jones on Unsplash

Back in the day, a helicopter parent actually flew a helicopter.

We lived close to an Air Force base as well as NASA, so we’d spot the occasional chopper, the pilot likely flying someone important west to then sleepy Orlando or east to the base or the space center or God forbid, anywhere close to Vietnam.

No hats, no sunglasses, no sunscreen. Just Florida kids outside squinting into the sky, post hand-off of the hose to the next neighbor kid waiting for a long draw of warm mineral-laden well water.

No one hovered us except that occasional helicopter.

As long as we came home for meals having somehow not embarrassed our parents, we managed to stay under the radar.

Which brings me to “Neck and Neck”.

I recall submitting the story to a lit mag that provided a writer with three comments noted by the initial readers. The first was a simple pass, but two of the three have stuck (paraphrased) in my mind these past several years:

-The story reads like something Stephen King would write.

-I thought The Beatles reference was really weird, did anyone else think the same?

Clearly, someone who somehow missed the cultural impact of The Beatles as profiled by Charlotte Hamrick “When Music Rocked Our World” at The Hidden Hour here.

Or perhaps someone who could not connect an eleven year old girl’s trauma construct to a chaotic event both literally and literary occurring in front of her eyes?

Trigger warning for the excerpt and the story in its entirety.

“My best friend sits beside me, pulling at her hair and sobbing like the teen girls did when The Beatles sang last week on the Ed Sullivan Show. We had laughed at those girls and swore never to hold any boy’s hand until we turned thirteen in a couple of years. All I want to do now is grab my brother by his hands, his feet, his clothes, anything, anything at all to save him, but I am so afraid all I can think to do is take off my sneakers and throw both at the dog.”

Or maybe, just maybe - the reader’s helicopter parent was more the grounded type.

“Neck and Neck” was published by Sick Lit Magazine (9/13/2016). Thank you, EIC Kelly Fitzharris.

Read the more-creative-nonfiction-than-not story here.

I remember Kelly used “raw” to describe the piece.

The things writers remember.

Thank you for reading.

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The Beatles Rare Vintage Beatlemania - This Little Girl (Remo Williams)