I.

 

There came a light knock upon the apartment door. 

 

The grown-up grumbled and rose from the armchair in the den to see who was there and at such an early hour. As soon as he opened the door, he was astonished by what he saw. It was a little boy. But not just any little boy. It was himself. He could barely recall what it felt like to be five years old; then again, that’s what pictures are for. 

 

“Hiya, Mister! Mind if I come in?” The little boy asked.

 

The grown-up was flabbergasted, shocked into a temporary paralysis. He remembered at once that uncaring way in which boys tend to mismatch their clothing. The boy standing before him had on a pair of cowboy boots, a pair of superhero pajama bottoms and a blue-and-white striped shirt. 

 

“Sure, sure. I can boil us some coffee.” The grown-up swung the door open further and gestured for the boy to enter with a sweep of the hand.

 

The little boy spat.

 

“Coffee! Gross!” He laughed. “Do you have any milk?”

 

“We’re–I’m–lactose intolerant now.” The grown-up said.

 

The little boy scratched his head. He was hip-hopping from one foot to another. Not in a way that might suggest he was nervous, but rather, it seemed he wanted to spring out of his own childish legs and sprout grown-up ones instead, immediately.

 

“Lack toads in tollbooth ants? What?” The little boy giggled.

 

“I’m allergic to milk. I mean–you’ll become allergic to milk at around age eighteen.” The grown-up said with a sigh.

 

“No way! You’re joshing, right? I drink milk like it’s water, Mister!”

 

The grown-up nodded soberly to indicate to the little boy, this five year old version of himself, that he was telling the truth.

 

“Oh, well. Pop still ok?” The little boy asked.

 

“You’ll want to stay away from sugar.” The grown-up replied. “Say, what do you think of the place?”

 

The little boy wandered around the apartment for a moment. He wobbled a candle set atop the coffee table and with an instep kicked one of the wicker rockers set before the back windows into motion. Then, he spun around and with a smile proclaimed:

“It’s huge! We–I mean–you must be rich!” 

 

The grown-up laughed.

 

“Hardly. It’s only eight-hundred square feet.”

 

“It’s about as big as… three of my rooms! And you have your own toilet? And–woah!–look at the television. It’s so thin!”

 

The inertia of these new findings appeared to prick the little boy’s curiosity further. He now plumbed the apartment without fear, without any prohibitions, and pointed out each and every new novelty.

 

Then, he came across the canvasses stretched below the sill in the bedroom. All fifty or so of them.

 

“You paint?” The little boy asked, his eyes widening.

 

“We–I mean–I only paint sometimes, these days.” The grown-up responded.

 

“They’re incredible! You’re like… what’s that Spaniard’s name?” 

 

“Picasso?”

 

The little boy flushed.

 

“Yes! When we–I–grow up, I’m going to become a Picasso!”

 

The grown-up grew embarrassed.

 

“You see, the thing is… these aren’t very good. They’re not very good at all. I enjoy making them, but in comparison to what some other people can do…”

 

“Oh, please.” The boy said, scooping up a canvass in his tiny hands and beholding it. “It’s much better than my stick figures. And a world beyond by finger painting.”

 

The grown-up laughed.

 

“Then I suppose you do have something to look forward to.” 

 

The little boy set the painting down and scratched his head and then sat on the corner of the bed. The grown-up thought it was eerie, seeing himself as he had been thirty years earlier admiring the life he would one day lead.

 

The little boy looked up questioningly at the grown-up.

 

“What else can you do?” 

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“Well, you can paint. And you make enough money to have a nice apartment with your own toilet and kitchen and–wait–IS THAT A CAT!?”

 

The little boy leapt from the bed as Dilla, fresh from a trip to the litter box, came prancing round the corridor.

 

“That’s Dilla. He’s very funny.”

 

Dilla let loose one of his patented chortles. This one went, “Harrooo-erumph!?” The orange cat meant it as a question, as if to say: “Dad–how on earth did you bend the physics of the universe to rocket your former boyish self into this adult timeline you’re currently deposed to?”

 

The little boy patted Dilla on the head. 

