Ben There

Chapter 11
Mid-April; Paying Attention, to Beech Trees

Chapter Description: Benji doesn't notice some things happening. He notice others too much.

Mid-April; Paying Attention, Beech Trees with Squirrels

So many things happened during the next week, which Benji didn’t even notice at first, that you might think he paid no attention at all to the universe around him. But that would be wrong; the trouble was that he paid so much attention to some things that he had none to spare for all the other things. I mean he paid a lot of attention to how far his cars flew off his racing car ramp, and he watched the oriels that were building a nest in his backyard quite closely, and there were lots of other things too, but some things he just totally missed.

I guess no one would have expected him to have noticed exactly when he became shorter than Kathy. That happened while Danielle was taking her turn brushing his hair on Wednesday morning, but the difference was so small at first that it was more than a week before he became aware of it.

And you might not have expected him to notice a change in his hair, but he noticed that on the same Wednesday morning when Danielle said, "Wow, Benji, your hair is so soft and wavy now. I’m going to have to call you Curly soon!" And he felt it, and she was right.

However, you probably would have expected him to notice that he wasn’t assigned to any lessons in the oldest kids’ room at the junior school that whole week, but he didn’t, perhaps because either Peter or Geoff, his other new friend, was always in the sessions with him.

And you would have expected him to notice that his mom had taken his shirt off him several nights at bath time, but he hadn’t because he had been busy talking to Kathy about the game they’d been playing, or the show he’d just watched, or the naval battles they could stage in the tub. He finally realized she had done that a lot when, on Thursday, he was using his hands so much to describe a wreck on his car ramp that she had to say, "Stick ’em up," just to get him to be still enough long enough for her to remove it. And then he realized that she had done it often, and it seemed too late to object. When that same night she unbuttoned his jeans and pushed them to the floor, he wasn’t sure if that was the first time or not.

In fact, Benji hadn’t even noticed that every time it was his turn to have his hair washed, his mom also washed one more part of his body as well. That was mostly due to her having a gentle touch and being sly, only adding a little bit each time, but the distractions of his boats and of kidding Kathy about her dolls also played a part.

Another thing that Benji hadn’t even noticed was that he always called his daddy ’Daddy’ now, not ’Dad’. Nor had he noticed that his daddy called him ’Benji’ now, like everyone else.

And of course, Benji didn’t know he had slept with a thumb in his mouth for a while now, because he was asleep then, but he also hadn’t realized that, unless he was using both hands for something, a thumb was almost always parked in his mouth when he was awake too. Of course, he did know that they got into there from time to time, and every time he noticed it he’d pull out the offending digit, quickly wipe it off on his leg, and hide it behind his back for a minute or more, as if by making it disappear he could obliterate the fact that he’d been sucking it.

He got over a little of his embarrassment about doing that on Tuesday, when he and Geoff were sitting on the bleachers talking to his girlfriend during PE class, and Amber said, "Benji, what does that thumb taste like? It must be really great!"

Benji blushed and did the wipe and hide routine. Geoff, who was really nice and real smart too, even though he wasn’t going to be eight till next fall, said, "Hey, don’t! I use’ to do that; peoples can’t stop it sometimes."

Amber took Benji’s hand, folded down his fingers, put the thumb back in his mouth and said, "I wasn’t on his case, Geoff! And it’s fine you do that, Benj. I’m just curious, is all. Can I try some?"

Banji, still very red, put the thumb up to her mouth, and she took it in her lips and said, "Yummm, butterscotch, and very, very sweet of course! Let me taste yours, Geoff. -- Humm, how can something taste like olives and still be sweet, Geoff? Now, you tell me what mine taste like."

Benji took her thumb all the way into his mouth and noticed mainly how big it was, and he said, "Strawberry." After a quick lick a giggling Geoff agreed, and Amber said, "Oh, I guess that’s caused by my hair color too."

Since PDAs were more tolerated in the junior school than in the big kids’ building, Benji gave his girlfriend a hug and accidentally kissed her on the cheek on the bleachers on the playground.

