The Odd Days

It was an aberration; an anomaly in the birth canal, but boy oh boy if you could have been there, if you could have seen it! The child came shooting out with a skull enough for two of them – screams and rips, the lens of each frame is painted translucent red and dripping. Yessir, the doctor swore it was the biggest head he’d ever saw on a critter, “whoo,” exhaling as he mops his brow with the pale blue and brown speckled sleeve of his scrubs, “what a show.”

The waiting room was packed, haggard reporters smoked cigars and downed miniature cups of vending machine coffee, filling the role of the absentee father; good for nothing schmuck. They all waited, clucking and murmuring about the newest freak show in town.

But the mother kept him and coddled him, cooing like every new mother must, swinging the ballooned baby in the crook of her arms. Before she released him to the world of gawks and stares, she sat rocking her precious baby boy, cheeks wet with joy at the beauty of what she held. It was hers, a piece from her ripped out from inside in violence and bright lights. She made him, the repulsive little thing. She licks her lips to ease her tongue, dry and cracking; they taste of salt, whether sweat or tears she cannot tell. Her cries thicken in either joy or fear or possibly both. As the hospital filled with ooh-ers and onlookers, the mother sat coddling her boy, whispering fantasies both near and far of unlikely heroes to welcome him gently into this world, wondering how he’ll possibly fare.

Still, the real show was to watch him grow. Parents and teachers and strangers all stared collectively in awe throughout the years, worried or possibly waiting for that giant head of his to teeter over and bring the tiny fleshy frame crashing down with him. It was a freakish baby balancing act watching him learn to stand and walk. His massive head sprouted fine blond hairs, wisping around his skull like cloud patterns on a distant earth, moonside window view looking down. The thin fibers of his jacket, like those on his head, shake terrifyingly with every gust of wind. But the boy would move on, stepping gingerly as any toddler might, completely unaware of his own bobbling head.

Neighbors would bring their kids to the park for play, hoping to get a look at the beast move with astounding elegance. Their necks would crane and women gasped, grabbing their collars outside on fall days at the thought of the precious boy tumbling down and never getting up – they never dared push him, but they all dreamt of it. Still the boy pressed on, indifferent and unaware; his feet would bound to the sound of his mother’s fairytales rushing through his memory.

The danger years were three to five, years clad with desperate denigrating braces and outrageous DIY solutions. Grandma pasted popsicle sticks into the collar of his baby gap shirts. Grandpa was often found whispering lectures late at night, suggesting he figger this whole head thing out before he hits puberty. The neighbor Jan swore to pete’s sake that a spoonful of pure maple syrup and just a drop of artists cement would harden that neck right up. His older sister joked that they should just drain it of all the air before he floats away. But late at night she would peer into his bed imagining the best place to drill without seriously hurting her stupid airhead brother. Sometimes she ran into Grandpa there. Uncle Al was even seen once dangling the boy by only his head, shaking slightly with the spins of too much Jameson. He was sure that with the right taps of his plumber hands, he could unclog whatever it was that was fillin that baby boy brain uh his.

But then one day he straightened out, just like that, about age seven and a half. He came home from school with his head down an inch and body up. And the day after that and the day after that until the boy’s bulb was indistinguishable from the rest of his 2^nd grade class. The kid was a medical marvel, no longer cursed with that massive, obtrusive head. His mother threw a big party and everyone was invited – the ladies wore sequined cocktail dresses and the men rented tuxes, and they drank champagne until five in the morning. The party was better than New Years and lasted twice as long. The reporters swarmed, now with open invitations. They sucked on Lucky Strikes and downed flutes of bubbly, taking quotes from an inebriated mother about happy endings and unlikely heroes.

And as years went by the boy slipped into normalcy, walking and talking and playing with toys and memorizing multiplication tables and pulling the pigtails of crying girls like all his friends. The only mention of his former head size was when Uncle Al would knock back too much of the golden juice at family get togethers and slur some lines about, “Remember yur boy had a head like a library globe?? Damn, shur was big. Whatever happened to that head?” and then Mom would slap him one good, straight into sleep. The world shirked it off, the garish impressiveness of baby boy, the story of miracles. But late at night, when he would rest his head on newly purchased kid-sized pillows, he could still hear grandpas lectures or his big sister mumbling to herself. Night was when he remembered himself as he truly was. He could still hear the cooing of his mother’s fairytales about broken heroes and peculiar gentleman with fantastical endings.

And people began to forget about the odd days. Mom burned the photo albums and said she lost them in the move. Grandma died and Grandpa took up woodwork. Neighbor Jan moved to Greenwich Village to try her hand at sculpting and his sister went to college for nursing. Only Uncle Al and the boy himself seemed to cling to a recollection of the odd days, but what did Uncle Al know, he’s a drunk. His childhood memories were shaky, maybe from the wear of passing time. But when he was alone, he’d spend hours with them, seeing that the visions themselves were always unfocused, what with the years of wobbling under the weight of his massive skull.

In those days he never once cried about it, back when he didn’t know any better. But these days the fairytales were the only things to still soothe him to sleep. He’d toss and turn at night thinking of the plight of the outcasts, the loner life. He’d elaborate on banal works of fiction, making them more disparaging at first and more fantastical in the end. The broken heroes, they spent years alone, crushing great things in their awkwardness and fumbles. But they deserved much more than that, they just couldn’t contol it, couldn’t know better, and every time, one day, they find their glorified place, unique and celebrated in a world that never quite fit them.

Time is oft spent in the memory of the middling folk, dreaming of years passed, the odd days or the exceptional ones. The less the world learned to gawk in awe at his now unremarkable form, the more he swore it to be his. Uncle Al died of alcohol poisoning. Finally, the tears would come, but only at brief, when shaky memories took hold of shaky hands. Alone, they shattered picture frames and ceramic figurines lining his shelves. Broken records and torn books scattered across the floor of his adult home. The scene would zoom out and he’d see it, crying in fear for the things he lost and joy at his own heroic fumblings. Curled on the floor, among the ruins of all his precious things, he’d breathe in stories of unlikely heroes. And for a brief moment, he’d lick his lips and taste the salt like that of his mother, confused and lost in what exactly he was crying for.