Broccoli Squares and Meatballs

Definition of Manic from Oxford Languages and Google:

Manic /manik/

Adjective: relating to or affected by mania. Showing wild, apparently deranged, excitement and energy. Frenetically busy, frantic…”the pace is utterly manic”.

Unlike conditions such as depression and bi-polar disorder, my baseline is generally sunny and content. Said plainly, I go from reasonable, content and happy-go-lucky to extreme moments of intense excitement, joy, euphoria, passion, and grandiosity.

As a child growing up in a subdivision on the border of Hollywood and Fort Lauderdale called Emerald Hills, almost every day was right out of an episode of The Wonder Years. In the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s, south Florida experienced stratospheric growth.

The nuclear family was intact, doors were often left unlocked, groups of kids on skateboards, bicycles, and on foot spontaneously gathered to play football, swim, roll ourselves up and down the hills of the golf course until achieving a perfect balance of vertigo and fantasy of flight, forts were built from scraps of plywood from the endless housing construction, and we dreamed to the point of our heads nearly exploding from how bright our futures were destined to become.

In late elementary school through college, I would get enormously excited over what most kids seemed to take for granted. In fifth grade, while standing in line to get into the cafeteria for lunch, I would jump up and down or wiggle and dance with indescribable anticipation while other students stood slumped and bored.

It didn’t matter what they were serving, I devoured ALL the cafeteria food as if it were filet mignon, champagne, and caviar…....soy and breadcrumb filled hamburgers with 0% meat….loved it….animal grade beef n’ macaroni….my heart raced….dry, over-baked rectangular pizza….orgasmic….gray-colored fish sticks…jumping out of my skin with suspense…and that smelly broccoli cut into perfectly symmetrical squares….breathless with anticipation! Even the enormous slime covered, nobody-had-a-clue-what-they-were-made-of, meatballs, of which 90% ended up being thrown in a huge garbage bag the janitor took home to feed his pit bulls, I devoured as if I hadn’t eaten in a year, savoring each spongy gelatinous grisly and bone-filled bite.

I beg forgiveness for my bluntness, but from 6th to 8th grade I had a continuous, nonstop boner. Had the school sent me to the hospital they would have certainly amputated. I literally was punch-love, blood-pumping, mind-blowingly aroused so often, I had to scotch-tape it to my thigh. A merciful teacher once pulled me aside, telling me to conjure up thoughts of someone dying in order to tame the beast. I was too self-conscience and scared to make any actual moves on girls, but just the manic energy of the fantasies was enough to keep me lit-up like a roman candle.

My dreams were larger than life. In 11th grade I ran for class president against 10 others as “The Outsider”. At the time, school politics was blood sport. They gathered the 600 students into the cafetorium and I was the second to last to give their campaign speech. Those before me pulled out crumpled pieces of paper, reading softly and mumbling about their good grades or how honest and trustworthy they were.

I was scared shitless. But as I stood to approach the blistering, boisterous unruly crowd of hormones, in the split-second between standing up and approaching the podium, my paralyzing fear and self-doubt was replaced by a tidal wave of adrenaline. Something deep inside my brain clicked and a powerful, reassuring voice whispered, “You have nothing to lose, grab them by their balls and go for it!”. By the time I uttered the first phoneme, I was in such a state of deranged euphoria I bellowed out a series of promises that were so improbable and absurd, I’m surprised the principal didn’t drag me off the stage.

I screamed…”It is our right as American citizens to have yearly field trips to Disney World. I complained that a full hour for lunch, on or off campus, was insufficient. I promised to end homework forever, I guaranteed a low priced all-you-can-eat pizza and fried chicken buffet, I insisted on weekly school dances with DJ’s…I promised everything short of drugs and alcohol.

And, yes, indeed, I won.

And, yes, I delivered on exactly zero of my promises.

Nobody cared though, the formula was clear. Speak loudly and emphatically, promise the world, paint the mental picture, dream the dream….it worked a second time, and I served two years as class president.

That was both the beginning and end of my political career. The college students weren’t as easily impressed with field trips and school dances, drugs and alcohol might’ve worked, but I didn’t go there.

My popularity peaked at 17. But my manic brain did not….