However, there were many things that Benji did notice that week too.

He had noticed that his shoes came untied a lot more often than they used too. He’d noticed that before one of the junior school teachers made him stand still right in the classroom and tied them for him in front of kids. That particular problem finally got solved on Friday, however, when they came undone before he even got downstairs for breakfast. After that his daddy became his official, certified shoe tier, and his daddy knew a top-secret way to tie shoes, and they never came undone after that. (Of course Benji had been taught that top secret years ago, and had been trying to do it, but his daddy whispered to him, "No problem, Big Ben. I guess your fingers are just a bit small right now to make all those big loops around the bow. I’ll do them for you until your fingers get big again, OK?")

He did notice that his Calculus teacher’s review of arithmetic skills had moved from division and multiplication to long lists of addition to do. He noticed that his stupid English teacher had stopped with all the comma/grammar worksheets and had assigned him a book report now. But why did the teacher insist that it be hand written instead of typed on a computer? (Which reminded him that he needed to set up his computer in his new room still, so that made it a good thing he couldn’t use it for the report really.)

He also had noticed that his Daddy now kissed him goodbye every morning (and hello every evening, and good-night every bedtime), just like he did Kathy. He might not have noticed that if his Daddy’s kisses hadn’t felt so different from his mom’s and Vicky’s (and Amber’s and Danielle’s). (All of Kathy’s and half of Vicky’s kisses just felt very silly.)

And he noticed that his Daddy could now almost throw him up into the air, close enough to pretend, and he did that almost every evening right after he got home, and that was funny.

He noticed that his mom started putting out the old fashioned kind of underwear for him every morning, the kind he thought of as baby underwear and couldn’t remember having worn before. But when he objected, she said that there weren’t many of the other kind in the size he wore now, so he had to use briefs for a while. Well, he knew Peter wore that kind, and Petey wasn’t a baby any more for sure, and neither of his sisters nor his daddy nor Maggie said anything when they saw him in them. And anyway they came in cool colors, like red or blue with yellow, and like that.

He notice that that Saturday night, right after his salamander hunt with Peter, a yellow sippy cup of water appeared beside his bed, just like the one by Kathy’s bed, but there was still no way he was ever going to use that stupid thing, and why did his mom put it there anyway?!

Then one afternoon his matchbox cars were in the midst of heated heats down his racing ramp and, long after afternoon snack and long before dinner, he got thirsty and didn’t want to take the time out to go to the kitchen, so he took one little sip from the sippy cup, and it was white grape (his new favorite). And that led to another huge problem: he liked it. The stupid things were very useful. Like Maggie had said, you could take a quick drink while working on the floor (building stuff, racing cars, reading a book) without having to sit all the way up, but even better than that, you could even drink stuff while lying right on your back.

But he didn’t want anyone to see him drink from them! It was so babyish. So every time he heard Kathy or anyone coming up the stairs or down the hall he hid his cup under the bed or somewhere. But then, late in the week, Vicky just charged into his room without any warning (while he was looking for the invisible stars that showed up on his ceiling at night and thinking of the time when he would be a real race car driver and jump off ramps like his little cars did). He threw the stupid cup behind the desk right away but didn’t know if he’d been quick enough, and he said, "Vicky! Damm-nit, knock on my door!"

Benji had lately noticed that he did like Vicky a lot now; she was real nice and had the third best lap in the house, at least for heads. And she hadn’t knocked at his door in weeks, and he didn’t knock at hers, or anyone else’s either, anymore, but now he was real mad.

"OK, little bro," Vicky said, "What were you doing? Playing with yourself?"

Benji didn’t answer because he didn’t understand the question. Of course he was playing by himself, he had no friends over, and Kathy wasn’t in here. He didn’t remember what else that meant.

Vicky said, "No, that can’t be it. You do that while watching TV and in the tub and don’t care who sees, and mom says it’s OK, as long as it doesn’t become all the time. So...?"

She started looking around on the floor.

