By MICHAEL J. VAUGHN
Though my friends never seem to believe it, I was a shy kid in sixth grade, a much-traveled Navy brat set down in the rough civilian lands of Sunnyvale, and so I spent a lot of my time alone. Since I lived only two blocks from my school, Braly Elementary, I preferred to walk home for my lunches, thus avoiding any unnecessary contact with my peers.
Since my mother had a lot of errands to run during the day, she gave me a house key so I could let myself in. She tried to guard against its loss by tying it to a loop of string.
That was her first mistake. To a sixth-grade boy, a key is just a key, but a key on a string is an experiment in centrifugal force waiting to happen.
The first experiment was simply spinning the key around my finger. Then I would block the string with another finger and let it wind around the both of them until it came to a stop.
This got old quickly.
Next came aerodynamics, an attempt to find the proper release point at which to send my metal comet shooting into the sky--and then run like crazy to catch it on the way down.
As with any schoolboy game, though, this one needed a gauge, and height being a difficult thing to measure, I began to look for targets. Which is when I discovered the telephone wire.
It cut across Gladiola Drive just around the corner from my home street, Lusterleaf Drive, and what's more, it marked the halfway point between school and home. At about 20 feet high, it made the perfect bar for my pole vault.
It took only a few attempts to clear the wire, and from there the game grew progressively more complex. Next I had to toss the key over the wire and then catch it on the other side. Eventually, I had to toss it over and catch it without breaking my natural stride, this being the game's--and my own-- "coolness factor."
After a few days of this, the key toss began to take on psychic meaning. A less-than-perfect execution foretold grave events: a surprise history test, a fight with Joe Jette on the basketball court or perhaps a reprimand from Miss Laakso for tapping my feet under my desk (a nervous habit that would eventually lead to drumming in rock bands).
I remember the day of the miracle as a sunny day in early spring. I was on my way back from school and, 20 steps from my personal Cape Canaveral, was already spinning my satellite in preparation for launch.
Everything after that was different. Upon release, the key flew upward and skimmed just over the wire, the trailing loop of string bent in half over the top of it. Then the key swung back underneath like Olga Korbut on the uneven parallel bars to split the heart of the loop and tie itself to the wire!
I broke my natural stride to stand with empty hands, awestruck, peering up as the key swung to and fro from its new perch, spelling out its momentum. Did I do that?
I think my parents eventually believed my story--because, really, who would make up something like that? And besides, one glance upward while driving down Gladiola would confirm its veracity. In any case, I was given no punishment, just a new key--except this one was on a chain, a very short chain.
The key dangled from that line for 15 years, a monument to my childhood and a constant worry to my father, who suspected a burglar would snip it down and break into our house. That never happened, of course, but years later when a 27-year-old writer came driving down the street for a holiday visit to the homestead, he discovered that his magic key had vanished from the line. He couldn't know if the deed had been done by the weather, a meticulous neighbor with a pruning pole or a PG&E repairman. He only knew that the sight left a small pain in his heart and made him feel just a little bit older.
Michael J. Vaughn is a Sunnyvale novelist.
This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, July 10, 1996.
©1996 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.