He Was Just Gone

     There used to be this chubby little boy running around the house with a bucket on his head and using the cat as a pillow and the dog as a blanket.  His cheeks were like that of a chipmunk...it was all you could do to keep from pinching them non-stop.

     I woke up this morning and the little boy was gone.  Vanished.  Into thin air.  We looked high and low, checked iPhone locator dots, messenger location, Google maps.  We used "The Cat in the Hat's - Calculatus Eliminatus."  We Stumbledupon his Tumblr account, Reddit outloud, and even asked the mayor of 4Square, but all for naught. He was just gone.  I honestly do not understand how something like this could happen.  I was certain we kept better tabs on him than that.  It's similar to those times when you walk into a room for a certain thing, and 5 minutes later you are still standing in the center of the room, wondering why you are there and what you were searching for in the first place.  As strange as this may sound...that very thing happened to this child of whom I speak...several years back.  We were in the theater, and I asked him to run and grab another bag of popcorn from the pantry.  10 minutes rolled by before I realized that neither the popcorn nor the child had returned.  I had to go in after him and retrieve the scrumptious necessities myself, for when I arrived in the pantry, there he was peering outside at the neighbors' dogs.  It was good that I went in anyhow because we also needed a fresh bag of flaming Hot Cheetos.

     Where did he go?  He was the kind of kid with a ball of energy just waiting to be opened by Pandora, and when the seal had cracked...look out!  His baby picture has him propped up with a bright smile on his face, fists clenched, and starring into the distance in preparation for his first TED talk.  We can't seem to find him.  I thought perhaps he was out in the garage next to the heavy bag where we would box and listen to 90's Rap music and talk about the many corollaries between life and boxing, but there was only a used pair of gloves and some wrist wraps.  Perhaps he was in the yard running through the sprinkler with his cousins, but when I turned the corner...there was no Nick.  The sprinklers looked like they hadn't been used in years.  They were dry, rusted over, and lifeless.  He would on occasion, play hide and seek in the basement, but I couldn't find him down there.  He wasn't in the attic, and he wasn't screening anything in the theater.  How does one just disappear like that?  Joyce reminded me that from time to time he would retreat to my office to play video games on the Mac and watch Funny stop-motion Hulk videos on Youtube while battling his Hulk action figures.  When I opened the door to the office...the lights were dim.  The screens for the Mac were off and no child sat before them playing some silly game.  There were no Hulk videos running in the background, and no little guy duking it out with some green action figures.  The silence was deafening.  There was a pain in my heart with the void of laughter and giggles that once stemmed from a child sitting in my seat.  The chair wasn't twirling in a dizzy spiral round and round again with a young voice calling for my attention inquiring about dinner.  There was no flipping through the channels or watching a rabbit-hole YouTube link and switching to an entirely different video only seconds into it, and repeating.  It was just silent, and he was gone.

     Joyce had found someone that looked like him upstairs in Nick's bedroom.  When I reached  the top of the stairs I met a young man who vaguely resembled our little boy, but with all vulnerability was far older and looked almost nothing like our missing child.  This fine young gentleman was tall, well dressed, and wore a long black gown with a light sheen and a square cap with a golden tassel dangling on the side.  He smiled and asked me, "Well, whatta-ya think, Dad?"  It sounded like him.  Surely it did.  His hair was thicker.  Voice was deeper, and somehow older.  He held a diploma binder in his left hand and a Katana Blade clenched proudly in his right fist.  I honestly didn't think he needed it, I mean...let's be honest.  They mail you the diploma within a couple of days, so what was he gonna do with a binder?  The blade was obvious and you being a bright and intelligent blog-subscribing individual and a well-read scholar...I needn't even get into the specifics of the need for the katana blade.  You probably already know everything about that.

    Who was this guy?  And where was our son?  Where's the kid with whom I would play catch in the backyard, and kick the soccer ball on the field, and wrestle to the ground?  Where's the little guy I used to throw out of his bed and claim his mattress as my own at bedtime as another opportunity to wrestle and bear hug?  Where's the kid I used to tuck into bed so tightly at the end of the day that he could barely move, and as I would turn to make my exit I would hear a slight giggle and bed squeak and ruffling of the covers.  I would then turn quickly to discover he had shot his foot out from underneath the tightly wound covers requiring us to begin once again...laughing the whole time, until we got yelled at by Mom.

     Apparently, that young child to whom I have referred several times is all grown-up, standing before us at attention with style and then some ready to take on the world headstrong and sure of his next steps.  I only wish I were as confidant in my own.  We were told all of our married life that we should take every moment to enjoy them while they're young, because one fine day we'll wake up and they will be graduating.  They were right.  We both did our best to suppress their aging process and keep them small and huggable and throwable, but in the end, after looking high and low and in all the regular places, our little boy had vanished leaving in his wake a fine young gentleman well on his way to the next chapter in this book called "Life", but then again...that's just my humble opinion.