 

“Do you remember when we–I–went to that apartment…” The little boy began.

 

“... And that weird lady without the legs who lived way high up in the skyscraper? And her two cats who cornered you–me–and scratched us up?” The grown-up opined, conclusively so.

 

The little boy and the grown-up stood awhile in silence until Dilla hopped up onto the bed and went, “Car-umf.” As if to say, “What’s past is past.”

 

“What’s past is past.” The grown-up said to the little boy, wondering if it might be worthwhile to assume the part of the stoic and impart some wisdom. “And as for what I can do… well, it’s not terribly impressive.”

 

“Go on.”

 

“Well, let’s see. I like to paint. But only a smidge. We’re–I’m–pretty alright at writing these days. Oh, we’re good at sports–.”

 

“Duh.” The little boy laughed.

 

“However.” The grown-up rubbed his knees. “We seem to be injury prone.”

 

“That’s too bad. Did we make it to The League?”

 

“We weren’t even close.” The grown-up smiled. “It’s pretty competitive, you know.” 

 

“I’ll keep trying anyway.” The little boy admonished.

 

“Let’s see. What else can I do. I can build websites. See that couch over there? I built that. I can make a pretty darn good Southern Seafood Stew. And–”

 

“Are you still friends with the Stanleys and Yoshimuras and Trifones and Howes and Genovesis and–.”

 

“No, no. Not really–but... I do see pictures of them online.”

 

“What’s an online?” The boy asked.

 

“I don’t know if even I can explain it.”
 

“Are you smarter than dad?” The little boy asked.

 

“Probably not.”

 

“Oh, that’s okay. He’s smart. Are you smarter than mom?”

 

“Probably not, either.”

 

“That’s okay, too. She’s smart, also. Are you happy?”

 

The grown-up grew wistful.

 

“Sometimes. Sometimes I am.”

 

“Why aren’t you happy all the time? I don’t understand–you can do everything!” The little boy threw his hands up into the air and let loose a huff of breath in exasperation.

 

“Well, for a long time, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I just knew I liked being creative and daydreaming and using my brain to solve problems. But then… I sort of got lost along the way. I let people who were older than me–who I probably shouldn’t have listened to–tell me what to do. Boss me around. And then–”

 

“Hold on. I need a break.” The little boy rubbed his temples. “My attention span isn’t what it used to be.”

 

The grown-up laughed.

 

“It’s fun making people laugh even though we’re not very funny. We are, but we’re not. But anyway, we started… making bad decisions. We put ourselves–got put into–bad situations. And we made bad decisions. Those bad decisions compounded and suddenly, we were… let’s just say we didn’t go to jail, but we were close. We never found a wife. Never made much money. Never had much success. Never traveled to Europe or Asia or South America or Africa or… At this age, we’re not going to have kids. We’re sad about it, too. Our dream, in our twenties, shifted from playing in the major leagues to making movies and writing stories and starting companies and having a wife and kids and living in a house on a cul-de-sac–just like you do–alongside all of our very best friends.”

 

The little boy looked around at the apartment and pulled his mouth sideways.

 

“You act like it’s over. It’s not over! How old are you–fifty?” The little boy asked.

 

“Thirty-four going on thirty-five.” The grown-up said.

 

“That’s nothing! If you start now, you can–”

 

“If I have a kid tomorrow, I’ll be forty by the time he’s your age.” The grown-up said.

 

“Dad’s only like… thirty… or something. I always forget his birthday.”

 

“See my point?” 

 

“Look.” The little boy said, pulling up his pants. “You need to buckle up, sally. Life isn’t what you think it is. I was four last year, and now I’m five. I could barely read two summers ago and now, I can read all by myself. Don’t give up! Please! You–we–need to just… do what we’re good at. We need to find what makes us happy, and do it. Find people like us. Oh, and we need to buy more Pokemon cards–for sure. Those are going to be worth something someday.”

 

“You’re right about that.” The grown-up said.

 

“Come on now.” The little boy led the way into the living room and plopped himself down on the couch. He patted the cushion next to him. The grown-up sat down beside the little boy.

 

“It didn’t break, now did it?” The little boy smiled.

