Jonathan Foer - Here I Am

He assumed that there were times, other than while masturbating, when he felt at home in his body, but he couldn’t remember them — maybe before he smashed his fingers? Samanta wasn’t his first Other Life avatar, but she was the first whose logarithmic skin fit. He never had to explain the choice to anyone else — Max was wide-eyed or righteous enough not to care — but how did he explain it to himself? He didn’t wish he were a girl. He didn’t wish he were a Latina. Then again, he didn’t not wish he were a Latina girl. Despite the near-constant regret he felt about being himself, he never confused himself for the problem. The problem was the world. It was the world that didn’t fit. But how much happiness has ever resulted from correcting the record on the culpability of the world?

> I was up until 3:00, cruising the Google Street View of my neighborhood, and I saw myself.

> Is there going to be some sort of party after this?

> Does anyone know how to manipulate a PDF? I’m too lazy to figure it out.

> My celebrity memoir title: It Was the Worst of Times, It Was the Worst of Times.

> What kind of PDF?

> We’re going to run out of maple syrup in three years?

> Is this going to be in Hebrew? If so, can someone less lazy than me write a script to stream it through a translator?

> I read that, too.

> Why do I find it so incredibly sad?

> Anyone have a NexTek thumb drive?

> Because you love waffles.

> My celebrity memoir title: “I Did It Your Way.”

> I skipped right over the article about Syrian refugees. I know that shit is horrible, and I know it in theory makes me sad, but I can’t find a way to have an actual emotion about it. But the syrup made me want to hide under my bed.

> They only work for a few weeks.

> So hide and cry your maple tears.

> Samanta, I got you something you’re going to love, if you don’t already have it, which you probably do. Anyway, transferring now.

> I can hear the most beautiful song coming from the earphones of the girl sitting across the aisle from me.

> Today’s most-watched: some kids in Russia with a homemade bungee jump, an alligator biting an electric eel, an old Korean grocer beating the shit out of a burglar, quintuplets laughing, two black girls beating the shit out of each other on a playground …

> What song?

> I want to do something massive, but what?

> Forget it, I figured it out.

> Shit, I didn’t know you’re supposed to bring a gift to a bat mitzvah.

> Transfer is taking forever.

Sam thought about texting Billie, seeing if she might want to join him at a modern dance performance (or show, or whatever they’re called) on Saturday. It sounded cool, as she’d written about it in her diary, which he’d removed from her unattended backpack while she was in gym, concealed behind his far larger, far less interesting chemistry textbook, and perused — a word that means the exact opposite of what most people think it means. He didn’t like texting, because he had to look at his thumb — the finger that got it worst, or healed least well. The one people tried not to notice. Weeks after the other fingers had regained their color and approximate shape, the thumb was black, and askew at the knuckle. The doctor said it wasn’t taking, and would have to be amputated to protect the rest of the hand from infection. He said this in front of Sam. Sam’s dad said, “You’re sure?” His mom insisted they get another opinion. The second opinion was the same, and his dad sighed, and his mom insisted they get another. The third doctor said there was no immediate risk of infection, and kids are almost superhumanly resilient, and “almost always these things just find a way to heal themselves.” His dad didn’t trust the sound of that, but his mom did, and within two weeks, the darkness was receding toward the thumb’s tip. Sam was nearly eight. He doesn’t remember any of the doctors, or even the physical therapy. He barely remembers the accident itself, and sometimes wonders if he’s just remembering his parents’ memories.

Sam doesn’t remember screaming, “Why did that happen?” as loud as he could, not out of terror, or anger, or confusion, but because of the size of the question. There are stories of mothers lifting cars off their trapped children, he remembers that, but he doesn’t remember his mom’s superhuman composure when she met his wild eyes and subdued them, promising, “I love you, and I’m here.” He doesn’t remember being pinned while the doctor reattached the ends of his fingers. He doesn’t remember waking up from his five-hour post-surgery nap to find that his dad had filled his room with the contents of Child’s Play. But he remembers the game they used to play when he was a child: Where is Thumbkin? Where is Thumbkin? Here I am! Here I am! They never played it with Benjy after the injury, not once, and never once acknowledged that they had stopped playing it. His parents were trying to spare Sam, not understanding that the shame suggested by the silence was the one thing he could have been spared.

> Here’s an app that should exist: You point your phone at something and it streams video of what that thing looked like a few seconds before. (Obviously this would depend on pretty much everyone filming and uploading pretty much everything pretty much always, but we’re already pretty much there.) So you would be experiencing the world as it just happened.

> Cool idea. And you could change settings to increase the lag.

>?

> You could see the world of yesterday, or a month ago, or your birthday, or — and this won’t be possible until the future, once enough video has been uploaded — people could move around their childhoods.

> Imagine a dying person, who hasn’t yet been born, one day walking through his childhood home.

> What if it had been torn down?

> And there would be ghosts, too.

> Ghosts how?

> “A dying person who hasn’t yet been born.”

> Is this thing ever gonna start?

Sam was brought back to the other side of the screen by a knocking.

“Go away.”

“Fine.”

“What?” he asked, opening the door for Max.

“Just going away.”

“What’s that?”

“A plate of food.”

“No it isn’t.”

“Toast is food.”

“Why the hell would I want toast?”

“To plug your ears?”

Sam gestured for Max to come into the room.

“They’re talking about me?”

“ Oh yeah.”

“Bad things?”

“They definitely aren’t singing ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,’ or whatever.”

“Is Dad disappointed?”

“I’d say so.”

Sam went back to his screen, while Max nonchalantly tried to absorb the details of his brother’s room.

“In me?” Sam asked without turning to face his brother.

“What?”

“Disappointed in me?”

“I thought that’s what you meant.”

“He can be such a pussy.”

“Yeah, but Mom can be such a dick.”

Sam laughed. “Absolutely true.” He logged off and spun to face Max. “They’re peeling off the Band-Aid so slowly, new hairs have time to grow and get stuck to it.”

“Huh?”

“I wish they’d just get divorced already.”

“Divorced?” Max asked, his body rerouting blood to the part of the brain that conceals panic.

“Obviously.”

“Really?”

“What are you, ignorant?”

“Is that like stupid?”

“Not-knowing.”

“No.”

“So,” Sam asked, running his finger around the frame of his iPad, around the rectangular tear in the physical world, “who would you choose?”