Little Henry loves dinosaurs.
He loves them so much that, during his cello lessons, he names the four cello strings Carnotaurus, Gigantosaurus, Dilophosaurous, and Ankylosaurus.
I’m somewhat of a raptor, myself. Gliding across all I survey, my enormous wing span covers just about everything and everybody visible below. By virtue of my fantastic size, I can see alot.
Childhood fantasy is a wonderful tool, enhancing the learning process by stimulating affective arousal and a host of synaptic responses the brain engages to receive, sort, and retrieve information. The problem emerges when adults get lost in its grandeur.
Nearly three weeks ago, I’d paid a surprise visit to my beloved. He had never been keen on these unsolicited appearances, telling me so in no uncertain terms; but, afflicted with not only a vividly overactive imagination I was also obsessive compulsive and, well, sometimes, found myself merely a passenger in the vehicle driving my behavior.
Such was the case on that evening when, ringing the doorbell, I stood on the front landing awaiting entry into his livingroom. By the time he did appear I could already tell that he’d chosen his own preferred mode of escape, having reached a state bordering on surly. But, still polite, he did let me in and stood, sluggish and squinting, as I strode into the kitchen to see how he’d spent his last eight hours.
No beer cans, anywhere; how deftly they’d been hidden. But, now, a homemade flatbread pizza slice left on the stone, one large unrecognizable bowl, emptied of what looked like guacamole and, as referenced in a previous recounting, a single recipe card – pristine and alone and bearing completely unfamiliar handwriting – on the opposite counter.
I moved back toward the livingroom, asking for the whereabouts of the ivermectin stash; this anti-parasitic had recently been found to prevent red blood cell aggregation, and might we…..he had no idea where he’d put it. Okay. I would search, myself.
Re-emerging from the bathroom, I caught him stuffing something under the sofa cushion and then, spying me, dramatically smoothing its surface.
The pair of black workout pants discovered there would become the subject of my fixation, therewith. I would challenge him with their size, seemingly too narrow for his muscle bound legs. I would ask him to put them on; he would refuse. I would leave – declaring him a liar, a cheat, a thief, and God knew what else. And, he would laugh.
Down the steps of the front porch I’d fly, my raptor wings flapping ominously all the way home. Predictably, gathering my huddle of equally willing grand jurists, we’d pronounce him precisely as described: liar, cheat, you know the tune, with the finality of a flock of buzzards circling over the county landfill. By the time we’d reach our verdict, he’d be toast.
Enter the Creator of all living, the Almighty Omnipresent and Omniscient. One perspective; one overriding view.
God would take my pea brain, fraught with its own traumas, and remold its perceptions. Within ten days, I would be graced with not one, but three pairs of black workout pants, at least one of them appearing to relax after the wearing and, most critical to the cause, a wooden box filled with recipe cards. Most relevant there were several, among those clearly bearing his illegible penmanship, which had been written by the same, unknown scribe who had produced the salad recipe used that fateful night.
While he may have been visited by the mistress demon who haunted all addictions, there had been no stranger in that house sharing in his misery. There was only albeit inebriated he – and then me, raptoriously soaring above reality to snatch up the residual bones in my ancient, creaking beak and reconstruct a definitive archeological find out of the whole scenario for an eagerly awaiting army of self-appointed anthropologists.
Little Henry is progressing. He’s been growing, too. His legs are now too long for the prototype cello, and he’s moved far beyond the four strings toward completing his first song. Would that we’d all evolve beyond our perceptions of a given delusion to wrench ourselves free of the dinosaurs lying wait to capture our only hope for psychic and emotional survival.
After all, there is really only One all-knowing.
And, that One created the dinosaurs, too.
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Copyright 2/2/23 Ruth Ann Scanzillo. All rights those of the author, whose story it is and whose name appears above this line. No copying, in whole or part or by translation, permitted; sharing only via blog link, exclusively, and that not by RSS. Write the script for your own story. Thanks.
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