"We're just crossing our fingers it doesn't assert itself and become rude and large".

I'm writing a story with The Boy. The way it works is I write 500 words, then give him the last two sentences and he writes 500 words off of them. Continue ad infinitum. The only reason I'm putting it here is because I wrote this at work and I don't want to save it on the work computer because that would be weird and I'd probably forget and the next person who uses this computer would inevitably find it and just think "what the fuck?" and while that would be amusing I would just rather not. Plus I can't access the work computer from my house. I don't know if this will become a thing or not. Here's the first part:

“In any case, it’s still a lost cause”. Barnaby Wilke stared down into his destroyed garden, flower petals strewn about it like tiny delicate corpses on a bloody battlefield, the weeds holding their spears and pitchforks high in victory.

“What about the perennials, though? They’ll just pop back up next year”. Amelia Jean looked up at her father.

“Then I suggest telling Mrs. Kershluck to watch for tulips next spring, because the bulbs are on her lawn”. Barnaby pointed at the boxy grey house across the street, in front of which at least twenty tulip bulbs were lying.  

“Well we can fix it!”

“It’s done, Amelia”.

“So you’re just going to leave our entire front yard looking like this?” Amelia waved a hand over the chewed up soil and broken plants. Suddenly, the snapped marigolds sprung upright; the petunias got up and replanted themselves; Barnaby watched as a sunflower waddled over to a patch of forget-me-nots and stood them all up straight at once. As everything began to settle down, Amelia crouched to peer up close at one of the daffodil. It swayed a little as she exhaled, but other than that made no move. As she stood up, she noticed the tulip bulbs lying immobile on Mrs. Kershluck’s lawn. Picking through the garden path, Amelia made her way to the curb in front of the boxy grey house. Feeling ridiculous, she flicked her hand over the bulbs and watched them roll their way across the street and back into the soil.

Amelia’s father stared at her as she walked back up the driveway. “Well fuck”.

***

“I’m not letting you cut into my fingertips!” Amelia slammed her hands down on the table.

“But how else are we supposed to figure out how this happened? There’s got to be something here to find!” Barnaby stirred his pot of macaroni faster and faster until elbow-shaped noodles were flying out and sticking to the walls.

“That’s not the point! I’m not a science experiment. Take me to a doctor! Tell them I hurt my hand and need and x-ray to see if it’s broken. Look at my fingerprints through a magnifying glass, I don’t care. But you’re not cutting me open”. Amelia took the cooking spoon away from her father and resumed making the macaroni at a more normal pace.

Jeremiah Wilke sat at the counter, watching his daughter and husband argue. He had arrived home from his rock-polishing class to find Barnaby and Amelia yelling at each other in the kitchen, Barnaby waving about the macaroni pot in frustration. Upon hearing about the incident in the garden that afternoon, Jeremiah had promptly pulled up a chair to watch the hilarity ensue. Amelia slammed the lid on the pot and marched around the counter to her father. “Dad. Do you honestly think you’ll find anything if you look in my fingers? Really?”

“I might. That’s the point. I don’t know”.

“Well you’re not cutting me open”. The macaroni began to boil over.  

Blankety Boo

I don't understand why sleeping with a blankie is considered childish.

Okay, well, I do understand. Sort of. Babies sleep with blankies. Children sleep with blankies. And after you reach a certain age, you start thinking that you want to be a grown-up. You start wanting respect from the people you admire. You start thinking that you have to be strong and mature and that being strong and mature means immediately ceasing any and all behaviours associated with being a child. Including sleeping with blankies.

I think that when kids start going through this, what they don't realize is that being an adult doesn't make you this impenetrable wall of security, because often times that's all they see. They see their parents. They see their parents deciding what to make for dinner and telling them that there is nothing under the bed and that the massive gust of wind won't actually pick them up off the ground. They see their parents being secure, because that is what their parents show them. A parent doesn't generally show their child the bills piling up in the mailbox that they won't be able to even start paying until Thursday; a dad reads Cinderella to the kids until they fall asleep and then cries himself breathless because his wife is having an affair she thinks he doesn't know about; or maybe she's not having an affair but he thinks she wants to but she says she doesn't but he doesn't believe her because how could she love someone as insecure as him? You don't show your kids that shit. You don't want to scare them, or hurt them, or have to try to explain something to them that is uncomfortable and that you probably don't even want to think about or that you maybe don't even fully understand. And so children grow up believing that adults don't need help, that they've all had security permanently stuck inside of them in an official Growing Up ceremony that gave them all the answers when they turned twenty-five.

Blankies give comfort that children trying to grow up don't think they should need. But everyone needs comfort. I think at some point everyone realizes that adults are still confused, only with bigger consequences. We realize that there is not going to be a moment in our lives where we are suddenly sure of everything and will feel completely safe for the rest of time. I'm still half hoping. But once you realize that, how can you think it shameful to need a blankie? Why is it only okay to fall asleep holding something if it is alive? We cuddle our friends and our loves and our pets and our parents, but what about when they aren't around? Are we supposed to just suddenly shed our need to be close, to have something or someone to hold on to? I think that's stupid. If I'm in bed alone and panicking and need something to remind me that I'm still attached to the earth, I will squeeze my blankie against my chest and feel safe.