Imagine (the window)

There once was a boy who didn’t have an imagination.

 The boy’s name was Alex. 

*

Now, for you to truly believe this story, you’ll need to use your imagination. Isn’t that a paradox? To believe something about a kid with a missing imagination by using your own?

Anyways, back to Alex.

When Alex was 2 years old, his parents- who were loving and devoted- started to notice things. They would read to him, and he would just stare straight at them, eyes unflinching, vacant. Even when they would get to the exciting part of the story, when the knight was about to save the princess from the dragon, he would stay staring ahead. The toys were the next thing. Like all parents, they bought him far too many toys. And they all sat in their box. He would look at them, the cars and trucks, blocks and army men, but they would all sit untouched and forgotten. It was like, to him, they were just as ordinary as forks or shoes, and who wants to play with those? Or maybe, it was that the idea of play in itself was a concept that Alex didn’t even understand. 

These were the kinds of questions that Alex’s parents would ask themselves at night after Alex was asleep. All parents are aware of those thoughts that creep into their minds: will our child be “typical”? Or “normal?” What awful words those are. Surely, we can do better. What is normal anyway? Who decides what is typical?

I digress.

This is about Alex. So they brought him to the doctor. Ran tests where big people would speak to this little person, getting down on their knees, going to his level to make him feel safe, asking him questions that were scientifically engineered to plumb the depths of the intricate machinery inside this boy’s skull. 

Nothing. Completely “normal”, whatever that means. A healthy young boy. Nothing on the spectrum, no delays of any kind, nothing even remotely off-putting about his brain. The doctor told the parents he is probably just more of a “left-brain” kind of kid- who knows, maybe he’ll be a scientist one day? So the concerns were left like that book that you plan on reading- on a shelf to be covered in dust. 

A note on the parents: Alex’s parents were your “typical” parents. They worked “normal” jobs, were firmly entrenched in the middle class, and lived in a relatively small town in a relatively prosperous country. The peccadilloes and idiosyncrasies of these people are not important; for in the grand scheme of things, these are not what life is all about. Of course, Whitman was right when he said he contains multitudes, but for most of us, it is the bigger things in life that dominate our lives. Love and loss, darkness and light, and the ever-present struggle towards prosperity and peace; this is what keeps us awake at night. And so, as Alex got older, his parents started to worry more. In grade school, he did okay in most things. He was able to grasp facts, things with rules and hard lines, where reason is responsible for setting parameters, but even then, when curiosity became involved, Alex seemed detached, like he couldn’t imagine a world where things that weren’t visible in front of his eyes could be true. 

English was the worst. Creative writing turned into stories that he had experienced, to the letter, and he couldn’t follow along with works of fiction. All of this culminated in a number of meetings with principles and educational psychologists, and all of the meetings resulted in testing, and all of the testing resulted in the same outcome.

One morning when Alex was in 5th grade, Alex’s dad approached him at the breakfast table. 

“Hey bud, can I talk to you for a minute?” 

Alex loved his parents. I don’t want to give you the impression that Alex couldn’t feel. Feelings were fine because feelings were noticeable. Sometimes, he would feel angry or sad when he got a test back with a low grade, confused when he couldn’t figure out why. He felt happy when he would get a chance to read about people who invented things, even though the part of him that could have invented something was sealed tight. He knew he was loved, though, and the look on his father’s face at that moment told him that. 

“If you don’t want to answer this question you don’t have to. But, I was just wondering… When you are thinking, y’know, to yourself, say, at night before you go to bed, do you ever think about things that aren’t… y’know… real?” 

Alex sat for a moment and pushed a Cheerio around his bowl. He looked at his dad and said, “No. I don’t.” 

There was no rudeness or snarkiness involved in his curt response, only the concision of truth, unfiltered and unrefined.

 His dad nodded. “So have you ever thought about something that wasn’t real? Like, even something in the future? What about what the world will be like in 20 years? I know you like that book about Thomas Edison, what do you think he thought about?” 

Alex sat still again. He spoke slowly, deliberately:

“When I think about things that aren't real, that I can’t prove or don’t know exist… I don’t know. Nothing comes. I don’t know about the future. It’s a big, empty hole, I guess. I think that the things that’ll happen will happen and fill the hole in. And once they happen, I’ll know. But right now, I don’t know.”

“What about imagination? Do you know what the word means?” 

Alex’s face scrunched up, a universal and inherent feature of all children that detects condescension, imagination or not. 

“Of course I do, Dad. It means thinking about things that aren’t real.”

