…the way it was. I was always small, dark, and serious. I guess was and always don’t really emphasize how small, how dark, and/or how serious I always was. I was never not small, dark, and serious. For example, I slept only a couple hours out of the night, but that sleep was always deep. In my dreams I was always plotting and learning. I’d leave a pen and paper by my pillow at night and when I woke, it was always covered in small, dark, serious writing.
By the time I was in the Third grade, my mom thought I had a problem. She asked everyone we knew what my problem was. “What’s his problem?” I’d hear her ask in the hallway after school and on the telephone. Sometimes, I’d hear her ask it over and over in her sleep. No one seemed to know. “He’s just young,” they’d always reply “some day he’ll grow up and learn to have fun.”
One day, a small, dark, and very serious box was sitting on our front porch when I got home from school. It was addressed to my mom, which I didn’t mind at all. “What’s this?” I asked myself in my tiniest, deepest, most business-like voice. No one said anything because no one else was there.
After organizing the mail into three piles (fun, junk, and bills), eating a snack (celery and peanut butter), and scanning the front page of The New York Times, I decided to open the box up. Inside was a pocket sized, grey electronic dictionary. “Oh, boy!” I said. “Oh! Boy,” I said again, making sure to rearrange the spoken accents so anyone who heard would understand I had moved the exclamation point. No one said anything because no one else was there.
By the time my mom got home, I had already worked up through the word commove which I told her meant, “to move violently”. She smiled, but I could tell it was a fake smile because her nose wrinkled up a little. I felt it was an astute observation, and so I said, “This is a very astute observation. You’re smiling a fake smile.” She laughed, said I could keep the dictionary, and got herself a bowl of ice cream with chocolate syrup and almonds. It looked delicious, which was also an astute observation, but this time I didn’t tell her because I couldn’t think of a better word for delicious.
We ate dinner while watching the news, which was my idea. I thought about the dictionary the whole time. I could feel it in my pocket. It felt warm and electric against my leg, even though it was turned off. Every few minutes, I’d forget about it and then move to grab some bread or shovel some fish into my mouth and there it’d be in my pocket, heavy as lead. I was in love.
That night, I dreamt I was older, larger, paler, and just slightly more jovial. The dictionary and I lived in a petite, brown, practical house on top of a hill. There was a fireplace, a guest bedroom, and a pantry. My vocabulary, as it would be assumed, was ridiculous. My dream self kept saying these short, dismal, serious words that I didn’t understand and drinking cups of black espresso. The dictionary just sat there, across the table from dream-me, looking slightly less shiny. “I’m aware I’m content!” dream me said aloud. He said it again, with more anticipation “I’m aware, I’m content,” making sure to shift the accents in a way I knew all too well. No one said anything because no one else was there.
