#3 – What If FOX News Never Existed?

What If?,

Perched on the rocker on her front porch, she closes her eyes and soaks up the whimsical sound of the children playing across the street. A strong breeze stirs the wind chimes above her head and she smiles thinking of her wedding day fourteen years ago. 

The breeze catches one of the smaller children’s giggles and ushers it onto the porch, swirling it around her head. She immediately hears her childhood in it; those delicious years of conjuring up magical worlds with her sisters, hamming it up for her mother, and building majestic snow forts with her dad. Those forts seemed so huge and her father towering over them gave him a larger-than-life countenance. Then there were the summers in the woods and on the lake, and the road trips to the east and the south to dip their feet in the ocean. She loved almost nothing more than talking trees with her father. 

Firmly rooted in her mid-50s now, those honey-dipped years recede further and further in the rearview mirror – presenting the possibility of disappearing altogether. She doesn’t lament this though. And she doesn’t regard those years passing as a loss but rather as the brilliant foundational first chapter of her life. She’s grateful for the peace, security, and happiness of the first chapter. The first several chapters, really. It was a time when she knew with certainty that she would always feel part of something. She would ALWAYS be part of her family.

She rests her head back and stares up at the grey autumnal sky. She closes her eyes and breathes in the wet and earthy scent of the season. Something in her throat catches. The holidays will be here soon. And she ponders gathering with her parents. Her father will most certainly comment on the state of the lawn, challenge her to a round of Jeopardy!, and drink one too many mai tais and start singing “Tiny Bubbles.” And her mother will offer to help in the kitchen, as she always does, while eager to hear about the happenings in her daughters’ and grandchildren’s lives. Perhaps they’ll watch a holiday movie, talk about their wishes and dreams, exchange meaningful gifts, or engage in any other number of new holiday traditions they’ve instituted over the years that so beautifully complement the traditions from her youth that ‘made the season bright.’ 

She snuggles deeper into her rocker and notices the earthy scent has taken on the slightly sweet smell of rot now. All but one of the children have been called inside. And it’s the oldest child, who’s quietly playing by herself. Another breeze stirs the chimes. And she thinks of her parents again. Their joy when they presented her and her husband with those chimes on her wedding day. How they’d just always been there. And how she assumed they always would be. 

“To assume is to make an ass of u and me,” her father used to joke. He was right though. 

She won’t see her parents this year for the holidays. Neither will her sisters. Just as they didn’t last year or the year before that. Because the truth is, there were never any new holiday traditions that included exchanging thoughtful gifts, watching movies, or having meaningful conversations. Over the past three decades, there’s been a gradual and steady unraveling. She’s witnessed her father slowly descend into irrational and sometimes hateful rhetoric – echoing the talking heads that spew fear and lies from every television in his house from dawn until dusk each and every day. He’s even directed it at her and her sisters. And as her mother rallied to stay connected over the years, she began to drift as her once razor-sharp brain grew weary and eventually surrendered to Alzheimer’s.  

Now they are thousands of miles away. And there are no conversations at all. Her father is lost in lies, and her mother is lost in herself.

She feels as though her parents have died. Except that they haven’t. With every ignored text message or unanswered call, she senses their presence on the planet. And it leaves her in an oppressive state of limbo. So she comes to sit on the porch every afternoon to rejuvenate. She loves the fuzzy quality of the October light and it brings her joy to hear the children laughing. And when the voices of her parents come through those wind chimes, it reminds her of their love. 

Wherever it may be.

#2 – What If the Sky Were Red?

What If?

“What if the sky was red?” Molly asks.

“Like blood?”

She twists her face as though she’s just tasted a lemon. Or a dill pickle. “I was thinking more like a flower.”

“Ah,” I say, squinting my eyes against the gooey warm light of the honeyed summer sun. It’s only 9am and it’s gotta be close to 85 degrees already. “Like a rose then?” 

She nods vigorously, wiping away a few strands of hair that hang limp on her brown freckled face.

“Maybe it is,” I say. 

“It’s not,” she responds with that brand of certainty possessed only by people under the age of six. And sociopaths. “Look at it. It’s BLUE.”

“Is it though?” I say, leaning back against the tree under which we decided to have our picnic breakfast. (Her idea.)

She stares at me, then rolls her eyes. “You’re just being silly. It’s blue.”

“But what if what I see as red is what you see as blue?”

This gives her pause. She picks a blade of grass and studies it intently. She gazes back up at me. “No.”

I’m surprised at this response. She usually entertains whimsy. Welcomes it into her arms like a gaggle of puppies.

“No?”

She shakes her head with the same vigor with which she nodded it previously. Several strands stick again to her sweaty cheeks. She wipes them away as a cicada begins its song in a neighboring tree. It’s a brand of music that always leaves me a little on edge. 

“Just like that, huh? Just plain no?” 

“Yep,” she sighs. “Because it doesn’t make sense.”

“That I might see blue where you see red?”

“Not unless your eyes are broken.”

“Or yours are,” I counter.

She laughs. “My eyes can’t be broken because my eyes are new,” she crosses them and points to them, “and yours are ooooooooold.”

I cock a brow and give her half a smile. Then I pick a blade of grass and study it as she did. “What do you see when you look at a blade of grass?”

“Huh?” she looks at me with an expression I don’t recognize.