Benji, said, "Don’t! Get out, Vicky!"

But just then Vicky smiled and said, "Is that all, Benji? You are so so zo silly-silly willy-nilly, baby bro. First your legs, then your wienie, and now your cup. You always want to hide stuff. You do know everyone knows you use it all the time, don’t you? How did you think it got filled up twice a day?"

Benji had known that it got filled up but had tried not to think about the ramifications of that too much; if he’d thought about it, he would have thought it was just his mom, and maybe Maggie, who knew, not everybody.

He said, "I don’ wan nobody to see. ’Cuz it’s baby stuff."

"Huh? Babies don’t use sippy cups. Babies use baby bottles. Duh!" Then she smiled, patted his head and said, "Be right back! Don’t move."

Well, Benji did move because it took her over three minutes to get back, and when she got back she was hiding something behind her back. She said, "OK, come here and sit on the bed with me. I got something to show you."

When he was on the bed she took two baby bottles with some water in them from behind her back and said, "These are Kathy’s old ones. Mom gave them to me to play with with my dolls a long time ago."

"I’m not using that!"

Vicky ignored his words and took one of the bottles and began sucking from it herself. After a few sucks she said, "Last year there was a rumor that one of the girls in my grade still used these at home. So, I got ’em out and tried it. Go ahead, see how they work. Go ahead, be brave, little bro. I’m doing it - yum-nom-nom-nom."

So Benji touched it to his mouth, and Vicky said, "It’s lots better with juice, you know?" But she made it look like she liked it with just water, and then said, "Milk’s even better. Strawberry Milk! But that’s pink, so maybe baby boys don’t like it?"

Once Benji started drinking she pushed his head onto her lap, and she made him empty the bottle while she twirled his hair and emptied hers, then she said, "OK. Now we’ve played baby together, baby bro, and I can see you with the cup, right? Just think how sophisticated you will look with a grown-up sippy cup now."

But he still didn’t let anyone else see him use those cups until Saturday morning. He and Kathy were watching cartoons and waiting for their mom to get up and tell them what to wear, and Kathy found two cups, all prepared, in the refrigerator and brought them to the den. Benji decided he didn’t want to miss the end of Scooby-doo just to have a drink at the table.

But the worst of that whole week was when he was reading the book he had to write a report on. First he had to find Maggie to get her to tell him a word (’engine’). Then, not ten minutes later, he had to ask her about something else.

"Why is the bear crying on the paper, Maggie? I don’t get it."

"Well, just let me see what is going on, Bwana. -- Aha! It’s not that bear that is crazy; it’s the crazy English, it is. See those four letters there? Some times they mean ’sad drop from eyes’, and we say ’tear’; other times the very same mean ’rip’, and we say ’tear’."

"Oh, yeah. I’ just real stupid!"

"Benjamin Christopher Collins! Don’t you ever say such a thing ever again! Do you hear me, right now, Bwana?"

There were sad drops in Benji’s eyes then, and he said, "But I couldn’t figure it out. ’Cuz I gettin’ dumb an’ shrikin’."

Maggie sat at the table and took Benji into her lap for the first time, and Benji squirmed a bit, but it wasn’t a bad lap, and she said, "And do teachers give you easy work to make you dumb, or do they give you very hard work to make you smart, Bwana? Did you think of swimming in the yard to get the mud off on Saturday? I did not, and never had. Is that a thing that’s being dumb?"

"But it’s about a bear! And I can’t read it alone, Maggie."

"And so what does that signify? My Joshua read a book about a big fish at a University so renown they can’t win a football game to save them, and had to talk about it hours a week with a professor too; it was reading one for a whole half a year about a man getting drunk in Dublin that turned him into a useful handy man. People write hard books about lots of things, little bwana."

"But it’s skinny and has pictures and everything."

"And that fish book has pictures of whales and old boats in most all copies I’ve seen. And come into the living room at your parent’s bookcases. I’ll show you skinny books."