“And what do you think about it?”

“I don’t know, really.” 

“Do you think you… have one? 

Alex paused again. 

“I don’t know. I guess I don’t think about those things much. Some of my friends do, but they just sound silly.”

Alex’s dad smiled and hugged his son. Squeezed him tight. Felt his own very real imagination begin to panic as thoughts of a future for his son wrapped around his throat and squeezed tighter and tighter until he had to think about something else.

*

The thing about parents is that they will stop at nothing to help their children. This won’t be news to you, dear reader, so I won’t waste any time explaining this. What should be explained, however, is that Alex’s father was a resourceful man. He worked in IT, and the only reason this is relevant is that he knew his way around the internet. That evening, while his wife was sleeping, he was on his laptop, the silence of a sleeping house and family enveloping him. He’d found a forum, somehow, that was about parents who were experiencing a similar thing. There was a lot of the usual talk about the spectrum and testing so he scrolled past that until he saw something that caught his eye. It was a post with a link about a new product called the Magic Window. Cringy name aside, it claimed that with cutting-edge pane technology, this window could enhance a child’s viewing experience, turning an ordinary backyard/ front yard scene into something exciting. 

*

Alex’s mom was comfortable having her husband take care of the work around the house. Alex’s father didn’t even feel guilty; it wasn’t like he was bringing the kid to some experimental hormone therapy, right? (He had thought about that, but ruled it out, for obvious reasons.) Anyway, one sunny afternoon when Alex was still in grade 5, his father replaced his window. To Alex’s young, imaginationless mind, there must have been a reason, and he asked his father this question, to which he responded that sometimes, things around the house get old and need to be fixed. This was a satisfactory answer for Alex. 

A few hours later, Alex’s father came downstairs, looking sweaty and tired. 

“Go have a look, bud,” he said. 

Alex wasn’t sure why his dad was asking him to look out a window, but he did what he was told. Up the stairs, into the room and the window… it pretty much looked the same. A little whiter around the edges, a little clearer… but his dad did ask him to have a look, so he did. At first, it was the same. His backyard and his neighbours' backyards, the people who had a pool a few houses back and to the left. After a few seconds, something happened that caught him off guard- something big streaked across the sky. Alex rubbed his eyes and looked again. It was far away, but big enough that he couldn’t help but see it: a gigantic brown shape in the distance moving towards the house. His breath caught in his chest as he watched. Every second brought the shape closer, revealing more details, which turned out to be that whatever this thing was, it was big and it had wings. 

After a minute, it was just about to cross the house in front of him, and he couldn’t believe what he saw: a pterodactyl. He knew from one of the books he read at school, and those books were about science and had fossils to prove it. But he could never really picture what it looked like… until now. He heard a shrieking sound from above as the airplane-sized “bird” flew overhead, and felt his heart pounding. Suffice to say, Alex was confused. After that moment of exhilaration, his young mind didn’t know what to do, so it did the predictable: stay where you are. Not surprisingly, his young mind made the right choice. 

Within a few minutes, there was something else to see. In the corner of his backyard, Alex saw something laying on the grass. At first glance, it looked like a dog. A big dog, but a dog, nonetheless. This was odd, as his family didn’t have a dog, but explainable… until it stood.

 As if on cue, the dog stood up and shook not one, or two, but three heads. It started to run around the yard, nipping at butterflies and rolling around in the grass like your everyday garden variety collie- except this one had three heads. 

Alex had a flash of recognition from last year at school: they had been learning about Greek myths and the underworld. Apparently, there was this three-headed dog that guarded the underworld. Alex just couldn’t buy it. But now, it was right in front of him. It wasn’t acting like an evil dog, not that he, at his young age, could fully comprehend what evil was, but he knew what Hades was supposed to mean, and it was acting like that. He tore his eyes away from the window and stared at his pillow. Internal alarm bells were ringing, signifying a problem that they couldn’t identify- the body’s response to this was to panic- some part of Alex’s mind said (probably with sunglasses on as it was hitting a jukebox to get it working again)... just have another look. 

*

Alex and his father unknowingly became opposing spies in the time that followed Alex’s first glimpse through the windowpane. Alex, for a reason unbeknownst to him, had decided to keep the things he’d seen a secret. Alex’s father, unbeknownst to his wife and his son, was keen to see if his investment had paid off. In short, they were cold war spies that didn’t give each other an inch. Alex was enjoying his window, that is for certain. Every day before school he would wake up early and catch the rising sun, which to him looked different every day: once, it was a huge spaceship, gleaming in the sky. 