“You were looking at a blade of grass before,” I say. “What did you see?”

“Why? Do you think it’s purple or something?”

I shake my head. “I think it’s green.”

“Good.”

“At least my version of green,” I add. She lets out an exasperated sigh. “But just stick with me a second. What did you see?”

“I saw a piece of grass.”

“Okay. Now, what if you were a ladybug on the blade of grass. What would you see?”

She shrugs. “How am I supposed to know? I’m not a ladybug, am I?”

“You are not,” I confirm. “But do you think a ladybug sees the same thing that you do?”

“No,” she says definitively, picking at her favorite muffin we grabbed at the café on the way here. A crumb falls to the earth. An ant scurries by my left foot and I suspect that he or she is heading to its brethren to report the presence of baked goods so they can organize.  

“So what do you think then?”

“I think this is stupid,” she says and tosses a piece of the muffin off to her right. An aggressive blue jay (a redundancy, I know) swoops down from the deep green canopy of a catalpa tree and snatches it with a victorious war cry; as if to mock everyone else who missed the opportunity.

“I think,” I offer, not that she asked, “that the ladybug sees a long smooth runway that it can take flight from. Like an airplane.”

“Okay,” Molly looks up at the sky. “And is it green?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t know how a ladybug sees.”

She rolls her eyes. “That’s what I said.”

It’s not what she said though. Not exactly.

“I’m bored and I’m hot,” Molly says through a yawn, which I try not to find annoying – given that it was her idea to come to the park on this sticky morning.

“Okay. So what do you want to do then?” I ask. She’s obviously not into our ‘what if’ game today. I smile thinking about some of the scenarios that have spilled so effortlessly from her imagination over the past two years during our times here. And I try to tell myself that it’s just the heat getting to her today because I don’t want to admit that we’re heading down a certain path. One that I recognize as I’ve traveled it twice before.

“I want to go home. There’s nothing to do,” she whines. Molly tosses the rest of her uneaten muffin into the baseball field and watches it get devoured by a mass of squawking seagulls who are easily twenty miles from the closest body of water. I catch a fleeting little girl delight in her smile and her eyes. It quickly fades.

“You don’t want to go over to the pond and see if the tadpoles have grown? Turned into big old gnarly bullfrogs?” I laugh.

She smiles and ponders this for a moment, but then responds with a rather uncommitted, “Not really,” as though she’s trying it on for size. 

I nod. “Okay. We can go home,” I say with some resignation. “If that’s what you want to do.”

“I do,” she says, standing up.

I don’t know if she picks up on my disappointment. It was not my intention, but she’s always been more empathic than her brothers. She comes over and nudges me gently on the arm. “So…” she begins.

I look at her quizzically. “So…?” I respond.

“So, what if the sky was red?” she repeats, pointing to the sky, trailing a half circle with her finger. “All the way acrost?” My heart stirs at the mispronunciation of the word – which I don’t dare correct. Life and the inevitable shedding of childhood will see to that. 

#1 – What If Pigs Could Fly?

What If?
A ridiculously adorable sugar glider. We’ll call him Hendrick the Evil.

Would it be so extraordinary for a pig to fly? They wouldn’t be the first mammal to do it. Bats cornered the market on that one. Then there’s the petaurus. You may know it better as a sugar glider. Or you may not know it at all. But the petaurus, as the name implies, doesn’t so much fly as glide.

So maybe a flying pig would be extraordinary.

Consider the pig’s poop, for instance. It’s most certainly larger than that of a goose, a turkey vulture, or even the exceedingly wide-wing-spanned albatross. Thus, the incidence of more sizable excrement droppings on sidewalks, vehicles, and statues (formerly the pigeon’s domain) would certainly be of some concern. Unless you’re into that kind of thing. In which case, you should seek some help.

Then there’s the issue of the pig’s appetite. Those guys (and gals, to be fair) love to nosh. Case in point? If you consume an entire pizza followed by an entire birthday cake, nobody will accuse you of being a titmouse – though it’s one of the funnier named animals for those with a penchant for juvenile humor. No, they will accuse you of being a pig. Because pigs. Like. To. Eat. Which brings us back to the excrement issue. It’s one thing to avoid the wormy droppings of the majestic cardinal. In fact, it’s almost an honor. Such a pretty bird. It’s another thing altogether to dodge a meaty shit grenade speckled with corn, roofing tiles, and peanut butter M&Ms. It’s a chilling notion. 

Now, perhaps you’re the (annoyingly) optimistic type. You may think, “Hey! I like pigs! I think it would be downright delightful to witness pigs flitting about in the sky with their cute pink bodies and cartoonish noses.” And while that IS an arguably delightful image, imagine the horror you would experience when people start shooting pigs out of the sky because bacon and pulled pork are now hunted meats. How do you like your flying pigs now, optimists!? 

Even dipped in butter, this kitten is not delicious.

Okay. The reality is that nobody would be shooting flying pigs out of the sky because no one would continue to advocate for pork, bacon, or any other pig meat to be considered its own food group. With their new ability to fly, their muscles would become as lean and sinewy as a supermodel’s. Or a cat’s. And despite what you’ve heard reported as truth by certain news media outlets lately, nobody wants to eat cats.

So for now, it’s probably best that the pig stays earthbound. Because, let’s face it, an LT isn’t much of a sandwich.