 

“No. No, I suppose it didn’t break.”

 

“Maybe… maybe you need to take a break. A vacation from this place, from your mind. Maybe it’s time you find a pretty girl who makes your heart stutter. And maybe… maybe it’s time you check out all those countries–”

 

“Continents–”

 

“Right, continents… that you were talking about earlier. Maybe you just need to find a new space.”

 

The grown-up hugged the little boy, a single tear racing like a toboggan down the slope of his cheek.

 

“That’s the wisest thing you’ve–we’ve–ever said.”

 

____________________________________________________________________________________

 

II.

 

A skittering ra-ta! elicited from the window. 

 

The grown-up poked an eye open and lifted his head off the pillow. He stretched his arms overhead and yawned. 

 

Ra-ta!

 

“It’s too early!” The grown-up grumbled aloud to himself.

 

He rose from the bed and opened the window and gazed out of it. The little boy on the lawn below had his arm raised and was preparing to launch another pebble up to the third floor. 

 

“What do you want!” The grown-up called out to the little boy.

 

“Let’s play!” The little boy yelled back. A chandelier in a neighbor’s kitchen sparked to life.

 

“Shh! I’ll come down!” The grown-up hush-yelled, mordantly aware of the social upset he had caused. 

 

The grown-up fumbled his way through the apartment and the grey of another early morning in search of his slippers. He looked high and low, peering under the bed and between the shirts hanging from the rack in the closet and he even checked the refrigerator just in case he had mistakenly, while in a haze, tossed them beside a juice carton.

 

“Cahoo-daroomph!” Dilla called out from his corner perch. The grown-up waddled over to the cat and wagged a finger at him.

 

“No, I didn’t check for my slippers under your belly. Why would that have been the first thought?” The grown-up replied.

 

“Brrraaa-stuft!” Dilla chittered, as if to say, “You know I have a strong affinity for textures, especially for those that are fuzzy. This is your fault, not mine!”

 

“Get up, smelly.” The grown-up said, scooping Dilla up in his arms and lightly tossing the beast onto one of the padded rockers. 

 

The grown-up descended the wooden stairwell and found the little boy tip-tapping on a watch wrapped around his wrist.

 

“Seventy-seven, seventy-eight, seventy-nine…” The little boy announced in a loud whisper. “What took you so long?”

 

“Dilla decided to pull another hoodwink this morning.”

 

“I see! Say, Mister, whatdyawannado today?” The little boy tugged at the shirt of the grown-up.

 

“How about if we find a library and read?” The grown-up suggested. “Or perhaps, we can go for a long, long drive while my brain fires up.”

 

“Let’s go bowling.” The little boy said.

“It’s five in the morning.”

 

“I never understood why–fine. What if we do a stone skipping competition at the park instead?”

 

“That sounds like it may trigger my tennis elbow…” The grown-up gazed upon the face of the little boy. The little boy looked equal parts heartbroken and bewildered. How could the grown-up remand further, and under any strain of good conscience?

 

“... But. Fine. You win.” The grown-up replied, patting the head of the little boy. 

 

At the pond, the little boy and the grown-up dusted the grounds for the most desirable stones.

 

“The best stones are the stones that fit easily into the palm of your hand.” The little boy proclaimed with an air of authority. “We’re looking for those smooth, flat suckers. The fellas that aren’t going to scrape your fingertips at the point of release.”

 

The little boy had an arm full of perfectly well-plucked stones. The grown-up, meanwhile, only had a pair of bloated and somewhat unsatisfactory specimens in his arsenal.

 

“How are you doing this so fast?” The grown-up asked the little boy.

 

“Whatdyamean?” The little boy replied, genuinely confused.

 

“I seem to be rusty. Finding the right stones to use isn’t as easy for me as it seems to be for you.”

 

“Well, then you have to practice more. Sometimes, I come to this pond in my dreams and dream of finding the perfect skipping stone.” The little boy said.

 

“Have you ever found it?”

 

“No. Not yet. This one time I found a skipping stone that looked like a donut, but thinner…”

 

“You mean, a CD?”

