Category: Child                              (499 words)


                   STOPPED

The reflection is dark, my image indistinct, but I see past the present
to a memory from my childhood.  It was Christmas morning, I was six, my
brother Robert four.  As usual, he was racing in circles.  From the
time he could crawl, Bobby was a dynamo.  He could not stay still. 
Bobby became Buzz, when Daddy said he was like a bee in a field of
flowers.  Always moving, lighting here, there, then somewhere else.

Daddy sat rocking, the newspaper hid everything from his waist up,
except his hands.  We waited for my mother, always a slow morning
starter, excitement building as the minutes passed.  The tree was a
glorious riot of red, green and gold: the presents stacked beneath, the
intense focus of our growing impatience.

Buzz could not contain himself, he jumped up and down, ran at the tree,
skidded to a stop, then danced back.  Daddy rattled the paper and
peering over the top, told Buzz to settle down, "....mother will be
along any minute, now."  Buzz ignored Daddy and began to orbit the
tree, difficult, as it was in a corner.  He accomplished his circuit by
ducking under the branches, crawling behind, where he could not stand. 
On his third loop, he dislodged an ornament and upset some of the
presents.  The ball made a tinkling crash as it hit the hardwood floor,
and Daddy lowered the paper, frowning over the pages.

"Buzzy!  Please be careful, buddy!  You don't want to knock over the
tree, now do you?" This gentle warning had no effect; Buzz continued to
circle the tree.  He completed two more orbits and then as he burrowed
behind, he fulfilled Daddy's premonition.  The beautiful tree swayed,
teetered, then toppled with a swish and the awful sound of breaking
ornaments!  A terrible silence followed.  It was ended as Daddy's paper
fluttered to the floor and the rocker creaked.

I held my breath, intuitive about what would happen next.

As Buzz crawled from beneath the mess, he was snatched and summarily
dragged to the couch.  Daddy sat, gentle no more, turned Buzz over,
jerked down his PJ bottoms and spanked those naked little buttocks
hard!  My brother was very dynamic over Daddy's knees, kicking,
twisting, howling as his behind turned red. It was over quickly:
twenty-five or thirty firm swats, then Buzz was carried to a corner and
told "not to move an inch."  Sniffling and hicupping, he obeyed,
standing stiff, sorry, sore and repentant.

I helped Daddy right the tree and repair the damage, hiding the broken
decorations in back.  When Mommy arrived, twenty minutes later, Daddy
was behind his paper, I was reading the comics and unstoppable Buzzy
Bee trotted in small circles on the far side of the room.  Only the
tear streaks on his face were clues to the recent incident.  The
presents we got that year were wonderful!

I walk the long black wall, find his name and remember.  Buzz is
stopped now, moving only in my memories.                          

    Copyright August 2004, by Koalabear <Woody at lava dot net>