Maggie led Benji to his daddy’s section of single Shakespearian plays and said, "Now just you look at that book, and say skinny and small means easy. For I can’t make heads or bottoms of those words. -- So, Bwana, I’ll not have you saying you are dumb, not at all. That’s a rule that’s firm. But Kathy has left me, because she got a fancy new desk now in her room, so you come and homework in the kitchen from now on, and maybe I can find those hard words you must read in my old head sometimes."

****************

As they walked into the park Sunday afternoon, Laddie was on a leash, but Benji wasn’t, and he was running ahead of and back to his daddy as he tossed the tennis ball into the air and bounced it on the pavement. He covered almost every inch of the path with leaps, spins and skips. Fifteen decades ago he would have been frolicking, but we don’t accuse people of that very often anymore.

He was oblivious to the grins and chuckles of the people he almost ran into (and of the glares of those few who can be in a park on a spring day and still be grumpy.) He did hear the woman who said to his daddy, "Wow! What a happy little boy!" though.

When the ball got away from him and bounced over to a little girl who was pushing a doll stroller and hit the doll in the head, Benji grimaced and said, "Oops. Sorry. Is she ’K?"

The little girl, whose head was at Benji’s chin, stood, arms akimbo, and said, "Just be more careful."

Benji said, "I didn’t mean to hit her! Really!"

Some woman near by said, "He said he was sorry, Sally. Now you be nice too. Kiss her booboo, and she will be alright." Then to his daddy the lady said, "He’s a real sweetie. I hope Sally learns to be that nice someday."

Benji’s daddy said, "Well, he’s got two sisters, so he knows about respecting dolls." Then he said, "Puddin’, you better come to a heel like Laddie until we get to the dog field, OK?" And for the rest of the way to the off-leash area Benji held his daddy’s hand and walked reasonably serenely, which wasn’t easy, but his daddy distracted him with a discussion of his book about that bear from Peru, which Benji liked in spite of the hard words.

Once they were in the dog park, both the boy and the dog were released to play fetch and frolic, and frolic they did, even though it is the twenty-first century.

Benji heaved the ball across the open ground; Laddie brought it back; his daddy tossed it further; Laddie sprinted after it, and Benji tried to out run the dog; Laddie loped back with the return. Then Benji shoved the ball straight into the air and tried to out jump the dog on the bounce, but didn’t (alas). His daddy tossed it really high, both boy and dog needed two bounces to judge their jumps, and the boy got one at last; the dog’s tail wagged just as fast as before.

Benji wanted to do one that high. He jumped as he made the throw towards the clouds. It went up, but its trajectory was askew; the ball landed several meters away. But it bounced really high, and he and Laddie pursued it. They leaped into the air at the same instant, both going higher and longer than on the other throws. The boy came down on top of the dog; the dog came down on top of the boy; the ball rolled away; the dog yelped; the boy cried.

Benji really, really didn’t want to do that. He really, really didn’t. But there were tears in his eyes, and he heard his own sobs, and he held his breath, but the sobs didn’t stop, and his arm hurt. He looked at the blood on his arm, and Laddie licked his face, and his daddy said, "Sit still, puddin’; let me look."

But his daddy looked in his eyes and softly rubbed his head. He was looking for even, reactive pupils and bumps on Benji’s head, but Benji thought he was counting the tear drops, and that made him want to cry even more, which he didn’t want to want to.

Benji’s first words were, "I’ Wad’ie hur’?" Laddie was weaving and waving right in front of Benji, also trying to see his face.

Once he was mildly reassured of Benji’s cerebral soundness, Benji’s daddy sat on the ground, sat Benji on his lap, hugged his boy and said, "Did you hit your head, puddin’? Laddie’s fine, just scared about you."

Benji did his best to say, "Nah", but he was still crying enough it was hard, and he pointed at the skinned elbow that went half way to his wrist.

Benji’s daddy pushed Benji’s head down to meet his shirttail and wiped Benji’s face and eyes and said, "Ohhh, that is one bad, bad indian burn."

Hugs and laps were a good treatment, and Benji said, "Not that bad. Shou’d’t ’e cry’n’."

