Very Far Away from Anywhere Else

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If you’d like a story about how I won my basketball letter and achieved fame, love, and fortune, don’t read this. I don’t know what I achieved in the six months I’m going to tell about. I achieved something, all right, but I think it may take me the rest of my life to find out what.

I never won any letters for anything. When I was a little kid, I really liked touch football, the strategy of it, but being short for my age I was always a bit slow even though I was good at evasive tactics. And then when we got into high school, it all got so organized. Going out for teams and wearing uniforms and all that stuff. And people talk about it all the time. Sports are neat to do, but dull to talk about. Anyhow there won’t be much about sports in this.

I am talking into a tape recorder and then typing it. I tried to just write it, but it came out all stuffy and clotted-up with words, so let’s see how it goes this way. My name is Owen Thomas Griffiths. I was seventeen in November. I am still fairly short for my age—5′ 7″. I guess I will be short for my age when I’m forty-five, so what’s the difference? It bothered me a lot when I was twelve or thirteen, but I was much shorter then compared to other kids, a genuine shrimp. At fifteen I grew six inches in eight months and felt really awful while I was doing it; my knees used to feel like the Famboo Splinter Torture, but when it was over I was such a giant compared to what I had been that I never could really regret not going on any higher. I am average compact build and have dirty gray eyes and a lot of hair. The hair is curly, and whether I wear it short or long it sticks out all over my head. I fight it with a hairbrush every morning, and lose. I like my hair. It has a lot of willpower.

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