Staring at the Light the Longest

Real Stories From a Fake Place - Story 26

When I was a kid we’d play this game - I can remember playing this game - that we called - I think it was called - we called it something like ‘Who Can Stare at the Light the Longest’ or something similar. It’s been a long time. I can’t remember the exact name for sure.

But we’d run down the carpeted staircase to the basement and we’d jump over the last few steps - to save time I guess, or just because it was fun - and we’d land at the bottom of the staircase with a big loud thud. And you had to run as soon as you landed or the next kid would come down on you… so, you know, you had to be fast and you wanted to go first too so you could get a better spot in the room. One without stains on the carpet or one further away from the corners, where there were almost always these big, huge, just like, giant spiderwebs.

Anyways we’d - my friends, siblings, cousins, whoever was our age - we’d get down there and just push everything, all this stuff that was in the basement to the sides of the room and make this big clearing in the middle of the room, right under the ceiling fan. Somedays, when we had a lot of people over, we’d have to move some of the boxes and furniture out of the room entirely, into the hallway or laundry room or spare room. We just had to make as much space in the main room of the basement for as many bodies to lay flat as possible so we could play the game.

Oh, but we’d also leave one chair in the middle of the room, under the fan. I almost forgot that part. It’s been a long time.

So the game goes something like - and I don’t know all the exact names of the elements of the game anymore, but I’ll try and remember them as best I can - but okay, so, the game started with every kid picking a piece of macaroni out of this jar full of macaroni that had been in the basement since who-knows-how-long and, in this jar, there was like, one piece of macaroni that was not elbow-pasta-shaped but instead a bow-tie noodle or something like that. We called it something like ‘the noodle’, emphasis on the ‘the’. So, you know, it was special. And every kid would go around picking out one piece of pasta from the macaroni jar - which had it’s own name but I don’t remember what we called that - and each kid would pick from it until someone pulled the bow-tie noodle - the ‘the’ - and then they’d be ‘it’ but I think we had a special name for the role they played too, though I really can’t remember it now either. Maybe we just called them ‘it’ but we probably had a more clever name at the time. I’m sure we did.

Anyways, I’m getting sidetracked and I know you have to go soon…

So all the other kids would lay down on their backs on the carpet and close their eyes and the kid who was ‘it’ would stand in the center of the room and climb up on the chair and unscrew the bolt to remove the frosted glass covering from the ceiling fan so that the lightbulbs were, like, directly exposed and out and everything. So they would do that and all the other kids would keep their eyes closed as best they could and then the kid in the center would stay up on the chair and count to ten out loud, really slow and, um, when they reached ten they’d pull the chain in the center of the fan and the light bulbs would click on and shine super bright and at the same time, all the kids in the room would open their eyes and stare right at these bulbs…

And the kid in the middle, whoever was ‘it’ would stand on their chair and watch over everyone and if anyone blinked they would point at them and call them ‘out’ and they’d be out of the game. So the goal - and it sounds silly talking about it now but this was very serious to us for many years - but the goal was just to be the last person to blink while you stared up at these super bright, blinding lights. You know, just whoever could keep their eyes open the longest, pretty much.

And we would do this for hours.

Whenever someone won the game, we’d all go back to the macaroni jar, pull our lots, and do it again and again and again…

I think the longest any kid was ever able to stare without blinking was something crazy like for seven minutes or something like that. I don’t remember who it was that set that record though. It wasn’t me. I never got past two minutes. I wanted to. I just didn’t. I remember wanting to for sure though.

I also remember after playing for a while everyone would stand up and get all dizzy and you’d see these floating, fuzzy, blue and white specs everywhere you looked for a while. Sometimes you’d be in school the next day or a few days later and you’d still see them when you tried to look up to the whiteboard or whatever. So that was always a trip. It was something to do I guess.

Some of the kids who got the bow-tie noodle took it so seriously. They’d really yell at you if they saw you blink. And, you know, they couldn’t always be looking around the whole circle the whole time so there were definitely times where they missed people blinking or something. I feel like they always caught me though for some reason. I still feel like it wasn’t fair but that’s ridiculous. I feel silly for even thinking that all these years later. But maybe it wasn’t fair.

There was this expectation that when you got out you’d help to get other people out and look for blinks but people would usually just go right over to whoever was their best friend that week and say that they were going to watch over them and call them out but would usually just let them blink and not say anything. There was a lot of cheating like this going on in the game. I think everyone knew it was happening and if you whined about it you just didn’t get invited back to play next time. Kids are mean like that. We were mean like that. But I don’t think we ever meant to be, or at least, we didn’t know we were being mean like that.

So we’d play this game and we’d all lay down and stare at the lights and when you do that for such a long time your eyes start to water and tears stream down your face and sometimes you start crying but it’s okay because everyone else is crying too.

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