Dare to dream...

I FOUND MYSELF lost. My body felt different; my bones felt so fragile and my skin felt so tight. I did not recognize my limbs because they seemed so withered. I was scared. I tried to move but my aching back refused.

I was sitting in a batibot chair, in front of our brown rusty gate, rising up about eight feet. Across the street, the pink house with red roofing was still there, the orange Chinese temple covered by asbestos at the corner, and the green tilted street sign. Everything looked the way it did yesterday. But there was something suspicious in the air.

The streets were so empty. All I could hear was the whisper of the wind and all I could feel was the blazing heat of the sun. There was not a single soul in sight. I was in solitude.

I picked up a shattered piece of glass on the asphalt. I looked at my reflection. To my surprise, a face of a sad old man greeted me. I had gray hair and a slim beard, my lips were dry and eye bags rose like small hills in my face. I was old beyond belief. A cloud of confusion then shrouded my mind.

Had I lost my sanity? It wasn’t surreal enough to be a dream. I kept scratching my head, thinking where and when am I?

About an hour passed. Beads of sweat fell from my forehead. I felt so weary and weak, when suddenly a boy appears from a distance. He carried a small pillow. I could not distinguish his features. My eyes were too old of age. But I heard him talking to his pillow. He kept calling it “pillow-petty.” Obviously he still possessed that moronic innocence of childhood.

He seemed oblivious to my presence. So I called him out, “boy, come here!” He looked at me, with an awkward stare. Then he looked around, as if he was searching for his parents, to ask permission if he could approach me. But his parents weren’t there. His eyes turned back to me as he drew closer. I could tell he was intimidated. Old grouchy looking men have that effect on children.

The boy wore a dirty white cotton shirt, raggedy red shorts, and worn out blue tsinellas. He had a fair amount of scabs in his right leg. And his limbs were huge for his age, a sign that he would grow taller when he hits puberty.

As my eyes slowly focused on his face, to my amazement, he was me! He was I at the age of seven or eight. He did not recognize me, but I recognized him. Goose bumps climbed up my forearms and I started to feel a bit wobbly. I felt like a million hairs fell from my scalp. Words fail to describe the strangeness that gripped me.

As Sherlock Holmes said, “When all the logical solutions to a problem are not accepted, the illogical ones, however impossible they maybe, are possible.” Had I traveled to a parallel universe?

I wanted to find out more about this boy, so I started asking him questions, “what is your name?” he replied hesitantly, “Keith… Keith is my name sir.” I already knew his name but I had to check. Then I continued, “Where are you from?” without giving a chance to answer, I questioned him again, “Where are your parents?” he responded with an ignorant pause. Like every other child, he was unmindful of the important details.

I looked at him in wonder. I never knew that I looked so scared when I was a child. I even carried that very same pillow when I was loitering around the house; I addressed it with the same name “pillow-petty.” So much of my troubled youth passed me by as I watched him. He stared at his feet and he scratched his thumbnail against his forefinger. A habit I used to do whenever I felt uncomfortable. What was going on?

I observed him for the next couple of minutes, until he broke the silence. He looked at me, so pathetically, so helplessly, and his eyes seemed as if they were going to shed tears. He said, “Mister… do you have any money?” I was moved by sadness and sympathy.

However, my coldness got the best of me. I remembered my childhood, where pity only made me weaker. I did not want to show compassion for the boy, because he has to know that the world is cruel. It will show him not an ounce of mercy.

I took a second to gather my thoughts then I replied with such a pitiless tone, “You little shit, how feeble can you be? Your tears are folly” I said, “go on, go away, get your own money, no one will get it for you.” He ran away in small strides, his face grief-stricken and his eyes soaking in tears. He had nowhere to go, but he went where the wind took him. He was alone, as I always was when I was growing up.

The ghost of guilt sat beside me. I checked my pockets. I had none to give him anyway. But it felt wrong. Regret always comes a minute too late.

I sat there, staring at the young me as he ran away, the old man that I was. Thinking about the young man that I’d never been.

I was alone again…