 

“What’s a CD?” The little boy asked.   

 

“It’s a disc that old people like me purchased to play music in cars and stereos and such. Before phones were programmed with music libraries and before they had headphone jacks.” The grown-up reminisced aloud, his mind darting a thousand different directions. 

 

“Well, I thought the dream stone I mentioned, the CD, was perfect at first. But then I tried it out, and it didn’t go very far. And it also scratched my hand. I think I expected too much out of it. Or, maybe I just wasn’t ready for it.”

 

“I’m not a geologist.” The grown-up began. “But you’ll want to find a skipping stone that suits you. One that doesn’t have a hole in the middle of it.”

 

“Is this supposed to be some grand life lesson?” The little boy asked, smiling lightly. “I just want to skip stones, man.”

 

“You brought it up.”

 

The little boy and the grown-up continued to scour the beach for more skipping stones. The little boy had collected so many that he had to make trips to and from a nearby drop-point to keep from suffering under the weight of them all. The grown-up, though nowhere near as fast as the little boy, meanwhile started to pick up his own pace, finding it easier and easier to identify the promising skipping stones among the clutter.

 

“Are you ready to start slinger-ringing?” The little boy asked the grown-up.

 

“Let’s give it a shot.” The grown-up replied. He was more excited to throw rocks than he had anticipated.

 

The little boy and the grown-up gathered up their skipping stones and trudged across a sturdy wooden dock jutting out of a bay rimmed by colorful weeds and a thick treeline. Before them lay open water. It was a windless morning, and so the water looked like glass and very nearly perfectly re-rendered the blank skies stretched above.

 

“You first.” The boy proclaimed.

 

The grown-up plucked a stone shaped like a waxing gibbous from his small pile. He gave a short hop and flung the stone off the dock towards the horizon. The stone plunked unceremoniously into the water and descended quickly to the lake bottom.

 

“Too much arc, not enough oomph.” The little boy quipped. “Try it more like this.” 

 

The little boy rubbed the skipping stone he held between his palms like a magic lamp and then whirled around three hundred and sixty degrees. Then, he righted his orientation, hopped high, crouched low, and let loose a whistling toss. The skipping stone skittered across the water for what seemed like an eternity before losing momentum and sinking below the surface with profuse grace.   

 

“That was excellent!” The grown-up encouraged the little boy. The little boy puffed out his chest.

 

“You used to be good at this, you know.” The little boy said. “You’re just rusty, that’s all. Too much work, not enough play.”

 

“Makes Jack a dull–”

 

“Stone!” The boy cried out, flipping the prototype over to the grown-up.

 

“We’ve got this.” The grown-up muttered, motivating himself. He adopted the approach of the little boy, spinning three hundred and sixty degrees before loosening the stone. This time, the skipping stone clipped the surface of the water, turned parabolic, and then cannonballed back into the water with a hearty splash.

 

“That’s the ticket!” The little boy laughed, hugging the grown-up. “Keep trying! There’s no harm in keeping trying!”

 

The little boy and the grown-up took turns skipping stones as the grey early morning transformed into warm, honey-fired dawn, and from dawn soon after came the conventional sky blues of daybreak. The grasshoppers thrummed to life in the tallgrass. Planes soon began to poke their noses through the shifting vapors of clouds. A pair of small fishing boats, one being slightly larger than the other, eventually dotted the horizon.

 

“Do you smell that?” The grown-up asked the little boy.

 

“Smell what?” The little boy responded.

 

The grown-up peered over the edge of the dock and turned back to the little boy, smiling. Then, he kneeled, thrust a hand into the water, and came back clutching the perfect skipping stone.

 

“It’s the perfect skipping stone!” The grown-up whopped.

 

“Victory!” The little boy whooped.

 

“Here.” The grown-up extended his hand to the little boy. “You throw it. This is your dream.”
 

“Our dream.” The little boy said with a chuckle and a wink. He grabbed the stone from himself, felt a surge of new and old blood course through his veins, and then fired the stone towards the horizon, sensing the wise instincts of childhood and the learned intuitions of adulthood guide the projectile towards its destiny.