Thirteen years ago I sat in a small room of the county hospital. It was three am and I was the only one awake. My wife was snoring away in the hospital bed, my newborn daughter was fast asleep in the bassinet within arm’s reach of my sleeping wife. The family had all filtered through and left hours ago. It was just me and the two most important people in my life. She was our first and only child. I was sitting on the edge of the bed staring a at my daughter. I counted every breath as I watched her tiny chest rise and sink with respiration. There’s nothing scarier in the world than realizing that you are responsible for every aspect of a child’s life. You and you alone are all that stands between the happiness of a defenseless child and the horrible tragedies that come with human existence. That’s how I came to find myself counting her breaths. I synced my breathing with hers. I panicked every time she exhaled, praying to god that her chest would rise again. It was the first time I saw my daughter and the last time I saw Marvin.
Everyone has a Marvin in their life. A big loveable dope who somehow makes the worse decisions humanly possible in every aspect of his life. Everyone has the loser friend who they keep around just for the mere fact that his misery somehow dilutes the pain of living their own lives. Everyone has a Marvin and if you can’t figure out who your Marvin is, then YOU are someone’s Marvin. But there’s only one real Marvin and that was my Marvin. Like a summoned spirit my Marvin had the magical gift of arriving at the worst time, spouting horrible ideas, and encouraging bad behavior. Marvin was the first guy to shout “I’m in” when presented with the stupidest of plans or schemes. Marvin was the first one in the car and the first to throw a punch. A true Marvin is loyal to a fault and willing to do anything for his friends . My Marvin made it very clear to everyone in our small group that he would always have our backs. My Marvin lived his life like some kind of superhero. A superhero whose sole power was to have the freedom to say anything to anyone at anytime. Marvin was quick to insult or call a person a call a piece of shit in such a demeaning and degrading way that a conflict was not only expected it was required. In almost every occurrence the “piece of shit” loved and admired Marvin by the end of the evening. My Marvin was the best Marvin because he never knew how not to be an asshole. He lived his life free from the burden of stupid shit like feelings, emotions, and common sense. He was and I suppose still is the freest person I’ve ever known. Freedom in the sense of his thinking process. His physical freedom was interrupted many years ago. I wasn’t surprised when the hospital room door swung open in the middle of the night and in walked Marvin. It never even occurred to me to ask how he made his way to our room well past hospital visiting hours. That’s just what Marvin did.
“Dickie Boy” what’s happening, he said calmly and joyfully. He didn’t know how to be frightened or scared. He walked over to the side of the bed where I was busy counting baby breaths. He slapped me entirely to hard on the back and leaned his face close to mine and we both stared at the child. Marvin’s presence demanded attention. He was always the biggest and loudest one in the room
I was always “Dickie Boy” to Marvin. That’s how you knew you meant something to him. He gave you a stupid nickname and ground it into your very being until it stuck. So, for as long as I knew Marvin, I was “Dickie Boy”.
“Jesus look at that head, looks like a football. Last time I saw something like that it was an extra point kicked through the uprights in the Swamp. He said snickering. I had been in the room for hours panicking and worrying about anything and everything. So much so that I was blind to the most obvious of conversation topics regarding my new daughter. Countless family members, friends and hospital staff had been filtering through the room all evening and none of them had the freedom or superhero power to mention that my new daughter’s head had the exact dimensions of a regulation football. That was Marvin, brutal honesty, and lack of any form of giving a shit.
The newfound revelation that my child looked like athletic equipment was more than my body could digest. I began cry as I realized Marvin was absolutely correct in his comparison. Marvin looked over and saw a tear rolling down my cheek. He followed up his insult to my only child with another to hard back slap and a phrase I had heard many times before.
“Come on stop being a little bitch, I am sure it won’t be like that forever” he said while disengaging from our moment and searching the room for the television remote.
My mouth was agape and my eyes wide open as I began to formulate a new list of really horrible shit to worry and fret about. I panicked and tried to do the impossible, I tried to reason and explain feelings to Marvin.
“Listen you don’t have kids you don’t understand everything that comes with them”, I almost finished the sentence before Marvin cut me off.
“You guys with these fucking kids. What the fuck do you know? You’ve been a dad for about four hours. You act like raising a kid is so fucking hard. That’s bullshit. You put food in the top and shit comes out the bottom. It ain’t that fucking complicated.
“Look Marvin you don’t understand I have to provide everything for her. I have to protect her, I have to…”
“It’s a fucking work” was all he said while cutting me off again.
He had managed to ignite the television and found a way to insult me while never taking his eyes away from the screen.
“What?” was all I could reply.
At this point in the story I find it necessary to interject that the only thing more important to Marvin than his friends was professional wrestling. The remainder of the story will be peppered with wrestling phrases and verbiage, all of which will be defined for non-wrestling afficionados.