A recent Saturday night. Late.

Jill and I are sleeping soundly at opposite ends of the TV Room sectional. I wake up in the flickering darkness and through squinted eye, see Liam between us, nestled back into the deep bend in the middle of the couch, sucking his thumb and staring balefully at the television. He regards me briefly over his small fist, then turns back to the TV. I begin to say something to him, I think.

A cushion… then darkness.

Later, I vaguely remember a sleepy Jill rousting me and herding us upstairs to our real beds. Liam walks ahead of me, and with furrowed brow, I follow his leopard-spotted blanket up the steps. “I’m going to lie down with Liam until he falls asleep,” Jill says.

I may have nodded, but no one really knows.

At the breakfast table the next morning, I suddenly recall my encounter with Liam the night before.

“Liam, were you watching TV last night while we were sleeping?”

“Yep.”

“What were you watching?”

“I watched a movie.”

“What movie?”

“I don’t know. But some guy was sawing somebody else’s foot off, and some other guy was encouraging him.”

I look at Jill, and Jill looks at me. She blinks rapidly.

“And then he was shooting a gun.” Liam continues. “And then he called him the adult word that starts with an ‘F’.”

He points at Jill, ”You know it, Mum-mum, say it!”

“My god. I think our five-year-old was watching ’Saw’.” 

I ask him why he was up in the middle of the night in the first place; how did he come to be watching an R-rated splatterfest, complete with shrieking violence, bloody hacksaws, and profanity-laden amateur limb removal?

He looks up calmly from his blueberry waffle.

“Because I was having a bad dream.”

Saturday. In the car. Liam pointing.

“That tire-swing gives me an idea. We should cut other stranger’s kid’s swings down, and stop them from having fun.”

“Just so you know, if I’ve decided that you have a current running through your body but you’re unable to tell anyone or let go, I plan to dislodge you from that cable by hitting you over the head as hard as I can with this wooden carpet dolly. Yeah. I decided to go with it instead of that aluminum step ladder.”

They’re short, quick little things, and I see them sometimes when I’m falling asleep or rubbing my eyes. They come unbidden, and they resist interaction.

They abhor repetition. They’re encapsulated, fully-formed little visual islands unto themselves, based upon nothing that has preceded them, and gone before scarcely registering. They’re flashes. They’re a sudden blast of scenery, then nothing. They’re non-sequiturs packed into the end of a firehose, then aimed at the open-mouthed face on my brain.

Picture yourself, holding the remote and scanning quickly through a number of empty black TV channels. You know that there’s a single active one somewhere, sandwiched pregnantly into the middle of the blindness. Before you pass it, you have no idea what it will show you; by the time you see it, it’s already gone.

They’re like that, but behind your eyes… On the inside, where the karate-man bleeds.

They’re a bored-looking young girl who chews gum with her mouth open. She twirls a leopard-printed rabbit’s foot idly around her finger. With a pop of her gum, she disappears. 

They’re a man dressed as the Underwood Devil, who gleefully stomps his red-booted feet on a dusty wooden floor, then with a slight smile, throws himself through a plate-glass window.

They’re a prairie dog, standing upright and fleshed from wet, yellowed cornmeal. It looks haltingly from left to right, then straight ahead. It shakes its head like a dog in a bathtub, and part of its face drops off with a plop.

They live at the edge of peripheral memory, and can be seen only in hindsight.

They’re short, quick little things, and I see them sometimes when I’m falling asleep or rubbing my eyes.

I’m a person who can vote older than a person who can drink older than a baby who can be safely introduced to peanut butter.

Dada: “Hey guys, I had a fun time at the pool with you today. And yesterday! I’m really proud of your good behavior.”

Liam: “Dada? Can we go to the pool usually, or can we go to the pool always?”

Dada: “Um, we can go to the pool… always?”

Liam: “Why?”

Dada:

Nate: “I see horses!”

I was dressed as a chicken. You… were dressed as a chicken. But not as regular chickens. We were each dressed as ‘Boyd’, the small finger puppet that came with our meal at an Arby’s drive-thru, years ago, on a trip I can’t recall, in a state I don’t remember.

We were on an elevator, and I may or may not have thrown my keys in anger, my feathers aflutter. I was facing you, and you were siding me. I may have been Jon Cryer, the actor.

We were leaving the party, the party that found us leaving it dressed as chickens. Not as chickens dress, but as chickens themselves. As Boyd. Matching white feathers and orange bills and royal blue, collared dress shirts and bright red ties. We were discussing something that may or may not have been important, but not important enough to remove our heads. Our emotions were elevated, in more ways than one. And they were not reflected by our round, black soulless plastic eyes, although the rest of everything was - The side of you in my fronts, and the front of me in your sides.

Our faces were frozen in sewn smiles, exaggeratingly happy. As happy as a small finger puppet, smiling up through plastic, and lying beside wrapped roasted beef and turned-over apples. As happy as a small finger puppet, hiding within my cupped hands as I run inside to tell you that I’ve just found a helpless baby bird sitting outside on the ground - do you want to see? As happy as a small finger puppet, smiling somewhere on the third floor, and waiting patiently to be discovered again. Waiting with the patience of cloth.

We stared and we smiled, and we went down and down. I had just thrown my keys, and we were in an elevator, and we were both dressed as chickens.