Growing Pains

There’s a little boy, nine years young and sick with wonder, who grows up on William Ave. The little boy doesn’t have a name yet, not one that matches the face he sees when he looks in the mirror. But the little boy does have a big, red, anatomically incorrect heart, and lungs filled with the potential to expand beyond his breast bone, and bright brown eyes the color of mud and sticks.

The little boy also has a backyard. And when you’re a little boy, backyards are perfect for adventures. Backyards have tall, uncut grass for critters to hide in, and weeds to stomp through, and flowers to pick for imaginary lovers. Backyards have huge, tall fences that hide you from your neighbors. Backyards have balconies that are also castles and pirate ships and bridges, and backyards have pools that are also oceans and rivers and floods.

Front yards are okay too sometimes. Front yards have semi-circle driveways that wrap around the giant tree, the kind of tree that’s somehow woodier than all of the other trees, a tree that’s so unbelievably dense and chock full of wood, like a four-course meal for a woodpecker. That kind of tree. The little boy would love to climb that tree, but all of its branches are too high, and it’s probably full of monsters anyways.

Monsters like the vampire family that lives across the street. The little boy loves the vampire family that lives across the street. He knows that they aren’t really vampires, that’s just what his mom says as a joke ‘cause they never come outside when it’s sunny. But it’s more fun to think that they are really vampires, and the little boy imagines that when he’s riding around his driveway on his Razor scooter, the vampire family is watching him through their windows, thinking about how yummy his little boy blood must taste.

The little boy likes blood. Except a few weeks ago, when he fell while running away from his cousin and skinned his knee up real bad. Blood isn’t fun when you’re running away from your cousin. Blood is only fun when vampires are involved, or when you’re on an adventure. He got a Spongebob band-aid for his hurt knee, though, and Spongebob band-aids are always fun.

The front yard also has wishy flowers. The little boy knows they aren’t actually called wishy flowers, but he always forgets the real name of them, and wishy flowers is as good a name as any. A wishy flower by any other name would smell as sweet, or something like that. The little boy doesn’t get that reference yet, but he would agree with the sentiment if he did.

Wishy flowers are fun. They’re good for kicking, and they’re real good for running through. The little boy loves running through the wishy flowers in his front yard, the cluster of them that grows in front of the giant tree, and watching the little white fuzzies go everywhere, like snow if it snowed in the wrong direction.

Wishy flowers are good for wishing, too, but everyone knows that. The little boy believes in wishes, ‘cause why wouldn’t he? Not believing in wishes is like not believing in crossing your fingers, and one time, the little boy’s mom’s car wouldn’t start, so the little boy crossed his fingers on both hands, and guess what? The car started! So of course he believes in finger crossing, and if you believe in finger crossing, then you’d be plain old stupid not to believe in wishes. And anyway, why would there be wishy flowers if wishes weren’t real?

So the little boy believes in wishes. He’s worried about running out of wishes. Between wishy flowers and eyelashes and ladybugs, he’s already used up a lot of his wishes on silly things, little boy things, like wishing for his mom to let him go to Chuck E. Cheese for his next birthday. He wonders what he’ll wish for when he’s older. When he’ll need to use his wishes on only the most important stuff, like going to a real good college, or getting a real good job, or marrying someone real nice. You gotta use wishes on the right stuff, the little boy thinks, ‘cause only some of them can come true, and you don’t want it to be just the stupid ones.

The little boy learned that wishes are important when his granny choked on one. A little white fuzzy flew into her mouth while she was sunbathing outside one day. She was wearing her magic orange bikini and laying down on the pool chair on the balcony and then poof! The wish slipped right between her lips and zipped down her throat and got stuck there. The little boy was doing homework with his cousin at the kitchen table when it happened. He was eating a green popsicle when his mom called 911, and it was this whole big thing, but then his granny was just fine. Probably ‘cause she wished for that wish to get out of her throat, or maybe ‘cause she was wearing her magic orange bikini, or maybe some combination of the two. Smart granny.

The little boy couldn’t finish his green popsicle after that, though. He just put it down on the table and watched it melt into a gooey green puddle.

The little boy likes stories about death. He worries that liking stories about death means that he’s evil or something, but he’s pretty sure that lots of little boys like stories about death. But if there’s one kind of story he likes even more than the ones about death, it’s the kind where someone almost dies. The pirate almost drowns in a whirlpool, but then his captain rescues him and gives him CPR. The knight almost gets crushed when the castle collapses on him, but then the friendly dragon helps him to safety. The granny almost chokes to death on a wish, but then she coughs it up and everything’s fine. There’s a green popsicle melting on the table, and a pounding in the little boy’s big, red, anatomically incorrect heart that he’s never felt before, the kind of pounding that makes him feel like he might throw up, the kind of pounding that’s accompanied by short, shallow breaths and fidgety hands. But the pirate didn’t drown, and the knight didn’t get crushed, and the granny didn’t choke to death, and everything is just fine.

Everything is just fine. But the boy, nine years old and sick with wisdom, doesn’t run through the cluster of wishy flowers anymore. It’s probably dangerous, he thinks, having all of those fuzzy white things floating around everywhere. And besides, it’s a waste of wishes anyway.