"Yeah, but it was scary too, buddy. I’d want to cry after that collision, and you were scared for Laddie too."

Benji tried to smile, but he still knew fifteen year-olds didn’t cry about skinned arms. Or tumbles. Ever.

Once Benji was calmed downed and his fears were assuaged (which really were the real tear makers; embarrassment being the second biggest, and totally counter-productive, element) and his face was not still getting wetter, his daddy picked him up and went looking for someone with a baby stroller.

Being carried was something new and fun, but Benji said, "Why we looking for babies?"

"Because people with babies and wheels always have cleansing stuff, and sometimes they have giant first aide kits. We’re going to beg for a towelette or two. Those things work on great big boys too."

They soon were supplied with analgesics and disinfectants, and with a clean and less hurting arm Benji went back towards the dog park. When almost there he said, "Daddy, I gonna ask ya’ som’thin’."

"OK, I’m ready. Shoot."

"’M I being a little kid too?"

Benji’s daddy picked him up again and said, "Uh-oh, I was expecting another elephant riddle. If we’re gonna do serious, let’s go sit on the picnic tables, OK?"

When Benji’s daddy and Laddie were on top of the table, and Benji was on top of his daddy’s legs facing him, he had to explain why he’d asked that, and he said, "’Cuz I cry like a baby over hurts, and didn’t use’ ta’. ’Cuz one lady said I little and ’nother said I sweet when we were coming in the park. And ’cuz other stuff."

"Well, Benji, it is my considered and scientific opinion that you now, and always have, act like a puddin’head. Even when you were very big you did. Nothing has changed in this. However, in the interest of full disclosure, son, I must tell you, your mom doesn’t fully agree."

Benji, didn’t follow all of that exactly, but he got the idea well enough to say, "Huh?"

"Your mom doesn’t think you are a puddin’head. She insists you’re a puppy dog and, from her behavior after your collision today, I think Laddie agrees with your mama."

Benji snickered and petted his pet. Then he said, "But there’s this girl that gets shrinking shots, and at my last shot she was crying like a baby in the scale room. I don’t want ta."

"Well, buddy, I know it’s too bad these shot make you little, but haven’t they done good stuff? Don’t you have more fun?"

Benji said, "I guess." He was having a hard time mustering his arguments. He thought, when he thought about it, that the having more fun thing was part of the b’comin’ a kid thing, but that wasn’t an argument against it when his daddy was talking the other way.

He said, "But I think I don’t do the same stuff in school neither, daddy, and I want to get smart!"

"I thought you were reading "Paddington"? That’s one great book! What’s wrong with it?"

"Nothing, just..."

"Benji, do you remember back when we first started this new program and your mom and I talked to you?"

"Yeah." Benji could remember that night, but he’d been much different then.

"We didn’t all know about the getting smaller stuff, that’s true, but we talked about letting you be a kid again, and having a lot less stuff to worry about, right, little guy?"

"Yeah."

"So, Puddin’head, be a kid and just stop worrying. Your mom and I worry a lot about how much you worry. And always have!"

Benji got so worried after his daddy said that that he sucked on his thumb so hard he could almost hear it -- it was important not to make his mom and daddy worry -- but just right then immediately his daddy picked him up off the table and said, "I betcha Laddie won’t mind being on lead for a while while you go down those giant slides. Want to go over there?"

"Uh-huh!"

And then Benji was put all the way up on his daddy’s shoulders and was asked, "So, how’s the view up there? Can you see France?"

"Uh-huh. I see Paris; I see France; I see someone’s underpants." Benji said that with lots of giggles.

"Not mine!" his daddy said as he jostled Benji to hitch up his jeans.

"Not really. I too high to really."

Five steps latter Benji said, "Hey, daddy, why do elephants have round feet?"

"To hide in cheery trees?"

"Noooooo. That’s a different question. To walk on lily pads. What big, gray, has a trunk, and likes peanuts a whole lot?"

"An elephant??"

"Noooooooooo...."