Lance Olsen - Calendar of Regrets

once upon a time there was a boy born a black marble-cover notebook he had a sewn-cloth spine for extra strength he was filled with wide-ruled sheets of paper he didn't have any arms or legs just two sad blue eyes a squinched nose a pair of lips thin as a line drawn by a number-two pencil floating among the patterning just above the white rectangle where it said Composition Book

when the nurse in the delivery room passed the boy to his mother the woman gasped in shame and pity then reached out her arms smiled my beautiful boy she cooed my beautiful beautiful boy

the father stood off to the side

weeping

he claimed with happiness but he had told his friends he didn't care what the baby was so long as it was healthy and now he was regretting his you could say inexact wording

the parents christened him The Notebook Boy their newborn wrote his name on the cover of him in bold black permanent marker

the mother saying he was a special gift from God

the father weeping calling him their little miracle

The Notebook Boy proved himself a quiet good-natured child he could entertain himself for hours simply by staring up at all the colorful plastic shapes strung above his crib like miniature warnings to miniature low-flying aircraft

he didn't need diapers

because he didn't make a mess

he didn't make a mess because he didn't need to eat

the parents' friends started dropping by they brought gifts loitered with their hands in their pockets asked in the end if they could see the new bundle of joy it wasn't long before they also wondered aloud shyly at first then less so if perhaps they could write something in him just a word or two

help yourselves the parents said handing them special blue felt-tip pens that matched The Notebook Boy's eyes some drew cute cartoons some gave what they thought sounded like sage advice some simply wished The Notebook Boy well on what would be nothing if not a challenging course

through life

the parents wrote in him as well

spelling out what he could do

what he couldn't

reminding him to say his prayers each and every night

just in case he happened to die in his sleep

amen

The Notebook Boy enjoyed the attention lying in his crib delighting in the tickle of those pens on his paper skin

he decided he would never learn to speak in part because he already knew what he would say hearing the obvious didn't interest him in part he preferred to listen to what others wrote in him finished as he was with the obvious what others had to say always surprising always pleasing him

his weeping father began to shrink

it wasn't conspicuous at first

the mother thinking perhaps he was just stooping a bit more than usual attention-getting device she told him to stand up straight get a backbone then she realized the top of the man's balding head only reached the tip of her nose this wasn't how she had remembered him at all she was sure that when they met he had towered above her

in school children picked on The Notebook Boy lifted him out of his motorized wheelchair held him down on the playground wrote I SUCK! in large red crayon letters in his wide-ruled pages

then walked away

laughing

leaving him stranded on his back in the patchy grass next to the monkey bars until his teachers found him

the better part of an hour later

he dropped out begged his parents to let him have his own apartment he needed somewhere to be alone with the voices inside him

nice place plenty of light

plasma-screen TV

his mother stopped by twice a day to

lend him a hand

once every morning once every evening

The Notebook Boy took a stay-at-home job watched television shows to see if he could guess the endings if so the marketing agency that hired him told him to rate the show in question as Good if not Poor

the father became the size of a small chimpanzee

the size of a guinea pig standing on its hind legs

the mother keeping him in a brightly colored soft-sided cat carrier

one day The Notebook Boy awoke to find sentences he didn't recognize having begun cropping up in the pages that comprised him the overwhelming impression being of strangers whispering things through his skin while he slept

I feel like I am always moving Taru

like I am never exactly where I am

the voices

whole stories too

three people wake one morning to find themselves treading water in the middle of the ocean still in their clothes not a good sign the first has unabridged Webster's dictionaries for feet she goes under in a matter of minutes the others can hear her shoutgurgling as she sinks out of sight