Taming the Muse--Prompt 20
Nov. 25th, 2006 02:10 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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tamingthemuseNot what I usually write--this time, it's more of a true story, wrapped in fiction.
Title: Me, Mikey, and Old
Rating: PG
Fandom: none
Pairing: none
Warnings: none
Summary: I don't remember growing old. I do remember Mikey.
God, I remember growing up so well…I can’t believe that the time went by so fast. I don’t feel old, never have, but when I look in the mirror and see that face looking back at me I wonder if it really is me or someone posing as me.
When we were kids, so long ago, we had a pygmy goat. He was adorable—followed us around like a dog. No horns yet, he was too young for that, but he had the goat eyes—you know, the scary looking ones where the pupils are up and down and not round? We called him Mikey.
Mikey was a goat, but he was our ‘dog’—he played with us like a dog would, followed us like a dog would, fetched and rolled over and basically did tricks like a dog. Except I don’t think that a dog would eat everything we gave him like Mikey would. Our favorite thing was to feed him dandelions. Buckets of dandelions. It would give him the squirts, but it stained his mouth and beard yellow and gave him an interesting look, for once.
There weren’t a lot of kids around and we learned to play with each other, because alone was no fun. Every once in a while the kids from down the road would come and visit their grandparents and we would finally have enough people for a pick-up game of ball or tag or whatever; that was a rare treat for us, since two can’t do much of anything besides compete. We called them the Willbillies, because their last name was Will and they were dressed in clothes that were worse hand-me-downs than ours—probably because they were stairstep kids too. The oldest was a girl the same age as me and the youngest was about six or seven years younger with all the ages covered in between. Good Catholic families, all of us. Crazy Catholic families, trying to raise passels of kids on little to no money.
They came over one day and we played until we couldn’t run any more. We all flopped down in the grass and lay there panting and talking. Marsha, the oldest Willbilly, was petting Mikey as he sat there just like a dog, panting with the rest of us.
I will say that Mikey had the silkiest fur I’ve ever seen on any animal. It was so soft that it was easy to get hypnotized into petting it, exactly what happened to Marsha. Pretty quickly she made her way from the hindquarters to his back, finally to his head when she looked at us with horror and her eyes grew three times larger in her face.
She looked at me and whispered in horror, “Do you know your dog has horns?”
I couldn’t help myself. I looked at my little brother and we both busted a gut laughing at her. Literally. We were rolling around on the ground holding our stomachs we laughed so hard. Marsha got this offended look on her face and got up to leave, towing her little brothers behind her.
Of course, she was a townie. She didn’t know what a goat was, much less that Mikey would have horns eventually. You couldn’t see them for the fur over them, but you could feel the little bumps since they had started sprouting. I climbed to my feet, trying to hide the little wet spot where I’d laughed until I peed a little, and tried to talk to her.
She turned her nose up at me and walked back to her grandparents, head held high.
She was my best girl friend and I ruined it by laughing. I didn’t laugh much that summer, mourning for what I had lost. That fall I found out that they were going to the other Catholic school, the one for the rich kids and I wondered how Marsha would get along with people who didn’t understand her like I did.
And now, fifty years later, with lines that seam my face and a body that isn’t fit to run or play like I used to, I still wonder.
But all I have to do to get a good laugh out of my brother who never laughs anymore is walk up to him and whisper, “Do you know your dog has horns?”
That’s one thing that cancer doesn’t destroy—your sense of humor. It never fails to make him laugh and if that’s the only thing that I can do for him, then I’ll do it.
But I still look in the mirror and wonder who that stranger is. She isn’t me. She’s someone who looks like me, with my memories, but she isn’t the girl who played drums or ran for hours or rode motorcycles until we ran out of gas. She isn’t the girl who cried over her first love after he had a fatal interaction with a train, nor is she the one who defied society and came out when she was in her twenties. She isn’t brave or defiant anymore. She’s old. I’m not old. I’ll never be old.
