American Stainless
Trisha Jenkins
Order of St. Gannon
Naxwam Complex
Planet Naxwam
Re: About the Doctor
I first met the Blue Box Man when I was ten, and it wasn't a happy occasion.
One day Pappy comes home drunk at three in the morning, and mama ain't having it.
First, he slaps her around, and then he pulls out a gun, and mama's dead and he's running out the door.
I didn't call 9-1-1 or nothing. All I knew was to sit on the front stoop of my house and cry.
That's when I saw him, this strange man in fancy clothes and a bow tie. He asked me why I was crying, so I told him.
I asked him if he were a social worker come to take me away to an orphanage on account of me not having any living relatives to go to, and he said no, then I got to crying again, so he offered me a bag of starchy gummy bears, Jelly Sumthins, I think he called them.
The man talked funny, like one of those rich newscasters on TV. He liked to say things like `daft' and `bullocks' and `rum' and `jolly' and he called people `blokes' and `chaps', he said centimeters instead of feet, and Paddy's truck he called a `lorry.' All this time I thought it was an F-150.
He did a number of things in attempts to cheer me up, giving me a doll, telling me jokes about Martians, letting me play with some toy with flashing lights, but I didn't stop crying until he showed me the box.
It was the funniest thing I ever saw. It had a big sign that said police box on it. I asked him what a police box was, and he said people in London use them to call the police.
I immediately got to crying again, telling him not to take my daddy away, because Pappy's the only family I have left, and I didn't have nowhere else to stay.
The man said it was too late, the cops already got him, but I could stay with him.
For a moment I was mad at him, because I thought he got Pappy arrested, but I didn't hit him because I secretly felt he did right. I never did miss all those times Pappy hit me.
When he opened the box, I changed my mind double quick and decided he was David Copperfield.
The box was like a clown car. The outside of the box looked like it couldn't hold but four people, if they were all crammed together. It wasn't any bigger than a porta potty, but on the inside, there was this big old room twice the size of a bus station. I still don't understand it.
"How'd you do that?" I asked him.
"Magic," he said.
"So you are David Copperfield," I said.
"No. Better," he grinned. And then he pulls a quarter out of my ear. Except it's not a quarter, it's bigger, and it has the year 1590 written on it. So I followed him inside the place.
It didn't look like any building I've ever been to. It was like Michael Jackson went crazy and built an airplane with stuff from the auto parts store. It had a video arcade, a little roller coaster, a pool, and a funny console he said he used to "navigate time".
When he first told me the box was a time machine, I didn't believe him, so he flipped a few levers and we're suddenly on the roof of my house.
To this day, I don't know how he did it. I never saw any staircases or trapdoors anywhere around that yard, and I'd been living there for years. Believe me, I'd know, the amount of time I played in the dirt. Still, anything was possible.
I didn't watch science fiction that much. Harry Potter was the closest thing I could compare this to, but I didn't believe in magic. I still thought this was some kind of stunt that grownups pulled on dumb little kids. I fell asleep halfway through Star Wars every time it came on, so I had no clue about whatever theories they had, either.
"That's a nice trick," says I. "But I still don't believe you."
And so he says to me, "If you could go anywhere in history, where would you want to go first?"
And I said I wanted to see grandma when she was young.
That's what he showed me.
We stepped out of the box, and it was the forties. The cars were old looking, but shiny like they just bought them. Everyone wore clothes like they had on I Love Lucy, and the bathrooms were segregated.
When I saw grandma, I didn't even recognize her. Neither that young man she kept kissing.
She didn't recognize me when I walked by, so we got back in the box.
I was still looking sad, so "Doctor" (that's what he said his name was) took me on other trips. We saw Moses part the Red Sea (that Sea of Reeds thing Pappy told me turns out to be nonsense) and saw Jesus preaching to folks just like they taught in Sunday school. Then we saw George Washington, but he wasn't as nice as I thought he'd be, asking me stuff about Doctor being my slavemaster, and not to get `uppity' and all that.
We saw the inventor of Mickey Mouse, Abraham Lincoln, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Count Dracula, who actually didn't have fangs and liked to impale people for fun. Then we went to the moon.
At this point, the Doctor got all sad and broody, and I couldn't figure out what was the matter until I asked him if he had any kids. He told me he had adopted two recently, and they had both died. He said there were others. Then he tells me he doesn't want me to get hurt like them.
Not too long afterwards, he's taking me to this big stone building in the middle of a desert and I'm being introduced to all these strange people in robes.
Turns out it was an alien monastery. Well, a monastery with a call center for an intergalactic prayer line.
The first monk I was introduced to was named Xeixido, Xei for short. He was a guy with a beak and ears like a bat.
Me and the Doctor followed him down a hall, and he taught me how to make pretty pictures.
Then, as I was painting some flowers, Doc said he had to fix something on his machine, and he was gone from my life for the next ten years.