Another time, it was a series of neverending concentric rings. 

There were plenty of things on the ground too: some “normal” animals, like snakes and lions, that certainly wasn’t native to Alex’s humble town, along with some things that just had to be made up- a caterpillar with some kind of pipe, a huge bear with a picnic basket, butterflies that were as big as beach balls, walking aardvarks and talking geckos.

 In the odd way that addiction works, even Alex’s young mind understood, at first, that he needed to take things slow. Don’t risk too much at once. But after a while, when the colour of the grass changed to a burning red and the sky a dark lavender, he felt he needed more. This wasn’t lost on his parents, of course. In a strange case of dramatic irony, Alex’s father attributed Alex’s newfound interest in the world outside his window to “maturation” and “good parenting.” His wife accepted this, in the same way that a patient who is blindly given a placebo, thinking it’s a real pill, is gracious of the outcome, and not the process.

 Alex had no ideas about outcomes and processes; he just saw things that he’d never seen before. After a while, he wanted to see more, so he pretended to be sick. The first few times, he didn’t meet much resistance. After all, a kid that imagines anything isn’t likely to make anything up, so he was free to gaze out his new window, seeing pixies and satyrs and gigantic bumblebees. It was after the second day that his mother said he needed to see a doctor, who promptly informed all parties involved that the young man was perfectly healthy; it must be in his head. 

*

High school saw no improvements. Alex thought only of his window, how reality paled in comparison to the fantastic scenes he saw when he got home in the days where sunlight lasted long enough. The “calling-in-sick” ploy didn’t work for long, so he eventually resorted to skipping classes. He would be there for the start of one, say he was feeling sick, and just not come back. Lucky for him, he was only a ten-minute walk from home, so he could soak in a good 30 minutes of window time before he came back to class, looking sufficiently embarrassed at his bowel movements. 

It got worse. 

With each year, he needed more time. There was more to see; more elephants and mermaids and talking peppers that just weren’t available to him in his everyday life. So he stopped caring. Let the calls come in, what could they do? His parents begged and pleaded, please, oh please Alex, go to your classes! He just smiled and came straight home the next day. They had no idea why. Even his father, who was on the ground floor of it all, was at a loss for his son’s interest in truancy. The obvious answer was drugs. A slippery slope that he’d pushed his own son down. Shame.

 So, he took a day off from work and hid in Alex’s closet. Lo and behold, Alex showed up right around the time he should have been learning about Hamlet’s thoughts on the hereafter. Alex’s father watched his son lean against the bed frame, press his eyes against the cool glass, and watch, waiting for the spark or sniff of something illicit. He saw Alex’s face soften, relax, as he took in the magic in front of him. Some force- to be honest, we don’t have a name for this one yet, so you’ll just have to wait- forced Alex’s dad to step out of that closet and ask why. Alex, with his now patchy beard and poking shoulders, told his father that he didn’t know. 

His father told him that he wanted to change the window.

His son, still a novice at emotions and how to communicate them, told him that was fine. They went downstairs. 

Alex’s father went to the bathroom. Alex felt something that told him he should get a knife. It wasn’t like morse code, but a lighting up of neurons. So he did. He wasn’t sure why he needed it, but he wasn’t in the business of questioning orders. His father walked back into the room to pour a glass of water and something told Alex that it was the time that the time was right it was the time it was right to do what it was to do and it was always right and it was it

So he stabbed him. In the back. A few times, just to be sure. He sat at the kitchen table while his father’s breath stopped coming. 

By the time his mother came home, there was no other choice; all he had to do was hide, wait for her reaction, and stab. He thought of nothing else, but his walk up the stairs to his room, opening the door slowly, seeing the window clearly, the steps, one after the other, scuffing clean carpet until his face was home, against that piece of glass, open to the universe that was his friend. 

*

 These days, Alex gets unlimited window time. As much as he wants. You could say he’s a glutton for the great outdoors, even though he’s indoors. 

Yea.

 About that. He can’t really go outdoors, that’s part of the deal. And there are all those guys watching him all the time. He’s taller now. They still ask him questions. Sometimes he answers, sometimes he doesn’t. I’ve been with Alex for quite some time now. I like him just fine. 

Who am I, you ask? Oh, you know me well enough. I’ve been with you every step of the way so far; behind your back, on your side, above your head, in your head, outside of your head and every goddamn place in-between.

 I’ll tell you what: you prove to me that I’m not real, and I’ll prove to you that everything you have experienced in your life actually happened. 

Deal?