But my dog? He’ll always have horns.
Title: Me, Mikey, and Old
Rating: PG
Fandom: none
Pairing: none
Warnings: none
Summary: I don't remember growing old. I do remember Mikey.
God, I remember growing up so well…I can’t believe that the time went by so fast. I don’t feel old, never have, but when I look in the mirror and see that face looking back at me I wonder if it really is me or someone posing as me.
When we were kids, so long ago, we had a pygmy goat. He was adorable—followed us around like a dog. No horns yet, he was too young for that, but he had the goat eyes—you know, the scary looking ones where the pupils are up and down and not round? We called him Mikey.
Mikey was a goat, but he was our ‘dog’—he played with us like a dog would, followed us like a dog would, fetched and rolled over and basically did tricks like a dog. Except I don’t think that a dog would eat everything we gave him like Mikey would. Our favorite thing was to feed him dandelions. Buckets of dandelions. It would give him the squirts, but it stained his mouth and beard yellow and gave him an interesting look, for once.
There weren’t a lot of kids around and we learned to play with each other, because alone was no fun. Every once in a while the kids from down the road would come and visit their grandparents and we would finally have enough people for a pick-up game of ball or tag or whatever; that was a rare treat for us, since two can’t do much of anything besides compete. We called them the Willbillies, because their last name was Will and they were dressed in clothes that were worse hand-me-downs than ours—probably because they were stairstep kids too. The oldest was a girl the same age as me and the youngest was about six or seven years younger with all the ages covered in between. Good Catholic families, all of us. Crazy Catholic families, trying to raise passels of kids on little to no money.
They came over one day and we played until we couldn’t run any more. We all flopped down in the grass and lay there panting and talking. Marsha, the oldest Willbilly, was petting Mikey as he sat there just like a dog, panting with the rest of us.
I will say that Mikey had the silkiest fur I’ve ever seen on any animal. It was so soft that it was easy to get hypnotized into petting it, exactly what happened to Marsha. Pretty quickly she made her way from the hindquarters to his back, finally to his head when she looked at us with horror and her eyes grew three times larger in her face.
She looked at me and whispered in horror, “Do you know your dog has horns?”
I couldn’t help myself. I looked at my little brother and we both busted a gut laughing at her. Literally. We were rolling around on the ground holding our stomachs we laughed so hard. Marsha got this offended look on her face and got up to leave, towing her little brothers behind her.
Of course, she was a townie. She didn’t know what a goat was, much less that Mikey would have horns eventually. You couldn’t see them for the fur over them, but you could feel the little bumps since they had started sprouting. I climbed to my feet, trying to hide the little wet spot where I’d laughed until I peed a little, and tried to talk to her.
She turned her nose up at me and walked back to her grandparents, head held high.
She was my best girl friend and I ruined it by laughing. I didn’t laugh much that summer, mourning for what I had lost. That fall I found out that they were going to the other Catholic school, the one for the rich kids and I wondered how Marsha would get along with people who didn’t understand her like I did.
And now, fifty years later, with lines that seam my face and a body that isn’t fit to run or play like I used to, I still wonder.
But all I have to do to get a good laugh out of my brother who never laughs anymore is walk up to him and whisper, “Do you know your dog has horns?”
That’s one thing that cancer doesn’t destroy—your sense of humor. It never fails to make him laugh and if that’s the only thing that I can do for him, then I’ll do it.
But I still look in the mirror and wonder who that stranger is. She isn’t me. She’s someone who looks like me, with my memories, but she isn’t the girl who played drums or ran for hours or rode motorcycles until we ran out of gas. She isn’t the girl who cried over her first love after he had a fatal interaction with a train, nor is she the one who defied society and came out when she was in her twenties. She isn’t brave or defiant anymore. She’s old. I’m not old. I’ll never be old.
But my dog? He’ll always have horns.
no subject
Date: 2006-11-26 11:01 am (UTC)A dog with horns... nice :)
*hugs*