He felt that his sense of separation from everyone was because he was the only person he knew who did not have two parents. Only a grownup from many decades later would be able to tell that this was the result of non-verbal learning disorder, a non-hereditary condition which nevertheless the father had.
He lay in the bath tub with a science fiction story for children. He would, in the time to follow, spend an unhealthy amount of time in a hot tub, reading science fiction and later exploring things better left for later. This particular story, a hardback from the ancient downtown library building, was about an alien trapped on earth because he had no power left on his spool to power his rocket. In the end, a bit of the spool his boy-landlord's mother had used to repair a screen door saved him. Somehow the story spoke to the 10 year old boy.
After he was out he pulled out the small box that the doctor named charles brown had given him at the hospital in New Orleans. He wondered even at the time, a 9 year old whisked to New Orleans only to be taken to a hospital, why he was singled out for this gift. He was not even sure why he was at the hospital, much less what a doctor would take the time to offer a gift to a skinny dark haired boy with dark, almost black eyes who must have appeared lost in the building.
The box contained a large pocket watch that worked, and one that did not have all its parts which did not work. It also held some small screw drivers with tiny little heads and spinning wheels on top so that the small heads could fit the tiny screws and the wheel placed against the palm to hold it in place while it turned. A grown person would wonder if somehow the family and doctor had sensed the non verbal learning disorder that would separate this child from other people even while making him perhaps more aware of his loss that they already knew was certain even though it was months in the future. The grown up would wonder what must his father have felt when that gift was given, for he was certainly standing right there beside the boy. And what was his mother thinking, for she must have been told, perhaps that same day that she would not see this boy turn 11, nor her other son 12, nor her daughter 15. She would not see her only daughter learn to drive, become an azalea trail maid, she would not be there to comfort her when her heart was broken and she would not be there to explain the world to a small boy who would forever be slightly apart from it. What was she thinking the day the watch was given.
There was a new house in a great neighborhood that he would had only just moved in to. But he would only live out the school year there. The memory of the death would drive the father insane with grief and he would move back to his own parents. The boy would never learn that the grief was due in part to a delay in seeking treatment, trying to do something practical which worked badly for all the wrong reasons. The boy would never know this, but a man in the future would morne the fact that he had never been given the chance to offer a child's consolation and even absolution for a bad decision. For the boy already knew much of bad decisions. A symptom of his condition was that he was never able to completely forget his crimes and his mistakes.
Even now he cringed at the memory of his first act of cowardice. There had been a fight between his brother and another boy. His brother had always fought with him, sometimes in fun, but often with the cruelty that idle hours can lend to small boys. He could not have been more than 8 at the time and his brother was in a fight with another boy and he was a spectator. His brother had called for him. In a moment, his emotions included one of justice (karma to an old man) which would have justified his holding back. But it was also one of fear and he would forever be shamed by this and embarrassed by his fear. Only a grown up would understand that courage is acting despite fear and not the absence of fear.
Maybe for a few months it would be home; but in the end the house which was bought for his mother would be sold. For now, he could enjoy the new friends in the new neighborhood and the walks through the deep woods which would soon be replaced with a massive four lane connecting road that would unhouse the animals and separate the large neighborhood into two smaller, more isolated ones.
The radio would have played the monkeys' "pleasant valley sunday", which would become ironic when those pleasant sundays disappeared. Soon he would lose a tooth, the nice house, the pleasant life he was just beginning to enjoy. White rabbit by Jefferson Airplane which had not yet become a starship must have been playing too, but it would be two years almost before he was forced too young to find out what that was about. For the moment, he was treated to "i'm a believer" and he did believe there was a future, but in truth the lost years were only beginning.
There were long rides up the hill to school, stopping at tony's pizza some days and getting a hot slice of pizza on the way home. Then he only liked peperoni pizza.
All you need is love was the beetles song, but he would never again have his mother's love. But still there was love for him, but it was a distant love, not the kind of love that is all you need. But there were dirt clod fights on the piles of dirt that had been gathered in the woods to build the road to destroy them, the school, the bully's who he did not recognize because of his non verbal learning disorder which meant that he would have to later develop the ability to recognize non-verbal cues and which would make the bullys think him more of a target and would provide a strange sort of armour against them since they were of the real world, and his world would always be part real and part fantasy.
Next the wonderful and cruel mind
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