I used to pretend that my pencil was a rocket. As my Grade 3 teacher broke the world into morsels digestible to eight year olds, I was launching golden missiles into space. I would squint with one eye open and, holding my Ticonderoga by the metal band around the eraser, move it steadily upward into my field of vision. Then, once the lead tip (or “nose cone”) had ascended out of view, I would deftly switch hands, grabbing the tip in my other hand while releasing the engine in time to see it sweep seamlessly by. Persistence of vision provided the illusion of unassisted flight across a constellation of adolescent heads. This business was hardly subtle, and on more than one occasion I was spotted by the teacher, my attention compromised, and made to participate in undesirable activities.

Daydreaming wasn’t the problem. Daydreaming is never the problem. The problem before the child with fantastic proclivities is figuring out a way to attend to matters of mind without gaining the attention of the authorities, as participation represents a spiritual forfeiture, and, to a lesser degree, an endorsement of dogma.

Several years passage found me an asocial tyke not yet at home in my own skin. A recent growth spurt had seen my legs replaced by mysteriously articulated stilts over which I had yet to gain mastery. But, though I was as awkward as a moist fawn, nothing could keep me from my running. I ran constantly, whether circuiting the school playground or dashing to the teacher’s desk to hand in my paper at the conclusion of a pop quiz. I had but two gears, fidgeting or sprinting. And if my energy seemed boundless then I can only attribute it to one thing: the power cartridges in my shoes. In the heel of each treble-striped Adidas was an invisible cylinder, shallow and wide. These provided me with a capacity for physical activity that few could match, and which fewer still could even tolerate. I would extract spent cartridges from my soles at least once a week, and this behavior became so ingrained that it continued–albeit with slightly diminished frequency–right up until my graduation from High School.

My tendency to running abated sometime during Grade 8, once I became aware of the disapproving glances of the girls. The girls had existed prior to my awareness of them, to be sure, but never in any substantial way. I’d seen them, if at all, as representatives from some obscure and transient sect, no more than shadows really. But something had changed over the Summer, and now, as I became more aware of them, they became painfully aware of me, as in Lovecraft’s tales of spectral beasties from beyond. And oh how the girls judged me, and tormented me by their mere existence. And so I had no choice but to withdraw, again.

As a teenager, during my final years of innocence, I spent most of my time pretending that I was a hollow giant, and that people–tiny to me–watched my every movement from my observatory eyes. I became hyper-conscious of my physical structure, and went about my business in a plodding, calculated fashion, supplying sound effects if I felt particularly alone. Sometimes I would pick up something nearby–a die, a salt shaker, a floppy disk–in order to satisfy the curiosity of my inner audience. A whine of hydraulics brought my arm toward my eye windows, and the little people would lean forward in their theatre seats, straining to examine each new artifact in as much detail as possible. As reserved as I had become though, there were still occasional difficulties. Using the lavatory became a challenge, for instance. I couldn’t risk seeing myself after all. And I remember one day when my stepfather caught me peering down at a sock that dangled from my fingertips. When I noticed him he just shook his head and went silently into the other room. I wondered how long he’d been watching me, and what his inner audience was saying about me.

Now, more than a decade removed from that age, I find that some things do not change. I haven’t used pencils in decades, the soles of my shoes are too thin for cartridges, and the theatre seats behind my eyes are empty. But presently I’m pretending that I’m an adult, and I do adult things such as buying my own hats, and working in an office during the day. And though none of this makes the least bit of sense to me, though I am certainly a fraud, I’ve garnered nothing but approval–praise even–for so successfully mocking the trappings of adulthood. This pretend life of mine is not as interesting as my more youthful pursuits, not by any measure, but fewer people are apt to question it.

I’ve come to understand that, in most cases, there is just one thing that is supposed to hold our attention. It’s usually the most obvious thing, and far more clever folk refer to it as “the thing right in front of you,” or “the task at hand.” Yet it could be anything. Whether we’re clipping off body parts and storing them in freezer bags, or filling our tax forms with bizarre scribbled figures, we know where our focus is supposed to be.

Even so, it’s difficult for me to lose myself in the moment. A given situation may be worthy of my attention, but time and time again I find myself distracted by the meta situation. The vaguest notion is likely to set my mind to recondite contemplation, and I soon lose track of things completely, like an autistic child distracted by a shiny button. A good example is my stepfather’s watch. When I was a child I had a stepfather who sported one of those auto-winding watches. I was fascinated how it whirred when he moved his wrist, which was usually when he was gesticulating at me during one of his tirades. A tirade is something you’re meant to pay attention to, otherwise why bother? But my mind was on that little mechanism with its flywheels and gears and… I didn’t actually know what was happening inside the watch, but by the time I emerged from thought it was already too late, and that watch was a hornet around my ears.

I go into each new situation with the best of intentions, determined to behold, consume, appreciate, without falling prey to the seductive analytical noise that whispers from somewhere close by. Sometimes I think I may even succeed. For instance, I recently managed to enjoy several sets at a local tennis event. It was during a slow weekend, and I had no pressing matters to attend to, so by all accounts I should have been able to surrender my attention to the little yellow ball. But that’s just it: the entire audience had already surrendered to the ball. Once the syncopated swivel of their sprinkler-like heads became apparent to me, any hope I might have had of being engaged in the rest of the match was lost.

The attendees were oblivious, and to a person, hopeless. I fancied I could hear their vertebrae grating against each other like granite blocks, and feared that their synchronized movement would generate eddies of air that, cumulatively, might soon suck down the roof of the stadium. At the same time I became very conscious of my own head movement, and the thought of joining mindless consensus gentium was out of the question. In fact I didn’t turn my head for the rest of the weekend, and spent the remainder of my leisure as if my spine had been fused.

Though my life of seclusion offers some respite from distraction, I still find myself occupied over things I shouldn’t notice at all. Very recently I’ve been hearing newscasters breathing. To be sure, any given news program consists primarily of actual news, recited by a photogenic crew, fleet of tongue, and authoritative. But the sheer volume of words involved in such presentations requires a precision of breath control matched only by the hurried inhalations of synchronized swimmers.

Unfortunately, once I’ve become attuned to the scantily camouflaged snort of an anchor’s inhalations, it’s all I can hear for the rest of the show. The rest of the monologue becomes a vague chatter, which is punctuated by a continuous chain of thunderous billows. I understand that the news staff must continue to feed oxygen to their respective brains, but must they allow the atmosphere to whistle through their teeth like a turbo prop?

Am I thinking about something, or thinking about thinking about it? The question occurs to me with increasing frequency, and I fear there may be no end to it. I wonder how self-referential this sentence will be, and if I’ll know when I’ve made my point. I’ve become an outsider in my own head. I’m just pretending, merely going through the motions even now. And if it’s true what they say, that in the end you are who you pretend to be, then maybe in the end I’ll be no one at all.