The Roar
Carson Calkins
Sportscenter airs. Dan Patrick reads the highlights. It’s 10:30 on a Saturday night. You’re still up despite being only ten, lounging in the corner blue chair. You’re not tired either, you’re eager. Giddy to discuss the slate of college football games. The upsets. The beat downs. The phenomenal plays. The questionable calls. All with your best friend: your dad.
You imagine the roar of the garage door, signaling he has arrived home from work. You’ll leap and sprint to the front door. Readying yourself to engulf his waist with your toothpick arms. As your parents eat dinner, you’ll be devouring a mug packed with Blue Bell cookies n’ cream. In between bites and spoonfuls, you and your dad will analyze the games like the analysts on College Gameday Final playing on the TV simultaneously. Eventually the discussion will come to a silent halt. You’ll fall victim to the lateness of the hour—passing out in the corner blue chair—and be carried off to bed.
This is what you want to happen but fear it won’t. You fear he’ll arrive home from his own sports broadcast brooding. Immersed in a darkness that crashes through the door when he walks in, flattening you. The only words said to you are a hollow hello.
You don’t know why he comes home covered in shadows. Your mother says some of his coworkers made mistakes during his broadcast that night, prompting the mood. Yet, you know there is more. You’re too young to know why—or how to ask—but you sense it.
Sportscenter cuts to commercials. The garage door roars. You rush to the front door and wait to see which dad walks up.
For Carson Calkins, writing was once the bane of his existence. Reading was not far behind it. Not until a recommendation from his psychiatrist (and journaling inside a storage closet following it) did he begin to journey the writer’s path. The written word consumes his day both professionally—as a 7th grade English teacher—and personally as each day either begins or concludes with intimate time with a pen and notebook.
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