War of the Witches & The Martian!

It was true. At least to me. At least for a little while. I had powers beyond the normal. That’s because, unbeknownst to my unsuspecting fellow fourth graders, I was not from this earth. Thomas “Martin” Strait was actually from Mars. Adopted by the Straits after my escape pod crashed into their backyard, I could do amazing things. I could will the teacher to pick the student I wanted when they raised their hands. I could read people’s minds. I could move my pencil across my desk just by the power of my mind. Well, sometimes I could. It didn’t always work. But it worked enough for me to know that I was, indeed, from someplace else.




But it didn’t stop there! In my classroom, there were also...witches. Yes, a whole coven, led by the nefarious Dona Bow, and her witchy friends Amy and Karen. That’s what was interfering with my powers! That’s why my telepathy and telekinesis didn’t always work!



But, oh, these amazing developments were hard to keep to myself. Soon the girls would know I knew what they were. And, eventually, other students figured out that I was the Martian.



And that is when the nightmare began. That is when my social decline started, spiraling me down into the lower ranks of elementary school cliques. At first they laughed at me because I thought I was a Martian. “You’re not a Martian, Strait! You’re just crazy!” I was baffled as to what to do, and increasingly humiliated.



In my frustration, I did one of the most evil things I have ever done. I dumped pencil shavings all over Dona Bow’s carefully drawn map of South America. It was a stupid, cruel thing to do. Why? Frustration that I was going down while the witches remained popular, some odd notion that Dona could use her witch powers to clear the map thus proving I was right, and, of course, most importantly, in the world of fourth grade logic, I had a huge crush on her and had no idea how to express it.



With that bit of horribleness, I snapped out of it. I confessed to everyone that I wasn’t really a Martian; I was just playing a game. And that just made things worse. Everyone began teasing that I really was a Martian, and said, “C’mon, Strait, move something with your mind! Tell me what I’m thinking! Why don’t you pop up your antenna and wiggle them around!” I became, and remained to one degree or another, the laughingstock of my class.



Eventually, I learned to take their teasing and use it to my advantage as best I could. I learned to use humor, particularly self-deprecating humor and also physical shtick, to get then laughing on my terms instead of theirs. As time passed, I had a bizarre kind of popularity as the class clown or funny guy. But I never felt good about myself again. Not really. I always felt like people really didn’t like me after that. That I had to prove myself just to be with people.



Recently, I have made friends with Dona Bow through the miracle of facebook. The most surprising thing I learned was that she actually enjoyed the witches and Martians game, and her friends played it some at home. That she believed it, at least a little. So I was not the only one with an explosive imagination.



Imagination is often beaten out of us as kids. We tend to blame adults or church or just the way the world works. But sometimes it’s our own peers that make the magic disappear. I’ve tried to hold on to what I could. I love comics and stories, theatre and writing. Even as a dull CPA, I have my own special place, where I can be a Martian if I want to be. And if you some of my staid peers don’t like it, well, that’s tough. I have a special pratfall just for you. So there!