Nightmare-ish Dream

At 4, I lead a happy merry life. I had a loving, caring father, a slightly plump, but a sweet, awesome mother and a wonderful, ‘filled with love’ life. As an only child, I was the centre of all their attention, and was sure that I would become a world class roller skater and story teller.

I was a happy-go-lucky kid, with a close knit group of friends and fellow-kindergarteners, who I would love to boss around. I had a corner in my parents’ room all to myself, lived with my doting grandparents and was fed till I would burst. It was living a dream life, and I thought it would never end, but…

Soon, the people around me, started going a bit eccentric. They started bringing me clothes which were way too small to fit me and toys which made me cringe. While, they were treating me like a new-born, they would simultaneously also call me a ‘big girl’. Gosh! If you give me things meant for 4 months old, how do you expect me to behave like a fourteen year old? (Yeah! I was a sassy little kid.)

I started noticing some weird changes in ‘my’ room too. There was a ‘baby-bed’ with random grills on it, put in ‘my’ corner of the room. All ‘my’ new toys, (which I had cringed at) were being laid in that cot, out of my reach. And most surprisingly, I found that people were no longer amused to see me ‘messing about’ and said things like “Grow up”.

But what worried my tender little heart the most was my ‘plump’ mother stated becoming borderline ‘obese’. She would feel uneasy all the time. My father and grandmother would ‘hush’ me out of the room, where my mother would lay for a majority of the day. I even heard her shriek and then happily say ‘Yes, I again felt a kick’. I was worried for her physical as well as mental state.

My merry dream life was rapidly turning into a nightmare.

Once, on a late gloomy night, I woke up panic-stricken, and found ‘my’ room to be empty. Completely empty. Scared, I started bawling my eyes out. After an eternity, my grandfather came and pacified me, but I wanted my mother. Alas, she did not turn up and my howling wouldn’t stop.

I must have fallen asleep while shrieking, because when I opened my eyes next I could see my father reaching out for me. He told me to get dressed and that he would take me to ‘Mommy’. I readily agreed, and when he took me to the most dreaded part of town- to the man who used to regularly push metal objects into my arm, I was a bit wary. (Well, this fragment became too creepy. The ‘man’ was my doctor, who used to give me my vaccines’)

Inside his clinic, I actually saw my mother and she had a weird looking ‘toy’ in her hands. I ran inside and hugged her. My father told me that my mother had felt the pain because of that ‘toy’, and I, with all the wisdom the 4 year old me could collect, said, ”Mom, I know that new toys make me happy, but you should never go through pain for a ‘toy’ again.” I thought this was very noble of me, but all the onlookers started laughing helplessly.

Seriously, grownups are ‘weird’.